Blood bath in Gaza

Considering that this "bloody bill" is coming out of a 360 square kilometer area populated with 1.5 million people, the result equates to, let’s say, a total of approximately 15,000 casualties and 70,000 injuries in Turkey. If you add the material damage on top, this is such a scene of cruelty!

Since Hamas announced the six-month truce is over on Dec. 19 and held missile attacks, up to 80 missiles a day, in especially the southern Israeli town of Sderot in the Gaza Strip, Israel had signaled a large-scale military operation against Palestinians. Israeli assault on Gaza was imminent. But the emerging tableau is an atrocious Israeli reaction even beyond disproportional use of force.

Without having the world standing up against, to calm down Israel is not possible. And the world generally means Washington for Israel. People behind the attacks have no doubt that outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush will give a "green light" to assaults as President-elect Barrack Obama’s keeping his silence guarantees that the Israeli attacks will continue for a while.

The important thing is that Germany and Europeans in general hold Hamas responsible for the assaults. Backed by United States and distrustful to the European Union circles, Israel this time feels more comfortable.

Moreover, and most importantly, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as the two leading countries of the Sunni Arab world, expect to see that Hamas will be weakened by Israeli attacks in Gaza, though they don’t express this openly. There cannot be bigger opportunity presented to Israel than allowing unlimited Israeli recklessness.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia view Hamas as "an Iranian ally" and a "tool to spread the Iranian influence in the region." Pervasive Iranian influence in the Middle East means "fatal" results for Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Egypt holds Hamas responsible for the failure of conciliation talks with al Fatah mediated by the Egyptians last month. Saudi Arabia put the blame on Hamas for the subversion of the "Mecca Accord" reached between these two major Palestinian organizations in 2006.

Israeli Haaretz daily’s columnist Zvi Bar’el wrote on Dec. 29 that without those two states, the Arab League will have trouble even convening an emergency summit. But its absence indicates that "Arab solidarity with the Palestinians" is crumbling under the leadership of Hamas.

An accurate assessment, it is. In addition to the fact that the Israeli brutality rips the hearts, Hamas’ leadership doesn’t play a strengthening role for the Palestinian people. In fact, the Taliban in Afghanistan called all Muslims to unit and fight against Israel.

This call is a kind to reduce the Palestinian intifada to the ground of "Muslim solidarity" and turn this into a "clash of civilizations." But it is, at the same time, may isolate Palestinians and push them into more despair. Actually, Israel’s racist-colonialist view and state of mind from which this Jewish state has always failed to disengage is behind this bloody strike. Therefore, disproportional use of force by Israel is something to do with a behavior pattern that could be explained only by a "clash of civilization" rather than a political-military rationale.

As a matter of fact, one of the prominent Israeli "revisionist historians" against Israel’s "official history," Tom Segev, makes the following striking assessment on the Gaza strike:

"Israel is striking at the Palestinians to ’teach them a lesson.’ That is a basic assumption that has accompanied the Zionist enterprise since its inception:

We are the representatives of progress and enlightenment, sophisticated rationality and morality, while the Arabs are a primitive, violent rabble, ignorant children who must be educated and taught wisdom via, of course, the carrot-and-stick method, just as the drover does with his donkey.

The bombing of Gaza is also supposed to ’liquidate the Hamas regime,’ in line with another assumption that has accompanied the Zionist movement since its inception: that it is possible to impose a ’moderate’ leadership on the Palestinians, one that will abandon their national aspirations."

This time there will not be an exception either. However, the last attack on Gaza seems to confute the Palestinian social structure and political arena.

Hamas took a heavy blow; this is obvious. But Israeli aggression will not bring any advantage to al Fatah either. Al Fatah cannot act like the "collaborator of Israel." And that will delay negotiation talks between al Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas, Abu Mazen, the Palestinian National Authority leader, and Israelis for a "two-state solution." The Fatah-Hamas tug of war will become definite on the other side.

Elections in Israel are scheduled for Feb. 10. The Likud Party leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is an extremist in the Gaza issue and the laxest in finding peace, was in lead. Barbaric attacks orchestrated by his biggest rival the Kadima Party leader and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and the Labor Party leader and the Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak will turn the election campaign into a "race of extremists." And that will shelf the words "peace" and "reconciliation" in the Middle East for a while.

The tableau we have seen reveals that Turkey’s role as an effective broker able to talk with all sides in the Middle East is likely to be weakened. Over the weekend, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan showed harsh attitude against Israel in a way to set one’s mind at rest. But this adamant stance of his was reflecting emotionality of a Muslim rather than being a product of "political mind."

I wonder if the inactivation of Turkey’s act as a mediator and a "pro-peace actor" will be in favor of the Palestinian people.

We should consider this. And the criterion is not the protection of Hamas’ political status, but the prevention of the Palestinian people’s blood loss.