Three Generals,
One Martyr
By Uri Avnery
31 March, 2004
Gush Shalom
Five
hundred black- and white-bearded Hamas members were sitting opposite
me. Venerable sheikhs and young people. On the side, some rows were
occupied by women. I was standing on the stage, talking in Hebrew, with
the crossed flags of Israel and Palestine on my lapel.
As I have recounted
already several times, it happened like this: at the end of 1992, the
new Prime Minister, Yitzhaq Rabin, expelled 415 Islamic activists -
mostly Hamas members - to the Lebanese border area. In protest, we put
up tents opposite the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem. There we
spent 45 days and nights - Israeli peace activists (who were later to
found Gush Shalom) and Arab citizens of Israel, mostly members of the
Islamic movement. Most of the time it was very cold, and some days our
tents were covered with snow. There was a lot of debate in the tents,
the Jews learning something about Islam and the Muslims something about
Judaism.
The expelled militants
themselves vegetated for a year in the hilly landscape, between the
Israeli and Lebanese armies. The whole world followed their suffering.
After a year they were allowed back, and the Hamas leaders in Gaza organized
a homecoming reception for them in the biggest hall in town. They invited
those Israelis who had protested against the expulsion. I was asked
to make a speech. I spoke about peace, and in the intermission we were
invited to have lunch with the hosts. I was impressed by the friendly
attitude of the hundreds of people who were there.
Undoubtedly, Sheikh
Ahmed Yassin and the spokesman of the expellees, Dr. Abd-al-Aziz al-Rantissi
(who became Sheikh Yassin's successor last week) would have been present,
too, if they had not been kept in prison.
I recount this experience
in order to point out that the picture of Hamas as an inveterate enemy
of all peace and compromise is not accurate. Of course, 10 years of
bloodshed, suicide bombings and targeted assassinations have passed
since then. But even now, the picture is much more complex than meets
the eye.
There are different
tendencies in Hamas. The ideological hard core does indeed refuse any
peace or compromise with Israel. They consider it a foreign implantation
in Palestine, which in Islamic doctrine is a Muslim "wakf"
(religious grant). But many Hamas sympathizers do not treat the organization
as an ideological center but rather as an instrument for fighting Israel
in pursuit of realistic objectives.
Sheikh Yassin himself
announced some months ago in a German paper that the fight would be
discontinued after the establishment of a Palestinian state within the
1967 borders. Recently, he offered a "hudna" (truce) for 30
years. (Which strongly reminds one of Ariel Sharon's suggestion that
Israel would give up the Gaza Strip and retain large parts of the West
Bank for an interim phase to last for 20 years.)
Therefore, the murder
of the Sheikh did not serve any positive aim. It was an act of folly.
The three generals
who actually direct the affairs of Israel - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon,
Minister of Defense Sha'ul Mofaz and Chief-of-Staff Mosh Ya'alon - maintain
that "in the short run" the assassination would indeed increase
the attacks on Israeli citizens, but "in the long run" it
would help to "rout terrorism". They are very careful not
to spell out when the "short run" ends and the "long
run" begins. Our generals do not believe in timetables.
I take the liberty
to tell these three illustrious strategists: Nonsense in tomato juice!
(as you say in Hebrew slang). Or rather, nonsense in blood.
In the short run,
this action endangers our personal security; in the long run it represents
an even greater danger to our national security.
In the short run,
it has increased the motivation for Hamas to carry out deadly attacks.
Every Israeli understands this and is taking extra precautions these
days. But the less obvious results are much more threatening.
In the hearts of
hundreds of thousands of children in the Palestinian territories and
the Arab countries, this murder has raised a storm of rage and thirst
for revenge, together with feelings of frustration and humiliation in
view of the impotence of the Arab world. This will produce not only
thousands of new potential suicide bombers inside the country, but also
tens of thousands of volunteers for the radical Islamic organizations
throughout the Arab world. (I know, because at the age of 15 I joined
the armed underground in similar circumstances.)
There is no stronger
weapon for a fighting organization than a martyr. Suffice it to mention
Avraham Stern, alias Ya'ir, who was killed by the British police in
Tel-Aviv in 1942. His blood gave an impulse to the emergence of the
Lehi underground (nicknamed "the Stern gang") which only four
years later was playing a major role in the expulsion of the British
from Palestine.
But Ya'ir's standing
was nothing compared to the standing of Sheikh Yassin. The man was practically
born to fulfil the role of a sainted martyr: a religious personality,
a paraplegic in a wheelchair, broken in body but not in spirit, a militant
who spent years in prison, a leader who continued his fight after miraculously
surviving an earlier assassination attempt, a hero cowardly murdered
from the air while leaving the mosque after prayer. Even a writer of
genius could not have invented a figure more suited to the adoration
of a billion Muslims, in this and coming generations.
The murder of Yassin
will encourage cooperation among the Palestinian fighting organizations.
Here, too, a parallel with the Hebrew underground presents itself. In
a certain phase of the fight against the British, there was much unrest
among the members of the Hagana, the semi-official underground army
of the Zionist leadership (comparable to Fatah today). The Hagana (which
included the elite Palmakh formation) was seen to be inactive, while
the Irgun and Lehi appeared as heroes who carried out incredibly audacious
actions. The ferment inside the Hagana caused the emergence of a group
called "Fighting Nation" which advocated close cooperation
between the various organizations. A number of Hagana members simply
went over to Lehi.
Now it is happening
among the Palestinians. The lines between the various groups are becoming
more and more blurred. Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade members cooperate with
Hamas and Jihad, contrary to the orders of their political leadership,
saying that "since we are killed together, let us fight together".
This phenomenon is bound to grow and make the attacks more effective.
Hamas' popularity
among the population is rising sky-high, together with its capability
to carry out attacks. This does not mean that the Palestinian public
accepts the aim of an Islamic state or that it has given up the idea
of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Even among Hamas members, many
embrace this idea. But the admiration of the masses for the attackers
and their actions reflects the conviction that the Israelis understand
only the language of force, and that experience proves that without
extreme violence the Palestinians will not achieve anything at all.
Unfortunately, there
is no real evidence for the opposite. The truth is that the Palestinians
have never achieved anything without resorting to violence. Therefore
the petitions being signed these days by well-meaning Palestinian personalities,
calling for an end to the armed struggle, will have no effect. They
cannot point to any other method that will sound convincing to their
public. And our government always, without exception, presents such
moves as a sign of weakness.
In the even longer
run, the assassination of Yassin poses an existential danger. For five
generations, the Israel-Palestinian conflict was essentially a national
conflict - a clash between two great national movements, each of which
claimed the country for itself. A national conflict is basically rational,
it can be solved by compromise. This may be difficult, but it is possible.
Our nightmare has always been that the national struggle would turn
into a religious one. Since every religion claims to represent absolute
truth, religious struggledo not allow for compromise.
The martyrdom of
Sheikh Yassin pushes even further away the chance of Israel ever attaining
peace and tranquility, normal relations with its neighbors, with a flourishing
economy. It increases the danger that future generations of Arabs and
Muslims will view it as a foreign implantation, installed in this region
by force, with every decent Muslim, from Morocco to Indonesia, duty-bound
to strive for its uprooting.
Such insights are
far from the capability of our three generals to absorb. Sharon, Mofaz,
Ya'alon and their ilk understand only brute force in the service of
a narrow nationalism. Peace does not inspire them, for them compromise
is a dirty word. It is quite clear that they will feel much more comfortable
if the Palestinian people is led by fanatical religious fighters than
by a man prepared to compromise like Yasser Arafat.