The Truth About Cease-fire Violations Between Israel and Gaza

Here’s how the relationship between Israel and Gaza works: successive “cease-fires” are repeatedly adopted and continuously violated, leading more often to skirmishes than to lulls in violence. Israel bombs Gaza with airstrikes, Gaza shoots rockets into Israel. Then a new “cease-fire” is imposed.

If you were to ask anyone, from a casual observer to a ‘well-informed’ media commentator, which side violates the ceasefires more often, they would almost surely say Gaza. The newspapers and network news media constantly inform the American people when a rocket is hurled from Gaza into Israel. Both Israeli and American politicians cite this phenomenon in speeches and press conferences to justify Israel’s continuing economic blockade of Gaza, among other things. With regard to the Gaza situation, practically all we hear about is rockets.

In an ongoing study of violence between Israel and Gaza, The Jerusalem Fund, a non-profit in Washington, D.C., has catalogued cease-fire violations on either side. The principal finding is as follows: “Palestinian launches have been rare and sporadic and occurred almost always after successive instances of Israeli cease-fire violations.” Despite this, in the diplomacy on Mid-East peace, we invariably hear about Israel’s security concerns, while that of the Palestinians’ is hardly mentioned.

Here is a graph of the findings:

[Click to Enlarge]

Yousef Munayyer, Executive Director of The Jerusalem Fund, explains how it typically works: Israel can “fire into Gaza without accountability, provoke a reaction and then claim self-defense.” See here for his explanation of the methodology.

I have written about previous cases in which Israel breaks the cease-fire with bombings, shootings, or territorial incursions, and then uses the retaliation from Gaza as a justification to launch a deeper bombing campaign here and here.

Israel violates the cease-fires more often, bombs Gaza more times than Gaza rockets Israel, and kills more Palestinians than Palestinians kill Israelis. But these findings are not what is striking. What is striking about this is that almost everybody believes the opposite of the reality. Here’s Munayyer with more on that:

So how have these cease-fire dynamics been covered? We’ve tracked New York Times coverage of the cease-fire during this period. The New York Times is representative of the mainstream and extremely important for shaping public discourse on events and thus an important window into broader mainstream coverage. The Times also has multiple reporters covering these events including a bureau in Jerusalem and a correspondent in Gaza. Finally, we simply can’t track everything so the Times, with its easily searchable history, is an effective example to use.

Of the nearly 120 Israeli cease-fire violations during this period the New York Times reported on 17 of them. Additionally, most of these stories (eleven) came either during the first week of the cease-fire, when the issue was still fresh in readers’ minds, or since the escalation on December 20th. That means for the bulk of this period, during which Israel committed 87 cease-fire violations and causing some 91 Palestinian casualties over nearly a one year period there were only six stories on the topic. This represents a systematic failure to cover Israeli cease-fire violations.

Making matters worse is the way events are covered in the rare instances they are covered. In most cases, Israeli actions are described as a response to Palestinian actions. So while most Israeli cease-fire violations are not covered at all, those that are are explained as justified retaliation. Thus the reader is completely misled about the dynamics of fire, why the cease-fire is threatened and exactly what is going on in and around Gaza.

The biggest challenge to the cease-fire agreement is persistent Israeli violation and the lack of any accountability for them. The politics of the Gaza Strip are complex. Israel says it wants Hamas to control projectile fire from other factions and yet it persistently violates the truce putting Hamas in a position of having to defend Israel’s violations. By targeting groups other than Hamas and by expecting Hamas to crack down on their responses, Israel is playing a dangerous and deadly game of divide and conquer in Gaza that will likely lead to the unraveling of the cease-fire. Once again, Israel has proven security is not its aim, subjugation is.

More here.

80 thoughts on “The Truth About Cease-fire Violations Between Israel and Gaza”

  1. Violence never starts with the oppressed since the oppression itself is violence. This narrative of Israel “defending itself” has been a recurrent lie since before Israel was a state. It is well documented that before Arab countries attacked Israel in’48 nearly 500,000 Palestinians had been ethnically cleansed using mass rape and murder to terrorise. Further and amazingly many people believe that Arab countries attacked Israel in ’67 when in fact Israel attacked Egypt on June 4.

  2. Your article turns reality upside down and is complete disinformation.
    Stories about cease fire violations usually read in the press as last-first with the Gazans being painted as the victim and only later in the article does it mention that Israel's attack is in response to a Gazan rocket.

    1. Amazeballs are you on planet earth? The article clearly stated that Israel is the first to break the ceasefire which the mainstream media ignored. Hamas in response to the Israeli aggression launched rockets into Israeli territory. Just Google the damn thing. "Israeli violations."

      1. I could hardly call The Jerusalem Fund as an unbiased objective institute. It would be amazing if a Palestinian institute would claim otherwise. Furthermore, Mr, Munayyer, Whom I personally know his Family for many years is a well known Palestinian activist. I assume that if necessary next time they will bring a research which prove that the moons is made of cheese/

        1. I guess you are unaware of other, third-party studies that have shown the same results.

          And even GOI and IDF official reports show clearly that the GOI instigated this last episode based on a false pretext using the lie that Hamas was responsible for the despicable kidnap/murders of the three yeshiva boys in the West Bank, and the weeks-long cruel pretense of mounting a search and rescue mission, knowing they were already dead (Operation Brothers Keeper). The GOI has since admitted that Hamas was not involved in the crimes against those three young men.

          And why did they need to create a false pretext to attack Hamas and inflict collective punishment in the West Bank and Gaza? Why, because according to GOI and IDF reports Hamas had not fired a single rocket since the ceasefire of November 21, 2012, despite regular violations by Israel. And not only did Hamas completely cease its own rocket fire, it created a police unit charged with arresting, at considerable risk, members of splinter groups who attempted to fire rockets. Their efforts were so successful that there was only one incident of mortar fire between Nov 21, 2014 and the end of the year, and only 41 rockets fired during 2013. All this is clear from IDF and GOI reports. So, they couldn't very well claim they were attacking to stop rocket fire that was not happening, could they?

          And even after Israel began mounting brutal attacks in the West Bank and Gaza based on the false pretext of the kidnappings Hamas held its fire for weeks, finally firing only 16 rockets on June 30 to retaliate for the extrajudicial murder of one of their officials.

          This kind of pattern has been absolutely typical of Israel's behavior, and has been documented since the early years of the state.

    2. The state of Israel is a violation of ever law in itself. Established on a mere myth, on stolen property with the help of brutal terror and justified by lies and liers like you.

    4. Amazing Balls: You would kick me in the face and then point to my teethmarks on your boots as proof of my aggression.

  3. Eventually these stolen lands will revert back to its owners no amount of money will change this.

  6. This is very well done. I cited it, and then later quoted it with credit in Wash Post comments for an article about rockets. The response was incredulity. They couldn't imagine it, they were deep in the pain of denial faced by fact. I hope you don't mind my using it for that. Thanks.

  7. Israel causes Palestinians to launch rockets into Israel by forcing them off their land, making settlements and using water from their homes to irrigate their farms. If Israel were the most powerful nation in the nineteenth century, the USA would use Israeli taxes to displace Native Americans.

  9. Pingback: Meanwhile, in the only democracy in the middle east… | The Cafe

  10. Propaganda has led the majority of people in the USA to believe the EXACT opposite of the fact: Israel is not only the aggressive occupier, but it also flat out attacks its victim, unprovoked, far more often than the victim retaliates!

    No act from the victim can be unprovoked. The victim is under illegal military occupation, as specifically determined by international law and all human rights organizations.

  11. Thank you for publishing the truth. I personally already knew Israel broke the ceasefire. Its obvious by their brutality and lies surrounding it, and how they attack even babies/kids.

    1. Israel does not attack babies/kids. It attacks members of Hamas who hide amongst civilians and are know to use civilians as human shields. Get your facts straight and learn to spell (its should be it's).

      2. Israel does not attack babies/kids? So it must have been someone else bombing that UN refugee centre with babies/kids at 2 in the morning, and someone else who wantonly murdered those 4 boys playing football on the beach. Oh, and those 400+ Palestinian children who are now DEAD (including a 5 day old baby who had to be rescued from her dead mother's womb)? They must have just keeled over and died on their own. Wake up.

      3. Yeah, yeah, yeah, ….we have all heard that rehearsed statement way too many times. Perhaps your employer (Israel) should teach you something else to preach so it wouldn't so obvious that you are on their payroll

  12. Why does either side attack the other? This leads to the old chicken-egg question of which came first?…so let's analyze this a bit more. You start of with Israel attacking Gaza, then the retaliation, back and forth, etc. But wait a minute. Why does Israel attack? Answer? Because they were attacked first. Okay. Why did Hamas attack first? Because they (justifiably) oppose what they call "the siege of Gaza". Hmm. Israel has no reason to attack Gaza preemptively, but Hamas believes it does have reason, so they will continue to hurl rockets into civilian populations until Gaza is free to inundate Israel with further acts of terrorism. Hamas knows that Israel will NOT march itself into the sea (the only solution it will accept), and is here to stay. Consequently, the only war it can win is the propaganda war. That is why Hamas launches rockets from civilian locations including hospitals, where they store weapons and ammunition. We read about hospital;s being attacked by Israel, but very little about the fact that Hamas sets it up for propaganda purposes. If (like Hamas)you believe that Israel has no right to exist, what more is there to say? Hamas will be in a constant state of war with Israel until Israel disappears – WHICH THEY WON'T! Peace is impossible. Why? Because HAMAS WON'T ALLOW IT!

    1. Oh, please! This is not chicken and egg question. Please read some real history, and try to understand it, and then come back and perhaps you can converse intelligently on this subject.

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  36. " Israel committed 87 cease-fire violations and causing some 91 Palestinian casualties over nearly a one year period there were only six stories on the topic"

    Humm. What constitutes a cease-fire violation? The article implies US media is slanted while leaving out extremely important information – the intent being to amplify the number of Israeli cease fire violations. How many did the Palestinian's violate using the same criteria during the same period?

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