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PERES HIMSELF SHUDDERS OVER WAR CRIMES
AND EVIL, MADE IN ISRAEL
MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 12/19/2001: Shimon Peres
ought to know. This is hardly the first time the Israelis have been caught at what
for most of the world deserve to be categorized as "war crimes." And for every time
they have been caught there are ever so many other times that the dastardly things
they have done have been successfully hidden from view, so far that is.
Peres himself was the temporary Prime Minister responsible for ordering and
attempted to cover-up the horrendous Qana massacre just a few years ago (see
http://www.middleeast.org/archives/qana.htm). Today he serves a Prime Minister with a
lenghthy history of war crimes charges leveled against him personally. There are in
fact many blood-curdling "incidents" sprinkled throughout the history of Israel's
military occupation of the Palestinian people, many of which Peres knows about but the
rest of us don't, so far that is. For the moment we'll mention just one more major
one -- the "Shin Bet scandal" of 1984 -- the one which lead to the Israelis
themselves trying to change the fact that they are, or were depending on your
perspective, the only "Western" and "democratic" country in the world where brutal
torture was, is, actually legal.
ISRAELI DEATH SQUAD DISARMED MEN AND SHOT THEM
By Phil Reeves in Salfit, West Bank
[The Independent, 15 December 2001]: The Israeli Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, says
some of his government's military strikes against the Palestinians make him "shudder".
Mr Peres would have had good reason to shudder yesterday, had he listened to the
testimonies of the residents of Salfit. They described in detail how an Israeli
undercover death squad arrived in the West Bank town in a pre-dawn raid and shot two
young policemen at close range as they lay unarmed on the ground.
The Israeli soldiers, dressed in black, spoke Arabic so fluently that Iman Herzala
who heard them talking in the street outside her house at first wondered whether
they were Palestinian forces taking part in a training exercise. But that was before
she saw the executions, less than 100 yards from her front door.
Residents had scraped earth over the spot, but yesterday afternoon patches of blood
were visible. A low wall bore the marks of several bullets.
Looking hollow-eyed and distressed, Mrs Herzala, 37, who has six children, described
the last moments of Dia Nabil Mahmoud, 19, and Abdul Ashour, 22.
They were among seven people to be killed by the Israelis yesterday in raids on more
than four communities in the occupied territories as Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime
Minister, increased his military pressure on the Palestinians. At the same time,
Israeli tanks and bulldozers carried out their biggest housing demolition of the
intifada at Khan Younis in the Gaza strip, knocking down 35 houses and making 345
people homeless.
Mr Mahmoud a member of Yasser Arafat's Force 17 security force and Mr Ashour, from
Palestinian military intelligence, were shot in the early stages of the Israeli raid
in which tanks and bulldozers, backed by helicopters, came thundering into the
Palestinian-run town of 10,000 near Nablus at around 2am.
Mrs Herzala said: "The two boys came and knocked on my door, and told me that the
Israelis were invading the town. I opened the door and asked them to come inside, but
they refused and went on walking up the street. The
Israeli soldiers came up to them and asked them to put down their weapons they only
had one and put their hands behind their backs.
"They put down the gun. The Israelis asked them to lie on the ground, which they did.
Then they started shooting them with machine-guns."
She said she watched the scene illuminated by the light of the soldiers' torches
by peering out of her front door. At the same time, Khadiji al-Fataj, 61, was looking
down at the spot where the execution took place from the window of her home, a few
doors from Mrs Herzala's. She said: "I heard soldiers asking the policemen to stop and
lie down. One was on one side of the road, and one on the other. I saw them being
shot."
Yesterday afternoon, as the women told their stories, Mr Mahmoud's father sat close by
the spot, dazed and exhausted. "He was just a child. If you look at his picture, you
can see that," he said.
The Israeli armed forces said the Salfit raid was in response to "murderous terrorist
attacks" in the area. The wording of their official explanation was suspiciously
vague: Israeli soldiers came on "armed Palestinians who came out of targets for
detention. They stormed the terrorists and killed them."
Mr Sharon has moved military operations into a higher gear. Yesterday's operations
were aimed at Fatah, the mainstream organisation headed by Yasser Arafat. The six
people killed in Salfit were all part of Mr Arafat's
security apparatus. Three homes were destroyed, all belonging to Fatah members.
Mr Sharon is bludgeoning the rickety structure of the Palestinian Authority,
liquidating its police and attacking the middle-ground pro-Arafat leadership. But
there is dissent in the government ranks.
Mr Peres told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that Mr Sharon's decision to shun
the Palestinian Authority was short-sighted. Mr Peres reportedly said: "I asked him
[Sharon], 'Suppose Arafat disappears, what will happen then?'"
EVIL UNLEASHED
By Professor Tanya Reinhart*
In mainstream political discourse, Israel's recent atrocities are described as
'retaliatory acts' - answering the last wave of terror attacks on Israeli civilians.
But in fact, this 'retaliation' had been carefully prepared long before. Already in
October 2000, at the outset of the Palestinian uprising, military circles were ready
with detailed operative plans to topple Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. This was
before the Palestinian terror attacks started. (The first attack on Israeli civilians
was on November 3, 2000, in a market in Jerusalem). A document prepared by the
security services, at the request of then PM Barak, stated on October 15, 2000 that
"Arafat, the person, is a severe threat to the security of the state [of Israel] and
the damage which will result from his disappearance is less than the damage caused by
his existence". (Details of the document were published in Ma'ariv, July 6, 2001.) The
operative plan, known as 'Fields of Thorns' had been prepared back in 1996, and was
then updated during the Intifada. (Amir Oren, Ha'aretz, Nov. 23, 2001). The plan
includes everything that Israel has been executing lately, and more.(1)
The political echelon for its part (Barak's circles), worked on preparing public
opinion to the toppling of Arafat. On November 20, 2000, Nahman Shai, then
public-affairs coordinator of the Barak Government, released in a meeting with the
press, a 60 page document titled "Palestinian Authority non-compliance...A record of
bad faith and misconduct", The document, informally referred to as the "White Book",
was prepared by Barak's aid, Danny Yatom.(2) According to the "White Book", Arafat's
present crime - "orchestrating the Intifada", is just the last in a long chain of
proofs that he has never deserted the "option of violence and 'struggle'". "As early
as Arafat's own speech on the White House lawn, on September 13, 1993, there were
indications that for him, the D.O.P. [declaration of principles] did not necessarily
signify an end to the conflict. He did not, at any point, relinquish his uniform,
symbolic of his status as a revolutionary commander" (Section 2). This uniform,
incidentally, is the only 'indication' that the report cites, of Arafat's hidden
intentions, on that occasion.
A large section of the document is devoted to establishing Arafat's "ambivalence and
compliance" regarding terror. "In March 1997 there was once again more than a hint of
a 'Green Light' from Arafat to the Hamas, prior to the bombing in Tel Aviv... This is
implicit in the statement made
by a Hamas-affiliated member of Arafat's Cabinet, Imad Faluji, to an American paper
(Miami Herald, April 5, 1997)." No further hints are provided regarding how this links
Arafat to that bombing, but this is the "green light to terror" theme which the
Military Intelligence (Ama"n) has been promoting since 1997, when its anti-Oslo line
was consolidated. This theme was since repeated again and again by military circles,
and eventually became the mantra of Israeli propaganda - Arafat is still a terrorist
and is personally responsible for the acts of all groups, from Hamas and the Islamic
Jihad to Hizbollah.
The 'Foreign Report' (Jane's information) of July 12, 2001 disclosed that the Israeli
army (under Sharon's government) has updated its plans for an "all-out assault to
smash the Palestinian authority, force out leader Yasser Arafat and kill or detain its
army". The blueprint, titled "The Destruction of the Palestinian Authority and
Disarmament of All Armed Forces", was presented to the Israeli government by chief of
staff Shaul Mofaz, on July 8. The assault would be launched, at the government's
discretion, after a big suicide bomb attack in Israel, causing widespread deaths and
injuries, citing the bloodshed as justification.
Many in Israel suspect that the assassination of the Hamas terrorist Mahmoud Abu
Hanoud, just when the Hamas was respecting for two months its
agreement with Arafat not to attack inside Israel, was designed to create the
appropriate 'bloodshed justification', at the eve of Sharon's visit to the US. (Alex
Fishman - senior security correspondent of 'Yediot' - noted that "whoever decided upon
the liquidation of Abu Hanoud knew in advance that would be the price. The subject was
extensively discussed both by
Israel's military echelon and its political one, before it was decided to carry out
the liquidation" (Yediot Aharonot, Nov. 25, 2001)).
Israel's moves to destroy the PA, thus, cannot be viewed as a spontaneous 'act of
retaliation'. It is a calculated plan, long in the making. The execution requires,
first, weakening the resistance of the Palestinians, which Israel has been doing
systematically since October 2000, through killing, bombarding of infrastructure,
imprisoning people in their hometowns, and bringing them close to starvation. All
this, while waiting for the international conditions to 'ripen' for the more
'advanced' steps of the plan.
Now the conditions seem to have 'ripened'. In the power-drunk political atmosphere in
the US, anything goes. If at first it seemed that the US will try to keep the Arab
world on its side by some tokens of persuasion, as it did during the Gulf war, it is
now clear that they couldn't care less. US policy is no longer based on building
coalitions or investing in persuasion, but on sheer force. The smashing 'victory' in
Afghanistan has sent a clear message to the Third-World that nothing can stop the US
from targeting any nation for annihilation. They seem to believe that the most
sophisticated weapons of the twenty-first century, combined with total absence of any
considerations of moral principles, international law, or public opinion, can sustain
them as the sole rulers of the world forever. From now on, fear should be the
sufficient condition for obedience.
The US hawks, who push to expand the war to Iraq and further, view Israel as an asset
- There are few regimes in the world like Israel, so eager to risk the life of their
citizens for some new regional war. As Prof. Alain Joxe, head of the French CIRPES
(peace and strategic studies) has put it in Le Monde, "the American leadership is
presently shaped by dangerous right wing Southern extremists, who seek to use Israel
as an offensive tool to destabilize the whole Middle East area" (December 17, 2001).
The same hawks are also talking about expanding the future war zone to targets on
Israel's agenda, like Hizbollah and Syria.
Under these circumstances, Sharon got his green light in Washington. As the Israeli
media keeps raving, "Bush is fed up with this character [Arafat]", "Powell said that
Arafat must stop with his lies" (Barnea and Schiffer, 'Yediot', December 7, 2001). As
Arafat hides in his Bunker, Israeli F-16 bombers plough the sky, and Israel's
brutality is generating, every day, new desperate human bombs, the US, accompanied for
a while by the European union, keep urging Arafat to "act".
* * *
But what is the rationale behind Israel's systematic drive to eliminate the
Palestinian Authority and undo the Oslo arrangements? It certainly cannot be based on
'disappointment' with Arafat's performance, as is commonly claimed. The fact of the
matter is that from the perspective of Israel's interests in maintaining the
occupation, Arafat did fulfill Israel's expectations all these last years.
As far as Israeli security goes, there is nothing further from the truth then the fake
accusations in the "White Book", or subsequent Israeli propaganda. To take just one
example, in 1997 - the year mentioned in the "White Book" as an instance of Arafat's
"green light to terror" - a 'security agreement' was signed between Israel and the
Palestinian authority, under the auspices of the head of the Tel Aviv station of the
CIA, Stan Muskovitz. The agreement commits the PA to take active care of the security
of Israel - to fight "the terrorists, the terrorist base, and the environmental
conditions leading to support of terror" in cooperation with Israel, including "mutual
exchange of information, ideas, and military cooperation" (clause 1). [Translated from
the Hebrew text, Ha'aretz December 12, 1997]. Arafat's security services carried out
this job faithfully, with assassinations of Hamas terrorists (disguised as
'accidents'), and arrests of Hamas political leaders.(3)
Ample information was published in the Israeli media regarding these activities, and
'security sources' were full of praises for Arafat's achievements. E.g. Ami Ayalon,
then head of the Israeli secret service (Shab"ak), announced, in the government
meeting on April 5, 1998 that
"Arafat is doing his job - he is fighting terror and puts all his weight against the
Hamas" (Ha'aretz, April 6, 1998). The rate of success of the Israeli security services
in containing terror was never higher than that of Arafat; in fact, much lower.
In left and critical circles, one can hardly find compassion for Arafat's personal
fate (as opposed to the tragedy of the Palestinian people). As David Hirst writes in
The Guardian, when Arafat returned to the occupied territories, in 1994, "he came as
collaborator as much as liberator. For the Israelis, security - theirs, not the
Palestinians' - was the be-all and
end-all of Oslo. His job was to supply it on their behalf. But he could only sustain
the collaborator's role if he won the political quid pro quo which, through a series
of 'interim agreements' leading to 'final status', was supposedly to come his way. He
never could. . .[Along the road], he acquiesced in accumulating concessions that only
widened the gulf between what he was actually achieving and what he assured his people
he would achieve, by this method, in the end. He was Mr. Palestine still, with a
charisma and historical legitimacy all his own. But he was proving to be grievously
wanting in that other great and complementary task, building his
state-in-the-making. Economic misery, corruption, abuse of human rights, the creation
of a vast apparatus of repression - all these flowed, wholly or in part, from the
Authority over which he presided." (Hirst, "Arafat's last stand?" (The Guardian,
December 14, 2001).
But from the perspective of the Israeli occupation, all this means that the Oslo plan
was, essentially, successful. Arafat did manage, through harsh means of oppression, to
contain the frustration of his people, and guarantee the safety of the settlers, as
Israel continued undisturbed to build new settlements and appropriate more Palestinian
land. The oppressive
machinery, - the various security forces of Arafat, were formed and trained in
collaboration with Israel. Much energy and resources were put into building this
complex Oslo apparatus. It is often admitted that the Israeli security forces cannot
manage to prevent terror any better than Arafat can. Why, then, was the military and
political echelon so determined to destroy all this already in October 2000, even
before the terror waves started? Answering this requires some look at the history.
* * *
Right from the start of the 'Oslo process', in September 1993, two conceptions were
competing in the Israeli political and military system. The one, led by Yosi Beilin,
was striving to implement some version of the Alon plan, which the Labor party has
been advocating for years. The original plan consisted of annexation of about 35% of
the territories to Israel, and either Jordanian-rule, or some form of self-rule for
the rest - the land on which the Palestinians actually live. In the eyes of its
proponents, this plan represented a necessary compromise, compared to the
alternatives of either giving up the territories altogether, or eternal blood-shed (as
we witness today). It appeared that Rabin was willing to follow this line, at least at
the start, and that in return for Arafat's commitment to control the frustration of
his people and guarantee the
security of Israel, he would allow the PA to run the enclaves in which the
Palestinians still reside, in some form of self-rule, which may even be called a
Palestinian 'state'.
But the other pole objected even to that much. This was mostly visible in military
circles, whose most vocal spokesman in the early years of Oslo was then Chief of
Staff, Ehud Barak. Another center of opposition was, of course, Sharon and the extreme
right-wing, who were against the Oslo
process from the start. This affinity between the military circles and Sharon is
hardly surprising. Sharon - the last of the leaders of the '1948 generation', was a
legendary figure in the army, and many of the generals were his disciples, like Barak.
As Amir Oren wrote, "Barak's deep and abiding admiration for Ariel Sharon's military
insights is another indication of his views; Barak and Sharon both belong to a line of
political generals that started with Moshe Dayan" (Ha'aretz, January 8, 1999).
This breed of generals was raised on the myth of redemption of the land. A glimpse
into this worldview is offered in Sharon's interview with Ari Shavit (Ha'aretz,
weekend supplement, April 13, 2001). Everything is entangled into one romantic
framework: the fields, the blossom of the
orchards, the plough and the wars. The heart of this ideology is the sanctity of the
land. In a 1976 interview, Moshe Dayan, who was the defense minister in 1967,
explained what led, then, to the decision to attack Syria. In the collective Israeli
consciousness of the period, Syria was
conceived as a serious threat to the security of Israel, and a constant initiator of
aggression towards the residents of northern Israel. But according to Dayan, this is
"bull-shit" - Syria was not a threat to Israel before 67: "Just drop it. . .I know how
at least 80% of all the incidents
with Syria started. We were sending a tractor to the demilitarized zone and we knew
that the Syrians would shoot." According to Dayan (who at a time of the interview
confessed some regrets), what led Israel to provoke Syria this way was the greediness
for the land - the idea that it is possible "to grab a piece of land and keep it,
until the enemy will get tired and give it to us" (Yediot Aharonot, April 27 1997)
At the eve of Oslo, the majority of the Israeli society was tired of wars. In their
eyes, the fights over land and resources were over. Most Israelis believe that the
1948 Independence War, with its horrible consequences for the Palestinians, was
necessary to establish a state for the Jews, haunted by the memory of the Holocaust.
But now that they have a state, they long to just live normally with whatever they
have. However, the ideology of the redemption of land has never died out in the army,
or in the circles of the 'political generals', who switched from the army to the
government. In their eyes, Sharon's alternative of fighting the Palestinians to the
bitter
end and imposing new regional orders - as he tried in Lebanon in 1982 - may have
failed because of the weakness of the spoiled Israeli society. But given the new
war-philosophy established in Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan, they believe that with the
massive superiority of the Israeli air force, it may still be possible to win this
battle in the future.
While Sharon's party was in the opposition at the time of Oslo, Barak, as Chief of
Staff, participated in the negotiations and played a crucial role in shaping the
agreements, and Israel's attitude to the Palestinian Authority.
I quote from an article I wrote in February 1994, because it reflects what anybody who
read carefully the Israeli media could see at the time: "From the start, it has been
possible to identify two conceptions that underlie the Oslo process. One is that this
will enable to reduce the cost of the occupation, using a Palestinian patronage
regime, with Arafat as the senior
cop responsible for the security of Israel. The other is that the process should lead
to the collapse of Arafat and the PLO. The humiliation of Arafat, and the
amplification of his surrender, will gradually lead to loss of popular support.
Consequently, the PLO will collapse, or enter power conflicts. Thus, the Palestinian
society will loose its secular leadership and institutions. In the power driven mind
of those eager to maintain the Israeli occupation, the collapse of the secular
leadership is interpreted as an achievement, because it would take a long while for
the Palestinian people to get organized again, and, in any case, it is easier to
justify even the worst acts of oppression, when the enemy is a fanatic Muslim
organization. Most likely, the conflict between the two competing conceptions is not
settled yet, but at the moment, the second seems more dominant: In order to carry out
the first, Arafat's status should have been
strengthened, with at least some achievements that could generate support of the
Palestinians, rather then Israel's policy of constant humiliation and breach of
promises."(4)
Nevertheless, the scenario of the collapse of the PA did not materialize. The
Palestinian society resorted once more to their marvelous strategy of 'zumud' -
sticking to the land and sustaining the pressure. Right from the start, the Hamas
political leadership, and others, were warning that Israel is trying to push the
Palestinians into a civil war, in which the nation slaughters itself. All fragments of
the society cooperated to prevent this danger, and calm conflicts as soon as they were
deteriorating to arms. They also managed, despite the tyranny of Arafat's rule, to
build an impressive amount of institutions and infrastructure. The PA does not consist
only of
the corrupt rulers and the various security forces. The elected Palestinian council,
which operates under endless restrictions, is still a representative political
framework, some basis for democratic institutions in the future. For those whose goal
is the destruction of the Palestinian identity and the eventual redemption of their
land, Oslo was a failure.
In 1999, the army got back to power, through the 'political generals' - first Barak,
and then Sharon. (They collaborated in the last elections to guarantee that no other,
civil, candidate will be allowed to run.) The road opened to correct what they view as
the grave mistake of Oslo. In order to get there, it was first necessary to convince
the spoiled Israeli society that the Palestinians are not willing to live in peace and
are threatening our mere existence. Sharon alone could not have possibly achieved
that, but Barak did succeed, with his 'generous offer' fraud. After a year of horrible
terror attacks, combined with massive propaganda and lies, Sharon
and the army feel that nothing can stop them from turning to full execution.
Why is it so urgent for them to topple Arafat? Shabtai Shavit, former head of the
Security Service ('Mossad'), who is not bound by restraints posed on official sources,
explains this openly: "In the thirty something years that he [Arafat] leads, he
managed to reach real achievements in the political and international sphere... He got
the Nobel peace prize, and in a single phone call, he can obtain a meeting with every
leader in the world. There is nobody in the Palestinian gallery that can enter his
shoes in this context of international status. If they [the Palestinians] will loose
this gain, for us, this is a huge achievement. The Palestinian issue will get off the
international agenda." (interview in Yediot's Weekend Supplement, December 7, 2001).
Their immediate goal is to get the Palestinians off the international agenda, so
slaughter, starvation, forced evacuation and 'migration' can continue undisturbed,
leading, possibly, to the final realization of Sharon's long standing vision, embodied
in the military plans. The
immediate goal of anybody concerned with the future of the world, ahould be to halt
this process of evil unleashed. As Alain Joxe concluded his article in Le Monde, "It
is time for the Western public opinion to take over and to compel the governments to
take a moral and political stand facing the foreseen disaster, namely a situation of
permanent war against the Arab and Muslim people and states - the realization of the
double phantasy of Bin Laden and Sharon" (December 17, 2001).
Notes:
1) For the details of this operative plan, see Anthony Cordesman, "Peace and War:
Israel versus the Palestinians A second Intifada?" Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS) December 2000, and it summary in Shraga Eilam, "Peace
With Violence or Transfer", 'Between The Lines', December 2000.
(2) The document can be found in:
<<http://www.gamla.org.il/english/feature/intro.htm>http://www.gamla.org.il/english/feature/intro.htm>
(3) For a survey on some of the PA's assassinations of Hamas terrorists, see my
article "The A-Sherif affair", 'Yediot Aharonot', April 14, 1998,
<<http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart/political/A_sharif.html>http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart/political/A_sharif.html>
(4) The article (in Hebrew only) can be found in:
<<http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart/political/01GovmntObstacleToPeace.doc>http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart/political/01GovmntObstacleToPeace.doc>
* Tanya Reinhart is a professor in Tel Aviv University.
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