The Situation

Text by Robert Rosenberg, images by Silvia Rosenberg (unless otherwise noted)

Think first

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

The launch, from Voyages to Promised Lands 1982, Acrylic on paper

resumably, Saddam’s capture should have held the attention of the Israeli press for more than a day or two, but two and a half scandals and a rare public speech by the head of the Shin Bet shoved the aftermath of Saddam’s capture off the front pages and the airwaves.

Shin Bet Chief Avi Dichter, speaking at the Herzliya gave a grim view of the situation: The main points he made: 80 percent of Israel’s casualties in the intifada have been civilians, 540 of the 901 people killed were killed inside the Green Line; while only 2 percent of the Palestinian terror attacks were suicide bombers, they were responsible for 55 percent of the deaths and casualties. ‘The quiet of the last 10 weeks is both deceptive and drunken,’ he said, making a pun in Hebrew, meaning that the security services – Shin Bet, police and army – are busy foiling attacks because the Palestinian Authority is not doing anything to prevent terror, and because it leads to a false sense of confidence on the part of the public. There were 20 distinct bombing plots foiled in the last 10 weeks. Suicide bombers are a strategic threat to Israel, he said, but so are Jewish terrorists, whose dream is to destroy the Islamic holy sites on the Temple Mount and thus ‘turn the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a conflict between 13 million Jews and 1.5 billion Muslims.’ He said Iran is not only conducts its own terror operations, such as the bombings of the Israeli embassy and Jewish community center in Argentina in 1992 and 1994 respectively, but also uses proxies – Hezbollah, Tanzim, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades – to strike at Israel.

There were some bright spots in his speech: ‘For the first time, there is a decline in Israeli Arab interesting involvement in Palestinian terror but there is an increase in their involvement in Hezbollah,’ he said, adding, ‘but the affiliation of Arab Israeli identification with the state is an important element in national security.’ Altogether, he said, of 220,000 East Jerusalem Arabs with blue ID cards and yellow license plates, only 120 are involved in terror. While saying that in any final agreement with the Palestinians, the Palestinian state should be totally demilitarized, he said that there are more democratic elements in the Palestinian Authority than in any of the Arab states surrounding Israel. And the fence, he said, is working, as it helped foil at least three attacks in the last ten days. He urged the government to hasten its construction according to security needs – ‘and worry about the enclaves later.’ The scandals were much more interesting to the radio broadcasters, at least. One scandal was a reprieve of a 1992 Israeli plan to assassinate Saddam Hussein. The military censor apparently decided that Saddam’s capture meant that for the first time Israeli reporters could say explicitly that the Tze’alim accident, in which 5 Sayeret Matkal soldiers were killed practicing a missile attack on an armored car representing Saddam’s car, was in fact a Sayeret Matkal plan to kill then Iraqi-president Saddam Hussein. While the newspaper reports this morning were full of details – in some cases somewhat contradictory – about the military plan, there were also comments suggesting that there was something faulty in the entire concept of the army plotting the assassination of the leader of a neighboring country, no matter how hostile that country. Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon, also speaking at the Herzliya conference – where Sharon is due to speak on Thursday – said it was ‘disgraceful’ and ‘irresponsible’ that the reports on the Sayeret Matkal operation were allowed. He also said that some Palestinian groups have decided to hold their fire in the intifada, but not all the Palestinian groups.

he other scandal was uniquely Israeli. Maestro Daniel Barenboim was awarded the prestigious Wolf Prize, but Education Minister Limor Livnat, responding to complaints that Barenboim conducted music by Hitler’s favorite composer, Richard Wagner, in an Israel Festival encore two years ago at the Israel Festival, announced he would not get the prize until he apologized. The Right has had it in for Barenboim for some time, because of his insistence on performing in Ramallah as well as Israel. There was much recrimination on Israel Radio this morning, with Livnat defending her position, legal affairs commentator Moshe Negbi saying she had no standing in the issue, since the prize is privately funded and given by the president of the state at the Knesset, and former education minister Shulamit Aloni saying that the decision against Barenboim was another step toward Israeli destruction of freedom of speech and democracy. Barenboim preferred not to comment on the entire affair.

The half scandal was the announcement by Gilad Sharon’s lawyer that the papers long sought by the police about money transfers in and out of Sharon family accounts would indeed be handed over to police later this week. It was unknown yet if the papers Sharon hands over will be sufficient for police to nail down their cases against the prime minister and/or his sons. Police say they need the banking documents to discover who exactly was interested in filling the Sharon bank accounts with millions of dollars – and they still want to understand why.

In other developments, there was a successful test of the Arrow missile system this morning, the defense ministry announced; the unions allowed Interior Ministry offices to open today to allow people to renew passports, update identity cards, and other routine bureaucratic procedures that have been unavailable to the Israeli public since September, because of the civil service strike. Thousands stormed branch offices. Yesterday, the same thing happened at the Department of Motor Vehicles; In Balata, several Palestinians were wounded during an IDF operation, while in the West Bank, the army said it had arrested four wanted Nablusis and two Islamic Jihad men, near Ramallah in overnight operations.

Recommended articles:

The Barrier of Jerusalem – Political Not Security by Gershon Baskin, December 09, 2003

FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCYALYPSE On November 14, 2003, in a dramatic development, four former Shin Bet chiefs call on the political leadership to make peace with the Palestinians. Read the full interview.

Sharon’s policy is bringing us to the brink of existential abyss a speech by Victoria Buch to the Peace Coalition weekly vigil outside the Prime Minister's Residence, November 29, 2003

The Weathervanes Are Turning Uri Avnery analyzes the changes that led to Ehud Olmert saying Israel must quit the West Bank and Gaza.

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