In a carefully worded statement released on the eighth day of Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s security cabinet confirmed that it would be “running down” the offensive, in a move widely-expected after high-level diplomatic calls for a ceasefire on Friday. Addressing a news conference in Tel Aviv, a shaken-looking Ehud Barak – Israel’s defence minister – later explained the decision, singling out Annie Lennox’s call for a hiatus in the bombing as “the final nail in the coffin”. 

“Whilst we are not keen to be seen to kowtow to demands from the outside world, there are occasions when we have to acknowledge where the protests are emanating from, and the impact of their words on future negotiations”, he said. “Annie Lennox has, for a long time now, been a major behind-the-scenes player in the Middle East peace process, and is fast becoming a significant actor in political circles”, he continued. “For her to break cover and go public with her petition was not something we [the government] felt we could ignore, hence our decision to bring an end to Cast Lead”.

Scenes of jubilation in Gaza greeted the Israeli announcement, with Hamas immediately declaring Lennox a “living shaheed”, urging all the group’s supporters to purchase as much of Lennox’s back catalogue as possible, in order to demonstrate their commitment to the cause. “And not just the early stuff, either”, boomed Hamas musical attaché Mahmoud Al-Suwani from a hastily-assembled stage in a crowded Gaza square. “Her solo albums also deserve to be recognised by the united Palestinian people. Particularly ‘Medusa’, which – despite being comprised of cover songs – still ranks up there with anything the Eurythmics released beforehand”.

In the southern Israeli town of Sderot, which bore the brunt of Hamas’ Kassam rocket fire for several years, residents retreated from their previous hawkish positions upon hearing of Lennox’s plea - acknowledging that “there are times to fight, and times to accede to the demands of somewhat washed-up and irrelevant lesbian icons”, according to Sderot’s mayor. “Whilst we are sorry that doyens of the eighties rock scene haven’t granted our military sufficient time in which to complete their mission, we nonetheless are grateful to have been allowed as much leeway as we have to carry out at least part of our task – despite earlier setbacks”.

He was thought to have been referring to last week’s minor political spat involving three of Queen’s backing singers, who issued an unofficial statement via Sony BMG calling for an unconditional ceasefire, before swiftly retracting the demand amid rumours of infighting between various soft-rock factions involved in the peace process.

 This is not the first time that the worlds of popular music and unpopular military campaigns have collided – as witnessed earlier this year, when Ethiopia’s ruling party finally caved in to pressure from A-Ha frontman Morten Harket and withdrew their troops from Somalia. At the time, Harket’s intervention was predicted by many commentators as heralding a new age of blurred boundaries between international diplomacy and Top 40 songsmiths.

 “In an era when domestic public opinion is shaped by the stars of yesteryear, it is not unthinkable that generals of armed forces around the world will also sit up and take note when platinum-selling stadium gods speak out about the wisdom of their military strategies”, wrote Simon Jenkins in the Guardian. “Furthermore, with the likes of Paula Abdul able to marshal millions of votes supporting her proclamations on American Idol every week, the logical next step could see armies and militias deciding their tactics on the basis of a ‘Strictly Come Carpet-Bombing’ interaction with the TV-watching public”.

Defence Minister Barak has, it is believed, privately expressed his support for such a move in relation to Israel’s forty-one year occupation of the West Bank. Sources close to his staff suggest that he is ready to utilise mass-telephonic voting in order to avoid deeply unpopular moves such as the infamous Disengagement of 2005. “Back then, the government relied on the advice of Bananarama to make up their minds about the move”, an anonymous diplomat stated. “At the time, it seemed entirely rational to canvass, and act upon, the opinion of those who had achieved chart success via saccharine pop music twenty years ago in another continent, but in hindsight it wasn’t the Israeli government’s finest hour”.

With that in mind, he was sceptical of the wisdom of Barak’s latest move. “Whilst acceding to Lennox might shore up international opinion in the short term, going forward it would seem far wiser to rely on weekly Saturday night viewers’ votes to help us decide how to rid the scourge of Islamic terror and fundamentalism from our midst”. Lennox herself was unavailable for comment in the wake of the ceasefire, her spokesman announcing that she had immediately turned her attention to tackling the ever-deteriorating situation in Angola, in which she had the “unwavering support” of political titan Roland Rat and his aide-de-camp Kevin the Gerbil.

The first stage of the ceasefire came between June 19 and November 4, when there was a marked decrease in the extent of rocket/mortar attacks. During this period, 20 rockets were fired, and 18 mortar shells. Most of these were fired by ‘rogue elements’ (Fatah/Popular Resistance Committee), for a variety of reasons. One justification was that the firing was a response to Israeli violations. For example, on June 24, three rockets were fired at Sderot (this was the first Palestinian violation of the truce), after an Islamic Jihad operative was killed in Nablus. It is important to note that the West Bank was not included in the ceasefire agreement. Hamas responded to these violations with minor gestures and short-term detentions of militants.

On November 4, Hamas prepared to abduct Israelis by digging a tunnel under the border security fence. According to the report, Hamas decided on this action in the knowledge of the damage it would do to the truce. This is because they concluded that, with the Shalit negotiations dragging out, it would be better to have another Israeli soldier as a bargaining chip. The IDF prevented the attack, killing seven Hamasniks in the process; Hamas responded with a massive barrage of fire.

And so began the second stage of the ceasefire, which lasted between November 4 and December 17. During this period, 171 rockets and 120 mortar shells were fired at Israel. This is still a massive reduction when compared to the figure before the ceasefire - during the six months preceding the agreement, 2278 attacks had been launched. More crucially, Hamas now participated in the attacks. In turn, the IDF intensified its operations in Gaza, which had been downsized during the first period of the truce.

What about the crossings? Broadly speaking, crossings were open (to an average of 90 trucks a day) when there was calm, and closed when there was not. This gives lie to the idea of an unyielding and consistently maintained siege. On June 22, for example, Karni and Sufa crossings were opened to deliveries of consumer goods and fuel. They were then closed in response to the June 24th violation. On August 17th, Keren Shalom (itself the target of an attack back in April) was opened. During the first period of the truce, a new trucking company was quickly set up in the Gaza Strip, with 100 trucks to transport goods. Company President Abd al-Hakim Hasouna said that the improvement in the crossings was a factor behind the speed in which he was able to get the company started. Since November 4th, however, the crossings have been mostly closed.

There has been a shortage of fuel in the Strip, particularly industrial fuel. Israel has continued supplying electricity from Ashkelon, despite it being targeted by rockets. Ashkelon supplies around 65% of the Strip’s electricity, while Egypt provides another 5%. In addition, there have been attempts to bring in supplies via the sea (SS Liberty, SS Free Gaza, Dignity). As for Rafah, Egypt has insisted that Rafah will only open in compliance with the November 2005 crossings agreement, by which the border will be supervised by the PA, Israel, and the Europeans. Despite this, Rafah has been open for short periods of time, and there have been attempts to break through.

The other main source of supplies, of course, are the tunnels. These continue to flourish. Before this week’s attacks, there were between 400 and 600 tunnels operating, and there have been calls to nationalise them. They have been used to bring in all kinds of goods, but it is important to note that there has been a vast increase in the type and quality of weapons available to the Hamas. In the meantime, there was an increase in military training, including advanced anti-tank weapons, naval training, special forces courses, urban combat etc, as the Hizbollisation of the Hamas continued.

Make of all this what you will, and feel free to point me in the direction of other reports dealing with the truce. It’s crucial that we understand what went wrong, and it should be easily verifiable to find out.

 2. How did this sentence, from Tariq Ali, get published? ”The assault on Gaza, planned over six months and executed with perfect timing, was designed largely…to help the incumbent parties triumph in the upcoming elections?” I assume that Mr Ali does not know as much about internal Israeli politics as he does about those of Pakistan, but here are a few pointers: How did Barak (the architect of the contigency plan for an attack on Gaza in the event of the breakdown of the truce)  know that the current government would collapse just a few weeks before the truce was due to expire? How did he know that Ehud Olmert would be indicted on corruption charges, leaving Tzipi Livni to try and form a coalition? How did he know that she would reject Shas’ demands on child payments, thus leaving no other option apart from early elections? This sounds like the work of a Timelord, not of a former failed Prime Minister. If only we had leaders of the foresight that Tariq Ali grants them.

3. One thing to add to Carlo Strenger’s trenchant critique of Nir Rosen.  Rosen, like many other on the left, cannot see beyond the paradigm of power differentials. According to this logic, all responsibility lies with the more powerful side in the conflict; their power means they can more safely offer concessions and magnanimity towards the weak. This is why one friend on Facebook refused my request that his call for an Israeli ceasefire be balanced by a call for a Hamas one. Power differentials are indeed an important factor in understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but they do not tell the whole story. They describe a material reality, but do little to explain the irrational intractables that have made the conflict so difficult to solve. Being weak, or being a victim, does not make you morally superior: you remain as responsible for your actions as anyone else. Even if you accept the pitiful account of Hamas’ rise, the responsibility for this conflagration remains theirs.

4. The criticism of Obama’s silence over the hostilities is unfair. He is right to state that there is only one president at a time, and he is right to take a holiday before embarking on what is arguably the toughest job in the world. Getting over-involved would have little point; he can have little impact until he is President, and there is no sense in compromising his stature with either party by taking sides.

5. In the interests of transparency, I should point out that this “five comments on the situation” series is inspired by the occasional “five comments on the situation” columb published by Yoel Marcus in Haaretz. I think there’s a lot to be said for this type of format, particularly during a conflict such as this. It offers a chance to try out ideas without having to milk them out over an entire page, thus ensuring that things remain much more focused. Or at least that’s the intention.

2. Writing in the American Prospect, Ezra Klein can’t get out of his head the idea that seven years of constant rockets from Gaza meant that Israel had to use military action. “No Death and no injuries,” he writes, as if life in Sderot was a picnic. Even the Binge Trader, no supporter of Israeli policy, tells me that “nothing I experienced when serving in the army compared to the fear of those in Sderot.” If you’ll forgive the irony of the analogy, life in Sderot is like something out of a Saramago novel: rockets falling randomly from the sky, an ever-present threat despite their ineffectiveness, only luck preventing tragedy. Should Israel have waited until a rocket wiped out a class of kindergarten children? According to Klein, it should have waited even longer - until the cows come home. ”But sometimes, Israel is simply wrong.” True indeed, but not today.  

3. Here’s some pre-emptive blogging. Soon, some will argue that Israel’s attack was “pre-planned”, that it has “nothing to do with the rockets launched on Sderot” but is part of a broader plan to “destroy Hamas and the Palestinian people”. Some are already moving in that direction. Feasting like vultures on the Haaretz analysis regarding the genesis of the operation, Ian Black reveals to the world Israel’s ”six months of secret planning”. He points out that plans for the current operation began soon after the ceasefire with Hamas kicked in six months ago. It’s clear that - in the absence of peace - enemies use ceasefires to regather their forces. Hamas did so by increasing the range and quality of its rockets, amongst other measures, while Israel did so by gathering vast amounts of intelligence regarding Hamas control over Gaza. This seems pretty sensible to me. A government that does not plan for all eventualities is remiss in its duties. As it became clear that Hamas did not intend to continue the truce, putting the plan into action became the only reasonable thing to do.

4. More on Israeli militarism: today’s Yediot Ahranot reports on the jostling between the elite Golani and Paratrooper units regarding who (in the event of a ground invasion) will get to go into Gaza. I understand that soldiers want to “do stuff”, but the idea of a rhetorical bloodbath over who gets the difficult task of entering the Gaza swamp is tasteless in the extreme. Israeli militarism is an unfortunate reality; it should not be heralded as an positive aspect of our culture.

5. Apart from - surprise surprise - Hezbollah in 2006, is there any example in history of a resistance/terrorist movement succeeding to liberate territory from the occupier, only to do all it can to invite the occupier back in again? This seems to be what Hamas wants. Hummus in the vineyard on me to anyone who can point to another time when this has happened.

2. The pictures of the deaths at the police graduation ceremony were particularly shocking. But this should not blind ourselves to the fact that they were employees of the Hamas government, participating in a ceremony in a Hamas installation. In an attempt to “civilianise” these casualties, some have pointed out that the policemen came from across the Palestinian political divide, that wearing uniform did not make them culpable for the sins of Hamas. Would the same be said if a uniformed member of the Israeli Home Front were killed in a Hamas attack? Once again, the primary responsibility lies with Hamas, a point understood clearly by the Egyptian Foreign Minister: “We told them to stop firing, but they refused to listen. The responsibility is with them.”

3. Without wishing to fall into the cliche of once again citing the famous midrash about not rejoicing over the death of one’s enemies, I’m disturbed by the fact that only on page 10 (of an old-skool style ’special edition’, noch) of Yediot Ahranot do we get to the bit about casualties in Gaza. Sure, there are a couple of articles written by Gazans themselves, but this is not enough. Whatever the circumstances, it’s vital to try and get a real sense of the suffering/feelings of the other side.

4. One of the more underreported aspects of Israeli planning towards “Solid Lead” are the considerations vis-a-vis Gilad Shalit. According to assessments, despite threats to the contrary, Hamas won’t harm the captured Israeli soldier. This is based on the conclusion that Shalit is a vital strategic pawn in Hamas’ hands, one that they wouldn’t want to risk losing. An extension of this is that the Israeli government - rightly, I think - views Hamas as a rational actor. The significance of this is that some kind of rapprochement - albeit of the conflict management variety - may eventually be achievable.

5. The best cautionary analyses of the weekend’s events have been written by Bernard Avishai and Yossi Sarid.  It is clear that the operation in Gaza has been carried out far more professionally (both in the political and military echelons) than the opening salvos in the Second Lebanon War. At the same time, it remains unclear what the end-goal is. Teaching Hamas a lesson is one thing, “changing the rules of the game” quite another. Our ambitions should remain modest, and our strategists should remember the limitations of force, that the longer the operation goes on, the greater the likelihood that Israel will be defeated. Anything more than a limited ground invasion, for example, would be a disaster. We can get touched too.    

Last Tuesday evening I was at Shuk HaCarmel, buying some apples. Having selected the least bruised of the bunch, I stepped forward to make the purchase. Around me, all the talk was of the oncoming winter. “I won’t be here tomorrow,” said the stall-owner. “There’ll be a lot of rain; I’m going to take the day off.” I hadn’t kept up to date with the latest weather forecast, and was keen to know more. “Is winter here then?” I asked. “Yep,” he told me, confidently. “Haven’t you heard? They had stopped it at Erez checkpoint, but have decided to let it in tomorrow.” I wandered off with my apples, pondering this dark humour, while the wind began its anticipatory swirl up above.

Talk of stopping the weather at Erez may have been figurative, but it’s clear that metereological assessments have played a major role in the events of the last few days. Over the course of the week, it became apparent that - despite the election campaign - the Israeli government wanted to launch an attack, limited in scope, against Hamas infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. Analysts suggested the attack would come early next week, and then the skies cleared. Most Arab-Israeli violence takes place in the summer, for obvious reasons. Now, though, Saturday’s relatively mild conditions meant that the IAF could go into action, that a sneak attack could be launched.

At the time of writing, estimates suggest that ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed around 150 Palestinians, with one Israeli killed by Palestinian rocket fire. Following the brinkmanship of recent weeks, the pieces have finally started crumbling. The two parties have been drawn into the opening storms of a potential escalation which common sense has told us that neither of them wanted. The Israeli/Egyptian blockade of Gaza continues, the prisoner exchange negotiations seem to have led nowhere, and Hamas intransigence over recognising Israeli remains unaltered. The future looks bleak.

It is a mistake to believe there are easy solutions to this problem. The idea that ending the blockade will end the rockets seems fanciful. Rockets were fired before the blockade was in place, with the Hamas leadership preferring to use Gaza as an extra staging-ground for attacks on Israel, rather than a place in which to try and make something - despite the difficult circumstances - of the first significant piece of territory the Palestinians had managed to liberate from Israeli occupation. Those who claim to be friends of the Palestinians do themselves no favours by ignoring this elementary fact.

The blockade, however, has been a disaster. Counterinsurgency 101 warns against pissing off the civilian population; a lesson Israel has still not internalised, over 40 years since the seventh day of the Six Day War. It is one thing to stand firm in the face of the Hamas refusal to recognise Israel, quite another to allow a territory populated by 1.5 million human beings to teeter on the brink of anarchy. You don’t have to be a peacenik to get this: with the underground economy flourishing, the blockade gives Hamas yet another method to maintain its control on the Strip. A wiser policy would be the opposite of a blockade, flooding the market with Israeli goods in order to weaken Hamas’ control.

What about the military dimension? No sovereign state should have to tolerate a situation in which its citizens live under the threat of rocket attack from a hostile territory ruled by an organisation committed to its destruction. The problem is, short of an all-out war with Gaza or a negotiated agreement between two sides, all the IDF can do is stem the flow. I don’t need to spell out the problems with an all-out war. As for a negotiated agreement, this also seems unlikely, although violent skirmishes between the two sides are often followed by unexpected agreements.

Perhaps the only answer is to manage the situation, for the two sides to vent off some steam and then get back to the ceasefire, until the next round. But what if the point of no return has already been passed? On the Palestinian side, the Second Intifada built up steam on the mistaken assumption that the West Bank could be the set for the sequel to Israel’s 2000 withdrawal from South Lebanon. In Gaza, Hamas - fuelled by ideological intransigence and religious pathos - seem convinced that they can do a Hezbollah. Again, a catastrophic mistake, at least if you are actually concerned about the value of human life.

In short, options are a beautiful thing indeed, but only when used in combination with one another. For too long, Israel has relied on its military power, neglecting the importance of diplomacy, among other tools in its armoury. If we again rely on force alone, we will become a part of Groundhog Day, repeating our mistakes without securing any victories. With Hamas increasing the range of its rockets, this cannot be allowed to happen. It is time that we started thinking a little more.

Umm-el-Fahm is up and down, down and up, urban planning as chaos, a city of squiggles. Rising high over Wadi Ara, its back to the Green Line, the Mother of Coal sits as a sober reminder to those who offer up easy solutions for the conflict. In the headlines following Baruch Marzel’s aborted far-right march through the city, it seemed the perfect place to launch Falsedi’s attempt to reconnect with Zion, with its towns and its countryside and its people.

Sitting in Tel Aviv Central Bus Station on Friday morning, waiting for the Binge Trader, I felt like a bandwagon jumper. According to Haaretz, hundreds of Israeli Jews had visited Umm-el-Fahm throughout the week, filling its restaurants and shops, an unexpected blowback to Mr Marzel’s attempts at further dividing an already fragmented population. Umm-el-Fahm has always been the symbol of Jewish suspicions towards the Arabs in their midst, becoming the place right-wing politicians turn when they want to state their policies on the Arab question: Apart from Bazza Marzel, Meir Kahane paid a visit during the 1980s, while Avigdor Lieberman has made redrawing the border to make the city part of Palestine one of the centrepieces of his security policy.

Standing near the top of the city, one wonders how Lieberman can be so strategically naive.  Umm-el-Fahm, founded in 1265 as the centre of a burgeoning charcoal industry, surveys the surrounding region with ease. Barely two hundred metres from the Separation Fence (which, in this part of the country, sits more or less on the Green Line), you can easily see Jenin, as well as points to the north, east, and west. It’s easy to forget that the Jordanians actually conquered Wadi Ara in 1948; a quick think about geopolitics makes it easier to understand why Israel was so keen to have it back as part of the armistice deal, even when you consider that the area was almost exclusively populated by Palestinians.

Today, Umm-el-Fahm is known as a deeply conservative city (it achieved this status in 1985), a stronghold of Israel’s Islamic Movement. Green flags fly everywhere, and on Friday silence reigns, the call to prayer the only sign of life. It very much feels like a Palestinian space, more so than other Israeli-Arab towns I’ve visited, like a town severed by history from its natural origins, although I suppose that could be said about anywhere that finds its status changed as a result of partition.

Umm-el-Fahm, though, is part of Israel, and it’s another tragic reminder of the second-class status of the country’s Arab citizens. As I’ve mentioned, there is no order to the city, its pock-marked streets rise and fall, at rollercoaster inclines, a claustrophobic sprawl out over the ridge, a mere afterthought. In a city of 50,000 potentially radicalised citizens, this is abject stupidity. The western edge of town is demarcated by heaps of rubbish that wouldn’t look out of place in an Indian slum, more visual evidence of the endemic discrimination towards Arab municipalities. Whatever your politics, this is a national disgrace.

It’s even more tragic because Umm-el-Fahm is strangely beautiful, a place full of potential. The chaos leads to charm, the views are breathtaking, the people are friendly. A recent article in Yediot Ahranot said that the city council was investing heavily in tourism. This was confirmed by the owner of the guesthouse in which we stayed, who told us that he regularly receives scores of Israeli-Jewish visitors. Truth be told, though, I saw only another three Israeli-Jews during the whole weekend - one at the art gallery (which houses a fascinating collection of photographs documenting the city’s history), and the other two at a hummus joint on the edge of town, a hop and a skip from the main road leading through Wadi Ara.

13 Palestinian-Israelis were killed during the October Awakening, a spontaneous outpouring of Israeli-Arab support for the Second Intifada, responded to with insanely excessive force by the Israeli authorities. It’s generally a quiet place, but it should give pause for thought to anyone who thinks Arabs can be easily integrated into the Israeli mainstream, or that creating a bi-national state would be easy. There is a clear cultural gap here, one that will be hard to transcend. Only by reaching out to the younger generation - a generation at once more radicalised and more Arab and yet more Israeli and more liberal and hence more capable of reconciliation - will even a modicum of progress be possible.

There is a slender mall at the edge of town. We had our bags ironically checked by a Qaffiyeh-wearing man, and then took a quick look around. Even this mall, a recent modernist insertion into an underdeveloped cityscape, seemed ill thought-out. The escalators lead upwards but not downwards, the shops cram in on each other, the people float by, devoid of purpose. The cliche is that Umm-el-Fahm is neither here nor there, stuck on a ridge between Israel and Palestine, wanting to have its cake and eat it. The truth is that Umm-el-Fahm is a mongrelised creation, an unexpected result of a century of conflict and failed peace attempts. If peace - on any kind - comes, then Umm-el-Fahm may yet thrive. If it doesn’t, it will become a place of ugliness, a place with a thousand of its own Baruch Marzels, waiting to march.

גם אני מצביע לציפי לבני

Abu Ghosh stilled as I came down the hill; another Thursday evening had arrived. As nobody else was waiting at the bus-stop, I assumed that the 185 had actually been on time. Even the broken plastic white chair was nowhere to be seen. I turned off my iPod and sat on the stone wall, intending to read until the next bus came. Agitated with the vanishing light, though, I decided to hitch. This was the first time I had tried to hitch my way away from work; I let my arm hang limply, like someone trying to solicit a prostitute for the first time.

Someone pulled over within a few minutes, a young Ashkenazi man in a trendy new car. The ride to the bridge was a short one - two minutes or less - but I felt the etiquette of the situation demanded conversation. I asked him about the music he was listening to - Israeli songs from back in the day, well produced and sentimental. “They’re songs from the fifties, the sixties, songs from the good Israel that once was,” he told me. I smiled and thanked him for the ride. “Don’t mention it, don’t mention it,” he said, his tone making me feel a fool for even saying so.

The 405 to Tel Aviv arrived immediately. Some days, there are no seats to be had, which means I have to spend the forty minute journey standing. This time, though, the signs were good. A Haredi man on the front seat was sat next to his hat: if the front seat is vacant, there are sure to be seats further back. I ventured forth, eyeing a number of possible places to sit, turn on my iPod, and take my late afternoon nap. I make this decision on the basis of the size of the person who will be sitting next to me; having found a suitably small teenager, I took my place at the penultimate row.

The music is Screamadelica by Primal Scream; I am soon drifting off. Then there is a whiff, a hint of a smell. Cigarette smoke, a smell so recogniseable it has lost all potential meaning, no chance for it to be the smell that will resurrect people’s memories. I instinctively turn back, where a middle-aged woman is scrambling to put away a packet of cigarettes. She looks haggard, like she’s just been put through a paper-shredder. She knows that others know that she is the smoker; I can see it by the nervous look in her eyes. 

She has put the cigarettes away though. She’s been gently reprimanded by the man in front of her, the window has been opened, and the air of the foothills has stolen away the stench. We can, I think, return to our thoughts. But then a man steps forward, a bearded, pleasantly rugged man in a hoodie. He is telling her off, informing her of the rules. She is denying the charge. “What, you think you’re my husband?!?” she says, her whimpish voice righteously intoned, her denials brazen. “No I don’t think I’m your husband but…” and there follows a slew of slang which I cannot understand. No matter. Despite being the most self-righteous of anti-smokers, I am tired of this.

Now the bus has pulled over. This happened two days ago, for the bizarre reason that the GPS broke down (what bus driver needs GPS on Route 1?), and all the passengers leapt out of their seats as if they suddenly had the right to mill about by the side of the freeway. Now, though, there was no Israeli stampede. The driver stepped forward, and asked who was guilty of smoking. The woman did not confess; it took everyone else to point the finger at the accused. If they hadn’t, we might never have left. The driver asked her to patiently wait half an hour, until we were in Tel Aviv where she could smoke freely. Then he turned on the engine, pointedly blasting us all with the air-conditioner.

The argument between the old woman and the young man continued for another minute or so; by now my eyes were wide open, letting the coincidence draw its own conclusions.

Arundhati Roy, however, should present a more compelling case for literary interventions into political disputation. Since winning the Booker Prize for The God of Small Things, eleven years ago, she’s devoted herself to politics, both as a writer and a campaigner. In India, she’s been active in the campaign against the Narmada dam, and has been an outspoken supporter of Kashmiri independence. Worldwide, she’s known as one of the leading writers of the New Left, a disciple of Noam Chomsky et al, and one of the most articulate opponents of what some people view as U.S. imperialism.

Her reflections on the attacks in Mumbai, then, were always going to arouse interest. In a piece entitled The Monster in the Mirror, published last weekend in the Guardian, Roy begins to challenge some of the accepted wisdom regarding the implications of the atrocities. Her central theme is that the Mumbai attacks don’t represent India’s 9/11, and that India should think very carefully before it acts. She reminds us that many other Indian cities have been targeted by terrorists this year, and that not all the terrorists have been Muslims. She reminds us that the poor were mowed down as indiscriminately as the rich, taking the Indian media to task for its obsession with elitist symbols like the Taj hotel, “the glittering barracades of India Shining.” She reminds us that the problem of poverty remains India’s most urgent problem.

These are all reasonable observations, and she manages to steer clear of the sentimentality which often creeps into her writing. Once she comes to the crux of her argument, though, things begin to unravel. I shall quote her in full:

“There is a fierce, unforgiving fault-line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let’s call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially “Islamist” terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even to try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime itself.

Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism, it exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm’s way. Which is a crime itself.”

This is a pretty transparent attempt to put a straw man up against an iron man. More than that, though, it  shows a disturbing lack of nuance. Yes, there are people who think like Side A and Side B. But what about the people in the middle? The people who reject these black and white dichotomies, who spend most of their life in the grey. Who understand that, yes, everything does have a context, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that draining the swamp will kill all the mosquitoes.

Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-a-Taiba, we are told, is on Side A. So are Babu Bajrangi and Narendra Modi, two of the instigators of the 2002 Gujarat massacres. By including such people in Side A, she’s stretching her own defintions, but that’s beside the point. The point is, she tells us, that Side B is better. “So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I’d pick Side B. We need context. Always.” Again, the straw man, the needless dilemma, the false dichotomy. Side B does not have a monopoly on context, and - in that context - it’s noticeable that she doesn’t attempt to provide a context for the Hindu massacres of Muslims in the Gujarat.

But the context for all of this is much bigger, she tells us. It’s partition and Indian discrimination against its Muslim citizens, a failed policy towards Pakistan and homegrown state repression. All of these are important points. Roy is to be commended for her outspoken support of Kashmiri rights; she is like an Indian Amira Hass, with a bit more national pride (albeit of the anarchic variety). Then she reminds us once more: “Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India at least there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room: Kashmir, Gujarat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid.” In short, “What we’re experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet’s squelching under our feet.” Side B.

It’s frustrating when someone like Roy seems to willingly simplify herself. It’s even more frustrating that she’s a prize-winning novelist, no stranger to complication. For her to provide such great insight about Indian domestic problems, about the absurd way it’s gone about fighting terrorism, about Kashmir, about the Narmada dam, only to conclude by asking Indian’s to take the blame, is deeply disappointing. Perhaps, in this sense, it’s wrong to speak of her as a novelist dabbling in politics. She’s frequently said that the problem of injustice is so great that it must take priority over literature: her’s is the rare literary choice of action over contemplation. But she seems to have totally lost the subtlety which made her such a promising writer in the first place. 

She concludes with another simplistic dichotomy:  ”The only way to contain (it would be naive to say end) terrorism is to look at the monster in the mirror. We’re standing at a fork in the road. One sign says Justice, the other Civil War. There’s no third sign and there’s no going back. Choose.” I hope somebody reminds her of this prediction in a few years time; I’ll happily take the bet that India will go on rumbling somewhere in between, somewhere in the murk of reality, somewhere where a one-time writer is falling between the cracks, neither narrating nor explaining, just losing the power of her art.