And nobody asks any questions
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
The loving dream, acrylics on paper, 70x50 by Silvia Rosenberg
National Religious Party MK Shaul Yahalom, a Gush Emunim founder, charged the initiators of the 'Geneva' draft permanent accord with 'treason' for 'plotting' to 'hand over pieces of the state' to others, noting the law includes the death sentence for such a crime.
That set in motion another storm of controversy about whether Yahalom's comments were incitement to murder, a storm that will likely last at most 24 hours before some other issue grabs the attention.
But the proximity to the anniversary of the Rabin assassination in early November, and the 'incitement' that preceded it, gave an added urgency to the Yahalom remarks, which followed remarks by other Right wing leaders, including ministers, who termed the Geneva document 'signed with the blood of the terror victims,' 'the Munich agreement,' and other terms with atavistic reverberations. Thus, the debate over the proposed peace agreement hammered out by unofficial Israeli and Palestinian teams has once again been diverted away by the Right from the content and details of the document, to the very legitimacy of dialogue with the Palestinians.
Labor MK Amram Mitzna, a member of the Israeli team for the Geneva understandings, told Israel Radio, 'we all remember the posters from 8 years ago. Yahalom's message is part of a campaign being run by the Right, and not just the extreme Right … Rubinstein should apply the law against incitement.' Likud MK Roni Bar On, chairman of the Knesset Houe Committee, called on Yahalom – and Mitzna – to withdraw their calls to Rubinstein to take action, saying 'politicians should not be threatened with the law every other day.' Settler leader Yoel Bin Nun also called on Yahalom to withdraw his remarks about 'treason and death' – and not only because a crazed person might act, but because this is not the way to conduct a debate in Israel.'
The storm over the Geneva paper took priority on this morning's broadcasts over the successive air raids in Gaza that killed at least a dozen people – and even the army admitted not all were terrorist targets – and wounded more than 100. The results of the attacks, which ended a month of informal cessation of airborne Israeli assassination attempts on Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists in Gaza, prompted a rare call from a government minister (albeit a dovish Shinui minister) for the government to apologize and compensate those Palestinians hurt in the attacks.
Infrastructures Minister Yosef Paritsky told Israel Radio 'we are not at war with the Palestinian people,' and therefore, the government should apologize and compensate those who were hurt by accident. But he wasn't speaking for the government. The most that deputy defense minister Ze'ev Boim was prepared to concede was that 'perhaps there was an operational failure' but he insisted that 'not all the Palestinian civilians are so innocent. Some cooperate with terrorists.' And when Israel Radio interviewed a Gazan journalist about the mood on the street, any mention he made of the need to end the violence hurting so many innocents on both sides was met by questions from more and less sympathetic reporters about why doesn't he see that there is a difference between accidentally killing civilians while trying to kill a terrorist, and deliberately killing civilians with a suicide bomber.
In any case, the vows for vengeance coming from Gaza did not fall on deaf ears; Security was on high alert in the cities and along the 'seam line,' the official euphemism for the blurred Green Line that separates the territories from the pre-67 war state of Israel. It's along that 'seam' that the separation fence is supposedly going up – with Sharon promising yesterday that it would be done by next year -- except that no monies have been allocated yet for next year, nor has the full route been formally approved.
One positive sign was taking place in the Jordan Valley, where about 300 businessmen from Israel and Jordan were meeting to discuss future plans for expanding the Qualified Industrial Zones on the border between Israel and Jordan. The zones have already produced some $1 billion in goods that go customs free to the NAFTA zone. Israeli government officials taking part called on the Jordanians to invite Israeli businesses into joint ventures in Iraq.
In another development, Arutz Sheva, the settler movement's pirate radio station was silent this morning after it turned off its radio broadcasts yesterday at 5 P.M., a few hours after a Jerusalem Magistrate Court ended five years of hearings and deliberations and ruled the station illegal. The station will continue issuing its hard-line messages through its website.
Ariga Recommends
 Death as a Way of Life David Grossman's collection of essays, starting in 1993, on the arc of the peace process from its optimistic begbeginnings the disaster known as the intifada. Highly recommended reading for anyone wanting to know what life is like in a land caught up in a spiraling madness in which people are taught terror and counter-terror, which have grown so interwoven that it has become impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends, is preferable to generosity of spirit, and compromise resulting from dialogue.
Previous recommendations
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in Frosties, the anthology of quotations
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