A message to Israelis

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

Flowerpot with three lilies, acrylics on crumpled wrapping paper, 50x70, by Silvia Rosenberg

The air force attack on the Palestinian training camp outside Damascus, with a resulting exchange of small arms gunfire on the Lebanese border with Hezbollah (in which an Israeli soldiers was killed), reverberated throughout Israel this morning. There was no consensus about the air force mission.

Almost all Israeli commentators on the issue agreed that Syrian logistical support for Palestinian and Hezbollah terror is becoming intolerable and the strike against the Syrian camp was the best the government could come up with short of expelling Yasser Arafat, which is what the Sharon government would prefer to do. But that was the extent of the agreement.

While the government argued the air attack was a message to Damascus (and Tehran), many in Israel saw it as a message to the Israeli public, which the government has long assumed wants revenge for every terror attack in Israel. Others said the attack inside Syria as a retaliation for the Haifa Maxim Restaurant massacre on Saturday was particularly dangerous because for the first time since the Al Aqsa Intifada began in 2000, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been taken to another Arab country.

Furthermore while predictably the Left – and several leading professional analysts, such as former Maj. Gen. Uri Saguy, Haaretz military analyst Ze’ev Schiff, and Syria expert Itamar Rabinovich – were very chary of the attack in Syria, a number of spokesmen for the Right were also opposed to it. Housing Minister Effi Eitam said it was a distraction from the real problem – ‘the arch-terrorist Arafat” – while his ministerial colleague Transportation Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that ‘ten minutes after the Haifa terror attack, the air force should have obliterated the Muqata, with everyone in it.’ Lieberman also suggested to Israel Radio that ‘perhaps it would be a good thing’ to widen the conflict, ‘and once and for all make some order in the region.’

As for Arafat, he is surrounded by international peace activists, including Israel’s Uri Avnery and others from Gush Shalom. Arafat has been reported ill in recent days, and on TV appears to be very gaunt, prompting rumors in the West Bank and Gaza that Israel has poisoned him. Doctors say he had an upset stomach and he was put on a chicken soup diet. Ill or not, he was to swear in an eight-minister ‘emergency cabinet’ today, headed by Ahmed Qurei’, who is saying he will use reason, not force to win cease-fires from all the armed Palestinian factions.

Obviously, Israel is skeptical, and because of that skepticism does not appear to be readying to do anything to help Qurei’ persuade the Palestinian public he can deliver on what the Palestinian public seems to want more than anything else: an end to the IDF checkpoints, closures and curfews that prevent freedom of movement throughout the West Bank.

Despite the flurry of tension on the northern border, Israel does appear to be going ahead with enhancing the status of the Hezbollah. While the raid in Syria raises concerns about the prisoner swap, Israel appeared to be proceeding as if the deal is on, with the state dropping its objections to lifting a court ordered gag on press reports about the circumstances of how Elhanan Tannenbaum was kidnapped by the Hezbollah. Now the press awaits the court’s decision. Tannenbaum’s family is opposed to lifting the gag order, believing it would endanger his life. There have been foreign reports suggesting Tannenbaum was lured to Beirut by the promise of a business deal, and that has led to sniping in the press about him being a profiteer while long-missing air force navigator Ron Arad, who won’t be part of the prisoner deal, was on a state mission when he ended up in captivity.

In other developments, the IDF has arrested 31 members of Islamic Jihad in the Jenin area; Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told a memorial ceremony for the fallen soldiers of the 1973 Yom Kippur War that Israel could be surprised again and must always be prepared for war, ‘even while being on constant lookout for peace’; and the government took steps to move legislation through the Knesset to begin the process of privatizing the ports, where the longshoremen remain on strike.”

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The Other Israel edited by Tom Segev, and published in September 2002, is a selection of essays, articles, and other jouranlist writings by a range of Israeli voices articulating practical, legal, and moral dissent to the Israeli government. The book questions popular assumptions about Israel's true supporters: are they those who support occupation, settlement and reprisal, or those calling for reconciliation and a just settlement? The book challenges the narrow perception that Zionism means taking over 'Judea, Samaria and the Gaza dsitrict.' Contributing writers include: David Grossman * Amira Hass * Avi Shlaim * Ilan Pappe * Gideon Levy * Meron Benvenisti * Neve Gordon * Shulamit Aloni * Baruch Kimmerling * Ami Ayalon * Ze'ev Sternhell * Gila Svirsky * Uri Avnery

[an error occurred while processing this directive] in Frosties, the anthology of quotations

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