The end of March and beginning of April saw the flaring up of new hope. It was expressed in such events as the gathering of several hundred Peace Now activists outside the Prime Minister's residence in Jerusalem, flying the flags of the 22 member states of the Arab League, plus the Palestinian and Israeli flags, under the banner: 'Don't miss the chance for peace!'
Though it seems much longer, it was only a few months ago. For a moment, Muslims and non-Muslims alike looked with expectation to the Holy City of Mecca. At a time singularly lacking in positive leadership, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia tried to step into the breach with two bold initiatives.
At the Arab Summit, the Arab Peace Initiative was re-introduced and reaffirmed - offering to Israel complete peace with the entire Arab World in return for complete withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. In fact the Saudis had already launched it once - back in March 2002 - only to see it immediately derailed and wiped off the agenda by the bloody Passover Eve suicide bombing in Netanya and the bloodier Israeli invasion of the West Bank cities ("Operation Defensive Shield").
This time, the initiative was not derailed - at least, not in such a blatant and peremptory way. And there was more: the heads of the warring Palestinian factions were induced and pressured into forming a "National Unity" government, ending (or so it seemed) the internecine fighting between rival militias and presenting to the international diplomatic arena a body with a valid claim to politically represent the entire population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
As the reader knows by now, that chance was missed, the incipient positive momentum soon turned into very negative directions, and there were a lot of violent deaths, some of them very gruesome. To the people of good will it is left to pick up the pieces.
Though the fact was not often appreciated in the mainstream Israeli and Western media, for the Hamas Movement to enter a joint cabinet with the rival Fatah Party represented a concession. It included explicitly agreeing to "respect previous agreements signed by the Palestinian Authority" - a formulation that resulted from prolonged bargaining and haggling between the Palestinian factions and the various Arab mediators.
This went a long way towards recognition of Israel and accepting the Oslo Agreements, on whose base the Palestinian Authority was created. Certainly, this formulation was in no way compatible with the harsh language of the Hamas Covenant, which the Israeli rightwing is so fond of quoting.
Given a modicum of openness on the side of the international community, this key article in the Unity Government's program could have served as the foundation for the kind of "creative diplomacy" beloved of past international mediators arriving in the Middle East. Such openness, however, was conspicuously lacking.
Not that much could have been expected of the Olmert Government - nor of George W. Bush with his division of the world into Good Guys and Bad ones, and with Hamas firmly placed among the latter. But quite a few Palestinians (and others) hoped for better from the European Union.
Initially, indeed, there were hesitant EU declarations welcoming the formation of the new Palestinian cabinet. Switzerland and Norway, European countries that are not part of the European Union and thus not bound by its common foreign policy, did recognize the Palestinian Unity Government, as did South Africa.
But rather than the harbingers of a general change, these turned out be no more than exceptions proving the rule. Engaging in some weeks of hand wringing, and giving non-Hamas ministers of the new government a warm welcome at Brussels but sending them back empty handed, the Europeans finally fell in behind the intransigent American position.
"The Diplomatic Quartet" reaffirmed its demand on the new Palestinian government, as on its predecessor, for an unquestioning obedience to the three conditions which had been set last year (Recognition of Israel, Acceptance of Previous Agreements and Renunciation of Violence) and which many Palestinians (and not only Hamas supporters) found one-sided and unfair (there was no reciprocal demand on Israel recognizing Palestine, implement previous agreement with the Palestinians or renounce its daily military raids into the Palestinian cities).
Since the hey-day of the Oslo Peace process, the EU holds the main purse strings of the Palestinian government — which, being debarred from control of its own borders and economy, cannot finance itself by taxation, as governments normally do.
Therefore, the continual denial of European aid to the Palestinians, added to the withholding of Palestinian tax moneys collected by Israel on behalf of the Palestinians but held in the Israeli Treasury's coffers since early last year, meant that the Palestinian National Unity Government has failed in its most elementary task — namely, to pay the government employees their monthly salaries.
Certainly, with the diplomatic avenues closed in its face, the new Palestinian government could offer its people not the slightest chance or hope of advancing towards a negotiated end to the Israeli occupation.
This meant that the political leaders — not only of Fatah, but also of Hamas — were fast losing ground to the heads of their parties' respective armed militias.
The Mecca-brokered Palestinian Unity Government had been met by the Israeli government's outright hostility. The Arab League's offer of full Arab recognition of Israel in return for full Israeli withdrawal encountered a more subtle reaction.
Though an outspoken reservation was made with regard to the return of Palestinian refugees, the government reiterated on several occasions that "The Saudi Initiative has many positive aspects." It was evident that Olmert in no way indicated acceptance of the initiative's stipulation of Israeli withdrawal to the '67 borders. Rather, he simply issued repeated invitations to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to enter immediately into "negotiations with no preconditions."
Far from beginners at the art of diplomacy, the Saudis concluded that such a public meeting would in effect grant already to Olmert the coveted prize of de-facto recognition by the richest of all Arab countries, without Israel in any way obliging itself to the required territorial quid-pro-quo.
In seeking such a "photo opportunity" with the Saudi King and sundry Gulf Emirs and Sheiks, Olmert was in fact hoping not only for a major coup for Israeli diplomacy but also — and especially — for a means of slightly improving his disastrously plummeting popularity ratings in Israeli public opinion.
Olmert, however, did not have it his way. The Saudis politely pointed out that there was no longer a "Saudi Peace Initiative" since it has been duly and formally adopted by all member states of the Arab League and made into an Arab Peace Initiative.
Therefore, it was suggested that Jordan and Egypt, the two members of the Arab League that already have peace treaties with Israel and maintain embassies in Tel Aviv, would conduct negotiations with Israel on behalf of the League.
Once this point was made clear, Israeli enthusiasm for the Saudi/Arab initiative visibly diminished. A mere four months after being launched, this once-hopeful initiative seems well on its way to the same limbo to which were consigned so many earlier Middle East initiatives and plans, which remain officially on the table, year in and year out, and get occasional empty and perfunctory praise...
...skirmishing with the Syrians
The Golan border with Syria has long been considered Israel's most quiet frontier. The Syrians carefully adhered to the terms of the 1974 cease-fire that ended the Yom Kippur War, and there have hardly been any border incidents.
Despite vociferous declarations to the contrary from Damascus, Israeli right-wingers persisted in interpreting the Syrian conduct as a tacit acquiescence in the loss of the Golan Heights — conquered in 1967 and unilaterally annexed in 1981.
And though Israeli governments on several occasions engaged in negotiations with Syria, these were never conducted in an atmosphere of urgency and the need to defuse an immediate crisis, which were the normal background to talking to the Palestinians. In fact, it was generally assumed that Syria had no military option — at least, no option of conducting a direct conventional war with Israel with any hope of success. (Egypt, Syria's ally in the 1973 war, soon afterwards concluded a peace treaty with Israel. And the Soviet Union declined and disintegrated, unable to re-supply the Syrian Air Force and Armoured Corps.)
The Syrians did, however, develop effective ways of reminding Israel of the unfinished Golan business by conducting an ongoing "war by proxy." Hizbullah and smaller Lebanese militias proved valuable and willing allies in such Syrian designs, and later the Syrians also developed similar contacts with Hamas and other Palestinian groups.
The Second Lebanon War of 2006 seemed one more exercise of such an indirect war, with the Syrians standing carefully aside and leaving Hizbullah (and the population of Lebanon in general) to bear the brunt of the fighting. It was seen to have produced an effective counter-measure to the long-standing Israeli superiority, through Hezbollah's combination of guerilla tactics with the intensive use of missiles of various kinds.
Katyusha rockets devastated the Israeli population centres, even though the Israeli fighter planes and bombers continued to dominate the Lebanese skies; advanced anti-tank missiles, in the hands of militants hidden in the mountainous terrain, pierced the armour even of the best Israeli tanks; a shore-to-sea missile inflicted losses on one of the Israeli gunboats which for decades patrolled Lebanese waters with impunity...
Suddenly, it was clear that Syria could adapt the same kind of strategy for a future attempt at militarily regaining the Golan — with many more missiles than Hizbullah has, some of them far more advanced and of a far longer range than those deployed in Lebanon.
Even had this possibility not occurred to the Syrian generals by themselves, they would have soon gotten the idea from their Israeli colleagues and military commentators, who in a whole series of alarming articles in the Israeli press set out scenarios for the possible Syrian tactics and strategy, in considerable detail.
Adding plausibility to the idea of Syria starting war was the attitude of Vladimir Putin's Russia, seeking to assert its position on the international arena by — among many other things — renewing the flow of arms to Syria.
Also increasingly prominent in the background were the bold efforts of Iran, Syria's long-standing strategic ally, to pursue its nuclear plans in the teeth of international opposition. An American and/or Israeli air strike on the Iranian nuclear installations, the possibility of which had been discussed quite openly for a considerable time, would be likely to draw Syria into the resulting war.
(Few of those nowadays condemning the "Syrian-Iranian Axis of Evil" remember that these two countries originally came into alliance, back in the 1980s, mainly in common apprehension of none other than Saddam Hussein's Iraq, then a highly unfriendly neighbour to both and a staunch ally of the United States).
In spite of possible temptations, however, entering into a direct war with Israel would still be a very high-risk gamble for Syria. The recent bitter experience suffered by inhabitants of Beirut and other parts of Lebanon clearly indicates that in such a war, Syria's main population centres and industrial areas would likely be devastated in Israeli bombings and suffer heavy damage and casualties — with the Syrian economy far from robust, to begin with.
An Israeli-Syrian war might play into the hands of the American neoconservatives, who consider Syria to be part of "The Axis of Evil" and still long to effect "a regime change" in Damascus, in spite of the manifestly disastrous effects of the Iraqi experiment.
Most observers agree that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would much prefer to keep the option of war theoretical, and use it as a catalyst for a diplomatic process leading to Israel bloodlessly disgorging the Golan. In any case, in the past year Israelis experienced a perplexing stream of media proclamations and discreet diplomatic messages emanating from Damascus.
Offers to resume peace negotiations and reach an agreement of Peace in Return for The Golan — either in the framework of the Arab Peace Initiative or in direct bilateral negotiations — are intermingled with veiled and sometimes open threats of war, should Israel persist in holding on to the 1967 conquests. Rather than all-out war, some Syrian proclamations hint at the possibility of low-level guerilla war in the Golan — taking, in effect, an earlier page from Hezbollah's book.
The time seems over that Israel could leave the Syrian issue on the back burner, and public debate has reached a higher pitch than seen for many years. Quite a few members of the political and military elites talk of the next war as "a question of when rather than if." Indeed, some of them clearly look forward to such a war as a means of "renewing" the "Israeli deterrence" damaged in last year's Lebanese fiasco. Israeli generals with considerable relish invited foreign journalists to witness "soldiers training for the conquering of a Syrian village."
On the other hand, an opposing faction — also with significant access to the corridors of power — sees war as far from inevitable, and on the contrary would like to see a resumption and completion of the talks with Syria, broken off in April 2000. The Army's own Military Intelligence has been quite outspoken on this point, its representatives on several occasions engaging in acrimonious debate with the far more hawkish Mossad Intelligence Agency.
Supporters of this position argue that the 2000 talks had been very close to success when then PM Barak got cold feet and called them off, immensely change Israel's entire strategic position.
In a feat of "back-channel" alternative diplomacy, retired Israeli diplomat Alon Liel — a former aide of Yossi Beilin and a participant in the Oslo talks — teamed up with Abe Suliman, a Syrian-American businessman who to some degree did — and to some degree did not — represent the government in Damascus.
The draft agreement worked out by the two of them was presented at a highly publicized, precedent-setting visit by Suliman to the Knesset in Jerusalem. It evidently could be a good basis for an official agreement, given a genuine Syrian willingness to make peace and an equally genuine Israeli willingness to give up the Golan.
For his part, PM Olmert was careful to assure the Syrians that there was no Israeli intention whatsoever to attack them, that all the conspicuous military manoeuvres were purely defensive in nature, and that war could break out "only due to a most tragic misunderstanding" — and was answered with similarly worded declarations from the Syrian side. All of which did not stop the continuing exchange of warlike declarations and gestures across the Golan cease-fire line.
The Prime Minister was far more reticent with regard to any move towards the negotiating table. Often reiterated statements made such negotiations conditional upon Syria first dropping its alliance with Iran on the one hand and with the Lebanese and Palestinian "terrorist organizations" on the other.
For their part, the Syrians indicated that they might be willing to talk of such issues in the negotiations themselves, in return for some Israeli gestures — for example, an end to the government-sponsored extension of settlements on the Golan and the whole-page ads in Israeli papers, calling upon inhabitants of the Tel Aviv area to move to "wonderful family houses" on the Golan. "Conditions are not yet ripe for the launching of negotiations without preconditions" was the Orwellian-flavoured conclusion of Olmert.
In one leaked account of a high-level confidential policy meeting, Olmert was quoted as saying: "We can't talk to the Syrians, the Americans would not allow us to do it." Olmert was roundly criticized, in numerous editorials and oppositional speeches, for speaking in a way unfitting for the head of a state claiming to be independent and sovereign.
On his next visit to Washington, Olmert got President Bush to declare (with disdainful expression on his face): "If the Israelis want to talk to the Syrians, that's their business, we will not interfere." But Bush would not dream of mediating or facilitating or in any way helping the success of such talks, as Clinton did in his time. In any case, no talks with Syria followed and none are predicted in the foreseeable future. And the reason seems to lie mainly in domestic Israeli politics.
As has often been pointed out, the Golan settlers are in a far stronger public position than any other group of settlers. Israelis tend to consider the Golan as being truly part of Israel, far more than any other occupied territory — mainly because the area's Arab population was expelled across the border upon its conquest in 1967, and was not left to present "a demographic problem" as in the West Bank.
Israelis like to go hiking in the Golan's admittedly lush and beautiful landscape, without bothering too much about the political implications. In order to evacuate the Golan, an Israeli Prime Minister would need far more than the miserable single-digit popularity ratings with which Olmert has to contend since the failure in Lebanon.
Of course, Olmert's failure to open peace negotiations may eventually entail another disastrous war.
In April there was a general feeling that Ehud Olmert was nearing the end of his political career. The Winograd Commission was about to present its Interim Report on the Conduct of the War in Lebanon. Olmert had himself hand-picked the commission members, sidestepping the law stipulating that they should be appointed by the President of the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, it was correctly expected that the Commission would severely criticize him, if only to prove its own impartiality.
Numerous scenarios were published well in advance, enumerating a whole set of factors which — singly or in combination — were expected to bring Olmert down: A wave of popular anger at the grassroots of Israeli society would gather unstoppable momentum; the members of Olmert's own Kadima Party — a jury-rigged political structure hastily created by Sharon in 2005 and to which Olmert fell heir quite by chance — would realize that their only chance of political survival would be to replace him with somebody more popular; the Labour Party, his main coalition partner, would bolt and deprive him of Parliamentary majority; his other partner, the extreme-right demagogue Avigdor Lieberman, would bolt — in tandem or in competition with Labour; various corruption scandals, now under investigation by Attorney-General Mazuz, would crystallize into hard evidence and a charge sheet, incompatible with remaining a Prime Minister...
In the matter of his own political survival, however, Ehud Olmert soon exhibited in abundance the kind of nimble skill so manifestly absent from his conduct of weightier issues. Having made careful advance planning for various contingencies, expertly manipulating the media and quickly adapting to changing situations, the PM and his advisers managed to defuse or ride out the threats, one by one.
A tumultuous mass rally calling for Olmert's immediate resignation did take place at Tel-Aviv's Rabin Square, organized by a coalition dominated by Right-leaning groups though also including the Meretz Party. But it was not quite as massive as some past rallies at the same location, and at its conclusion the protesters went home and attempts to organize further protests soon petered out. Moreover, the likelihood that Likud leader Binyamin ("Bibi") Netanyahu would take power, should Olmert fall, was enough to make many stick to Olmert as "The Lesser Evil."
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni had long before tried to depict herself as a credible alternative, with a reputation for personal honesty and integrity as well as being the initiator of bold and imaginative diplomatic plans and moves (or what passed for such). Especially, she emphasized her special personal connections with US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in a so-called "Women's Connection" bypassing their male bosses. However, Livni's months-long build-up failed miserably at the moment of truth.
Olmert's people managed to quickly defuse the incipient mutiny in the Kadima parliamentary faction, setting other would-be inheritors at Livni's throat (and each other's). The Foreign Minister managed to discredit herself with one wrong step — openly calling upon Olmert to resign, but failing to herself resign from his cabinet — and was showered with waves of ridicule in the media, forcing her to the humiliation of "making her peace" with the PM. Her reputation and political fortunes may yet recover, in the ever-changing kaleidoscope of Israeli politics — but as of the time of writing, she is clearly not in the running at any leadership contest.
Unlike Olmert, Defence Minister and Labour Party Leader Amir Peretz had no chance of riding out the scathing criticism levelled at him in the Winograd Report. Once known as a peace activist, trade union organizer and social reformer, Peretz had managed to violate all his promises at record speed and alienate the Israeli public in general and most members of his own party as well.
The PM took no official position about the Labour Party primaries selecting Peretz's successor, but was visibly pleased that former Prime Minister Ehud Barak had won out against his main competitor, retired Admiral and Security Chief Ami Ayalon. Ayalon had vowed to take Labour out of the Olmert Cabinet. Barak, to the contrary, slid into the Defence Ministry right upon getting the Labourites' confidence, unceremoniously throwing out his hapless predecessor.
Olmert had long wanted to get Barak to take over the military portfolio, so as to increase the government's popularity ratings. With his considerable prior experience as Army Chief, Defence Minster and Prime Minister, Barak declared himself "the person most suitable to conduct Israel's next war" — his main slogan in successfully campaigning to get the confidence of the Labour Party membership.
Olmert had been warned that Barak, though a valuable ally in the short term, could eventually turn out to be a dangerous rival — having ultimately set his sights at regaining the Prime Minister's bureau, from which he was ousted in January 2001. But for a Prime Minster whose career seemed moribund, the short term prevailed. Olmert has now gained a breathing spell — at least until the autumn, when the final Winograd report is due.
The PM has further fortified his position by getting the famous Shimon Peres elected as President of Israel. While the presidency is a mainly ceremonial position, having won the hard-fought contest over it enhanced Olmert's prestige.
Those who had already written Olmert off evidently need to revise their calculations. Whether he intends to do anything with the time he won — other than simply hold on to power as long as possible — remains to be seen.
Already for many years, a recurring complaint by Palestinians had been the extensive network of Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks spread over the West Bank. Indeed, many highways have been declared altogether out of bounds for Palestinian traffic and reserved to settler traffic.
For Palestinians, travel from one city to another — or even from a village to its immediate neighbour — has become a long, frustrating, unpredictable and on occasion highly hazardous process. This resulted in considerable disruption not only to the daily personal lives of Palestinians, but to any economic activity which requires a regular and reliable inter-city transport — i.e., to virtually all Palestinian economic activity.
The issue of easing travel restrictions on Palestinians came up regularly in each and every meeting between Israeli and Palestinian officials, and was often also taken up by the Americans. A ritual developed by which the Israeli Prime Minister of the moment would promise to do his best to ease Palestinian daily life, "subject to Israel's security needs." In practice, generals and security chiefs made clear their view that any removal of checkpoints and roadblocks would result in a wave of suicide bombings in the Israeli population centres. This "professional opinion" would be immediately published widely by the army's numerous official and unofficial mouthpieces in the media.
At some time in April, Major General Keith Dayton — the American Security Coordinator appointed to deal with the situation on the ground in the Palestinian territories — tired of the game of asking his Israeli counterparts for unspecified "humanitarian gestures towards the Palestinians" and getting in return an unspecified nothing. He presented his "Benchmarks" plan, enumerating the exact location of various West Bank road-blocks, their name as used in the IDF's own terminology — and a precise timetable for their removal.
In return, the Palestinian security forces were supposed to intensify their activity to prevent the shooting of Qassam missiles from Gaza into Israeli territory.
In a marked contrast to the extreme Israeli deference to American wishes where the idea of (not) opening negotiations with Syria was concerned, General Dayton's Benchmarks encountered an immediate, vehement and outspoken rejection by the Israeli generals, which was duly conveyed to Washington by Olmert. Allegedly, an aide of Amir Peretz — then still Defence Minister — had been indiscreet and provided the Americans with information on the location of the West Bank roadblocks. In the view of the military hierarchy, immediately shared with the general public, this was the ultimate proof of Peretz's unfitness for his job and the urgent need to replace him (as was done soon afterwards).
The Israeli generals did not, however, need to worry for long. Another pet project of their American colleague Dayton — the arming and training of Palestinian armed forces loyal to President Abu Mazen, with the openly proclaimed aim of their suppressing those of Hamas — created a situation which soon swept Dayton's Benchmarks off the agenda.
Palestinians never came close to realizing a Unified Armed Force. Ever since the Palestinian Authority was formed, division and subdivision persisted into (often mutually hostile) militias, owing loyalty to different political parties — or to specific factions or leaders.
With the election of the Hamas-led Government in March 2006 things became worse. The official Palestinian Armed Forces refused to acknowledge that government or take any orders from it, proclaiming sole loyalty to President Abu Mazen. The Haniya Government reacted by forming its own armed forces, known as the Executive Force. These were deployed mainly in the Gaza Strip — with Israeli forces preventing formation of the Hamas-loyal forces on the West Bank.
Both sides claimed to be the genuine armed forces of the Palestinian Authority, loyal to a duly and democratically elected government, and accused the other of being in illegal rebellion. Both sides had some point — depending on which interpretation is taken of the rather ambiguous and self-contradictory Palestinian legislation on the relations between Prime Minister and President.
It had been originally adopted, under considerable international pressure, with the aim of weakening the President and strengthening the Prime Minister (at the time, Arafat was President and Abu Mazen was Prime Minister). But it was hastily amended in the opposite direction, again under considerable international pressure, once Abu Mazen became President and Ismail Haniya the Prime Minister.
In practice, this legal ambiguity resulted in the Gaza Strip having two rival governments, each with its own armed forces (not counting the numerous "incursions" and ongoing siege by the Israeli Army). An inherently unstable situation, bound to produce frictions and clashes of increasing frequency and ferocity. Smaller armed groups occasionally added their own discordant notes — for example, the long lasting kidnapping of BBC reporter Alan Johnston.
Throughout the past year, Palestinians hoping for an end to the spectre of civil war pinned their hopes on the formation of a Unity Government. However, the framers of the Mecca Agreement did not tackle the daunting job of uniting the various armed forces and militias. Instead, a single neutral Minister of the Interior was chosen after considerable wrangling, to whom all of these forces were supposed to be accountable. In the event, none of them took any real notice of him, and he soon resigned.
Had the Unity Government developed a momentum of political and diplomatic success, the spirit of national unity might have eventually seeped down to the armed grassroots — or at least, the various military leaders might have restrained themselves. But such, clearly, was not the case.
Not only did the international community maintain its strangling boycott. Israeli and American officials continued quite openly their efforts and preparations for an eventual final military showdown, in which Fatah was expected to pulverize its foe. The fact that Fatah and Hamas were partners in a National Unity Government was completely ignored.
Specifically, one Fatah faction was expected to pull that trick — the one headed by Muhammad Dahlan, a Gazan who had started as a grassroots leader in the First Intifada and had then spent quite a bit of time in an Israeli prison — but that was a long time ago.
Not all factions of the Israeli military and security services were equally sanguine about the ability — and the willingness — of Dahlan and his men to carry out the role assigned to them in such scenarios. For months there was a continuous wrangling in the high Israeli echelons whether or not to authorize Egypt's arming Dahlan's troops with armoured cars and heavy machine guns. The opponents asserted that the Fatah troops would not fight in earnest, and the arms provided to them would fall into Hamas hands or even be used against Israel by Fatah people themselves.
The net result of these deliberations and debates — of course leaked to the press, and from there swiftly translated into Arabic — was the worst of possible worlds for Dahlan and his people. The Israeli debate was more than enough to depict them as collaborators, turning to the occupier for machine guns with which to shoot their own people — but the guns themselves they did not get...
Hamas prepared for defence in the eventuality of being attacked, and also for a pre-emptive strike of its own. Industriously procuring arms via the smugglers' tunnels from Sinai to Gaza, Hamas did not seem to encounter any cross-purposes among its own suppliers.
p>Sderot pays again
In the first half of May, confrontations between the Palestinian factions in Gaza broke out again, and soon reached proportions rivalling those of the time before the Unity Government was formed. The reaction of several Israeli columnists expressed the gut feeling on the street: "Let them kill each other."
Suddenly, however, a massive salvo of Qassam missiles came of the Gaza turmoil upon the Israeli border town of Sderot and its environs. They were far more numerous than the occasional shooting of a missile or two on a day, which is the usual retribution for the killing of Palestinians by Israeli troops. And further massive salvos landed on Sderot, day after day during the following week.
The Qassam is a highly inaccurate weapon, and most of those shot from Gaza exploded harmlessly. Still, more than a hundred missiles were enough to leave two Israelis dead, several severely wounded and a town in the grip of panic and hysteria.
Israeli papers published extensive eulogies and emotive background articles on the two Israeli victims of the bombings (as is of course never done for the dozens of Palestinian civilians killed in Israeli bombings).
The shady multi-millionaire Arkady Gaidamak, who had made his fortune in arms trading at African civil wars, financed buses which demonstratively evacuated Sderot residents — forcing the government to follow suit and conduct its own extensive evacuation project.
Right-wingers — on this as on many earlier occasions — called for an intensive military operation to conquer the entire Gaza Strip and "root out the terrorist infrastructure" — modelled on the Israeli re-conquest of the West Bank cities in April 2004. But Olmert still remembered the recent sharp criticism made by the Winograd Commission of his hasty plunge into war in Lebanon.
Moreover, many of the PM's advisers were of the opinion that the shooting at Sderot had been deliberately initiated with the aim of provoking Israel into just such an all-out invasion, and in that way unite all Palestinian factions against the common enemy.
And the generals, watchful for sudden developments on the Syrian and/or Lebanese borders, warned against committing too much of the IDF's resources to Gaza. (Ben Kaspit, a well-connected Ma'ariv commentator, actually wrote "We need to make peace with Syria so as to free the army's hands for the bloody job which must be done in Gaza"...)
In conclusion, the government contented itself with intermittent air strikes and small-scale "incursions", in which between twenty and thirty Palestinians were killed.
There followed a kind of informal de-escalation (reportedly helped by the mediation efforts of Qatar) and after a week and half, shooting along the Gaza border returned to the "drizzle" level which had prevailed for years.
Inside the Gaza Strip, inter-Palestinian tensions built up again towards the final climax, a few weeks later.
p>The miscalculation of the patrons
The quick and utter collapse of Muhamad Dahlan's troops in Gaza, at the middle of June, took virtually everybody by surprise — including, apparently, the Hamas forces that achieved it.
Many explanations were offered for that outcome. The Fatah forces were demoralized and had not been paid for many months, due to the international financial boycott; they were disunited and divided into many sub-groups and factions, often mutually-hostile; many of their commanders escaped in the very inception of the fighting, or were not present in the Strip at all (including Dahlan himself).
Possibly most important, while American and Israeli planners have made plans assigning to these troops a role amounting to collaboration with the occupation, the troops themselves — members and supporters of the Fatah Movement, which had led the Palestinian National Movement for decades — in no way felt that they had signed up to perform such a mission. When confronted with Hamas' well-organized and highly motivated troops, it was no real contest — even though on paper the Fatah men greatly outnumbered those of Hamas.
Not everybody in Hamas was happy with the outcome. It was clearly a victory for the Hamas military wing, whose control of the Gaza Strip was now unchallenged by any Palestinian armed group (though many smaller militias remained at large, including some Fatah offshoots opposed to Dahlan's). It was, however, a grave setback to the Hamas political wing, in particular to Prime Minister Haniyeh, thoroughly undermining and discrediting their claim to political legitimacy as a democratically elected government.
Palestinians of all political factions expressed shame and dismay at this extreme manifestation of disunity and internecine bloodshed. The killing of four Palestinian children in a "misdirected" Israeli aerial strike in the southern Gaza Strip — the kind of event which would in normal circumstances arouse stormy reactions — passed virtually unnoticed, in the face of the internal Palestinian bloodshed occurring nearby.
For their part, Israeli governmental and right-wing propagandists made full use of such events as the public execution by Hamas militants of their most hated Fatah opponents, by shooting or throwing them from the top floors of Gaza high-rise buildings. (As Yediot Aharonot columnist Dror Ze'evi wryly commented, reactions in the Israeli media might have been more subdued if it were the Dahlan people doing it to Hamas leaders...)
Some of the right-wingers went as far as reviving the argument that "There is no such thing as a Palestinian People", rarely heard in Israel since the time of Golda Meir in the 1970's.
More mainstream commentators and politicians contented themselves with the assertion that the Palestinians have "proved incapable of governing themselves." Therefore, they were to be indefinitely consigned to continued Israeli rule, to the imposition of an international force and regime, a return to Jordanian and Egyptian tutelage as before 1967, or a combination of all three. And the pesky Palestinian demand to have regular communications between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — an explicit Israeli obligation in the Olso Agreement that was never fulfilled — could now be conveniently swept off the table, since "the Palestinians themselves have severed the connection."
Such patronizing attitudes were manifested in the public debate on the fate of hundreds of fleeing Fatah militants and their family members, crowded just across from the IDF forward positions at Erez. Some commentators called upon the government to admit these refugees "as a special act of mercy and compassion, proving Israel's moral superiority" while others demanded that they be turned back since they were "terrorists just like Hamas." (In the end Barak, in his first decision as Defence Minister, let the "new refugees" in — but only on condition that they immediately go to Egypt, rather than to the West Bank.)
Meanwhile, however, Hamas failed to make any overt move to impose a theocratic dictatorship in Gaza. After a brief rampage of revenge killings, they did issue a pardon to their defeated enemies. Despite an intensified Israeli and international physical and financial siege, they did make a credible effort to establish regular governmental services in a territory which had long suffered the ravages of having two rival feuding governments.
This culminated with the spectacular release of the BBC journalist long held by a small radical militia — an affair in which Hamas acted as governments often act in such cases, using a combination of military pressure and judicious negotiations in order to finally get the hostage free and unharmed.
However, the Gaza Strip remains under continued blockage, with no more than a trickle of supplies being allowed in, to avert outright starvation. At the time of writing some 6000 Gazans are already for a month unable to return home, being stranded under the hot summer sun on the Egyptian side of the Rafah Border Crossing — the Gaza Strip's sole access to the outside world, now hermetically closed and sealed. <
Since the so-called "generous offers" presented by Barak in his previous tenure, and whose rejection served as the effective casus belli for the numerous small and large military offensives launched since October 2000, the dominant discourse of the Israeli mainstream held that "there is no partner."
All Palestinian leaders have been categorized as being either bloodthirsty terrorists who must be isolated and fought against, or weaklings who cannot be trusted with any real power. From the official Israeli point of view, the dramatic events in Gaza simply created two Palestinian governments — one of either type.
Immediately upon Abu Mazen dissolving the National Unity Government and appointing a new cabinet headed by economist Salam Fayad — the one Palestinian to effectively possess a personal "Good Guy" certificate from George W. Bush — Olmert proclaimed the new situation to show "a great promise."
The new Palestinian government, free of Hamas presence and outspokenly hostile to Hamas for its Gaza misdeeds, was to be coddled, encouraged and "strengthened." That did not mean, however, that it was to get any real power in the West Bank, which was supposed to be under its rule. The idea of removing checkpoints and roadblocks, briefly mooted by Olmert as "gesture to help Abu Mazen" was once again unceremoniously vetoed by the generals and security chiefs.
Even while Israel's PM every day proclaims outspoken sympathy for the leader of Fatah Movement, with the fall of night the military units supposedly accountable to that Prime Minister are continuing to hunt, detain and often kill members of the same Fatah — as of all Palestinian factions impartially — throughout the West Bank...
Olmert's one gesture of actual support for Abu Mazen — aside from a "gradual and phased" disgorging of the detained tax moneys which are unquestionably the Palestinians' own property — was the release of 250 Palestinian prisoners out of more than ten thousands incarcerated by Israel.
Olmert ceremoniously proclaimed this prisoner release in the presence of Abu Mazen, as well as of President Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan, at the Sharm a-Sheikh Summit — a "photo opportunity" which failed to greatly impress either Israelis or Palestinians.
There followed weeks of wrangling about the identity of prisoners to be released, with the security services trying — as they did on past occasions — to fob off the Palestinians with prisoners whose terms are nearly over anyway.
Also as on previous occasions, "prisoners with blood on the hands" would be excluded. This means that Marwan Barghouti — the one Fatah leader considered to have enough popularity and integrity to be able to unite the Palestinian people — would for the time being remain behind bars, sentenced to "five consecutive life terms plus forty years."
Even from his prison cell, Barghouti has played an important role in all significant political moves of the past years. The idea of his release is being promoted by a significant faction within the political and military establishment, whose most well-known speaker is Minister Gideon Ezra — himself a former senior operative of the Shabak Security Service and far from consistently dovish in his positions.
Ironically, Barghouti's release is most likely to be procured through the agency of none other than Hamas — as part of a prisoner exchange involving the freeing of Israeli soldier Gil'ad Shalit, captured in June 2006 and held ever since in some secret Gaza Strip location.
On the day of the Sharm A-Sheikh Summit, the Hamas leaders upstaged Olmert by for the first time releasing a voice cassette of the captive soldier. The news captured the headlines, and Israel's mass circulation dailies — including even the usually right-wing Ma'ariv — published highly emotive conspicuous editorials calling upon the government to "Bring Gil'ad Home." Opinion polls showed a large majority in support of such a deal, even at the price of releasing many "prisoners with blood on their hands", from all Palestinian factions. That does not in any way mean that Olmert is going to do it, any time soon.
On a more fundamental issue, the governments of Israel and the United States are already for years on record as supporting a Two State Solution — and nevertheless Israel's actual military occupation of the territory, now entering upon its forty-first year, has rarely seemed so far from coming to an end.
Something very rotten in Israel
As often happens in Israel, scandals and affairs follow each other in quick succession, yesterday's hot sensation being barely remembered today. Suddenly, the sex scandal of President Moshe Katzav burst again into the headlines, with the news of a plea bargain by which the rape charges against the former president would be dropped and he would walk free out of the court, with no more than a suspended sentence to show for his alleged sexual assaults of no less than ten women employees.
A call for protest action, issued by Feminist groups, gathered enormous momentum and drew a crowd estimated by police at twenty thousands to Tel-Aviv's Rabin Square.
Many demonstrators felt that the scandalous privileged treatment of "The Presidential Rapist" was but the tip of the iceberg — while others were hostile to any linking of the Katzav Affair with wider issues. It might be worthwhile to end this account with an excerpt from the speech of Liat Rosenberg, delivered to the sound of a tumultuous mixture of cheers and boos:
"In the past days we heard Katzav's victims in the media. There is nothing new in such stories, except for the fact that they were published. I hear such stories thousands of times, in my work at the Tel Aviv Rape Crisis Centre, and usually they get no publicity whatsoever.
These victims of rape, and many other victims of all kinds, are being silenced. There is something very rotten in an Israeli society in which oppression of all kinds is a daily reality, and which is silencing and hiding that oppression.
A rotten society that again and again elects the same recycled rotten leaders and uncritically swallows their utterings — their hollow, oppressive, uncaring, violent, occupying utterings — and that still buys into the pretence of a moral Israel and a chosen Jewish People. (...)
The gap continues to increase between the values that this country is supposed to represent and the actual rotten reality of xenophobia, alienation, commoditization and plea bargains. This cannot be my country. As long as a soldier who points his gun at children is a war hero and a famous rapist gets off Scot free, I will not call this my country!"
It was the voice of a new generation — not yet so often getting the stage — a generation which has never known something else than the ugly face of Israel the Occupier. Maybe they are more hardened, and will succeed where others have failed.
The Editors
Holon, July 10, 2007
