by

Ami Isseroff

A new slogan was born at this year's Support Israel campaign in the U.S: “I Support Israel and Palestine. It could be more than a slogan. It could be the start of a whole new way of looking at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In the same spirit, Father Elias Chacour, a Palestinian priest, made these remarks at commencement exercises at Emory University in Atlanta Georgia:

"You who live in the United States, if you are pro-Israel, on behalf of Palestinian children I call unto you: give further friendship to Israel. They need your friendship. But stop interpreting that friendship as an automatic antipathy against me, the Palestinian who is paying the bill for what others have done against my beloved Jewish brothers and sisters in the Holocaust and Auschwitz and elsewhere. And if you have been enlightened enough to take the side of the Palestinians - oh, bless your hearts - take our sides, because for once you will be on the right side, right? But if taking our side would mean to become one-sided against my Jewish brothers and sisters, back up. We do not need such friendship. We need one more common friend. We do not need one more enemy, for God's sake."

{End of quote]

Supporting Israel and Palestine is a win-win program that all decent friends of peace should advocate. It makes it clear to audiences on both sides that the speaker is not a traitor or an enemy, but someone who supports their side.

Supporting Israel and Palestine means supporting a way for both people to live together. At this time, it must mean all of the following together:

Support for the Mitchell Plan as a whole - freezing settlements alone or stopping the violence alone will not support both Israel and Palestine. Doing both will help both people. Both together can open the way to further negotiations and the beginning of hope.

An end to the occupation - the occupation is not compatible with support for Palestine.

An end to the violence - the violence is hurting both Israel and Palestine. There will be no progress toward peace until the violence stops, and both peoples desperately need peace.

An end to the closure - collective punishment is hurting innocent Palestinians, and damaging Israel's image. It is bad for Israel and Palestine.

An end to incitement - plans for destroying Israel and cries to "kill the Jews wherever you find them" are not support for Israel.

An end to the blacklists and anti-normalization - Israel and Palestine can only live together if their people communicate with each other. The people who compile the blacklists are the ones who yell the loudest about "apartheid". Anti-normalization and blacklists must result in apartheid.

Support for democracy in Palestine - tyranny, corruption and religious fanaticism do not help Palestine.

"Support Israel and Palestine: is a good slogan. "Peace process" was also a good slogan. Each side however, took it to mean different things. Each leadership wanted to use the peace to continue the struggle by other methods. For the majority of Israelis, "peace" meant legitimation of the occupation and its perpetuation. For the majority of Palestinians,"peace" meant destroying Israel through the right of return - a return to Haifa and Tel Aviv.

There is an equal danger that Support Israel and Palestine will be misunderstood and misused. People hear and understand whatever they want to hear and understand. An anti-Zionist radical wrote to me that end the occupation is exactly the same as Support Israel and Palestine. It is not, just as it is not the same to say that one side should stop fighting (surrender) as it is to say that both sides should stop fighting (peace). End the Occupation alone or Stop the violence alone are not half of supporting Israel and Palestine, but the opposite, a call on one side or the other to admit defeat.

In the perception of the Palestinian public, rightly or wrongly, the violence is the only way to get Israel to accept fair terms for Palestine. In the eyes of the Israeli public, the occupation is the only way to prevent the Palestinians from establishing a base for destroying Israel. Israelis point out that The occupation according to the Hamas, extends to Haifa and Yaffo and Tel-Aviv and Beersheva - to all of Israel in fact. To most Israelis and many Palestinians, End to the Occupation means end Israel. The only way to change those perceptions is to get Israelis to speak out against the occupation in large numbers, and equally, to get Palestinians to speak out against boycotts, Hamas, terror and abuse of the right of return in large numbers.

Support for Israel and Palestine does not mean support either for the policies of Israeli PM Ariel Sharon and the Israeli government or for those of Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat and the PNA. We should not delude ourselves. Behind the words of both leaderships, their goals are not conducive to peace or support for the real needs of their peoples. Both sides are embarked on a course that is ultimately "bad for the Jews" and bad for the Palestinians.

Support Israel and Palestine can only be a successful rallying cry if it is adopted by both Palestinians and Israelis. The Israeli peace movement cannot hope to gain back any real acceptance in Israel if it continues to offer uncritical and unreciprocated solidarity to Palestinians. Peace has to work both ways. Solidarity and support has to work both ways. Otherwise, calls of the Israeli peace movement to "End the occupation?ot; are viewed at best as unrealistic by most of the Israeli public.

Support for Israel and Palestine means support for nonviolence and for self-determination for both peoples. Anyone who cannot support both principles is not a friend of peace. Anyone who really wants to end the conflict and the suffering will get behind both principles wholeheartedly. That could be the beginning of hope for a new beginning.

 2. Understanding Sharon's Strategy

The recent BBC Panorama documentary rehashed the facts and surmises regarding the massacre in Sabra and Shatilla, in which Sharon played a passive part, and concluded that Sharon could be, or might be indictable as a war criminal. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian leadership has a brilliant humanitarian record. However, it is more relevant, and interesting, to discuss Sharon's qualifications as a great strategist than to dwell on the possibility that he could be indicted as a war criminal. Sharon, after all, built his military reputation on doing the unexpected and the "impossible." His crossing of the Suez Canal in 1973 to get behind the Egyptian third army - somewhat against orders and against "military wisdom" - saved the strategic situation for Israel in the 1973 October Yom Kippur War.

Several theories have been offered for the "strategy" underlying the current Palestinian violence, which began last September. The Palestinians "officially" claim that the violence was triggered by Ariel Sharon's visit to the temple mount. However, previous to that, there had already been several incidents, including killing of an Israeli soldier on a joint patrol. Imad Faluji declared in Lebanon that the PNA had in fact planned the violence, but Arafat and the PNA forced him to recant this admission. There is no way of knowing if it was true. Less officially, it is claimed that the Palestinian Authority either started or encouraged the current violence and perpetuated because the Camp David proposals were unsatisfactory. What looked like a state on 95% of the territory was in fact, it is argued, a "swiss cheese" of isolated enclaves, with a large part of the land slated to remain in Israeli hands for a long time, or perhaps indefinitely (see http://www.mideastweb.org/campdavid2.htm). The purpose of the violence, according to this theory, was to provoke Israeli responses, which would bring about international pressure on Israel, and give Arafat an excuse to call for an international force that would protect the Palestinians and effectively eliminate Israeli sovereignty over the territories.  The occupation would be ended de-facto without negotiation with Israel. A slightly different view, advanced in the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis Quarterly Reveiw, June 2001, is that the PNA had hoped to "to revive their victim status - which Arafat had sacrificed by his hardheadedness at Camp David - and thus to recapture the sympathies of the international community. In the ideal case,  the PA leadership hoped popular sentiments in the Arab nations would force Arab governments to get involved in the conflict. Intensified political pressure from a united Arab world might eventually
compel Israel to settle the fighting and agree to a final settlement to Arafat's liking." (IFPA Quarterly Review, June 2001, page 5).

Since the strategy, if that is what it was, has manifestly not worked, the question is, why does the violence continue?

The actual causes of the current violence are far more complex, and are partly beyond the control of Chairman Arafat, the PNA and the Fateh. A recent article in Time magazine revealed what has long been known to many about Palestinian society. Policy is determined by clan loyalties of Palestinian society and the need to satisfy different groups, by friction between the PNA-Tunis "outsiders" (who are really insiders who run the government ) and the locals, and the machinations of various political groups and foreign powers. The violence was an expression of all these forces, who perceived that there was a "danger" of peace.

The PNA strategy has been partly to lead the violence and partly to channel violence led by others. The strategy has been frustrated by the failure of Arab states or the international  community to provide any effective aid to the Palestinians, and by the change in governments in both the US and Israel. It might have worked with Ehud Barak. Barak was genuinely interested in a fair peace - fair at least in his conception, and he was also forced to over-react because of pressure from right-wing opposition. The strategy might also have worked with U.S. President Bill Clinton, who was eager to conclude a Middle East peace settlement that would clear his name and redeem him from taint of the Monica and Whitewater scandals. Clinton was also vulnerable to pressure from U.S. humanitarian groups. 

George Bush is a different man than Clinton. He has no aspirations regarding Middle East foreign policy other than those of the "energy interests," and is not vulnerable to pressure. Sharon has none of the limitations of Barak. He is not interested in peace that will empower the Palestinians in any way or end the occupation, and his right-wing opposition is fairly negligible. He was the right wing opposition. Sharon's program is clear and known. He wants, eventually, to withdraw from about 30 to 40% of the West Bank land that cannot be easily defended, and to legitimize de facto ("facts on the ground") Israeli annexation of the rest of the territory, leaving the vast majority of the settlements intact. The Palestinians would be given several separated enclaves in which the PNA could do as it pleased to its own people, as long as it did not bother Israel.

Sharon understood several strategic truths, if not before he took office, then certainly after it:

1. This war will be won by whoever kills the least people. The violence is not on a scale that can have strategic effects. It is just large enough to be good fare for media reporting. Bloody pictures make good copy, and the side that causes the blood will always be in the wrong, whatever the provocation.
2. Israel’s strength is illusory, since retaliation is limited by U.S. and European reaction.
3. The PNA would not, or could not, agree to a permanent settlement that did not involve right of return or another ruse for the destruction of Israel.
4. The real reason the PNA would not agree to a settlement, is that too many Palestinian leaders had invested their lives in "the struggle." Peace would put them out of business. It would expose the PNA to charges of corruption, tyranny and mismanagement. It was more convenient to channel the ire of the Palestinians against the "Zionists."
5. Palestinian violence, including terror bombings inside Israel, is a constant that will not go away until and unless the Palestinian people decide to make it go away. Arafat and the PNA cannot stop it, they can only harness it to their own needs and channel it through organizations like Tanzim.

From the above, Sharon developed the following strategy:

Since Palestinian violence could not be stopped, he would leverage it against his opponents - as a good fighter in hand to hand combat does. Each bombing and ambush would become another nail in the coffin of Palestinian independence. In this way, the Intifadeh and those who support it are helping the settlers.

The Palestinian violence, coupled with the lack of any real Palestinian peace movement or opposition to violence, had effectively neutralized any internal Israeli peace opposition. Demonstrations to "End the Occupation" against the background of suicide attacks by Palestinians would only make the Israeli peace movement look ridiculous and garner votes for Sharon.

Israel would refrain from dramatic retaliation for Palestinian violence.

Sharon would offer to negotiate - after the violence stops. He could count on the fact that the violence will never stop.

If negotiations did start, he would offer a "temporary" settlement that the Palestinians could accept - because they would not give up the right of return or any other long term goals. The temporary settlement would, as outlined above, perpetuate the occupation. In Israel, there is a saying, "nothing is more permanent than temporary arrangements." The agreement would be useful to both sides. The PNA could continue the struggle, the Israelis could continue the occupation. A win-win strategy for the bad guys.

Initially, his strategy worked very well indeed. Israel declared a cease fire, and a willingness to begin a settlement freeze-provided the Palestinians stopped the violence. Of course, the Palestinians did not stop the violence. It may be obscene to say that the bombing of the discotheque - only the most dramatic of a series of Palestinian "cease-fire actions" -  was a great victory for Israel, but it was. The extreme peace movements completed Sharon's joy by calling for "An End to the Occupation."The Occupation is Killing us All" was the mindless slogan that the Israeli-Palestinian Ta'ayush group adopted, as if the Palestine-Israel conflict began in 1967, and as if the Hamas, who were behind the bombing in Tel-Aviv, would respect the green line.

Sharon was counting on the fact that Palestinian violence would not stop, could not stop. In Washington however, Sharon has hit a snag, since the American government is pressuring Israel to begin peace negotiations and a settlement freeze even without a complete end to the violence. Even if those negotiations start, they will be based, from the Israeli point of view, on the Sharon plan - a tiny Palestinian state or entity of some sort and perpetuation of the occupation. There is no chance for any other proposal as long as the violence continues, and no reason for Israelis to back any other proposal.

The way to counter Sharon's strategy is clear. The only effective opposition would be a mass movement of Palestinians and Israelis committed to supporting both Israel and Palestine, to supporting real peace, rather than peace as a means of continuing the struggle or advancing their outmoded ideologies. Sad to say, this is not a realistic option at this time. It would take a massive cultural reeducation program on both sides. Neither government would be willing to finance such a program, which would go against its perceived interests. Once again, Middle Eastern peoples are victims of their leadership and societies.

Ami Isseroff