The
Language Of Force
By Uri Avnery
28 August, 2007
Gush
Shalom
Soon
after coming to power, Ariel Sharon started to commission public opinion
polls. He kept the results to himself. This week, a reporter of Israel's
TV Channel 10 succeeded in obtaining some of them.
Among other things, Sharon
wanted to know what the public thought about peace. He did not dream
of starting on this road himself, but he felt it important to be informed
about the trends.
In these polls, the public
was presented with a question that came close to the final Clinton Proposal
and the Geneva Initiative: Are you for a peace that would include a
Palestinian state, withdrawal from almost all occupied territories,
giving up the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and dismantling most
settlements?
The results were very instructive.
In 2002, 73% (seventy three percent!) supported this solution. In the
next two years, support declined, but it was still accepted by the majority.
In 2005 the percentage of supporters slipped under the 50% line.
What had changed in these
years?
The TV presenter painted
in the context: in 2002 the second intifada had reached its climax.
There were frequent attacks in Israeli cities, people were being killed.
The majority in Israel preferred to pay the price of peace than to suffer
the bloodshed.
Later, the intifada declined,
together with the Israeli public's readiness for compromise. In 2005,
Sharon carried out the "unilateral separation". It seemed
to many Israelis that they could manage without an agreement with the
Palestinians. The readiness for peace dropped below the half mark.
A POPULAR Israeli saying
has it that "The Arabs understand only the language of force."
This poll may confirm what many Palestinians think: that it is the Israelis
themselves who don't understand any other language.
Both versions are true, of
course.
I have often said that the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a clash between an irresistible force
and an immovable object. A clash is a matter of force.
The present lamentable state
of the Palestinians, with half of them living under occupation and the
other half as refugees, is a direct result of the Palestinian defeat
in the 1948 war. The first part of that war, from December 1947 to May
1948, was a clash between the Palestinian people and the Hebrew community
(the "yishuv"). It resulted in a resounding defeat for the
Palestinians. (When the armies of the neighboring Arab states then entered
the fray, the Palestinians became irrelevant to the struggle.)
That was a military defeat,
of course, but its roots extended far beyond the narrow military field.
It followed from the lack of cohesion of Palestinian society at the
time, its failure to set up a functioning leadership and a unified military
command, to mobilize and concentrate its forces. Every region fought
alone, without coordination with the next one. Abd-al-Kader Husseini
in the Jerusalem area fought independently of Fawzy al-Kaukji in the
North. The yishuv, in contradistinction, was unified and strictly organized,
and therefore won - in spite of the fact that in numbers it was hardly
equal to half the Palestinian population.
HAMAS LEADERS mock Mahmoud
Abbas and his supporters in Ramallah for expecting an Israeli withdrawal
without armed struggle.
They point out that even
the Oslo agreement (to which they object) was achieved only after six
years of the first intifada, which convinced Yitzhak Rabin that no military
solution was possible.
They aver that Ehud Barak
left South Lebanon in 2000 only after the resounding success of the
Shiite guerillas
Their conclusion: even a
Palestinian state within the 1967 borders will not come into being unless
the "Palestinian resistance" inflicts on the Israelis sufficient
casualties and damage to convince them that it is in their interest
to withdraw from the occupied territories.
The Israelis, they say, will
not give up one square inch without being compelled to do so. Sharon's
poll may well reinforce them in that belief.
The people around Abbas respond
by mocking Hamas for believing that they can win against Israel by force
of arms.
They point to the immense
superiority of Israeli forces. According to them, all the violent actions
of the Palestinians have only provided Israel with a pretext to reinforce
the occupation, steal more land and increase the misery of the occupied
population.
And indeed, the personal
situation of the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is
now incomparably worse that it was on the eve of the first intifada,
when they could reach any place in the country, work in all Israeli
towns, bathe on the Tel-Aviv sea-shore and fly from Ben-Gurion airport.
Both views contain much truth.
Yasser Arafat understood this. That's why he did everything to keep
the Palestinians united at any cost, encourage the Israeli peace forces
and gather international support, without giving up the deterrence of
the "armed struggle". He succeeded in this up to a point,
and as a result was removed.
PALESTINIANS WHO worry about
the fate of their people are asking themselves where all this is leading
to.
Their situation has reached
its lowest point in over 20 years. They are politically almost isolated
throughout the world. Israeli public opinion has become indifferent
and united around the mendacious mantra: "We have no partner".
In the peace camp, many are dispirited. And, most importantly, the Palestinian
national movement has split into two factions, and it seems that the
hatred between them is growing from day to day.
Splits are not uncommon in
national liberation movements. Actually, there has hardly been one liberation
movement that did not undergo such a crisis. But a situation where two
warring factions control two different territories, both under foreign
occupation, is almost unknown.
IT MAY be interesting to
compare this situation with that of our own underground organizations
before the foundation of the State of Israel.
There is some similarity
(not ideological, of course): Fatah is a little bit like the large Haganah
organization that was controlled by the official Zionist leadership;
Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which reject the PLO leadership, are like the
Irgun and Stern group. Fatah's al-Aqsa Battalions can be compared to
the Palmach, the regular fighting force of the Haganah.
Between these Hebrew organizations,
a burning hatred developed. Haganah members considered the Irgunists
as fascists, the Irgun fighters considered the Haganah men as collaborators
with the British occupation authorities. The national leadership called
the Irgun and Stern group "secessionists", the official Irgun
designation for the Haganah was "shits".
Matters reached a climax
in the "saison" (hunting season), when the Haganah abducted
Irgun members and turned them over to the British police, who interrogated
them under torture and then deported them to internment camps in Africa.
But there was also a short period when all three organizations coordinated
their actions under the umbrella of the "Hebrew Rebellion Movement".
Israeli politicians like
to recall the Altalena incident, when Ben-Gurion gave the order to shell
an Irgun ship loaded with arms off the shore of Tel-Aviv. (Menachem
Begin, who had come on deck, was narrowly saved when his men shoved
him into the water). Why doesn't Abbas dare to do the same to Hamas?
This question ignores a salient
point: Ben-Gurion used the "sacred cannon" (as he called it)
only after the State of Israel had already come into being. That makes
all the difference.
The bitter hatred between
the Haganah and the Irgun, and to some extent also between the Irgun
and the Stern group, simmered down only gradually, during the first
years of the State of Israel. Nowadays streets in Tel-Aviv are named
after the commanders of all three organizations.
More importantly: historians
now tend to view the struggle of all three as a single campaign, as
if it had been coordinated. The "terrorist" actions of the
Irgun and the Stern group complemented the illegal immigration campaign
of the Haganah. The growing popularity of the Irgun and the Stern Group
convinced the British that they should reach a modus vivendi with the
official Zionist leadership, lest the "extremists" take over
the entire Hebrew community.
This analogy has, of course,
its limitations. Ben-Gurion was a strong and authoritative leader, like
Arafat, while the position of Abbas is much weaker. Menachem Begin was
resolved to prevent a fratricidal war at any cost, even when his men
where abducted and turned over to the British. I don't believe the Hamas
leaders would react like this in a similar situation. Unlike the Irgun
and its supporting political party, Hamas has won the majority in democratic
elections.
But it is possible that in
the future, after the state of Palestine comes into being, historians
will say that Fatah, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad really complemented
each other. President Bush is pressuring Ehud Olmert into making concessions
to Mahmoud Abbas, in order to prevent the complete takeover of the West
Bank by Hamas. Perhaps it is precisely the turning of Gaza into Hamastan
that will enable Abbas to utilize his weakness to achieve things that
he could not get any other way.
ANYWAY, in order to accommodate
President Bush's request, Olmert is now ready to cooperate with Abbas
in writing something like a "framework agreement" that will
lay down the principles of an agreement that may be achieved later on
- but without details or a time-table.
According to the leaks, the
agreement will repeat more or less Ehud Barak's proposals at Camp David,
including some of the bizarre ones, such as Israeli sovereignty "beneath"
the Temple Mount. The Palestinian state will have "temporary"
borders, with the "permanent" borders to be fixed some time
in the future. Olmert demands that the Separation Wall will serve as
the "temporary" border. This, by the way, confirms what we
have been saying from the very first moment, and what was violently
denied even before the Supreme Court: that the path of the Wall does
not reflect security considerations, but was designed to annex 8% of
the West Bank to Israel. In this area, the "settlement blocs"
were set up, those that President Bush has generously promised to attach
to Israel.
The whole exercise is very
dangerous for the Palestinians. True, if such a document is indeed completed,
it will officially fix the minimum that the Israeli government is ready
to give, but it can be interpreted as setting down the maximum that
the Palestinians will be allowed to demand. In political life, not much
is more permanent than the "temporary".
It is also dangerous for
the Israelis. It may encourage the illusion that such a "solution"
would put an end to the conflict. In fact, no Palestinian will see this
as a real solution, and the conflict will go on.
How will public opinion treat
this plan? Olmert is certainly commissioning polls to find out. We don't
know the results. Like Sharon, he keeps his polls secret.
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Comment
Policy
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.