Who Broke the 2008 Israel-Hamas Ceasefire?

A response to Mitchell Bard's sophistry, part 1

I recently picked up and started combing through a book titled Myths & Facts: a Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, by one Mitchell Bard. Mitchell Bard is “an American foreign policy analyst, editor and author who specializes in U.S.–Middle East policy”. Bard has no shortage of academic bona fides, possessing a masters degree from Berkeley and a PHD from UCLA. He is also the director of the Jewish Virtual Library, where, incidentally, you can read his book in full- though I wouldn’t recommend it.

Upon reading through the book, it immediately became clear to me that it was a heap of trash, and that Mitchell Bard himself is a dishonest piece of garbage. Nonetheless, I figured that wading through his dishonesty could be a fun exercise and provide some content for my blog. Moreover, it is worth exploring Bard’s lies insofar as many of them are not particular to Bard. Bard, in large part, is not an original thinker, but an official propaganda compiler and repeater. The title of this article includes “Part 1” because it is likely that I will address other sections of Mitchell’s book here in the future.

In this article, I will be focusing on the section of his book where he addresses the “myth” that Israel broke its ceasefire with Hamas in 2008 with its cross boarder raid which killed several Hamas members on November 4th. As is widely acknowledged, Hamas had carefully abided by the ceasefire prior to this event, which effectively put the brief period of calm to an end. Following Israel’s flagrant breach of the largely successful ceasefire, Hamas responded with retaliatory rocket attacks. Israel then used Hamas’ retaliatory rocket fire as a pretext for a brutal assault known as “Operation Cast Lead” which killed around 1,400 Palestinians, and throughout the course of which Israel was accused by the UN as well as every reputable human rights organization on the planet of committing grievous war crimes.

Bard’s “debunking” of this “myth” goes as follows¹:

On June 17, 2008, after several months of indirect contacts between Israel and Hamas through Egyptian mediators, Hamas agreed to a cease-fire (tahadiya). Almost immediately afterward, terrorists fired rockets into southern Israel. Despite what it called a “gross violation” of the truce, Israel refrained from military action. In fact, during the six months the arrangement was supposed to be observed, 329 rockets and mortar shells were fired at Israel.

While there were considerably fewer Palestinian assaults after the agreement than before, terror continued. Nevertheless, the IDF did not respond to the provocations. On the contrary, Israel significantly increased the amount of goods delivered to the Gaza Strip.

During this period, Israel also expected to negotiate the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier taken hostage by Hamas in June 2006. The group repeatedly increased its demands for the number of prisoners it wanted released in exchange for the lone Israeli captive, but never agreed to grant his freedom.

Violence escalated in early November after the IDF carried out a military operation close to the border security fence on the Gazan side that killed seven Hamas terrorists. Israel acted after discovering that Hamas had dug a tunnel under the fence and planned to abduct more Israeli soldiers. Hamas responded by shelling Israeli towns and has continued the rocket barrage ever since.

When the Hamas-imposed six-month deadline expired in December, Israel hoped an agreement could be reached to extend the cease-fire. Instead, Hamas began firing what would be hundreds of rockets into Israel.

I am not exaggerating even slightly when I say that you would be hard pressed to find a single sentence in this passage which is not either an outright lie or at the very least highly misleading. An even more embarrassing fact is that in many cases, all you have to do to discern the dishonesty of what Mitchell is saying is read through the citations which he himself provides.

Ceasefire negotiations

Let’s start with the first sentence. Already, the initiation of the ceasefire is framed in highly misleading terms. According to Mitchell, after several months of contact, “Hamas agreed to a ceasefire”. While this is technically true, Mitchell’s wording clearly implies that it was Hamas’ rejectionism which had been holding up the ceasefire prior to it finally being initiated. But what are the facts? As Sherifa Zahur, writes in a study for the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College, “for months Israel steadfastly rejected diplomacy involving Hamas and Hamas’ truce appeals as offered by Ismail Haniyeh early in 2008, but after efforts by Saudi Arabia and Qatar to mend the conflict between Fatah and Hamas and a deal negotiated by Egypt, it entered into a temporary 6-month truce with Hamas on June 19, 2008.”

Palestinian Rocket Fire

Mitchell then goes on to assert that “Almost immediately afterward, terrorists fired rockets into southern Israel. Despite what it called a “gross violation” of the truce, Israel refrained from military action.” Again, while all technically true, Mitchell omits a few key facts. Firstly, while “terrorists” did fire rockets into southern Israel shortly after the ceasefire was put in place, Mitchell fails to note the important detail that the “terrorists” who launched these rockets were not Hamas². As the source which Mitchell cites in defense of his claim points out, “Islamic Jihad, a militant group backed by Syria and Iran, claimed responsibility for the rocket fire from Gaza.”

Not only was it not Hamas who fired the rockets, but, as Mitchell’s source goes on to note, “Hamas, the militant Islamic group that rules Gaza, promised to rein in the Iran- and Syria-backed faction that carried out the rocket attacks and pledged to remain committed to the truce that went into effect June 19 and urged restraint by all sides.” Hamas’ attempts to “rein in” other terror groups in Gaza were apparently not in vain. As the New York Times subsequently reported, “It took some days, but they were largely successful. Hamas imposed its will and even imprisoned some of those who were firing rockets. Israeli and United Nations figures show that while more than 300 rockets were fired into Israel in May, 10 to 20 were fired in July, depending on who was counting and whether mortar rounds were included. In August, 10 to 30 were fired, and in September, 5 to 10.”

Another detail contained within Mitchell’s citation which is notably absent from his portrayal of events is that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket attacks “were retaliation for the Nablus raid” carried out by Israel in the West Bank earlier in the day, which killed two Palestinians. The raid killed a Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander, as well as “a neighbor” who “was also shot to death by troops when he opened the door of his apartment during the raid” according to a Palestinian bystander, as Mitchell’s source mentions. Unsurprisingly, the IDF disputes this eye witness account, asserting that both men were armed and killed in an exchange of fire, despite the fact that the latter victim was later identified not as a known terrorist but as a 21 year old university student. This raid, while not technically violating the ceasefire, which didn’t prohibit Israeli violence in the West Bank, was clearly a provocative and aggressive move from Israel nonetheless³.

In one of the most shockingly dishonest passages of this section of Mitchell’s book, he then claims that “In fact, during the six months the arrangement was supposed to be observed, 329 rockets and mortar shells were fired at Israel.” Mitchell’s citation for this claim is a report titled The Six Months of the Lull Agreement put out by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center. Now, the claim that “329 rockets and mortar shells were fired at Israel” can be found in that report, but it is instructive to read the entire sentence in which this claim appears. The report writes “In the six months the arrangement was in force, 329 rockets and mortar shells were fired at Israel, most of them during the month and a half after November 4.” November 4th, readers may recall, is the day on which Israel flagrantly violated the ceasefire by killing several Hamas members, effectively ending it.

Indeed, the report that Mitchell cites breaks the period in which the ceasefire was supposed to hold into two sub periods. The first, “A period of relative quiet between June 19 and November 4” in which “Hamas was careful to maintain the ceasefire” and in which only “20 rockets and 18 mortar shells were fired at Israel”, all from other “rogue terror organizations”, and often “in defiance of Hamas”. The second, “The escalation and erosion of the lull arrangement, November 4 to the time of this writing, December 17” which began when “the IDF carried out a military action close to the border security fence on the Gazan side”. The report also claims that the IDF’s military raid was preemptive, and aimed at thwarting “an abduction planned by Hamas”. This claim is doubtful, but we will return to that later, as Mitchell also makes this claim and I would like to explore his lies chronologically.

Israel’s Response

Mitchell continually praises Israel for their unassailable sainthood in the face of brutal Palestinian aggression, referring repeatedly to Israel’s supposed lack of a “response”. When discussing the Palestinian Islamic Jihad rockets launched in the first week of the ceasefire, Mitchell claims that “Despite what it called a “gross violation” of the truce, Israel refrained from military action.” This is true but misleading. While discussing more broadly the sum of Palestinian rocket attacks throughout the ceasefire, however, Mitchell asserts more aggressively that “The IDF did not respond to the provocations.” This is simply a bold face lie.

In the context of Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s initial rocket attacks, it is true that Israel did not respond with military action. However, once again, if you read Mitchell’s own source, you will discover a very notable qualification to this claim which Mitchell himself mysteriously omits. The article writes “Israel took no military action, but late yesterday decided to shut the crossings, cutting off shipments of basic supplies that had been increased as part of the truce deal, according to defense officials... There was no word on when the crossings would be reopened.” While Israel didn’t attack Gaza militarily, then, they nonetheless responded to the rocket strikes in a way which inflicted substantial harm on the people of Gaza, and violated their end of the ceasefire.⁴

This fact, while rendering Mitchell’s first statement misleading, renders his second statement, that the IDF “did not respond” to Palestinian provocation at all, straightforwardly false. At risk of making this article too repetitive, I would like to once again note that Mitchell knew that this claim was straightforwardly and uncontroversially false when he made it, as its falsehood is revealed clearly by the source that he himself cites, and paraphrases in his book almost verbatim.

It’s also curious how Mitchell could make such claims, when, later in his book, he writes “Violence escalated in early November after the IDF carried out a military operation close to the border security fence on the Gazan side that killed seven Hamas terrorists. Israel acted after discovering that Hamas had dug a tunnel under the fence and planned to abduct more Israeli soldiers.” Would not this military action count as Israel responding to provocation? How are these statements compatible? Perhaps when Mitchell says that Israel didn’t respond, he just means “until they did”- but this qualification obviously takes much of the force out of his argument, which is likely why he didn’t make it explicit.⁵

Israeli benevolence does not end there. Not only did Israel “not respond” to Palestinian provocation, according to Mitchell, but “on the contrary, Israel significantly increased the amount of goods delivered to the Gaza Strip.” How generous! Of course, Mitchell fails to acknowledge that the mechanism through which Israel “increased the amount of goods delivered to the Gaza Strip” was slightly loosening the illegal and inhumane economic blockade that it has imposed on Gaza for years, and that the reason for this loosening was that Israel was required to do so according to the terms of the ceasefire. Finally, Mitchell fails to mention that though Israel did loosen the blockade, they never even did so to the extent that the ceasefire required of them.

Indeed, as the New York Times reports, “The goods shipments, while up some 25 to 30 percent and including a mix of more items, never began to approach what Hamas thought it was going to get: a return to the 500 to 600 truckloads delivered daily before the closing, including appliances, construction materials and other goods essential for life beyond mere survival. Instead, the number of trucks increased to around 90 from around 70.” It’s not surprising that this was Hamas’ expectation. After all, the terms of the ceasefire maintained that “all crossings would be open between Gaza and Israel, and Israel will allow the transfer of all goods that were banned or restricted to go into Gaza.”

Israel’s refusal to lift the blockade is seemingly a far more egregious violation of the ceasefire than anything carried out by Palestinians, for multiple reasons. Firstly, this violation issued directly from the Israeli government, whereas Gaza’s violations of the ceasefire happened in spite of the Gazan government’s attempts to prevent them. Secondly, while Israel’s blockade inflicts real and substantial harm on the people of Gaza, the handful of rockets fired at Israel from small terrorist organizations in Gaza throughout the ceasefire failed to inflict any real harm on Israel (nor would we expect them to, given how infrequently Palestinian rockets succeed at harming Israeli’s even when fired en masse).

In fact, according to data from B’Tselem, Israel’s largest human rights group, not a single Israeli civilian or security force member was killed by an attack from Gaza during the period that the ceasefire held.

Israel Ends the Ceasefire

As previously mentioned, on November 4th, Israel broke its ceasefire with Hamas via a lethal cross border raid which killed several people, in a move that is widely acknowledged to have effectively ended the ceasefire. If this sounds bad, then not to worry, because our champion for truth and justice Mitchell Bard has an explanation. According to Mitchell, “Israel acted after discovering that Hamas had dug a tunnel under the fence and planned to abduct more Israeli soldiers.”

Indeed, this was Israel’s official excuse for its violation of the 2008 ceasefire. However, as is the case with many of Israel’s official excuses, it never adduced any evidence in its defense (and certainly Mitchell doesn’t provide any- in fact, he doesn’t even offer a citation for his statement). Already, then, this claim should be treated as highly suspect. In general, it is recognized that we shouldn’t assign much confidence to claims on the basis of statements from parties who plausibly have an incentive to make those statements regardless of whether or not they are true, as is the case here.

Predictably, Hamas denied Israel’s claim, saying that while they had built a tunnel, its purpose was not to facilitate the kidnapping of IDF personnel, but was rather defensive in nature. More significantly, according to Dr. Robert Pastor, a professor at American University and senior adviser to the Carter Centre who met with Israeli and Hamas sources in December of 2008, these facts were confirmed by an IDF official. Former president Jimmy Carter, who was also present for these meetings, later stated in an article for the Washington Post that “Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza.”

Even if Israel did not, as is reported, know that the tunnel was in fact not being built with the aim of kidnapping some of its personnel, it is still not clear that the Israeli position can be maintained. As Dr. Noam Chomsky argues, “The pretext for the raid was that Israel had detected a tunnel in Gaza that might have been intended for use to capture another Israeli soldier; a “ticking tunnel” in official communiques. The pretext was transparently absurd, as a number of commentators noted. If such a tunnel existed, and reached the border, Israel could easily have barred it right there. But as usual, the ludicrous Israeli pretext was deemed credible, and the timing was overlooked.”

Casting further doubt on Israel’s supposed justification for breaking the ceasefire, Likud MK Yuval Steinitz stated in an interview with Al Jazeera in 2009 that Israel had begun planning to attack Gaza months before Hamas had supposedly provided Israel with its pretext for ending the ceasefire. Echoing this claim, Haaretz reports in December of 2008 that “Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.” Justifying the ceasefire with Hamas, Barak reportedly maintained that “the Israeli army needed time to prepare” for the offensive.

Indeed, Israel’s decision to attack Gaza in what would come to be known as “Operation Cast Lead” seemingly goes back even further than that. As Haaretz reports in January of 2009, “IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi has instructed the army to prepare for action in Gaza since March 2007, shortly after he entered the post. That month, military programs were authorized that were eventually put into action as Operation Cast Lead.”

Offering more insight into Israel’s attitude towards the 2008 ceasefire, the Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni asserted in early December of 2008 that although Israel did want “a temporary period of calm” with Hamas, an “extended truce” or “long term calm” “harms the Israeli strategic goal, empowers Hamas, and gives the impression that Israel recognizes the movement”. Needless to say, the fact that Israel had been planning a return to violence with Hamas before and during the ceasefire is cause for extra skepticism when they go on to induce that return, citing an unverifiable self defense pretext to justify their doing so.

Ceasefire Renegotiations

After the ceasefire was ended, there were some attempts at reinitiating it which ultimately failed, leading to a continuation of hostilities, and subsequently a massive Israeli assault on Gaza. This period is described by Mitchell as follows: “Israel hoped an agreement could be reached to extend the cease-fire. Instead, Hamas began firing what would be hundreds of rockets into Israel.” As per usual, Mitchell’s narrative bears strikingly little resemblance to the reality of the situation.

In fact, as the Jerusalem Post reported in December of 2008, “Hamas is interested in renewing the relative calm with Israel but is prepared for military conflict and wants to improve the cease-fire conditions, Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin told the (Israeli) cabinet Sunday”. Hamas’ proposed conditions for renewing the ceasefire, according to Diskin, were “cancelling the blockade of the Gaza Strip, obtaining a commitment that Israel won't attack, and expanding the cease-fire to the West Bank.”

Diskin was not the only prominent Israeli official to recognize the opportunity for peace which Hamas had offered. Former commander of the IDF’s Gaza division Shmuel Zakai, for instance, held that “Hamas would have - and still would - accept a bargain in which Hamas, the only power who holds sway over the multiplicity racketeers and gunmen of Gaza's many armed groups, would halt the fire in exchange for easing of the many ways in which Israeli policies have kept a choke hold on the economy of the Strip”, Haaretz reports. Zakai states that “We could have eased the siege over the Gaza Strip, in such a way that the Palestinians, Hamas, would understand that holding their fire served their interests. But when you create a tahadiyeh, and the economic pressure on the Strip continues, it's obvious that Hamas will try to reach an improved tahadiyeh, and that their way to achieve this, is resumed Qassam fire.”

Similarly, according to the Huffington Post, “Contrary to Israel's argument that it was forced to launch its air and ground offensive against Gaza in order to stop the firing of rockets into its territory, Hamas proposed in mid-December to return to the original Hamas-Israel ceasefire arrangement, according to a U.S.-based source who has been briefed on the proposal.” Hamas officials reportedly told Egyptian Minister of Intelligence Omar Suleiman that “Hamas was prepared to stop all rocket attacks against Israel if the Israelis would open up the Gaza border crossings and pledge not to launch attacks in Gaza.” Unfortunately, upon being presented with this proposal, Israel either “explicitly rejected the Hamas proposal or simply refused to respond to Egypt.”

Dr. Robert Pastor also testified in December that Hamas “was willing to go back to the ceasefire that had been in effect up to early November "if there was a sign that Israel would lift the siege on Gaza"”, as indicated to him by the head of Hamas’ political bureau Khaled Meshal. However, after Pastor presented Meshal’s proposal to a senior IDF official, “the Israeli official said he would get back to him, but did not.”

Instead of agreeing to return to the original ceasefire (involving a lifting of the blockade and a halting of Palestinian rocket fire), Israel demanded what amounted to a unilateral and unconditional ceasefire by Hamas while tightening the blockade. Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossan Zaki lamented this decision, saying that “Israel needs to show more flexibility by opening the crossing points and allowing essential supplies into Gaza.”

We can see then, that in classic Mitchell Bard fashion, the truth has been exactly inverted: in fact, it was Hamas who earnestly sought a renewal of the ceasefire (even though it was Israel who broke it), in the face of unrelenting Israeli rejectionism.

Israel’s Violations, Bard’s Omissions

In his recollection of events, as we have seen, Bard does not let a single Palestinian violation of the ceasefire go unmentioned. On the other hand, Israel violating the ceasefire by refusing to end the blockade of Gaza is entirely omitted. However, this is not the only Israeli violation of the ceasefire which Mitchell omits (although it is certainly the most major). Indeed, there were numerous reported incidents of Israeli forces firing on and even killing Gazans during the period that the ceasefire was supposed to hold, in blatant violation of its terms.

Incidents include Israeli forces firing against Gazan fishermen and farmers in the opening hours of the ceasefire, a 67-year-old Gazan being shot in the shoulder and neck by Israeli forces while in his garden, an 82 year old Gazan being shot in his hand as Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinian agricultural land, a Gazan woman being shot in the leg by Israeli forces while tending to her sheep, and an unarmed Gazan being shot and killed by Israeli forces near the Gazan boarder⁶, among others.

It should be further noted that several of the Palestinian rocket attacks which Mitchell refers to were in response to Israeli violations of this sort.⁷ Moreover, it should be mentioned that while there were no Israeli’s killed by Gazan attacks during the ceasefire as mentioned previously, at least 19 Palestinians in Gaza were killed by Israel during the same period, according to B’Tselem data.⁸

Summary

The foregoing discussion has, I think, established that Mitchell Bard is a grossly dishonest interlocutor, and that his success is a scathing indictment of our academic institutions. More importantly, in wading through bard’s lies, a more accurate picture of what transpired throughout the 2008 ceasefire has begun to reveal itself. That picture looks something like this:

• In 2008, after rejecting Hamas’ proposals for a ceasefire for months, Israel finally agreed to one.

• Once the ceasefire was initiated, Hamas obeyed it dutifully, refraining from shooting any rockets at Israel while also taking steps to stop other terrorist organizations from doing so. These efforts were largely successful, as rocket attacks from Gaza came to a virtual halt during the ceasefire, though there were still some attacks from rogue groups. Meanwhile, Israel crucially reneged on its end of the ceasefire by refusing to lift the blockade on Gaza. Israel also on several occasions violated the ceasefire by firing on Palestinians in Gaza.

• Nonetheless, the ceasefire basically held in this form until November 4th, when Israel ended the ceasefire with a deadly cross boarder raid which killed several members of Hamas. Israel justified this action by claiming it was acting to prevent an abduction of IDF personnel through a tunnel being built by Hamas, a claim which doesn’t seem to survive even superficial scrutiny and was contradicted by later reporting.

• Hamas responded to the attack with retaliatory rocket fire, though offered on multiple occasions to renew the original ceasefire. Israel refused, demanding essentially an unconditional and unilateral ceasefire from Hamas. As a result, hostilities continued.

• Then, on December 27th, Israel launched a deadly assault on Gaza wherein they committed severe war crimes, targeted civilians, and successfully killed around 1,400 Palestinians. Israel justified this action by claiming it was to protect Israel from Palestinian rocket fire. Of course, if Israel wanted to protect itself from Palestinian rocket fire, one wonders why it triggered the resumption of Palestinian rocket fire by ending the ceasefire, and then passed up the opportunity to renew it.

At this point, my readers might be wondering “why would Israel do this? Why would they trash a largely successful ceasefire and then attack Gaza?” Giving an in depth answer to this question is beyond the scope of this article. Briefly, I would suggest that Israel was motivated on the one hand by a desire to regain its deterrence capacity after its humiliating military defeat in Lebanon, and on the other hand, to ward off the threat of the growing Palestinian “peace offensive”, represented by Hamas’ insistence on and obedience to a ceasefire with Israel and its recent acceptance of and willingness to negotiate a two state solution.⁹ To these ends, Israel had to initiate a return to hostilities with, and subsequently a brutal assault against, the people of Gaza.

1. Mitchell’s “debunking” actually goes on for a bit longer than is presented in this article. I chose not to include the final few paragraphs of this section of his book because they do not really add anything, or offer any points for me to respond to. He mostly just mentions how an EU official condemned Hamas for rocket attacks, and then goes on to vividly describe how scary it must be to have rockets shot at you.

2. It should noted that PIJ’s attacks were still a violation of the ceasefire, as the ceasefire did not just apply to Hamas but to all of the terrorist groups in the region. However, the fact that the rocket attacks were fired by PIJ and not Hamas is still obviously significant.

3. Indeed, the desire among Hamas and other radical groups for the terms of the ceasefire to extend to the West Bank was well known at the time.

4. This was not isolated to one incident. Israel continually justified economic aggression against Gaza throughout the ceasefire by appealing to rocket attacks from rogue terrorist organizations.

5. Not to mention that the time horizon which Mitchell indicates he is quantifying over is simply “after the ceasefire” was put in place, which includes November 4.

6. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed that the victim had been one of its members.

7. The cases of the 67 year old man being shot, and the unarmed Gazan being shot near the Gaza boarder, for instance, both produced retaliatory rocket strikes from Gaza.

8. Upon recently re reading this article and trying to take a more critical eye towards it, it struck me that this section was the one where the sources used were most obscure and hardest to verify- most of them I found through the Wikipedia page for the 2008 ceasefire, but it’s hard to find more information on them. I’ll try to look more into this soon, but for now I’ll just leave this disclaimer.

9. For elaboration on and defense of these points, I would point my readers to chapter 2 of Norman Finkelstein’s Gaza: an Inquest into its Martyrdom.