Irreversible
Mental Damage
By Uri Avnery
23 June, 2004
Gush Shlom
Two
weeks ago, the international community made a shocking declaration.
Giving in to a
demand by George Bush, the Quartet accepted the Revised
Disengagement Plan of Ariel Sharon. This means that the United
Nations, the European Union, the Russian Federation and the United States
confirmed this document. I wonder if any one of the honorable diplomats
has read the document with their own eyes.
In the first paragraph
of the plan, the following words appear: Israel has
come to the conclusion that at present, there is no Palestinian partner
with whom it is possible to make progress on a bilateral peace process.
That is to say,
the international community has confirmed that the Palestinian people
have no right to take part in the determination of its own fate. Everything
will be decided by the Government of Israel alone, with the backing
of the United States, whose position will be automatically accepted
by the other partners of the Quartet.
The European Union
with its 25 member-states, the government of the Russian Federation
and the organization that represents the entire world have humbly accepted
the edict of Bush, the dictator of the world, who is himself a captive
of Sharon. Sharon decided long ago that the elected president of the
Palestinian people is irrelevant, together with the whole
Palestinian leadership.
The Palestinian
people have been eliminated from the list of decision-makers, thereby
also abolishing in practice all the agreements signed with them, from
Oslo to the Road Map.
This is a scandalous
step, unprecedented in its dimensions, and it passed without comment.
Apart from Sharon and his minions, nobody noticed the implications.
The big boot of the international community trod on the Palestinian
people without even noticing it, as if on an ant.
That is the culmination
of a process that began with the return of the then Prime minister,
Ehud Barak, from the 2000 Camp David summit. After the failure of that
meeting, he coined the mantra that has since become the cornerstone
of the policy of successive Israeli governments: I have turned
every stone on the way to peace / I have offered the Palestinians more
generous proposals than any of my predecessors / The Palestinians have
rejected all my offers / Arafat wants to throw us into the sea / We
have no partner for peace.
This mantra is
based on a series of lies that have been exploded long ago. American
eye-witnesses like Rober Malley, President Clintons advisor at
Camp David, as well as some of the Israeli participants and international
researchers have published detailed reports that prove that Barak himself
was responsible for the failure at least as much as Arafat in
fact, far more.
And as if by coincidence,
just when the international community absent-mindedly accepted that
the Palestinian people is not a partner for peace, in Israel itself
things are happening that turn everything upside down.
The High Priest
of the We Have No Partner creed is General (res.) Amos Gilad,
who at the crucial time was chief of the research section (and as such
the No. 2) of the Army Intelligence Department. Since army intelligence
is the department solely responsible for the national security
assessment, it has a decisive influence on the formation of national
policy.
The army intelligence
man reports directly to the Prime Minister and takes part in cabinet
meetings. No minister would dare to question his assessments, which
are the guiding star of the entire state. The research chief of the
intelligence department is supposed to submit a professional summary
of the huge amount of data amassed by the intelligence community. Most
ministers are forbidden to read the written report, and even the few
others are allowed only to glance at it. Therefore, the oral summary
presented by the chief of research to the Prime Minister and the cabinet
is of paramount importance.
Amos Gilad went
even further: he appeared almost daily in the media, commenting on almost
every political and security event. He was not only the national
assessor, but also the national explainer, as he was
commonly called in the media.
Who is this man,
who has had a greater influence than any other person on the policies
of Israel over the last few crucial years, and whose kontsepsia (Hebrew
for conception, a Hebrew word meaning something like rigid
mental framework) is still directing the path of the state? This
is the very same Amos Gilad who some days ago claimed for himself the
benefits due to disabled army veterans. He was not wounded in battle,
God forbid, but claimed that the stress caused by his difficult job
has inflicted on him irreversible mental damage.
This claim involves
a considerable amount of Chutzpah, if not worse. But it also raises
the question: This mental damage, when did it start? When were the first
symptoms observed? Was it when he started endlessly repeating that Arafat
wants to throw us into the sea? Or was this declaration, perhaps, itself
a symptom of his mental problem? And how can he continue to fulfil his
present duties?
The last two weeks,
Israel witnessed a stormy debate that should have shaken the very foundations
of the state.
The former chief
of Army Intelligence, General (res.) Amos Malka, who was the direct
superior of Gilad, broke his silence of many years and published a thunderous
accusation: that Amos Gilad arrived at his kontseptsia without any intelligence
basis whatsoever. On the contrary, the huge amount of information collected
by the intelligence department indicated the very opposite. That is
to say, Gilad freely invented his intelligence reports, based on his
political views and/or on the desire to please his political bosses,
Barak and Sharon.
This grave accusation
raised a storm in professional circles. Intelligence operatives of undoubted
integrity emerged from their anonymity in order to support Malka publicly.
They were headed by the man who, at the relevant time, was in charge
of the Army Intelligence section for Palestinian affairs, Colonel Ephraim
Lavie, who was then responsible for the collection of all intelligence
material about the Palestinian leadership. There is no doubt that in
the professional confrontation between Amos and Amos, Amos Malka emerged
as the victor.
This means, in
simple words: there was no intelligence material at all backing the
assertion that Arafat is working for the destruction of the State of
Israel, that Arafat had broken off the peace process in order to start
a terror campaign, that Arafat is not ready for a reasonable compromise.
All these assertions, uttered by diverse Israeli politicians and generals,
were based on the assessment of one man who, while appearing
to represent the intelligence department, was actually suppressing the
considered professional reports of his own department, as well as of
the General Security Service (Shabak).
When the debate
heated up, the orientalist Matti Steinberg, a former advisor on Palestinian
affairs to the chief of the Shabak, joined the fray. Steinberg not only
confirmed that Gilads kontseptsia was completely false and contradicted
the intelligence material assembled by his own people, but he also asserted
that Gilads kontseptsia fulfilled its own prophecy.
Since Israel is
immeasurably stronger than the Palestinians, its actions create reality.
The acts guided by Gilads kopntseptsia created results that suited
it. Much as the kontseptsia of Eli Zaira, the intelligence chief
at the time of the Yom Kippur war, resulted in catastrophe, thus the
kontseptsia of Amos Gilad caused and is still causing
the disasters of the present intifada.
(The 1973 intelligence
kontseptsia was that Egypt would not dare to attack Israel, causing
all the glaringly obvious signs to the contrary to be ignored, thus
preventing adequate preparations and resulting in the death of 3000
Israeli soldiers. Since than the Hebrew word kontseptsia has assumed
an almost obscene connotation in Israel.)
As of now, Gilads
immediate superior (Malka) and his immediate subordinate (Lavie) both
accuse him of presenting his personal opinions, which were unsupported
by any intelligence backing, as if they were the official assessment
of the intelligence services.
Gilad has caused
irreversible damage. His mantra was accepted by the vast majority of
Israelis, as well as a large part of international public opinion. Its
exposure in professional circles will not alter this fact. Indeed, the
recent decision of the Quartet shows how deeply entrenched
this lie has become throughout the world.
By the way, these
revelations show that the secret assessment of the highest professional
echelons of the Army Intelligence Department and Shabak were practically
identical with the assessments published at the time by Gush Shalom,
which were met with total disbelief by the media and the public, including
a large part of the peace camp. To wit, that the Palestinian
leadership, headed by Arafat, has never wavered from its readiness to
make peace with Israel based on the creation of a Palestinian state
on 97% of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (which together make 22%
of historic Palestine), with territorial compensation for the remaining
3% and sovereignty over East Jerusalem and the Haram-al-Sharif (Temple
Mount). The refugee problem would be solved by agreement with
Israel (meaning: Israel will have a veto on any solution).
The experts of
army intelligence and the security service, too, agree that Arafat has
not wavered from this position. On this basis, peace can be achieved
even now, as Arafat himself confirmed this week in a fascinating interview
with the new editor of Haaretz, David Landau.
Ariel Sharon denies
this, of course, because he is not ready for peace on these terms. He
wants to annex at least 55% of the West Bank, hoping that the life of
the Palestinians in the remaining 45% will become so impossible that
they will leave the country of their own accord. Shimon Peres is eager
to help him in the realization of this design.
For that, Sharon
needs the We Have No Partner mantra. Amos Gilad delivered
the goods. Now the Quartet has accepted it, bringing shame
on itself and obstructing the search for peace.