[The following editorial overview is extracted from the March-April 2008 issue of The Other Israel.]

THE BANALITY OF OPPORTUNISM

An Editorial Overview

We have been through such periods of turmoil before. Aroused feelings and mounting tensions, hatred and violence and counter-violence and killing answered by killing and more killing... What makes it so extremely difficult to act nowadays is not the killing in itself - however sickening the daily news. It is the cloying cover of unbearably unconvincing sham and pretence, spread over the yawning gap of raw fear, hatred and bloodshed. The cheapening of words; terms, ideas that had once been taken seriously. The solemn pronouncements and ceremonies, which arouse no hope, nothing but a cynical shrug.

***

"History repeats itself. First as tragedy, second as farce," said Karl Marx - as if he had in mind President Bush and his Annapolis Conference. The colorful pageant of world and regional leaders, answering the imperial summons and duly attending at the hall of the US Naval Academy, failed to evoke the faintest chord among the people directly concerned. "Nothing will come of it" was the very sensible comment given by "the man (or woman) in the street" in Tel-Aviv and Ramallah alike. Sham upon sham upon sham. Originally, Annapolis was billed as "a concluding ceremony" where an Israeli-Palestinian agreement was supposed to be unveiled and formally signed. But there was no sign of any such agreement, and Annapolis merely "launched negotiations."

It was declared that an agreement would be signed until the end of George W. Bush's term - but Olmert soon amended: "Reaching an agreement in 2008 is desirable, but not a binding timetable." And moreover, a signed agreement would not be the same as an implemented agreement. Implementation would wait upon the Palestinians "dismantling the terrorist infrastructure." Until then, it would remain "a shelf agreement" (a term coined by FM Tzipi Livni). The negotiating teams were given a wide mandate: to discuss "honestly and thoroughly" all the "core issues" - Jerusalem, settlements, borders and refugees. However, a week before they were to meet for the first time, the Israeli Ministry of Housing announced the extension of a settlement in East Jerusalem - namely of Har Homa established in 1996 by Binyamin Netanyahu, in the teeth of a nearly unanimous condemnation by the UN General Assembly. Now, 300 new housing units would be erected - so as to widen "the Jewish wedge" driven between the East Jerusalem Arabs and their brethren in Bethlehem and Beit Sahour to the south. There was a major diplomatic row. Abu Mazen's emissaries walked out in anger, stating that it was useless to negotiate while Israel was unilaterally determining the result. The Europeans, the Egyptians and the UN made strong protests - and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a bit more muted one. Finally, Olmert met with Abu Mazen and agreed a compromise - the Palestinians would pass over the Har Homa construction, and Israel would initiate no further settlement construction. (Olmert's word was kept - for all of two and a half months.)

At the least, it now seems that Annapolis did not mark the foundation of a coalition to back an imminent war against Iran - which is what more than one radical group suspected ("Not a peace conference but a summit to prepare war!"). Perhaps Annapolis would have been just that, but for the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, published two weeks later, asserting "with high confidence" that Tehran had halted its nuclear weapons already in the Fall of 2003." What had seemed an unstoppable avalanche of a war drive was set far back, no longer likely to happen during Bush's term. Thank God for small mercies...

Survival without ratings

As all observers of the Israeli scene agree, Ehud Olmert is a master at the art of manipulating and navigating the murky depths of Israeli party politics (rather than at peace-making, or for that matter war-making). Olmert's participation at Annapolis reeked of a domestic agenda - as did his getting President Bush to pay a personal visit to the region, a month later. Ever since the Lebanese fiasco of mid-2006, Olmert's opinion poll results invariably gave a poor showing. For many months, he had persistent single-digit popularity ratings. Even the September 2007 bombing of a supposed Syrian nuclear reactor - officially never admitted, unofficially taken credit for and boasted about - only brought a very modest recovery.

By all polls, should elections take place, they would result in a Netanyahu victory. Olmert strives with all his might to keep his coalition together so that elections remain at their scheduled date, the safely distant November 2010. Binyamin Netanyahu and the Likud Party direct their efforts to detaching the more right-wing elements in the coalition, pointing to "Olmert's irresponsible concessions to the Arabs." These very accusations gained Olmert some support on his left flank, among peace-seekers willing to do everything to avert a Netanyahu comeback. All the more so when the racist demagogue Avigdor Lieberman departed the cabinet in a huff, loudly condemning Olmert's very willingness to negotiate on the "core issues." Olmert needed all the support he could get towards the publication of the Winograd Commission's final report on the conduct of the Second Lebanon War. An extra-parliamentary movement, spearheaded by reserve soldiers who had served in Lebanon and bereaved parents whose sons had fallen there, gathered momentum and prepared to pounce on Olmert, in what was billed a "non-partisan movement uniting the entire people - left, right and center - to get rid of the incompetent Olmert."

Israeli history provided a precedent - the 1974 protest movement that ended the careers of PM Golda Meir and Defence Minister Dayan following the Yom Kippur War. And moreover, the present Defence Minister, Labor Party leader Ehud Barak, had during the contest for the party leadership solemnly promised to take Labor out of the government "immediately following the publication of the Winograd Report." Netanyahu, expecting to ride to the ballot box on the crest of the wave, was willing even to embrace some arguments originally made by the anti-war movement. For example, that the land offensive launched at the very end of the 2006 Lebanon war, after the UN already resolved upon a cease-fire, was completely futile and useless, expending unnecessarily the lives of 33 soldiers.

It wasn't too difficult for Olmert to keep peace-seekers away from the incipient new mass movement. They were eager for the bait of the PM's dovish proclamations - at Annapolis, during Bush's visit to Jerusalem and in speeches and newspaper interviews. ("If we don't create an independent Palestinian state now, the world will demand that we give the vote to Arabs in the Territories, which would be the end of Zionism, of the Jewish state. If there is no Palestinian state, Israel is finished!") It worked. The radical Meretz KM Zehava Gal'on did vociferously attack Olmert, even at the cost of rubbing shoulders with extreme-rightists, but she was virtually alone among the notable leaders of what is accounted the Israeli Peace Camp. Others either stayed out of the Winograd game or backed Olmert, implicitly and sometimes explicitly. ("At least Olmert is saying some good things, though so far he has done little to implement them. Even that is more than can be said of either Netanyahu, or Barak").

Once published, The Winograd Report - while far from giving Olmert a clean bill of health - was ambiguous enough for the expert spin doctors of Olmert's bureau to present it as a victory. The small crowd of demonstrators seen on TV, hoarsely chanting "Olmert, Go Home!" looked like what they were - predominantly settler-friendly Religious Nationalists - leaving people in other parts of the spectrum with little inclination to join. Within a few days it was all over: the protest on the streets fizzled out before it could begin. Barak - to nobody's surprise - wriggled out of his promise and stayed on in the government and at the Ministry of Defence, even at the cost of losing some face. And Olmert actually gained some grudging respect for his political acumen and sheer talent for survival. Hardly anyone on the Left mourned the aborted anti-Olmert mass movement. But the whole affair increased, in all parts of Israeli society, the feeling of alienation, of a political establishment completely insulated from and uncaring about grassroots movements of all kinds - which wouldn't make it easier to mobilize people for future causes.

For his part, Olmert - having defused the crisis by securing his left flank - turned to the other direction. The remaining major threat was the possible defection of Rabbi Ovadyah Yosef's Shas Party, exposed to direct and indirect pressures by the settlers and their supporters. Olmert made quite clear that the Shas leaders could more or less name their price for staying on in the cabinet. Nothing loath, they came up with an impressive shopping list in various spheres: considerable sums to their school system and other religious institutions, including the revival under the party's control of the notoriously corrupt Ministry of Religious Affairs; increased welfare payments to poor families with many children, of which there are many in the Shas electorate; a law restricting access to pornographic sites on the Internet...

Shas, however, also demanded (and got) concessions directly connected with the Palestinians. With Rabbi Ovadyah declaring "We will leave the government if negotiations start on the Holy City of Jerusalem", Olmert announced that "Jerusalem will be the very last subject coming up in the negotiations" - which deprived the desultory talks with Abu Mazen's representatives of the little significance they may have had. To considerable derision, the negotiating teams resolved to set up a committee to deliberate on the modalities of operating border crossings between Israel and Palestine, leaving aside for the moment the question of precisely where that border will be demarcated...

Later on, Shas also demanded and got the "defreezing" of choice settlements construction projects - as it happened, mainly construction projects earmarked for the kind of impoverished ultra-religious people who are the Shas party's main electoral support. Now, it was the turn of the left to rage against Olmert's acts, while the right-wingers tacitly had to approve of them...

Survival without an economy

In November 2007, the International Committee of the Red Cross published a brochure entitled "Dignity Denied in the Palestinian Occupied Territories." The preface stated:

"In the Gaza Strip as well as in the West Bank, Palestinians continuously face hardship in simply going about their lives. They are prevented from doing what makes up the daily fabric of most people's existence. The Palestinian territories face a deep human crisis, where millions of people are denied their human dignity. Not once in a while, but every day. Nothing is predictable for Palestinians. Rules can change from one day to the next without notice or explanation. They live in an arbitrary environment, continuously adapting to circumstances they cannot influence and that increasingly reduce the range of their possibilities."

Similar reports (sometimes worded more sharply) are continually produced by human rights and humanitarian organizations - international, Israeli and Palestinian - as well as by representatives of countries on cordial good terms with the Israeli government. Recently, Condoleezza Rice made some remarks in this vein. The high-ranking dignitaries of the "Donor States" - who gathered in Paris for gala occasion, solemnly pledging no less than seven billion dollars "to bail out the Palestinian economy" - were also well aware of the situation depicted.

However much money is poured in, it is unlikely to fundamentally help an economy where travelling (or transporting goods) between one city and another is an unpredictable adventure, dependent on the considerations of senior Israeli officers placing a sudden roadblock on a well-travelled road, as well as on the mood and whims of the 19-year old Israeli corporal or sergeant on the spot. At the Paris conference, as on many previous and later occasions, the Israeli representatives promised to "improve the quality of daily Palestinian life" - but always with the proviso "subject to security considerations", which in effect nullifies all such promises.

Having long charged Palestinian leaders of being unable or unwilling to control the various militias and armed factions, Israeli leaders are increasingly seen to have a similar failing. The claim of being "The Only Democracy in the Middle East" is still a staple of Israeli propaganda - especially in the US. However, it is the generals and security chiefs who increasingly seem the true decision-makers, with the elected government reduced to being a mediator - and an often ineffective one - between them and the international community. On George W. Bush's visit to Ramallah - held under very tight security, since quite a few Palestinians seemed less than enthusiastic about this state visit by the President of the United States - he spoke about having "passed without hindrance" the Israeli roadblocks on the way from Jerusalem. (Not all of his listeners at Ramallah's Presidential Compound could produce the obligatory smile, considering the long waiting and harassment that even prominent Palestinians often endure at the same roadblocks.)

The American President could hold out no hope of a real change. On the contrary, he echoed the words he heard from Olmert and Barak on the previous evening, telling Palestinians that a change in the West Bank checkpoints must wait upon "an improvement in the security situation." It is not much different with regard to the "illegal" or "unauthorized" settlements outposts. "Illegal" even under Israeli law, since under International Law all settlements in occupied territory are illegal by definition; "unauthorized", since the settlers created them without authorization - which did not prevent the government from posting soldiers to protect them and from providing them water, electricity and all other amenities. There are at least 26 such outposts, though some reckon them at more than a hundred (depending who is doing the counting, and by exactly which criteria).

Israeli Prime Ministers and Defence Ministers have pledged to remove them (all the 26, at the very least), repeating and reiterating this pledge at numerous international gatherings and ever so many press conferences. In practice, some more outposts have been added and others have considerably grown. Nor is there any sign of Barak preparing the forces under his authority to undertake any operation to remove them and confront the wild bands of settler youths, who already proclaimed their intention to resist by force. Rather, Barak's aides have entered into a prolonged process of negotiations with the settler leadership in an effort to procure "an agreed evacuation of the outposts." Settler leader Pinchas Wallerstein told the radio what form such an agreement might take: "Well, we might agree to three or four outposts being moved to another location, provided that the others stay where they are and the whole outposts issue be considered closed, once and for all. And, of course, that we have no further restrictions on building anywhere in Judea and Samaria..."

The normally moderate writer A.B. Yehoshua was driven to call upon the Americans for an extreme action. "Does President Bush not realize that he is being made fun of? If he was to recall his ambassador from Tel Aviv and announce he would not be returned until the outposts had been dismantled, we would see some quick action." Which may well be so, except that Bush did not seem to contemplate any such action.

Still a third area of controversy are the Palestinian cities of the West Bank - which the Oslo Agreements had made into "A" areas, "under complete control of the Palestinian Authority's security forces", but which the Israeli Army reoccupied in April 2002 and on which the Israeli generals refuse ever since to relax their stranglehold. Every night, Israeli forces hold raids and capture "terrorist suspects" - or sometimes, shoot them to death since they had been "trying to escape" or "resisting arrest" or simply were "armed and dangerous." The Palestinians captured in such raids and hauled off to the Shabak Security Service's interrogation centers greatly outnumber those released in the "good will gestures to Abu Mazen" occasionally announced by Olmert.

When Israelis and Americans embarked a year ago on re-arming the PA's forces - with the almost openly proclaimed aim of getting them to embark on a civil war with the forces of Hamas - Abu Mazen entertained some hope that the deal would also include a restoration of the pre-2002 situation in the Palestinian cities. The Israeli generals and security chiefs, however, rejected the idea out of hand - both before and after the PA forces were thoroughly beaten in the struggle for control of the Gaza Strip. True, Abu Mazen was able to send several hundreds of his police into the city of Nablus. There, they conducted some operations against the local Hamas militias - which were highly controversial; and also some operations against what were described as "criminal gangs masquerading as resistance fighters" - which seem to have been welcome to many inhabitants. Thereupon, Israeli forces entered Nablus, imposed several days' curfew over the entire city and conducted house-to-house searches - all the while confining Abu Mazen's forces to barracks, on pain of being instantly shot down should they try to venture out. "Abu Mazen? He is a joke, a nothing. We are the only force propping him up. Should we withdraw from the cities, Hamas will sweep him and his men away, as they did in Gaza" was how General Gadi Shamni, commander of IDF forces on the West Bank, described the situation in a Knesset briefing.

The more that Israeli military officers and civil officials speak and behave in this way, the more true it becomes. Mahmud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, has never been a charismatic figure; but he heads Fatah, which led the Palestinian National Movement for four decades, and he had gotten an unquestioned popular mandate to replace the beloved Arafat, just three years ago. With every passing day, Abu Mazen now sinks deeper into the morass of being seen as - and of actually being - a collaborator with a brutal occupation. Abu Mazen's only hope is to achieve quickly something concrete: significant and clearly visible change in the situation on the ground, and/or a signed agreement with Israel which Palestinians at large would see as providing a real solution to their predicament and suffering. But the chance of getting either from Olmert and Barak, Bush and Rice, seems increasingly forlorn.

The tightening noose

It is difficult to determine precisely when did the Siege of Gaza start, since there were so many stages and intermediate steps since the 1990's - the separation becoming increasingly stringent concurrently with the Oslo Agreements, when the Israeli army withdrew from Gaza City, and later with Sharon's Disengagement when the Israeli settlements in the Strip were also evacuated. The tragedy of it all - or rather: the logic of occupation - is that all the changes in the end only made things worse, in Gaza and to a lesser extent also on the West Bank. After the mostly non-violent popular uprising (First Intifada) which earned the Palestinians worldwide sympathy, what Gazans actually got was isolation and deprivation. And the subsequent outbursts of violence, when frustration became too much, was met with collective punishment. Gradually, bitterness replaced hope in the occupied and the occupier societies, alike.

First, "measures had to be taken" because of knife-wielding Palestinians; then, it was the threat of suicide bombers; then, it was the missile-shooting militias whose actions were cited as the reason for the increasingly harsh collective punishment imposed on the Gaza Strip's million and half-strong population. Already impoverished and overcrowded to begin with, Gazans have become more numerous and far poorer and miserable as they were increasingly encircled and cut off from the outside world. Access to work in Israel, once a mainstay of the Gazan economy providing jobs to tens of thousands, was restricted, reduced to a trickle and cut off altogether. Nowadays, a Gazan could only get a permit to cross the Erez Checkpoint in an urgent case of a life-threatening disease (and not always then, either). The entrance of Israelis into the Strip was increasingly restricted, and then forbidden altogether "for their own safety." For some years, an exception was made for Israeli journalists going to cover Gaza events; then their entrance, too, was forbidden. The entrance of foreigners was restricted to Representatives of Recognized Humanitarian Organizations and the number of organizations on the list of such "recognized" organizations steadily reduced.

Israeli gunboats patrolling off the Gazan shore strictly forbade Gazan fishermen from going more than two or three kilometers into the Mediterranean, any boat venturing further being suspected of arms-smuggling and harshly treated. Work on Gaza's own seaport - the prestige project of the Oslo years, which was supposed to create thousands of jobs - has been halted before it has fairly begun. And the Gaza International Airport near Rafah, which had been ceremoniously opened by President Clinton, was long since closed down - its runways thoroughly ploughed up by Israeli army bulldozers.

Still, up to mid-2006, Gaza's border crossings with Egypt - over which Israel had no control in theory, though quite a bit in practice - were open, at least for a large part of the time. Also, there was no lack of consumer goods (at least, for those who could afford to buy them). The situation rapidly deteriorated after the armed confrontation of June 2006, which the American and Israeli governments intended to end with the crushing of Hamas - but in which it was the Fatah forces under Muhammad Dahlan who were pulverized and driven out, leaving the Hamas government headed by Ismail Haniya in control. The Rafah Border Crossing has remained closed ever since - with the Egyptians (and the Europeans observers) falling in with the Israeli and American boycott and declaring their unwillingness to recognize the Hamas Government or admit its forces to the crossing.

The Gaza Strip has become completely encircled, with no opening left on any side, and virtually no one allowed in or out. And the government of Israel moved to tighten the noose, steadily reducing the number and quantity of goods allowed in. Calls for going further and cutting off the supplies of electricity and water were constantly made - not only by the right-wing opposition, but also by prominent members of the ruling coalition, such as Minister Without Portfolio Haim Ramon, Olmert's close helper and confidant. Government speakers reiterated that "Israel will not allow a humanitarian crisis to develop." However, extreme hardship falling short of mass starvation was deemed acceptable and indeed desirable, in the cause of stopping the shooting of missiles at Israeli border communities as well as destabilizing and overthrowing the Hamas Government. But the mounting hardships imposed on the Gaza population seemed to have the opposite result - an increase in both the shooting of missiles and the Hamas Government's resilience.

The war of words

As on very many other issues in the course of the century-old conflict, the Israeli "narrative" and the Palestinian one are completely divergent and contradictory with regard to how and why the shooting of Qassam missiles started.

As seen by most Israelis - including quite a few who consider(ed) themselves part of the Peace Camp - Israel in 2005 exhibited an unmatched generosity, evacuating its military forces and settlers from all of the Gaza Strip's territory and leaving the Palestinians the option of making the Strip into "a flourishing garden." "The Palestinians", however, "responded by wantonly shooting missiles across the border" - thus proving in the eyes of said Israelis the essential malevolence of the Palestinians as a whole, and the inability to ever reach an agreement with them. (Or the somewhat more liberal variation: it might be possible, but not with Islamic parties and militias.)

Palestinians - even the considerable number who regard the shooting of missiles a wrong and harmful strategy - point out that Israel had never truly "disengaged" from Gaza.

Also, in Israel it is virtually never mentioned that the missile attacks from the Gaza Strip upon Israel had started in retaliation for West Bank Palestinians killed in the ongoing army raids. At least to begin with, every Gazan missile launching was an explicit retaliation for a specific killing on the West Bank. However it is considered to have started, by the beginning of 2007 the fighting in and around the Gaza Strip had settled into a sort of lethal routine. Virtually every day saw a "drizzle" (as Israeli inhabitants came to call it) of two or three missiles, shot at the town of Sderot and some Kibbutzim in the immediate vicinity of the Gaza Strip.

The Qassams in most cases caused no physical harm, often landing in empty fields, but also could not be ignored. The tension of the daily air raid alarms greatly traumatized the population, especially the children - and the plight of Sderot became a major issue in the Israeli media. Hamas usually refrained from shooting missiles itself, though tacitly allowing smaller militias - such as the Islamic Jihad or the Popular Resistance Committees - to go ahead with it.

The Israeli side of the routine fighting included constant air raids on Gaza, plus ground "incursions" penetrating more than a kilometer into the Strip and the creation of a "no-go zone" on the Palestinian side of the perimeter fence, where any venturing Palestinian might be killed out of hand. The cumulative effect amounted to some two or three dead Palestinians per day - some of them armed militants, some unarmed civilians "who were in the wrong place in the wrong time." (The traumatizing effect that this had on the children of Gaza was, of course, not a topic in the Israeli media.)

On days which were considered "exceptional" - i.e., when an Israeli was killed or seriously wounded, or when the number of Palestinians killed on a single day exceeded five - the side feeling aggrieved felt the need to mount an impressive retaliation: Israeli battalions of infantry and tanks charging deep into the densely built-up areas of Gaza, killing and destroying; spectacular salvos of thirty or forty missiles in a single hour, bringing Hamas' own batteries into play. After a few days of mounting bloodshed, retaliation and counter-retaliation, there would be a de-escalation and a return to the deadly "routine."

In January, a variation was introduced by Defence Minister Barak, with the declared aim of "changing the rules of the game." An army raid into Gaza had claimed 19 Palestinian lives on a single day, and was as usual answered by a salvo of Palestinian missiles (in which nobody was killed, though there was damage to property). Thereupon, Barak ordered the complete closure of all passages into Gaza and the cutting off of even the most vital of supplies.

First to feel the burnt was the Palestinian power station of Gaza, supplying some 30% of the Strip's needs, and whose supplies of fuel were stopped. Thereupon, TV screens all over the world were filled with footage of Gazan children marching with candles through darkened streets and ministers of the Hamas-led Palestinian cabinet holding an emergency meeting by candlelight.

Israeli governmental speakers were quick to decry the Gazan "Candle Children" as "a sham and lying propaganda show" - since "Gaza still had a lot a electricity." There may have been some truth in this - but it was a highly effective "show." (All the more so since the international media had files bulging with quotations of Israeli politicians explicitly threatening "to plunge Gaza into total darkness").

About a week later, Barak - together with the entire government and high command of the army - was surprised and staggered by the sudden breaking of the border fence between the Gaza Strip and Egypt - "The Mother of all Shows" or "The Largest Prison Break in History", to quote only two of the numerous epithets for the event which nearly monopolized the headlines during the following two weeks.

Fall and rise of the wall

It was not quite a spontaneous event. As it turned out, militants had months in advance placed explosive charges under the eight-metre high wall, erected at considerable expense by Israel all along the Gaza-Egypt border before the army evacuated the area, with the strident demand (hitherto heeded) that it be kept standing.

Barak's order to close the passages completely and threaten Gaza with total strangulation provided the final trigger. The walls were blown up late in the night, and the early morning already saw tens of thousands of Gazans flowing inexorably across the suddenly open border - a scene that invited the obvious comparison with the breaking of the Berlin Wall. There was no mistaking the widespread euphoria, visible on every one of the countless photos disseminated within hours all over the world. Also the shared happiness of Egyptian civilians on the other side of the border - and not only because the shopping spree of famished Gazans provided a moment of unmatched prosperity to the merchants of the normally sleepy Egyptian Rafah, and the popularity of Hamas mounted, in Gaza and far beyond.

To some degree, the Gazan exhilaration also touched upon the communities on the Israeli side of the border, which experienced an immediate sharp plunge in the number of missile attacks. (This remained the case for the entire period when the Rafah border was open). Unlike Berliners in 1989, however, Gazans entertained few illusions that the new situation would remain in existence. Anyone who had money at all went into Egypt, bought and bought and bought all they could lay hands on. And indeed, soon there came reports of Egyptian police converging on the breached border, clashing with the Palestinians who tried to keep it open a bit longer.

The regime of President Hosni Mubarak had been under pressure - from Israel, from the US, to some degree even from the Europeans - to reseal the border. And anyway, Mubarak was far from happy at having an open border where anyone could go in or out unchecked. (Even before 1967, when Egypt ruled the Gaza Strip, it never allowed Gazans an unimpeded access to its territory). But a move against the Gazans would be extremely unpopular as the Palestinian masses breaking out of the siege was extremely popular among the masses throughout the Arab World - including in Egypt.

In fact, there were those in the Israeli political and military establishment who saw an opportunity to "throw the Gazans upon the Egyptians": Keep Gaza's passages to Egypt open while those with Israel remain closed, charging Egypt with the exclusive responsibility for the Gazans' needs - thus cutting off any remaining contact between the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Palestinians started to feel that they may have fallen into a subtle trap. But soon, an opposite Israeli establishment faction came to the fore - stridently warning that Palestinian militias were using the open border to smuggle advanced weapons into the Strip. (Before the breaking of the Rafah wall, the same people had charged that the border was "porous with smugglers' tunnels" and that arms were getting into Gaza this way).

It was further charged that armed assailants were using the open border in order to infiltrate into Israel via the Sinai Desert. A sudden suicide bombing in the Negev town of Dimona, claiming the lives of two Israelis, seemed to clinch the argument (until it turned out that the assailants had in fact come from the West Bank). Still, pressure on the Egyptians mounted, and the border was re-sealed two weeks after its dramatic opening - once again closing the siege. Gazans were left to consume the stores they had accumulated and wait upon an Egyptian promise to negotiate with Hamas on "reopening the Rafah Crossing in a formal and regulated way."

With the siege back in place, the cross-border routine of shooting and retaliation and counter-retaliation was also resumed. Osher Twito - the eight-year old Sderot child who lost a leg in a direct hit - was days-long in every headline. Barak openly threatened to have the Hamas leaders - including Prime Minister Haniya - assassinated in targeted aerial attacks. Haniya and his fellows went into hiding, amid speculations about an imminent "Grand Ground Operation" for total Israeli reconquest of Gaza.

However, suddenly and unexpectedly, it was Hizbullah which was targeted - Israel's enemy on the northern flank. Imad Mughnia, accounted "Hizbullah's Number 2" was assassinated in a mysterious explosion in the Syrian capital Damascus. As on previous occasions, the Olmert government officially denied all responsibility while informally boasting of "settling accounts with an arch-terrorist." The Israeli media converged on the case referring to Mughnia as the mastermind behind a list of heinous bloody attacks in the 1980s and 1990s, among them against the Jewish Community Center and Israeli Embassy in Argentina. The Israeli and American governments agreed that "whoever killed Mughnia, the world is a better place without him."

Mughnia was buried at a mass funeral at Beirut, and Israeli diplomatic representatives around the world were ordered to brace themselves for the imminent revenge. All in all, attention had shifted away from the Gaza Strip and tensions eased - for a while.

Winner takes nothing

"Gasoline stores in Gaza dried out completely" stated a terse headline. "If they shoot missiles, let them walk" remarked Prime Minister Olmert. In Gaza, the price of donkeys rose. Gazan organizations (not precisely Hamas, though the media blurred the difference) issued a call for a mass march and non-violent human chain all along the border with Israel. After the recent Rafah events there was in Israel widespread apprehension. The possible breaking of the border by a Palestinian crowd - even if unarmed - was declared "an intolerable threat."

TV was invited to the border area, to take footage of soldiers preparing machine gun positions pointing at the Gaza border "in case that tear gas and water cannon would prove not enough to stop the charging Palestinians." Some reports mentioned the possibility of using even artillery as "a means of crowd control." Defence Minister Barak and Foreign Minister Livni published a dramatic communiquי, placing in advance "the full responsibility for any bloodshed" upon "Hamas, and Hamas only."

While Israel had shown itself vulnerable and easily panicking, the event seemed an anti-climax: turnout fell short of the promised 40,000, and those who did come simply stood in an orderly line parallel to the border, holding hands and waving "End the Siege" signs in English and Arabic. The Israeli media dismissed the Palestinian effort as "a fiasco" and quickly forgot about it. Decision-makers were spared the inconvenience of offering explanations for shooting at an unarmed crowd of civilians, and went back to normal - promptly ordering the "liquidation" by an Israeli plane of five senior Hamas men travelling in a car.

As expected, there was a retaliatory salvo of missiles out of Gaza. This time, however, Hamas demonstrated its possession of improved rockets, the "Grad" - able to hit the hitherto almost unscathed Israeli town of Ashkelon, with 120,000 inhabitants (as compared with 20,000 in Sderot, the main target of Palestinian missile attacks). On the following day, Israeli forces in far greater numbers than hitherto deployed staged an massive invasion of the Jebalya Refugee Camp.

Jebalya: a large-scale warren of small alleys, with countless impoverished families eking out a very miserable existence and countless militants of small and large militias, members of the same families, holed out everywhere and shooting from their hiding places - however ineffectively when wielding light weapons against dozens of tanks and armored vehicles. The only way for the Israeli forces to carry out their mission - as those who ordered it knew full well in advance - was to smash and destroy buildings and entire streets as they advanced, and direct torrents of hellfire at any source of real or suspected resistance.

Judging by the "body count" it was, indeed, an Israeli victory. The invading forces lost two soldiers, killed when they ventured out of the cover of an armored vehicle in the early stages, while they inflicted 120 deaths on the Palestinians in the course of four days - 70 of them on Saturday, March 1, the most bloody single day in the Palestinian Territories in more than 40 years of occupation. The ratio of armed militants to unarmed civilians among the dead, and of how many among them were children, became immediately the source of fierce controversy, which is not likely to be ever conclusively resolved.

"Body Count" apart, modern wars are often won on TV screens rather than in the field. Soon, the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem was flooded with desperate calls from embattled Israeli diplomats around the globe, warning of "a propaganda disaster" and reporting condemnations and expressions of "grave concern" by their host governments. The West Bank erupted in violent protests and clashes of Palestinian youths with Israeli soldiers, reminiscent of the outbreak of the two intifadas - and similar scenes were seen in East Jerusalem, long considered to have been "pacified." Abu Mazen saw no choice but to suspend his negotiations with Olmert, "in protest at the Israeli crimes in Gaza." A few days later, an armed Palestinian from East Jerusalem broke into a religious academy (yeshiva) in Jerusalem and shot down eight young students; Israeli media did its best to deny any connection between this brutal act and what had occurred in Gaza in the previous week.

It was at this juncture that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in the region, on what had been intended as "a routine visit." To judge from what occurred then, even a lame-duck President and a Secretary of State nearing the end of an undistinguished career could still pull some weight, if they really put their minds to it. It is a fact that Israeli forces were immediately pulled out of the Strip, and have not (up to the time of writing) gone back in.

The long-stalled Egyptian mediation efforts suddenly gained momentum, with the aim of achieving a "package deal" including a lasting cease-fire, an opening of the Rafah Crossing and end to the siege, as well as the long-delayed exchange of captured Israeli soldier Gile'ad Shalit for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Several days passed without any missiles being fired out of the Gaza Strip, and even after Israeli undercover agents in Bethlehem shot down four Palestinian militants at Bethlehem, the Palestinian retaliatory shooting of missiles fizzled out after one day and did not proceed into a major new conflagration. Barak, however, categorically denied that any ceasefire was signed, officially or unofficially, or was being sought - and he darkly declared: "The worst escalation is still ahead of us."

Where to go from here?

The futility of it all is increasingly evident: of negotiations for an agreement that is unlikely to be implemented (if signed at all); of fighting a bloody war in which conclusive victory is just as unlikely. Former Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer - head of a considerable Labor Party faction and (for the moment) an ally of Barak - is the most prominent of those who see a way out of the impasse by releasing Marwan Barghouti, presently serving five cumulative life imprisonments in an Israeli prison. Barghouti, who also from his prison cell plays a central role in Palestinian politics, seems the only Fatah leader capable of rebuilding the party's mass base of support. But even he cannot do that without getting significant Israeli concessions. Failing that, Barghouti - to avoid being seen as a collaborator and/or actually becoming one - would have to embark on a militant struggle, which might get him back in prison - or dead.

For its part, the IDF Military Intelligence recommended a way out of the impasse by a shift of the diplomatic effort towards a deal with Syria. Offering the return of the occupied Golan Heights in return for peace and the severing of Syria's ties with Iran, so the generals argue, would strategically weaken both Hizbullah and Hamas and deprive them of much of the aid they at present get. However, Syria would not fall in with any such plan without exacting a carefully calculated price. Leaks in the Arab media mention an Israeli-Syrian meeting which was supposedly due to take place at Istanbul under Turkish mediation - but which was cancelled when news arrived of the Gaza bloodbath.

Though not always in the best of terms with the Palestinians, Syria would clearly not leave Israel a free hand to crush them, and a ceasefire in Gaza seems an indispensable prerequisite also for making a headway with Damascus. Increasingly, politicians and generals talk of the need to take one of two clear-cut ways: an unambiguous, lasting ceasefire with Hamas, followed by the Islamists' direct or indirect inclusion in the negotiations process - or alternately, an all-out war to conquer and re-occupy the Gaza Strip, accepting the huge price in death and destruction (and the loss of any Palestinian partner for the foreseeable future).

Ehud Olmert, however, seems far from ready to taking any such decisions. If it is up to him we head for many more months of dithering and ineffective measures, one indecisive move followed by another in a zigzagging medley. Such tactics cannot, however, last indefinitely - if only because further dithering would most likely result in the demise of Abu Mazen, very likely entailing the final collapse of the weakened and discredited Palestinian Authority itself. Indeed, an increasing number of Palestinians are advocating just that - having come to regard the PA as a liability for their national cause, the sad and futile remnant of a failed hope.

The discrediting of diplomacy

For decades, Middle East peace-making was dominated by a single, clear-cut paradigm: the leaders of both warring sides dramatically presenting themselves before hundreds of TV cameras, and under the aegis of the President of the United States shaking hands and vowing "No more war, no more bloodshed." Afterwards, they would supposedly walk hand in hand towards the dawn of a new day of peace and plenty, and a well-deserved Nobel Peace Prize.

To a considerable degree, we too played this game. We were, indeed, an important and sometimes indispensable part of it. Hundreds of thousands gathered in Tel Aviv's main square, to raise an euphoric cheer when Anwar Sadat of Egypt broke through decades of psychological barriers to speak from the Knesset podium and stand with Begin and Carter at Camp David. The same hundreds of thousands turned out to the same square in mounting anger and frustration, feeling bitterly betrayed when Begin turned from televised ceremonies to intensive settlement construction and the bloody invasion of Lebanon, culminating with the carnage of Sabra and Shatila.

Yitzchak Rabin went the opposite route: the hated breaker of Palestinian bones during the First Intifada became the hailed breaker of taboos who shook Arafat's hand on the White House lawn. Finally, he was apotheosed into a glorious and impeccable martyr, the very pattern and example against whom all would-be peacemakers are measured. To be sure, most candidates are found sadly wanting - but sooner or later, a worthy successor would take up Rabin's mantle and complete the dead hero's lifework - so, at least, the speakers promise every November from the Memorial Rally podium.

Such had once been the appeal that enabled Peace Now to get masses of supporters into the street, which gave Meretz an electoral prominence and made the Labor Doves a powerful faction. Even more radical groups, conducting highly controversial and sometimes downright illegal dialogue with "terrorists", fully hoped and expected to thereby facilitate eventual formal negotiations by fully authorized government representatives.

But the Camp David fiasco of 2000 deeply discredited this model of peace making. The people were promised "the historic agreement to top all historic agreements", neatly tying up all loose ends left over from earlier occasions - and by all opinion polls they were willing to give such an agreement their massive support. Instead, the people of Israel were presented with a flood of denunciations of the treacherous Palestinians, who had "rejected Barak's generous offers" and were solely and entirely to blame for the hellish cycle of violence and bloodshed that followed. (Until today, Peace Now and Meretz have not recovered from that blow, steadily losing extraparliamentary and electoral support, respectively.)

For a time, the mirage of "unilateralism" and "disengagement" were presented as an alternative - Israel alone (or in consultation with Washington) would determine which piece of territory to relinquish and which to keep, and how much control to continue exercising where it had supposedly withdrawn. Yet this model did not work either, judging from the bitter results of the Gaza "Disengagement", and further by Olmert's fiasco in Lebanon - from where Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2000.

When exhumed at Annapolis, the old model universally got skeptical to cynical reactions, failing to arouse even a trace of the old enthusiasm. Should Olmert's negotiators, against all odds, achieve an agreement with Abu Mazen's, wary and weary people might still support it. But they are very unlikely to come out into the streets to cheer and speed on a process in which they place so little confidence or hope.

For peace activists the marathon struggle is far from over. The question after all those years: how to keep oneself going, expecting no dramatic results, yet never losing sight of the ultimate goal. Senior activists take inspiration from and join hands with the group of young people known as Anarchists Against Walls. Among the forces opposing occupation and oppression, it is those young who set an example of courage and determination. By their most basic ethos and view of the world, the last source from which Anarchists would seek salvation are meetings between heads of state where formal diplomatic agreements and accords are ceremoniously signed. Three years of constant struggle at Bil'in Village, in which Israeli Anarchists have taken part alongside Palestinian villagers, have produced no more of a concrete result than a court order to move the Separation Fence half a kilometer westwards. An order that the army is in no hurry to implement (and the judges in no hurry to enforce).

Still, this mode of struggle is spreading to other villages, and the long term implications of grassroots partnership as a model of non-violent struggle creates a rare ray of hope - where governments and diplomats prove so impotent in putting an end to the misery of Israelis and Palestinians.

The Editors