More warring, Wednesday, November 02, 2005

It is not clear if Israel is deliberately trying to provoke the Islamic Jihad and Hamas into escalation, or whether it is acting on the same assumption that has long dominated Israeli thinking about the Palestinians: they only understand force – and if the Palestinians won’t use it against the terrorists, the IDF and Shin Bet will. To a large extent, the IDF has determined policy for the last five years, because it is during arrest operations and particularly during assassinations, that innocent Palestinians get hurt, which motivates more terror. Of course, the Israelis, or at least the hardliners among them, point out that the Palestinians don’t need innocent victims as a motive to murder us, because as far as those hardliners are concerned, that’s the permanent state of affairs in the relationship between Jews and Arabs. Thus, while there was plenty of Israeli disgust at Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s comments on wiping Israel off the face of the map, but no real surprise about them. That’s what all Muslims think, said the average Israeli, upon hearing Ahmadinejad’s comment. Much more surprising to Israelis was this week’s unanimous UN resolution declaring January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, as a global Holocaust Day. There was genuine astonishment in Israel that the Arab world did not try to fight the proposal for the global Holocaust memorial day, the first proposal ever submitted to Israel at the UN. Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, as is his wont, seemed to claim credit for it during an interview on Israel Radio, since it happened on his watch.

Shalom also used the interview to enunciate his view on the ‘war against Palestinian terror’ – the assassinations will stop when PA President Mahmoud Abbas stops the terror. Hamas and Islamic Jihad continue to say that they are ready to keep the tahadiye, but only if Israel ceases its operations. Israel says it will cease operations if the terror stops. Meanwhile, said Israel Radio, nine jailed Hamas members announced they are leaving Hamas, ostensibly because of its newfound moderation, and are joining Al Qaida. Other Hamas spokesmen are warning that the organization will start fighting back if the Israeli assassinations continue.

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz is meanwhile heading to Washington this week, for meetings with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, among others. It will be the first Mofaz trip to the U.S. capital since the contretemps over the sales to China of 1990s-era Harpy missiles. Rice meanwhile will be visiting Israel and the Palestinian territory later this month.

On another front, while settler youths have begun circulating a petition calling on their sympathizers to refuse to enlist in the army, the army was dismantling security equipment at Yitzhar, one of the most radical of the settlements. The army complained that settlers from Yitzhar, ideologically opposed to the security fence and a fence around their settlement, had vandalized the equipment. There were no reports of arrests for that vandalism.

But little of this was of interest to the morning current events talk shows. There, the items of interest was State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss’ announcement that he’ll soon issue a special report on ‘seven grave cases of corruption.’ The news followed yesterday and today’s reporting about MKs taking free airline tickets from Agrexco, the airline that specializes in agricultural exports from Israel, particularly since the state-owned company’s impending privatization is a subject of intense discussions in Knesset committees to which the Likud MKs accused of the corruption, belong.

But there was good news, nonetheless. The world chess championships are underway in Israel, in Beersheba. Teams from countries as diverse as Russia, China, and Cuba have shown up for the games, which will last all week. Israel has always been a chess power, but the last generation of Russian immigrants brought a chess culture that has flourished in places where immigrants are a dominant element of the population, such as Beersheba, capital of the Negev.

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