MCC Palestine Update #27
For the past week, the MCC office in Jerusalem has been inundated by faxes, e-mails, and phone calls, all from Palestinian friends and partners. They were calling up to ask if we had friends or family affected by the attacks of September 11, to express their shock and outrage at the attacks, to send their condolences to us as Americans, to MCC, and to the US in general. Palestinian schools, meanwhile, observed a minute of silence in mourning for the dead.
The handful of Palestinians who celebrated in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Nablus are not representative of Palestinians. Quite the opposite. Time and again, we have been struck by how Palestinians, who have very good reasons to be angry with the United States for its overwhelming support of Israeli occupation, transcend the pain of their particular circumstances by expressing sympathy for victims of the attacks in the US.
This is a time not only of mourning in the occupied territories, but also of fear. The Israeli military has stepped up its operations in West Bank and Gaza: military spokesmen told Ha'aretz newspaper that they expected greater latitude of action while the world's attention was diverted away from the occupied territories. Prominent voices in the Israeli government, furthermore, try to tar the Palestinian leadership with the "bin Laden" brush, and there is more and more talk of dismantling the Palestinian Authority and driving out (or killing) Arafat. This is a very uncertain time for MCC's Palestinian staff and partners--please keep them in your prayers.
Below are three pieces. The first, by British journalist Robert Fisk,tries to place the attacks in the US in context. While Fisk does not, to our mind, adequately note that Palestinians who celebrated were a small minority, his piece does serve to highlight reasons for anger at the US in the Middle East. We should stress that such analyses of looking into root causes of anti-Americanism in the Middle East are not justifications of the horrific attacks we saw; if, however, we want to move beyond shock and revenge, we need to look at how to promote justice in the region. The second piece is by the Israeli peace group, Gush Shalom, outlining its rejection of the Arafat=Bin Laden equation. Finally, a piece by Gideon Levy describing the siege on one West Bank village.
1. The wickedness and awesome cruelty of a crushed and humiliated people
Robert Fisk
The Independent, 12 September 2001
So it has come to this. The entire modern history of the Middle East the collapse of the Ottoman empire, the Balfour declaration, Lawrence of Arabia's lies, the Arab revolt, the foundation of the state of Israel, four Arab-Israeli wars and the 34 years of Israel's brutal occupation of Arab land all erased within hours as those who claim to represent a crushed, humiliated population struck back with the wickedness and awesome cruelty of a doomedpeople. Is it fair? is it moral? to write this so soon, without proof, when the last act of barbarism, in Oklahoma, turned out to be the work of home-grown Americans? I fear it is. America is at war and, unless I am mistaken, many thousands more are now scheduled to die in the Middle East, perhaps in America too.
Some of us warned of "the explosion to come''. But we never dreamt this nightmare.
And yes, Osama bin Laden comes to mind, his money, his theology, his frightening dedication to destroy American power. I have sat in front of bin Laden as he described how his men helped to destroy the Russian army in Afghanistan and thus the Soviet Union. Their boundless confidence allowed them to declare war on America. But this is not the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about American missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia paid and uniformed by America Israel’s ally, hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee
camps.
No, there is no doubting the utter, indescribable evil of what has happened in the United States. That Palestinians could celebrate the massacre of 20,000, perhaps 35,000 innocent people is not only a symbol of their despair but of their political immaturity, of their failure to grasp what they had always been accusing their Israeli enemies of doing: acting disproportionately. [Note: this was written when the casualty figures were thought to be much higher; also, Fisk does not note the overwhelming denunciation of the attacks by all levels of Palestinian government, politics, and civil society.] All the years of rhetoric, all the promises to strike at the heart of America, to cut off the head of "the American snake'' we took for empty threats. How could a backward, conservative, undemocratic and corrupt group of regimes and small, violent organisations fulfil such preposterous promises? --- Now we know.
And in the hours that followed yesterday's annihilation, I began to remember those other extraordinary assaults upon the US and its allies, miniature now by comparison with yesterday's casualties. Did not the suicide bombers who killed 241 American servicemen and 100 French paratroops in Beirut on 23 October 1983, time their attacks with unthinkable precision?
There were just seven seconds between the Marine bombing and the destruction of the French three miles away. Then there were the attacks on US bases in Saudi Arabia, and last year's attempt almost successful it now turns out to sink the USS Cole in Aden. And then how easy was our failure to recognize the new weapon of the Middle East which neither Americans nor any other Westerners could equal: the despair-driven, desperate suicide bomber.
And there will be, inevitably, and quite immorally, an attempt to obscure the historical wrongs and the injustices that lie behind yesterday's firestorms. We will be told about "mindless terrorism'', the "mindless" bit being essential if we are not to realize how hated America has become in the land of the birth of three great religions.
Ask an Arab how he responds to 20,000 or 30,000 innocent deaths and he or she will respond as decent people should, that it is an unspeakable crime. But they will ask why we did not use such words about the sanctions that have destroyed the lives of perhaps half a million children in Iraq, why we did not rage about the 17,500 civilians killed in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. And those basic reasons why the Middle East caught fire last September the Israeli occupation of Arab land, the dispossession of Palestinians, the bombardments and state-sponsored executions ... all these must be obscured lest they provide the smallest fractional reason for yesterday's mass savagery.
No, Israel was not to blame though we can be sure that Saddam Hussein and the other grotesque dictators will claim so but the malign influence of history and our share in its burden must surely
stand in the dark with the suicide bombers. Our broken promises, perhaps even our destruction of the Ottoman Empire, led inevitably to this tragedy. America has bankrolled Israel's wars for so many years that it believed this would be cost-free. No longer so. But,of course, the US will want to strike back against "world terror'', and last night's bombardment of Kabul may have been the opening salvo [Note: It turned out this wasn't a US strike.] . Indeed, who could ever point the finger at Americans now for using that pejorative and sometimes racist word "terrorism''?
Eight years ago, I helped to make a television series that tried to explain why so many Muslims had come to hate the West. Last night, I remembered some of those Muslims in that film, their families burnt by American-made bombs and weapons. They talked about how no one would help them but God. Theology versus technology, the suicide bomber against the nuclear power. Now we have learnt what this means.
2. GUSH SHALOM
pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033 – http://www.gush-shalom.org/
Sept. 13: Today, the editorial of the mass-circulation Ma'ariv pointed out "the rare opportunity to turn international public opinion Israel's way", since "The world is horrified by the ideological alliance between Arafat and Bin Laden". This, the paper believes, makes it possible for Sharon "To seize the moment and use against terrorism the kind of means which hitherto he did not dare to use for fear of international reaction".
Sharon needed little urging, as indicated by the frankly brutal report carried in Yediot Aharonot, Ma'ariv's great rival, also of today: "At about 2.00 PM the IDF forces reached the building in Arabeh Village where three Islamic Jihad activists had barricaded themselves. The three refused to surrender, and were liquidated by missiles and shells. A 12 -year old girl was also killed in the shooting on the inhabited building. Later, another wanted Palestinian was liquidated as well. In the three hours' exchange of fire, four Palestinian civilians were killed by mistake and about fifty wounded".
In the Israeli media it was reported, though ruthlessly - on the international networks it had no chance. (A group of firebrand politicians, led by former PM Netanyahu, seem to find such operations insufficiant; they are making shrill calls for total destruction of the Palestinian Authority and the killing or exiling of Arafat.)
Altogether, at least 18 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army in the past two days. Among those killed was a 71-year old man from Beit Likia, shot by soldiers for the crime of trying to bypass the earthen barrier blocking the single exit road from his village; and a wounded Palestinian policeman died when his ambulance was delayed by the soldiers maintaining for the third con-secutive day a close siege over the town of Jenin. One Israeli got killed, a settler woman caught in a Palestinian ambush near Hable.
It is now - a late night hour - the fourth night since Israeli soldiers started the siege of Jenin, which involves occupying parts of the "A" area - the area where they should not be present according to the Oslo agreement - signed eight years ago to the day. It is an invasion of the Palestinian territory far longer - and with far more severe consequences - than the April invasion of the Gaza Strip which at the time drew a sharp reprimand from the US State Department (nothing of the kind this time, needless to say). Another big-scale invasion by an armoured column took place during the past day at the venerable town of Jericho, and there were sundry bombings and bombardments at various other spots, altogether "the largest number of simultaneous operations since the uprising started" according to the Israel Radio's military correspondent.
The weekly Gush Shalom ad, due to be published in Ha'aretz in the morning, sounds a caution to the PM and the rest of the warmongers: "(...) Sharon hopes that from now on he will get the automatic support of the Americans and Europeans for the continuation of the occupation. In this he may be disappointed. The opposite can also happen: the Americans and Europeans may interfere in order to put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is poisoning the international atmosphere. This would be in the interest of the Israeli people, too."
Certainly, it seems that Secretary of State Powel has no intention to accept Sharon's "Arafat equals Bin Laden" formula. Instead, Powel has pointedly mentioned Arafat among the heads of state whose condolences to the American people he had received, and pushed for a meeting between the Palestinian President and Israel' Foreign Minister Peres, which is due to take place on Sunday. But PM Sharon, evidently displeased with the intended meeting, gave Peres a very narrow mandate: to call for immediate cease-fire without offering the Palestinians even the most remote hope of an end to the occupation, the oppression, the settlement extension. [NOTE: The meeting was canceled by Sharon.] In other words, a demand for unconditional surrender, with Peres playing the part of "Good Cop" on Sharon's behalf. Not much hope there.
3. No way out
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, 15 September 2001
Ninety percent unemployment; 1,500 people in need of medical help; two weeks of total blockade during nearly a year under closure; shortages of medicines, water and food; and a civil protest staged by 500 senior citizens in front of an army checkpoint. A report from the besieged town of Beit Furiq, which lies between Itamar and Elon Moreh
By the middle of last week, they felt that they couldn't take it any more. For two weeks, they'd been completely cut off, with no one allowed to enter or to leave apart from some tankers delivering water - and that only under constraint and after much pleading, when the situation had become utterly untenable.
Then the mayor of Beit Furiq called the council head of the neighboring village of Beit Dajan, on the other side of the hill, and the two debated what to do. They sought the counsel of the village elders and their respective councils, and contemplated staging a demonstration or some kind of civil rebellion, although they were worried that people might be killed. And what kind of protest could the residents of two remote villages put up against the occupying Israelis at the gate - or at the checkpoint, to be more exact without it leading to more bloodshed? Weren't the five dead the villages had already suffered - including a man harvesting olives in his orchard and an innocent woman in her car - enough?
In the end, there was a decision to protest by parking cars in front of the roadblock. But, so as not to provoke or alarm the soldiers unnecessarily, it was decided that only the older people from both
villages would come out to the checkpoint. Young drivers were more apt to become hotheaded; the senior citizens could be trusted to stay calm and not to go overboard with the protest.
And so, last Wednesday, after two weeks of being totally sealed in, all of the elderly people of Beit Furiq and Beit Dajan drove their cars - or their children's cars - to the checkpoint that was shutting
off and strangulating their villages, and parked in a long line, one after the other, car after car. Not that they had any other use for their private vehicles at this point: Since the blockade on the villages was imposed at the start of the intifada, they have been prohibited from leaving except in service taxis or supply trucks. In the past couple of weeks, those two options were also revoked.
The soldiers at the checkpoint didn't know what to make of the quiet, elderly protesters. After an hour and a half or so of this peaceful civil rebellion, Officer Itai was summoned. Ataf Hanani, the
mayor of Beit Furiq, tried to explain to Itai that Beit Furiq and Beit Dajan have always been dependent on Nablus for everything, and that the residents cannot be prevented from getting to the city. Beit Furiq and Beit Dajan are basically suburbs of Nablus, much closer to the center of the city than Gilo is to downtown Jerusalem.
After some discussion back and forth, Officer Itai announced that the blockade would be lifted the next day. The following day, last Thursday, Hanani set out for Nablus. His passage out of the village - for the first time in two weeks - was amazingly easy. The soldiers at the roadblock quickly allowed him through. But at 11 A.M., when he wished to return home (normally, traveling from Nablus to Beit Furiq takes no more than five minutes), he found about 100 cars stuck at the checkpoint at the entrance of his village. He reached his home at about 3:00 in the afternoon, four hours after he left Nablus. Four hours instead of five minutes, all for the sake of a handful of residents of Itamar and Elon Moreh living on the hill, whose security is the only thing that seems to interest Israel. And to hell with all the rest.
Thus has Beit Furiq been liberated from the siege imposed upon it; now you just have to wait a little while at the checkpoint.
A mayor, beaten
The window of the Palestinian taxi is shattered. Two days ago, settlers hurled rocks at it, near the Tapuah junction. It's a matter of routine.
The flowers are in bloom all along the way from Qalqilyah to Nablus. Like most West Bank roads these days, this one is deserted, whether due to fear (on the part of both the settlers and the Palestinians) or prohibitions (affecting the Palestinians). All of the roads that spill onto the main highway are blocked with trenches, mounds of dirt and concrete blocks, as are most of the impromptu dirt paths that have sprung up.
It's a depressing sight. Throughout the trip, the conversation centers on one thing: How to get there? Where is there a roadblock? Whom will the soldiers allow to pass? How long will it take? Which route is blocked?
At the Dir Sharaf checkpoint, a broad roadblock at the hub of a village, the tension rises. A long line of vehicles, including an ambulance, is standing and waiting. Whoever is allowed to pass through will be in Nablus in two minutes; whoever is refused permission will have to spend an hour and a half getting from here to there via extremely makeshift "roads."
The soot around the windows of the building where the Hamas offices are located, a building where two Hamas leaders were killed in a rocket attack, has already been removed and the place now looks like a tranquil apartment house - as tranquil as an apartment house in Nablus can look these days. The bombed-out police headquarters still stands in ruins; pictures of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, still hanging on the wall, are the only things left intact.
At first glance, the routine of the city seems unchanged, but on closer look, one sees that it appears to be moving in slow gear. There are hardly any private vehicles on the road, only taxis. Amazingly, very few armed men are roaming the streets. Groups of gloomy-looking young men idly wander about, certain to cause any Israeli who might somehow find himself here a shiver of unease.
A poster of intifada casualty Zahi Muzhir adorns the entrance to the Balata refugee camp at the edge of the city. Balata is proud of its son. A picture of Saladin Darwazi is affixed to the ruins of his red car, destroyed in a rocket attack. "Woe to those who have struck at us," reads the Hamas flyer affixed to the car. "Here is the place where the commander was murdered."
Nablus already has a good share of such monuments. Dr. Rasan Hamdan leaves the offices of the organization called Medical Relief that he heads. Another doctor from the organization, Dr. Muhammed Zakaki, an expert on first-aid in a city that has been shelled a number of times, calls to say that he is stuck at the Hawara checkpoint and that he hasn't been able to convince the soldiers to let him through. Salah Hajj Yahya, who is with Israel's Doctors for Human Rights foundation, tries to come to the doctor's assistance.
Last week, Dr. Hamdan wrote from Nablus to the Tel Aviv office of Doctors for Human Rights: "The Israeli soldiers are totally preventing the passage of people and goods to Beit Furiq. Water is the only product they allow to be delivered. We urgently request assistance with basic foodstuffs such as rice, sugar, oil, baby food and medicines."
The "Medical Relief" sign on the front of Hamdan's car enables us to get past the roadblock at the entrance to Beit Furiq. A water tanker (a gift from the Japanese government to the Palestinian Authority) is being delayed behind us. Did the Japanese know that this is what would become of their truck?
A single house belonging to the Itamar settlement sits atop a high hill overlooking all the village streets, as if to taunt the inhabitants, whose lives would be so different if it weren't for this settlement situated right over their heads. For some time now, the villagers the villagers have been prevented from reaching their olive trees planted on the lower part of the mountain, due to fear of the settlers who, they say, shoot at anyone who dares to approach the groves
That's how one local man, Farid Nasasra, was killed. We visited Nasasra's home in January of this year, on the day in which soldiers killed Fatma Abu Jish, a clerk at the hospital in Nablus who'd been returning from work and tried to get home by way of the fields, having no other options available. Beit Furiq Mayor Hanani, who is also a farmer, told us then about the beating he had endured at the hands of the soldiers when trying to visit his aunt in Nablus. The soldiers also let the air out of his tires (his car bore an official town seal) - making him apparently the only mayor in
the world to receive such treatment.
Staggering unemployment
Practically nothing has changed since then in the town hall: The same tattered black chairs still sit at the entrance; the same old man lies sprawled out on one of them; the town and national flags are displayed, as is a picture of a smiling Arafat in the mayor's office. Hanani's official Mitsubishi pickup truck sits in the parking lot. There is one new addition, however: Portraits of the leaders of
the Popular Front - George Habash and the assassinated Abu Ali Mustafa - are stuck on the wall by the entrance.
And one other thing: A new Hebrew phrase, "tehakeh batzad" ("Wait on the side") has been added to the lexicon of the occupation. "Those were two very difficult weeks," recalls Hanani. "No one came in and no one went out. After three days, when we appealed to B'Tselem and the International Red Cross, they allowed the water tankers to come in."
There is no running water in Beit Furiq, so without the water deliveries, the place is as good as dead. Now only 40 tanks per day are allowed to enter. Why not more? Why does someone care
how much water gets into the town?
In recent months, the Israel Defense Forces have been busy blocking all the improvised, alternative access roads in the town's fields. In any case, everyone was afraid to travel on them since the soldiers started shooting at people trying to sneak through to their homes; so once again, the only way out is through the roadblock. This roadblock has also undergone some changes. At first it
consisted of an impassable trench and concrete blocks; now it is manned by three soldiers in dusty uniforms who decree who goes out and who comes in - which sometimes is to say, who will
live and who will die.
Hanani: "The other thing is the soldiers' mood. Their moods are fickle. Sometimes, they sit for an hour at the roadblock without signaling to even one car to pass. There are shifts where the soldier decides not to let any car pass through. The hardship just increases. If someone is transporting food products, the soldier can decide to unload everything.
"The queue gets longer and longer. A car with young passengers can be detained for hours for no reason. And all of this mess because of 70 settlers. I understand the matter of security. As far
as I'm concerned, they can take all the security measures they want, but without shutting down our lives like this."
The unemployment rate in Beit Furiq is a staggering 90 percent. The town has 8,500 residents. Half of its labor force used to work in Israel, a third worked in the Nablus quarries, and another 10th in
agriculture, as farmers or shepherds. The road to work in Israel is blocked; only a few manage to sneak through, and when they do, they stay away for a week or two, working only in the Arab
villages. The stonecutters are also unemployed because of the severe economic crisis in Nablus.
As for the farmers and shepherds, either they cannot reach their lands - because of the settlers - or they cannot reach their markets - because of the soldiers. Not long ago, one chicken farmer from Beit Furiq tried to bring 10,000 live chickens to market in Nablus. Thousands of chickens expired from the heat during the long and winding journey made in order to circumvent the roadblocks.
Social service workers are also often prevented from reaching their jobs in Nablus or the surrounding villages because of the roadblocks. Before the intifada, there were 220 families
registered with the town's welfare office; now 1,000 of the 1,500 families are in need of help.
How do people manage in the face of all this? The answer to this familiar question is always the same: mutual assistance.
"I cannot eat when my neighbor has nothing," as Hanani puts it. Those who used to eat meat once a week have stopped eating meat altogether. If they used to cook with gas, now they light bonfires. "We've gone backward 20 years."
Would it be possible to visit the home of a poor family? The village officials are reluctant: It could hurt the family's dignity or their town's honor.
The medical situation in the virtually closed-off town: Dr. Hamdan says that there is a severe shortage of medicines. There is one clinic whose doctors come from outside. The only doctor who lives in the town works somewhere else. At the beginning of the intifada, no doctors came at all because the road was blocked by the trench.
Last Tuesday, at the height of the full blockade, the Medical Relief organization set up a mobile clinic staffed with nine doctors who had come to Beit Furiq. Some 1,500 patients came to be examined. Hamdan says that most were chronically ill people, who had been unable to receive their regular medical treatment for a long time. There were also children with respiratory infections that
had gone untreated, as well as patients with anemia and high blood pressure, and many cases of intestinal illnesses brought on by the poor quality of the water. Some of the residents cannot afford
to pay health insurance fees, so they are prevented from going to the regular clinic.
On the first of the month, Abla Mana'a, who suffers from diabetes, found that her supply of insulin had run out. The blockade was in full force, but her husband, Ahmed, came up with a solution: He
gave NIS 120 to the driver of a water tanker, asking him to buy the insulin in Nablus and to bring it back on his return trip. And so Abla was saved.
What about dialysis patients? There are no such patients in Beit Furiq itself, but in all of the surrounding area, there are 158 people requiring dialysis treatment who must somehow make their way to Al-Watanati Hospital in Nablus, the only dialysis center for patients from Nablus, Jenin, Tul Karm and Qalqilyah and their environs. Getting there has become increasingly difficult. Newsweek
magazine reported on this situation several weeks ago.
Israel Air Force jets are in the air and all eyes are turned to Nablus.This was the day of the three terror attacks and all of the headquarters in Nablus have been evacuated for fear of an Israeli bombing, which is not long in coming. Dr. Hamdan hurried to the city to be ready in case he was called to work in one of the ambulances. In the basement of Beit Furiq's town hall, a little girl
practiced playing an electric organ, alone on the floor of the spacious room. In the next room, a group of housewives in white head scarves awaited the arrival of the doctor who is giving them a course in first aid. They are preparing for every eventuality.
Meanwhile, many more cars have lined up at the roadblock, hoping to enter the village. The drivers are prohibited from approaching the intersection until a soldier signals them to do so and then only
one car at a time. The taxi driver from Qalqilyah has fixed his broken window: He found a good deal in Nablus - a used windshield for NIS 800, practically his entire monthly wage.
At the Dir Sharaf checkpoint, a woman stood all upset and perspiring, dejectedly waving a fistful of documents, her face as white as a sheet. She had had surgery at the hospital in Nablus the week before and had the documents to prove it. She had just been released from the hospital and was trying to cross through the checkpoint on foot in order to get back to her home in the village of Bal'a.
"So she'll wait a little bit. It's not so terrible," says the young lieutenant at the roadblock. "First let's put things in some order here and then we'll let her pass."
Saturday, September 15
Monday, September 10
MCC Palestine Update #26
MCC Palestine Update #26
[Note: This was due to be sent out last Wednesday. We delayed sending it out until today. We will send another update out this Wednesday with pieces related to the attacks of September 11.]
With news this past week of plans to declare large stretches of land east of the "Green Line" closed military zones, the Israeli siege on the occupied territories has intensified. More homes in Rafah, probably the Palestinian town hardest hit during this past year, were demolished.
MCC is supporting a project initiatied by the Bethlehem Bible College and Defense for Children International-Palestine Section in which Palestinian schoolchildren will write messages of peace on postcards destined for the White House. Palestinian children will write on one half, children in US churches on the other. MCC in the US will promote this project in Mennonite churches during the Advent season. Participating churches can combine this postcard activity with other MCC materials, such as a packet of worship and advocacy materials or the MCC Middle East Children's Box. If your church would like to participate, contact us, and we'll forward your interest to the relevant people.
Below are three pieces. The first, by the lawyer John Whitbeck, examines how Israel's dream of a peace of "non-belligerency" which does not end the occupation will not work. Uri Avneri of Gush Shalom then looks at the influence of the military class on Israeli politics. Finally, a news piece from Ha'aretz newspaper looks at the growing number of conscientious objectors in Israeli society.
1. Crusader Kingdoms: No to Non-Belligerency – Yes to Peace
John V. Whitbeck
Al-Ahram Weekly, 17-23 May 2001
When, almost ten years ago, Yitzhak Shamir lost his bid for reelection as Israel's prime minister, he gave a remarkably frank interview to the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv. Mr. Shamir stated that, if reelected, he would have dragged out Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for ten years while settling a further half a million Jews in the occupied Palestinian territories. (Actually, he referred to "souls" rather than to "Jews," and to "Judea, Samaria, and Gaza" rather than to the occupied Palestinian territories, but everyone knew what he meant.) He thereby made clear that it was never his intention that the "peace process" launched at the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference should, in fact, lead to peace._
_
It should now be sadly clear that Mr. Shamir's electoral defeat changed nothing. His spirit lived on in Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. While a full half a million Jews have not settled in the occupied Palestinian territories since the "peace process" began in Madrid, the number of settlers living there has approximately doubled during this period, and all of Mr. Shamir's successors have demonstrated, in deeds if not in words, that their only interest in the "peace process" was in the "process" (intended to keep the rest of the world off their back while they dug in deeper in the occupied Palestinian territories) rather than in "peace."_
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Until Ariel Sharon, that is. He at least has the merit of honesty in having formally dropped any pretense of seeking peace with Palestine. He has made clear, with support from his soulmate
and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and to apparent international indifference, that all he is interested in negotiating with the Palestinians is a "long-term non-belligerency agreement."_
_
What precisely would a "non-belligerency agreement" between an occupying power and an occupied people signify? Non-belligerency may sound like a close cousin of peace, but its essence could not be more different. In the Israeli-Palestinian context, it would signify Palestinian acquiescence in the continuing illegal occupation of the Palestinian lands conquered
in 1967 and Palestinian renunciation of the internationally recognized right to resist occupation. Where will one find the Palestinian who would be interested in even discussing such a
thing?_
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Nevertheless, the near-universal reaction of the international community to the current intifida and the succession of war crimes deployed to repress it continues to be to call for an end to violence (with the emphasis on Palestinian violence) and a return to negotiations. Negotiations about what? What will it take for the international community to recognize that the problem is not the resistance to the occupation but the occupation itself and that the goal must be to end the
occupation, not to end the resistance?_
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The Palestinian people have made clear that they are prepared to pay a high price for their freedom, their dignity and their fundamental human rights. For most of them, the conditions of their lives are already so miserable and humiliating that the prospect of death with dignity is not an unattractive option. They have nothing left to lose. What will it take for the international community to start to live up to the principles of international law and basic humanity which it professes to support at least elsewhere?_
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One must always expect the worst from the United States and cannot be surprised that it would veto even sending unarmed observers to the occupied Palestinian territories. The United States would probably give unqualified support to Israel even if it pushed three million Palestinians, live, through a meat-grinder. However, one used to expect better from Europe. While obsessing daily over alleged war criminals in the former Yugoslavia, the European Union has greeted Ariel Sharon's assumption of power (and even the inclusion in his cabinet of Rehavam Zeevi, whose entire political career is founded on the advocacy of ethnically cleansing the entire indigenous population of historical Palestine) with apparent equanimity and has reacted to the ongoing and accelerating rape of Palestine with remarkable silence and passivity._
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It is particularly disappointing and depressing to see certain Arab governments adopting the Israeli-American analysis and priorities and publicly calling for an end to violence, rather
than for an end to the occupation and solidarity with the Palestinian resistance. _
_
The primordial requirement for peace must now be to make Ariel Sharon and all he represents appear, in Israeli eyes, even a worse disaster than Ehud Barak, so that the Israeli body politic undergoes a powerful laxative purge which produces a successor willing to get serious about actually achieving peace, not simply keeping a never-ending, so-called "peace process" twitching with faint signs of life, and which could cause Israeli public opinion to finally grasp the fundamental reality and essential truth that complying with international law and relevant UN resolutions and ending the occupation is profoundly in Israel's own self-interest._
_
Unfortunately, this will require that conditions on the ground get even worse in the short term in order for there to be any hope of their getting better in the long term. During the difficult months ahead, a far greater degree of Arab solidarity with the Palestinian people than has been demonstrated to date--not simply on the rhetorical level but on the practical and financial levels--will be required. The Arab world has the means to summon the world's attention and to force it to take effective action on behalf of a genuine peace if its leaders can only summon the political will to do so._
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Israelis love to recite, with a certain smugness, that "the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." If Israel had any true friends in the world, they would now be screaming that Israel is in the process of missing a golden opportunity that may never come again. _
_
Since the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference, almost all Arab and Muslim states (including, most significantly, the State of Palestine) have been offering to accept the permanence of the Jewish State in the 78% of historical Palestine which the Zionist movement conquered in 1948 and which the international community has come to recognize as Israel's sovereign territory, even though this represents substantially more land than the UN proposed for the Jewish minority in its November 1947 partition resolution, in return for Israel's withdrawal to its internationally recognized borders in compliance with international law and relevant UN resolutions. This offer, if accepted, would have constituted an awesome achievement for the Zionist movement._
_
However, the Israelis wanted--and still want--more. Their spurning of this generous offer and their abuse of the peace process and of the goodwill of their Arab neighbors are changing the assumption of permanence in Arab eyes. The 78% offer may no longer be on the table--at least in the hearts and minds of most of the people of the Arab and Muslim states. It will certainly be off the table if Ariel Sharon's successor is not serious about actually achieving peace._
_
One thing should be clear to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the history of Palestine: Nothing is permanent except the presence of the Palestinian people. Historically, short-term interlopers have come and gone. The Crusader Kingdom in Palestine lasted for 88 years. So far, the Jewish State has lasted for 53 years. Unless a radical change in Israeli attitudes and direction occurs soon (and it is in everyone's interest that such a change should occur), a prudent person would hesitate to bet on the Jewish State's matching the 88-year lifespan of the Crusader Kingdom._
_
John V. Whitbeck is an international lawyer who writes frequently on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict._
2. Military Democracy
Uri Avneri
Gush Shalom.org, 8 September 2001
“The Israeli army does not have a state!” Ariel Sharon declared this week, after the Chief-of-Staff tried to create a fait accompli behind his back. I am not sure that Sharon knows where this phrase comes from. It was coined by the Count Honore de Mirabeau, one of the instigators of the French revolution, in his essay about Prussia. After stating that “war is the national industry of Prussia”, Mirabeau said that while in other countries the state has an army, in Prussia the army has a state. It has been said more than once that Israel is the “Prussia of the Middle East”. I have tried to analyze the origins of this similarity.
The Prussian state came into being after a holocaust, before which it was just another small German state, called Brandenburg at the time. In 1618, the Thirty Years War broke out, killing a third of the German people and devastating most of its towns and villages. It left behind a trauma that has not yet entirely disappeared.
In the Thirty Years War almost all the major European armies took part, and all of them fought each other on German soil. Germany is located in the middle of Europe and has no natural boundaries. No sea, no desert and no mountain chain defend it. After the calamity, the leaders of Prussia drew the obvious lesson: if we have no natural barriers to defend us, we must create an artificial barrier in the form of a regular, big and efficient army. That’s how the Prussian army came into being, a force that was designed to defend the fatherland, and in the course of time became the terror of its neighbors, until, in the end, it became the Nazi army ironically called the Wehrmacht – the “defense force”.
Israel is faced with a similar dilemma. Zionism was, in the beginning, a small and weak movement, rejected even by the majority of the Jews. When the first Zionists came to this country, they were surprised to find here a population that did not agree to turn its homeland over to another people. It resisted violently, and the Zionists defended themselves as well as they could.
Then came the Holocaust and annihilated a third of the Jewish people. It gave Zionism a tremendous impetus. The movement was seen as a valiant effort by the Holocaust survivors to redeem themselves. By the same measure, Arab resistance grew. The Zionists needed to create an “Iron Wall” (as Ze’ev Jabotinsky phrased it) against the resistance, a “defense force” strong enough to withstand the onslaught of the entire Arab world. Thus the IDF was born and, in the war of 1948 conquered some 78% of Mandate Palestine, and in the June 1967 war the remaining 22%, as well as great chunks of the neighboring countries. Since then, the “defense force” has become an army of occupation.
In the Second German Reich there was a popular saying, “der Soldate ist der beste Mann in Staate” (The soldier is the best man in the state.) In Israel, the slogan was “The best go to the Air Force”. In the young state, the army attracted the best and the brightest. The attitude towards the senior officers sometimes bordered on idolatry.
From the time the state was established until today, the generals have controlled the media, both by means of strong personal relations with the editors and by a complex network of army spokesmen masquerading as “our military correspondent”, “our Arab affairs correspondent” (generally former army intelligence officers) and “our political correspondent’.
Foreign observers have frequently asked whether a military coup could occur in Israel. That’s a silly question, because a coup is quite unnecessary. Since its early days, the army command has had a decisive influence on national policy, and its members have occupied key positions in the Israeli democracy, in a way unimaginable in any other democratic state.
A few facts may suffice: of the 15 chiefs-of-staff who preceded Mofaz, two became prime ministers (Rabin, Barak), four others became cabinet ministers (Yadin, Bar-Lev, Eytan, Lipkin-Shahak). Two prime ministers were past leaders of the pre-state armed underground organizations (Begin, Shamir), and one a former Director General of the Defense Ministry (Peres). Two generals became Presidents of Israel (Herzog, Weizman). In the present government there are five generals (Sharon, Ze’evi, Vilnai, Sneh, Ben-Eliezer.)
Former generals have always been allotted the key economic positions and have controlled almost all big corporations and state services. Many generals became mayors. The entire political-military-economic-administrative class in Israel is full of generals.
The dispersal of the generals among different political parties does not change anything. This is proved by the fact that many generals, upon leaving the army, were offered leading positions in oth major political parties – Labor and Likud – and chose one or the other according to the price offered. Some wandered from one party to another (Dayan, Weizman, Sharon, Mordecai). At the beginning of the present Knesset, four political parties were headed by generals (Likud by Sharon, Labor by Barak, Merkaz by Modecai, Moledet by Ze’evi). The religious camp has, until now, been bereft of generals, but with the appearance of the far-rightist, Effi Eytam, this will be corrected.
There would have been nothing bad in all this if it would have been only a personal and professional phenomena. But the problem is much more serious, because all the governing generals have a common mentality. All of them believe in the policy of force, annexations and settlements, even if some of them are less extreme than others. The exceptions can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and some would say on one finger (the late Matti Peled).
In this respect, there is no difference between active and retired officers. All of them together have always formed a kind of super-party, directing the political establishment. Not because they are organized and decide together, and not because of their strong social bonds, but because of their uniform way of thinking, which leads them almost automatically to the same conclusions in any given situation – irrespective of their belonging to Likud, Labor, National Union or Merkaz. Not necessarily on every detail, but in the general direction.
One of the results is the neutralization of women in the Israeli political system. Women have no place on the upper echelons of the army and its machoist ethos, which directs all spheres of
Israeli policy. (The only outstanding exceptions, Golda Mair, took pride in being “the only man in the government” and surrounded herself with generals.)
All this is being done quite democratically. In the “Only Democracy in the Middle East”, the army gets its orders from the government and obeys. In Israeli law, the government as such is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. But when the government itself is controlled by former generals, this is meaningless.
That’s how it was in the 50s, when the Chief-of-Staff Moshe Dayan imposed on the government a policy of “retaliatory actions” and had it implemented by Major Ariel Sharon. And that’s how it is today, when the same General Sharon imposes the same policy and has it implemented by general Ben-Eliezer, the Minister of Defense, who happens to belong to the rival party. (In democratic countries, it is extremely rare for a Minister of Defense to be a former general.) Sharon’s predecessor, the former Chief-of-Staff Barak, surrounded himself with a bunch of generals, rejecting all civilians.
Lately a new and dangerous development has taken place. Under the leadership of the Chief-of-Staff, Shaul Mofaz, a man with a far-rightist outlook, the army has started to rebel against the “political directives”. It mobilizes the media against the government and makes it responsible for its abject failure in the war against “terrorism”- reminding one of the Prussian generals after World War I who accused the politicians of “sticking a knife in the back of the army”. When Foreign Minister Peres, with the approval of Sharon, recently started to initiate a meeting with Arafat, a “senior military source” leaked to the media that the army strongly objects to all such meetings.
Things reached a climax this week, when the Chief-of-Staff decided to create across the Green Line (the pre-1967 border) “closed military areas”, with detention camps and military, Kangaroo courts for Palestinians trying to enter. This means de facto annexation, with far-reaching political, international and national implications.
Sharon, who heard about this while on a state visit in Russia, seethed with anger. A game of accusations and counter-accusations began, with the army leaking secret documents to the media. (“I came across a document…” a TV commentator announced.)
If this gives the impression that this is a major fight between the government and the army, it’s an illusion. Sharon himself belongs to the military clique more than anyone else. But he has an old grudge against the General Staff, which at the time prevented him from becoming Chief-of-Staff. On top of that, contrary to civilian politicians, he has no inferiority complex when
dealing with the generals.
This is a fight within the family. There are no real differences of opinions between Sharon and Mofaz. Both believe in the same policy of enlarging the settlements and preventing any compromise with the Palestinian people. Both believe in the maxim “If force doesn’t work, use more force”. Both are moving towards escalation and more escalation.
In the Weimar republic after World Wart I, there was a saying: the Kaiser went, the generals remained”. In Israel, the government changes hands from time to time, but the generals always remain.
3. They also serve who refuse to serve
Joseph Algazy
Haaretz, 6 September 2001
The number of conscientious objectors is growing, but the IDF prefers to ignore the phenomenon.
There are currently six soldiers in the regular army and the reserves who are serving time in three military prisons for refusing to serve in the army or in the territories. Among them are two reserve officers with the rank of captain: Sefi Sendik, who is refusing to serve in the army for
political reasons, and Dan Tamir, who refuses to serve in the occupied territories for reasons of conscience.
In July, six soldiers were jailed, and in August another five. This week, two more regular army soldiers were sentenced to prison terms: a woman soldier and youth leader, Avia Atai, and a male soldier-teacher, Rotem Mor. The Israel Defense Forces Spokesman's Office said that the army has no statistics on the dimensions of the phenomenon of refusal to serve, and it does not intend to comment on the issue.
Most of those who refuse to serve explain that their motives are political -the reason is either pacifism or opposition to government policy toward the Palestinians. Two of the organizations dealing with soldiers who refuse to serve, Yesh Gvul and New Profile, a movement to turn Israel into a civil society, report that the phenomenon of declaring a refusal to serve has grown - including refusals that the IDF accepts. Some of those who refuse are not put on trial by the IDF, and do not go to prison.
Two days ago, Rotem Mor was sent to Prison No. 4, after the IDF had sentenced him to 28 days of prison and 28 days of probation. Mor, who is 20 years old, finished high school in the summer of 1999 and took the matriculation exams. In February 2000, he was drafted. He served for a while in the liaison unit with foreign forces in Eilat, and then took a course for soldier-teachers, which in the past was open only to women. Mor admitted that he was not always a disciplined soldier, but he liked working with teenagers, and was willing to invest his time and talent for their benefit. A few weeks ago, however, he decided that he didn't want to serve in the army any longer. By then he had already served for about a year and a half.
When he made his decision to be a conscientious objector, he removed his uniform and showed up at his military unit in civilian clothing. Even when he came to the IDF Conscientious Objectors Committee, he wore civilian clothes, and in reaction, the committee refused to hear his arguments. Mor told his friends that for him, military service had become "slavery," and that he didn't feel that the IDF was protecting him.
Early hatred
In a political statement that he published shortly before his arrest, Mor wrote: "For a long time, I have had doubts about the honesty of military service. These questions began to arise long before I was drafted. They stemmed from information I had acquired about the Israeli-Arab conflict,
and from discovering the false information about it, to which I was exposed for years. As I learned more, I was increasingly skeptical about the official Israeli version of what happened. This official version is the basis on which most of Israeli youth justifies its military service. I started to understand to what extent fear and hatred had been instilled in me from a very early age. I discovered that I do not believe in the existence of an "enemy," but rather in the existence of people of different cultures, who are frightened and angry, just like me."
In order to conduct his fight, Mor opened a Web site in which he explained his commitment to his own truth. Mor points out that he formulated his pacifist view on his own, with the aid of books.
Love of the land
Avia Atai, 19, a high school graduate and a former youth leader in the Scouts, declared even before she was drafted into the IDF that she would not bear arms or serve in the occupied territories. Before she was drafted, she took a pre-army course given by the Jewish National Fund, which trained her to be a youth leader in the IDF on topics related to JNF projects. When she finished basic training, she served as a soldier-youth leader in the Kennedy Forest near Jerusalem. In this position, she did not bear arms or engage in guard duty, "but in love of the land," her father, Yehuda Atai, explained this week.
Last week, Atai was asked by her superiors to take on another assignment: teaching children and teens in Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood how to defend themselves from bullets, mortar shells and bombs. Atai refused, explaining that she lacked the proper training. If they don't want to endanger the lives of children in streets that are under fire, the safest way is to take them out of there, she suggested. The decision to leave children in the line of fire, she added, is political, and therefore, the job of protecting and defending them should be given to those who were trained to do so.
Avia Atai's father says he read the instruction manual given to the women soldiers sent to Gilo, and it seemed to him "full of absurdities ... it doesn't give a true and proper answer to the dangers threatening the children of Gilo." Because of her refusal to join the woman soldiers sent to Gilo, Atai was sentenced on Monday to 28 days in jail; the same day, she was transferred to Prison 400.
Yehuda Atai is an officer in the paratroops who served in the unit led by Yoni Netanyahu, hero of the 1976 Entebbe rescue operation and late brother of Benjamin Netanyahu. Atai said this week that he totally supports his daughter, who was educated, like all his five children, to love the country. "The ruling system in Israel has collapsed," he said, "and the country is suffering from loss of direction and an identity crisis."
Yishai Menuhin, a major in the reserves, and one of the heads of Yesh Gvul, believes the phenomenon of refusal is growing; the number of regular and reserve soldiers who turn to his organization is on the increase, he says. "We know of many cases where the IDF avoids confrontation with soldiers who refused to serve, and sweeps their problem under the rug. As the problem grows, the IDF is disturbed by it, is not succeeding in dealing with it, and therefore is refusing to pay attention to it."
Public call
This week, Yesh Gvul made a public call to soldiers to refuse "to participate in war crimes," declaring that "shooting unarmed civilians, including children, shelling and bombing of residential neighborhoods, assassinations, destruction of homes, withholding of food and medical care, and destruction of sources of income" are actions "that are defined in international and in Israeli law as war crimes."
Heading the declaration of Yesh Gvul, there is a stanza from a song published by Israeli poet Natan Alterman in 1948, after a massacre:
"Because those who bear arms, including me/ some actively, and some by agreement,
are pushed, with the muttering of `it's essential' and `revenge',/ to the area of war crimes."
This Saturday,(Sept 22) Yesh Gvul will hold a vigil to identify with the imprisoned objectors, next to Prison 7 in Atlit.
Yesh Gvul recently received a message from the Canadian organization Palestinian and Jewish Unity, that they have adopted the imprisoned reserve captain, Dan Tamir "as a man who believes in democracy and Jewish values, and who refuses to take part in military operations whose goal is to perpetuate the Israeli occupation in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip." A letter from the Canadian organization to Tamir says that if there is peace in the Middle East, "it will also be due to the courage of people like you. Know that you have many friends." The organization plans a protest vigil tomorrow opposite the Israeli consulate in Montreal, as a sign of identification with Tamir and the other imprisoned soldiers.
New Profile provides information about those who refuse to serve on its Web site, and calls on the public to protest to the government against their imprisonment. And this week, over 60 high school seniors signed a letter they sent to the prime minister, the defense minister and the chief of staff, in which they declared that they would refuse to take part in the activities of repression against the Palestinian nation. They called on young people their age to do the same.
One of those who signed the letter, Haggai Matar, is to be drafted next July. He has been engaged in a voluminous correspondence with the IDF, and is asking to serve according to his conscience, in an alternative framework, similar to that offered to conscientious objector Yinon Heller, after a decision by the Supreme Court. The IDF was prepared to allow Heller to do his obligatory military service in a hospital, without undergoing basic training, without wearing a uniform, and without bearing arms.
At the beginning of July, Matar was invited to the Conscientious Objectors Committee, composed of representatives of the draft board and of the military legal division. He explained his political views, his activity in Jewish-Arab political contexts, and his friendship with Palestinians from the territories. In response to his request for alternative service, like Heller's, the members of the committee told him that Heller's case is not a precedent. The committee rejected his request to be released from service in the IDF for reasons of conscience. Matar announced this week that he would appeal the decision. When the time comes, "I will refuse to be drafted into the army, for reasons of conscience," he said.
[Note: This was due to be sent out last Wednesday. We delayed sending it out until today. We will send another update out this Wednesday with pieces related to the attacks of September 11.]
With news this past week of plans to declare large stretches of land east of the "Green Line" closed military zones, the Israeli siege on the occupied territories has intensified. More homes in Rafah, probably the Palestinian town hardest hit during this past year, were demolished.
MCC is supporting a project initiatied by the Bethlehem Bible College and Defense for Children International-Palestine Section in which Palestinian schoolchildren will write messages of peace on postcards destined for the White House. Palestinian children will write on one half, children in US churches on the other. MCC in the US will promote this project in Mennonite churches during the Advent season. Participating churches can combine this postcard activity with other MCC materials, such as a packet of worship and advocacy materials or the MCC Middle East Children's Box. If your church would like to participate, contact us, and we'll forward your interest to the relevant people.
Below are three pieces. The first, by the lawyer John Whitbeck, examines how Israel's dream of a peace of "non-belligerency" which does not end the occupation will not work. Uri Avneri of Gush Shalom then looks at the influence of the military class on Israeli politics. Finally, a news piece from Ha'aretz newspaper looks at the growing number of conscientious objectors in Israeli society.
1. Crusader Kingdoms: No to Non-Belligerency – Yes to Peace
John V. Whitbeck
Al-Ahram Weekly, 17-23 May 2001
When, almost ten years ago, Yitzhak Shamir lost his bid for reelection as Israel's prime minister, he gave a remarkably frank interview to the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv. Mr. Shamir stated that, if reelected, he would have dragged out Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for ten years while settling a further half a million Jews in the occupied Palestinian territories. (Actually, he referred to "souls" rather than to "Jews," and to "Judea, Samaria, and Gaza" rather than to the occupied Palestinian territories, but everyone knew what he meant.) He thereby made clear that it was never his intention that the "peace process" launched at the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference should, in fact, lead to peace._
_
It should now be sadly clear that Mr. Shamir's electoral defeat changed nothing. His spirit lived on in Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. While a full half a million Jews have not settled in the occupied Palestinian territories since the "peace process" began in Madrid, the number of settlers living there has approximately doubled during this period, and all of Mr. Shamir's successors have demonstrated, in deeds if not in words, that their only interest in the "peace process" was in the "process" (intended to keep the rest of the world off their back while they dug in deeper in the occupied Palestinian territories) rather than in "peace."_
_
Until Ariel Sharon, that is. He at least has the merit of honesty in having formally dropped any pretense of seeking peace with Palestine. He has made clear, with support from his soulmate
and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and to apparent international indifference, that all he is interested in negotiating with the Palestinians is a "long-term non-belligerency agreement."_
_
What precisely would a "non-belligerency agreement" between an occupying power and an occupied people signify? Non-belligerency may sound like a close cousin of peace, but its essence could not be more different. In the Israeli-Palestinian context, it would signify Palestinian acquiescence in the continuing illegal occupation of the Palestinian lands conquered
in 1967 and Palestinian renunciation of the internationally recognized right to resist occupation. Where will one find the Palestinian who would be interested in even discussing such a
thing?_
_
Nevertheless, the near-universal reaction of the international community to the current intifida and the succession of war crimes deployed to repress it continues to be to call for an end to violence (with the emphasis on Palestinian violence) and a return to negotiations. Negotiations about what? What will it take for the international community to recognize that the problem is not the resistance to the occupation but the occupation itself and that the goal must be to end the
occupation, not to end the resistance?_
_
The Palestinian people have made clear that they are prepared to pay a high price for their freedom, their dignity and their fundamental human rights. For most of them, the conditions of their lives are already so miserable and humiliating that the prospect of death with dignity is not an unattractive option. They have nothing left to lose. What will it take for the international community to start to live up to the principles of international law and basic humanity which it professes to support at least elsewhere?_
_
One must always expect the worst from the United States and cannot be surprised that it would veto even sending unarmed observers to the occupied Palestinian territories. The United States would probably give unqualified support to Israel even if it pushed three million Palestinians, live, through a meat-grinder. However, one used to expect better from Europe. While obsessing daily over alleged war criminals in the former Yugoslavia, the European Union has greeted Ariel Sharon's assumption of power (and even the inclusion in his cabinet of Rehavam Zeevi, whose entire political career is founded on the advocacy of ethnically cleansing the entire indigenous population of historical Palestine) with apparent equanimity and has reacted to the ongoing and accelerating rape of Palestine with remarkable silence and passivity._
_
It is particularly disappointing and depressing to see certain Arab governments adopting the Israeli-American analysis and priorities and publicly calling for an end to violence, rather
than for an end to the occupation and solidarity with the Palestinian resistance. _
_
The primordial requirement for peace must now be to make Ariel Sharon and all he represents appear, in Israeli eyes, even a worse disaster than Ehud Barak, so that the Israeli body politic undergoes a powerful laxative purge which produces a successor willing to get serious about actually achieving peace, not simply keeping a never-ending, so-called "peace process" twitching with faint signs of life, and which could cause Israeli public opinion to finally grasp the fundamental reality and essential truth that complying with international law and relevant UN resolutions and ending the occupation is profoundly in Israel's own self-interest._
_
Unfortunately, this will require that conditions on the ground get even worse in the short term in order for there to be any hope of their getting better in the long term. During the difficult months ahead, a far greater degree of Arab solidarity with the Palestinian people than has been demonstrated to date--not simply on the rhetorical level but on the practical and financial levels--will be required. The Arab world has the means to summon the world's attention and to force it to take effective action on behalf of a genuine peace if its leaders can only summon the political will to do so._
_
Israelis love to recite, with a certain smugness, that "the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." If Israel had any true friends in the world, they would now be screaming that Israel is in the process of missing a golden opportunity that may never come again. _
_
Since the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference, almost all Arab and Muslim states (including, most significantly, the State of Palestine) have been offering to accept the permanence of the Jewish State in the 78% of historical Palestine which the Zionist movement conquered in 1948 and which the international community has come to recognize as Israel's sovereign territory, even though this represents substantially more land than the UN proposed for the Jewish minority in its November 1947 partition resolution, in return for Israel's withdrawal to its internationally recognized borders in compliance with international law and relevant UN resolutions. This offer, if accepted, would have constituted an awesome achievement for the Zionist movement._
_
However, the Israelis wanted--and still want--more. Their spurning of this generous offer and their abuse of the peace process and of the goodwill of their Arab neighbors are changing the assumption of permanence in Arab eyes. The 78% offer may no longer be on the table--at least in the hearts and minds of most of the people of the Arab and Muslim states. It will certainly be off the table if Ariel Sharon's successor is not serious about actually achieving peace._
_
One thing should be clear to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the history of Palestine: Nothing is permanent except the presence of the Palestinian people. Historically, short-term interlopers have come and gone. The Crusader Kingdom in Palestine lasted for 88 years. So far, the Jewish State has lasted for 53 years. Unless a radical change in Israeli attitudes and direction occurs soon (and it is in everyone's interest that such a change should occur), a prudent person would hesitate to bet on the Jewish State's matching the 88-year lifespan of the Crusader Kingdom._
_
John V. Whitbeck is an international lawyer who writes frequently on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict._
2. Military Democracy
Uri Avneri
Gush Shalom.org, 8 September 2001
“The Israeli army does not have a state!” Ariel Sharon declared this week, after the Chief-of-Staff tried to create a fait accompli behind his back. I am not sure that Sharon knows where this phrase comes from. It was coined by the Count Honore de Mirabeau, one of the instigators of the French revolution, in his essay about Prussia. After stating that “war is the national industry of Prussia”, Mirabeau said that while in other countries the state has an army, in Prussia the army has a state. It has been said more than once that Israel is the “Prussia of the Middle East”. I have tried to analyze the origins of this similarity.
The Prussian state came into being after a holocaust, before which it was just another small German state, called Brandenburg at the time. In 1618, the Thirty Years War broke out, killing a third of the German people and devastating most of its towns and villages. It left behind a trauma that has not yet entirely disappeared.
In the Thirty Years War almost all the major European armies took part, and all of them fought each other on German soil. Germany is located in the middle of Europe and has no natural boundaries. No sea, no desert and no mountain chain defend it. After the calamity, the leaders of Prussia drew the obvious lesson: if we have no natural barriers to defend us, we must create an artificial barrier in the form of a regular, big and efficient army. That’s how the Prussian army came into being, a force that was designed to defend the fatherland, and in the course of time became the terror of its neighbors, until, in the end, it became the Nazi army ironically called the Wehrmacht – the “defense force”.
Israel is faced with a similar dilemma. Zionism was, in the beginning, a small and weak movement, rejected even by the majority of the Jews. When the first Zionists came to this country, they were surprised to find here a population that did not agree to turn its homeland over to another people. It resisted violently, and the Zionists defended themselves as well as they could.
Then came the Holocaust and annihilated a third of the Jewish people. It gave Zionism a tremendous impetus. The movement was seen as a valiant effort by the Holocaust survivors to redeem themselves. By the same measure, Arab resistance grew. The Zionists needed to create an “Iron Wall” (as Ze’ev Jabotinsky phrased it) against the resistance, a “defense force” strong enough to withstand the onslaught of the entire Arab world. Thus the IDF was born and, in the war of 1948 conquered some 78% of Mandate Palestine, and in the June 1967 war the remaining 22%, as well as great chunks of the neighboring countries. Since then, the “defense force” has become an army of occupation.
In the Second German Reich there was a popular saying, “der Soldate ist der beste Mann in Staate” (The soldier is the best man in the state.) In Israel, the slogan was “The best go to the Air Force”. In the young state, the army attracted the best and the brightest. The attitude towards the senior officers sometimes bordered on idolatry.
From the time the state was established until today, the generals have controlled the media, both by means of strong personal relations with the editors and by a complex network of army spokesmen masquerading as “our military correspondent”, “our Arab affairs correspondent” (generally former army intelligence officers) and “our political correspondent’.
Foreign observers have frequently asked whether a military coup could occur in Israel. That’s a silly question, because a coup is quite unnecessary. Since its early days, the army command has had a decisive influence on national policy, and its members have occupied key positions in the Israeli democracy, in a way unimaginable in any other democratic state.
A few facts may suffice: of the 15 chiefs-of-staff who preceded Mofaz, two became prime ministers (Rabin, Barak), four others became cabinet ministers (Yadin, Bar-Lev, Eytan, Lipkin-Shahak). Two prime ministers were past leaders of the pre-state armed underground organizations (Begin, Shamir), and one a former Director General of the Defense Ministry (Peres). Two generals became Presidents of Israel (Herzog, Weizman). In the present government there are five generals (Sharon, Ze’evi, Vilnai, Sneh, Ben-Eliezer.)
Former generals have always been allotted the key economic positions and have controlled almost all big corporations and state services. Many generals became mayors. The entire political-military-economic-administrative class in Israel is full of generals.
The dispersal of the generals among different political parties does not change anything. This is proved by the fact that many generals, upon leaving the army, were offered leading positions in oth major political parties – Labor and Likud – and chose one or the other according to the price offered. Some wandered from one party to another (Dayan, Weizman, Sharon, Mordecai). At the beginning of the present Knesset, four political parties were headed by generals (Likud by Sharon, Labor by Barak, Merkaz by Modecai, Moledet by Ze’evi). The religious camp has, until now, been bereft of generals, but with the appearance of the far-rightist, Effi Eytam, this will be corrected.
There would have been nothing bad in all this if it would have been only a personal and professional phenomena. But the problem is much more serious, because all the governing generals have a common mentality. All of them believe in the policy of force, annexations and settlements, even if some of them are less extreme than others. The exceptions can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and some would say on one finger (the late Matti Peled).
In this respect, there is no difference between active and retired officers. All of them together have always formed a kind of super-party, directing the political establishment. Not because they are organized and decide together, and not because of their strong social bonds, but because of their uniform way of thinking, which leads them almost automatically to the same conclusions in any given situation – irrespective of their belonging to Likud, Labor, National Union or Merkaz. Not necessarily on every detail, but in the general direction.
One of the results is the neutralization of women in the Israeli political system. Women have no place on the upper echelons of the army and its machoist ethos, which directs all spheres of
Israeli policy. (The only outstanding exceptions, Golda Mair, took pride in being “the only man in the government” and surrounded herself with generals.)
All this is being done quite democratically. In the “Only Democracy in the Middle East”, the army gets its orders from the government and obeys. In Israeli law, the government as such is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. But when the government itself is controlled by former generals, this is meaningless.
That’s how it was in the 50s, when the Chief-of-Staff Moshe Dayan imposed on the government a policy of “retaliatory actions” and had it implemented by Major Ariel Sharon. And that’s how it is today, when the same General Sharon imposes the same policy and has it implemented by general Ben-Eliezer, the Minister of Defense, who happens to belong to the rival party. (In democratic countries, it is extremely rare for a Minister of Defense to be a former general.) Sharon’s predecessor, the former Chief-of-Staff Barak, surrounded himself with a bunch of generals, rejecting all civilians.
Lately a new and dangerous development has taken place. Under the leadership of the Chief-of-Staff, Shaul Mofaz, a man with a far-rightist outlook, the army has started to rebel against the “political directives”. It mobilizes the media against the government and makes it responsible for its abject failure in the war against “terrorism”- reminding one of the Prussian generals after World War I who accused the politicians of “sticking a knife in the back of the army”. When Foreign Minister Peres, with the approval of Sharon, recently started to initiate a meeting with Arafat, a “senior military source” leaked to the media that the army strongly objects to all such meetings.
Things reached a climax this week, when the Chief-of-Staff decided to create across the Green Line (the pre-1967 border) “closed military areas”, with detention camps and military, Kangaroo courts for Palestinians trying to enter. This means de facto annexation, with far-reaching political, international and national implications.
Sharon, who heard about this while on a state visit in Russia, seethed with anger. A game of accusations and counter-accusations began, with the army leaking secret documents to the media. (“I came across a document…” a TV commentator announced.)
If this gives the impression that this is a major fight between the government and the army, it’s an illusion. Sharon himself belongs to the military clique more than anyone else. But he has an old grudge against the General Staff, which at the time prevented him from becoming Chief-of-Staff. On top of that, contrary to civilian politicians, he has no inferiority complex when
dealing with the generals.
This is a fight within the family. There are no real differences of opinions between Sharon and Mofaz. Both believe in the same policy of enlarging the settlements and preventing any compromise with the Palestinian people. Both believe in the maxim “If force doesn’t work, use more force”. Both are moving towards escalation and more escalation.
In the Weimar republic after World Wart I, there was a saying: the Kaiser went, the generals remained”. In Israel, the government changes hands from time to time, but the generals always remain.
3. They also serve who refuse to serve
Joseph Algazy
Haaretz, 6 September 2001
The number of conscientious objectors is growing, but the IDF prefers to ignore the phenomenon.
There are currently six soldiers in the regular army and the reserves who are serving time in three military prisons for refusing to serve in the army or in the territories. Among them are two reserve officers with the rank of captain: Sefi Sendik, who is refusing to serve in the army for
political reasons, and Dan Tamir, who refuses to serve in the occupied territories for reasons of conscience.
In July, six soldiers were jailed, and in August another five. This week, two more regular army soldiers were sentenced to prison terms: a woman soldier and youth leader, Avia Atai, and a male soldier-teacher, Rotem Mor. The Israel Defense Forces Spokesman's Office said that the army has no statistics on the dimensions of the phenomenon of refusal to serve, and it does not intend to comment on the issue.
Most of those who refuse to serve explain that their motives are political -the reason is either pacifism or opposition to government policy toward the Palestinians. Two of the organizations dealing with soldiers who refuse to serve, Yesh Gvul and New Profile, a movement to turn Israel into a civil society, report that the phenomenon of declaring a refusal to serve has grown - including refusals that the IDF accepts. Some of those who refuse are not put on trial by the IDF, and do not go to prison.
Two days ago, Rotem Mor was sent to Prison No. 4, after the IDF had sentenced him to 28 days of prison and 28 days of probation. Mor, who is 20 years old, finished high school in the summer of 1999 and took the matriculation exams. In February 2000, he was drafted. He served for a while in the liaison unit with foreign forces in Eilat, and then took a course for soldier-teachers, which in the past was open only to women. Mor admitted that he was not always a disciplined soldier, but he liked working with teenagers, and was willing to invest his time and talent for their benefit. A few weeks ago, however, he decided that he didn't want to serve in the army any longer. By then he had already served for about a year and a half.
When he made his decision to be a conscientious objector, he removed his uniform and showed up at his military unit in civilian clothing. Even when he came to the IDF Conscientious Objectors Committee, he wore civilian clothes, and in reaction, the committee refused to hear his arguments. Mor told his friends that for him, military service had become "slavery," and that he didn't feel that the IDF was protecting him.
Early hatred
In a political statement that he published shortly before his arrest, Mor wrote: "For a long time, I have had doubts about the honesty of military service. These questions began to arise long before I was drafted. They stemmed from information I had acquired about the Israeli-Arab conflict,
and from discovering the false information about it, to which I was exposed for years. As I learned more, I was increasingly skeptical about the official Israeli version of what happened. This official version is the basis on which most of Israeli youth justifies its military service. I started to understand to what extent fear and hatred had been instilled in me from a very early age. I discovered that I do not believe in the existence of an "enemy," but rather in the existence of people of different cultures, who are frightened and angry, just like me."
In order to conduct his fight, Mor opened a Web site in which he explained his commitment to his own truth. Mor points out that he formulated his pacifist view on his own, with the aid of books.
Love of the land
Avia Atai, 19, a high school graduate and a former youth leader in the Scouts, declared even before she was drafted into the IDF that she would not bear arms or serve in the occupied territories. Before she was drafted, she took a pre-army course given by the Jewish National Fund, which trained her to be a youth leader in the IDF on topics related to JNF projects. When she finished basic training, she served as a soldier-youth leader in the Kennedy Forest near Jerusalem. In this position, she did not bear arms or engage in guard duty, "but in love of the land," her father, Yehuda Atai, explained this week.
Last week, Atai was asked by her superiors to take on another assignment: teaching children and teens in Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood how to defend themselves from bullets, mortar shells and bombs. Atai refused, explaining that she lacked the proper training. If they don't want to endanger the lives of children in streets that are under fire, the safest way is to take them out of there, she suggested. The decision to leave children in the line of fire, she added, is political, and therefore, the job of protecting and defending them should be given to those who were trained to do so.
Avia Atai's father says he read the instruction manual given to the women soldiers sent to Gilo, and it seemed to him "full of absurdities ... it doesn't give a true and proper answer to the dangers threatening the children of Gilo." Because of her refusal to join the woman soldiers sent to Gilo, Atai was sentenced on Monday to 28 days in jail; the same day, she was transferred to Prison 400.
Yehuda Atai is an officer in the paratroops who served in the unit led by Yoni Netanyahu, hero of the 1976 Entebbe rescue operation and late brother of Benjamin Netanyahu. Atai said this week that he totally supports his daughter, who was educated, like all his five children, to love the country. "The ruling system in Israel has collapsed," he said, "and the country is suffering from loss of direction and an identity crisis."
Yishai Menuhin, a major in the reserves, and one of the heads of Yesh Gvul, believes the phenomenon of refusal is growing; the number of regular and reserve soldiers who turn to his organization is on the increase, he says. "We know of many cases where the IDF avoids confrontation with soldiers who refused to serve, and sweeps their problem under the rug. As the problem grows, the IDF is disturbed by it, is not succeeding in dealing with it, and therefore is refusing to pay attention to it."
Public call
This week, Yesh Gvul made a public call to soldiers to refuse "to participate in war crimes," declaring that "shooting unarmed civilians, including children, shelling and bombing of residential neighborhoods, assassinations, destruction of homes, withholding of food and medical care, and destruction of sources of income" are actions "that are defined in international and in Israeli law as war crimes."
Heading the declaration of Yesh Gvul, there is a stanza from a song published by Israeli poet Natan Alterman in 1948, after a massacre:
"Because those who bear arms, including me/ some actively, and some by agreement,
are pushed, with the muttering of `it's essential' and `revenge',/ to the area of war crimes."
This Saturday,(Sept 22) Yesh Gvul will hold a vigil to identify with the imprisoned objectors, next to Prison 7 in Atlit.
Yesh Gvul recently received a message from the Canadian organization Palestinian and Jewish Unity, that they have adopted the imprisoned reserve captain, Dan Tamir "as a man who believes in democracy and Jewish values, and who refuses to take part in military operations whose goal is to perpetuate the Israeli occupation in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip." A letter from the Canadian organization to Tamir says that if there is peace in the Middle East, "it will also be due to the courage of people like you. Know that you have many friends." The organization plans a protest vigil tomorrow opposite the Israeli consulate in Montreal, as a sign of identification with Tamir and the other imprisoned soldiers.
New Profile provides information about those who refuse to serve on its Web site, and calls on the public to protest to the government against their imprisonment. And this week, over 60 high school seniors signed a letter they sent to the prime minister, the defense minister and the chief of staff, in which they declared that they would refuse to take part in the activities of repression against the Palestinian nation. They called on young people their age to do the same.
One of those who signed the letter, Haggai Matar, is to be drafted next July. He has been engaged in a voluminous correspondence with the IDF, and is asking to serve according to his conscience, in an alternative framework, similar to that offered to conscientious objector Yinon Heller, after a decision by the Supreme Court. The IDF was prepared to allow Heller to do his obligatory military service in a hospital, without undergoing basic training, without wearing a uniform, and without bearing arms.
At the beginning of July, Matar was invited to the Conscientious Objectors Committee, composed of representatives of the draft board and of the military legal division. He explained his political views, his activity in Jewish-Arab political contexts, and his friendship with Palestinians from the territories. In response to his request for alternative service, like Heller's, the members of the committee told him that Heller's case is not a precedent. The committee rejected his request to be released from service in the IDF for reasons of conscience. Matar announced this week that he would appeal the decision. When the time comes, "I will refuse to be drafted into the army, for reasons of conscience," he said.
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