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"Starting this war was
a scandal...It was possible to solve the problem of the missiles
in South Lebanon by diplomatic meansThe offensive of the last
two days of the war, in which 33 soldiers were killed after the
cease-fire resolution had already been accepted, was a spin of
the Prime MinisterThe Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense
and the Chief-of-Staff must resign"
Right, it was Gush Shalom,
the Israeli peace group.
But that's not new. What is
new is that yesterday, the former Chief-of-Staff, Moshe Ya'alon,
repeated these statements, almost word for word.
"Bogie" Ya'alon is
the very opposite of Gush Shalom. Nobody could say that he belongs
to a "marginal group". He comes from the very center
of the establishment. He is a Rightist. He was responsible for
some of the most cruel acts of the occupation.
There is another difference:
Gush Shalom spoke out when the events were actually happening,
in the midst of the war, when it was still possible to save the
lives of those 33 soldiers. At that time, these statements were
unpopular in the extreme, bordering on treason. Because no Israeli
medium was prepared to publish them, the Gush had to pay for
them as advertisements. Now Ya'alon comes and repeats them, after
the wind has changed and they have become popular.
Ya'alon's motives are not important.
(As will be remembered, Ariel Sharon removed him from office
and replaced him with Dan Halutz a year ago, in order to ease
the way for the "Disengagement"). What is important
is that the things have now been said by a person with supreme
military credentials. When such a person declares that 33 soldiers
were sacrificed for no military purpose, for the personal interests
of Ehud Olmert, that the war itself was quite unnecessary, and
that the problem of Hizbullah's rockets could have been solved
by diplomatic means - these things carry weight.
This is not important only
in regard to what happened a few weeks ago, when the leadership
spoke of a terrible danger looming on our northern border, but
even more so today, when the same leadership is warning of an
even more acute "threat" somewhere else.
* *
*
IN THE corridors of power in
Jerusalem the cry is going up: "Help! Peace is upon you,
Israel!"
A terrible enemy is conspiring
to impose peace on us. He is advancing against us from two sides,
in a giant pincer movement.
One arm of this offensive is
the Palestinian Unity Government that is about to be set up.
The other is the decision of
the Arab League to revive the Arab Peace Plan.
From the point of view of the
Government of Israel, this offensive is far more dangerous then
all of Hassan Nasrallah's rockets put together.
* *
*
THE PALESTINIAN Government
of National Unity is designed to solve, first of all, domestic
Palestinian problems.
Since the Palestinians elected
Hamas, a state of anarchy has prevailed on the Palestinian street.
The constant clashes between the President, who is the head of
Fatah, and the Prime Minister, who belongs to Hamas, have created
a state of paralysis, just when the Palestinian people need unity
in the face of existential challenges.
Fatah has dominated the modern
Palestinian national movement since its foundation by Yasser
Arafat almost 50 years ago. It is not resigned to defeat. But
a people fighting for its very existence cannot allow its two
main factions to fight against each other, instead of cooperating
in the struggle for national liberation.
To this must be added the blockade
imposed on the Palestinian Authority by Europe and America, by
order of President Bush. This is an unprecedented attempt to
literally starve a whole people into removing its democratically
elected government.
The National Unity Government
is designed to restore public order and to break the international
blockade.
For this to happen, the government
must circumvent several obstacles. For religious reasons, it
is difficult for Hamas to recognize Israel officially. This has
nothing to do with anti-Semitism, as alleged, but with the fact
that according to Islam, Palestine is a "Waqf" (religious
endowment) belonging to Allah (similar to the Jewish fundamentalists'
belief that God has promised us the country, so that giving away
any part of it is a mortal sin.) But the Muslim religion opens
a back door here by allowing for a long-term "hudnah"
(truce) that can last for decades or even centuries.
The way to solve this problem
is to get the Unity Government, headed by Hamas, to declare that
it is committed to the "prisoners' document", the UN
resolutions, the agreements signed between Israel and the PLO
and the Arab peace plan - all of which are based on the recognition
of Israel. That should suffice for anybody who really wants to
promote Israeli-Palestinian peace.
As far as our government is
concerned, there precisely is the rub.
* * *
THE SECOND arm of the peace
offensive is the renewal of the Arab Peace Plan.
This plan was originally devised
by Abdallah, then the Crown Prince and now the King of Saudi
Arabia. It was adopted by the summit meeting of the Arab heads
of state in Beirut in March 2002.
This plan says, roughly: the
entire Arab world will recognize Israel and make peace with it,
if it withdraws to the 1967 borders and makes it possible to
establish the State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its
capital.
The government of Israel has
rejected the initiative, as the Hebrew expression goes, "on
the threshold" (every peace initiative is rejected "on
the threshold", so as not to allow it, God forbid, to put
a foot in the door.) The plan was consigned to a pigeon hole
and has been collecting dust ever since. Now the evil Arabs have
decided to dust it off and slap it back on the table.
* * *
AGAINST THIS danger of the
Arab peacemongers, the Olmert government is calling up all its
forces. In spite of the fact the entire political and military
leadership is now busy fighting for its survival after the Lebanon
fiasco, it is uniting in the face of this frightening menace.
Tzipi Livni was sent head over
heels to the United States, in order to avert the danger. She
went to convince President Bush (who happened to "pass"
the room when she was talking with Condoleezza Rice and who calls
her "Tsiffi") to use the deadly American veto against
any Security Council resolution that might support peace. She
is going to meet with some 20 heads of governments and foreign
ministers to enlist their support against this menace.
For this, she took down from
the Foreign Office attic a diplomatic rag called "the Road
Map". It has never even entered the mind of the Israeli
government to carry out this agreement, whose sole purpose was,
right from the beginning, to create the impression that President
Bush has achieved something in the Middle East. From its inception,
all the parties knew that this was a document that cannot be
implemented.
Israel and the US will, therefore,
declare that the Arab peace plan is damaging peace, because it
contradicts the Road Map. The Palestinian unity government, when
it is set up, must be boycotted, because it does not explicitly
state that all its members recognize the State of Israel (as
if all the members of the Israeli government were prepared to
recognize the State of Palestine and its government, not to mention
foreswearing violence and accepting all the existing agreements.)
Therefore, the blockade of the Palestinian population must go
on, until it sinks to its knees.
* * *
WHY DOES the peace offensive
frighten the Israeli government?
If somebody had come to us
on June 4, 1967, and told us that the entire Arab world was ready
to make peace with us within the borders existing on that day,
and that the Palestinian leadership, too, was prepared to declare
an end to the historic conflict, we would have felt that the
Messiah had come.
But on June 5, 1967, we started
a war that changed everything. We were soon in control of the
whole of Palestine and huge additional territories. We declared
that we were holding them temporarily in order to trade them
in, but, as is well known, appetite comes with eating. We started
to annex territories (East Jerusalem with its surroundings and
the Golan Heights), and to cover the West Bank with settlements.
In the eyes of the Israeli
leadership, the peace initiative - any peace initiative - is
nothing but an evil conspiracy of the peacemongers to rob us
of these territories. It would compel us to put an end to the
settlement enterprise - which has not stopped for a moment since
1968, and which is even now in full swing - and to dismantle
the existing settlements.
The pincer movement of the
peacemongers could gather momentum and generate international
pressure that would be difficult to withstand. That's the reason
for the panic in Jerusalem.
* *
*
THE ARAB peace initiative could
be successful if it puts in front of the Israeli public the straight
and unequivocal choice: peace without the occupied territories
- or the occupied territories without peace.
After six major wars and several
minor ones, we may be inclined to suspect that the price in blood
and money is too heavy, and - more importantly - that it does
not bring victory, but multiplies the burdens on Israeli society.
In the six years of folly between
the 1967 and the 1973 wars, Moshe Dayan coined the phrase: "Better
Sharm al-Sheikh (on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula)
without peace than peace without Sharm al-Sheikh!"
Such slogans cost the lives
of some 2700 Israeli soldiers (and who knows how many Egyptians
and Syrians) in the Yom Kippur war. Afterwards we returned Sharm
al-Sheikh and all of Sinai and got peace with Egypt. Dayan himself
played a role in achieving this peace.
How many soldiers and civilians,
Israeli and Arab, must die before we finally understand that
peace with the Palestinian people and the entire Arab world is
immeasurably more important to Israel than trying to hang on
to the occupied territories and the settlements?
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
