-Caveat Lector- : THE EXPLOSION - Briefing nr 19 : Tel-Aviv, October 3 : We knew that it would come; in a way we saw it coming, and still - it : took : us by surprise. On the first Friday when we heard of "rioting" on Temple : Mount - the morning after Sharon had paid a "visit" to the Al Aqsa Mosq : - : we still thought that this was a one day event, an outburst at an : occasional offense, and maybe also a reminder like there had been before : as to what the explosion would be like if the peace talks would come to : naught. Gradually we start to realize that the big explosion is : happening : here and now. From talking to Palestinian friends it seems it also : surprised them. Nobody had really expected that there would be such an : overreaction by the police, whose only response to what started with : stone : throwing was shooting to kill. : On Saturday there were riots all over the Palestinian territories, which : was the first day of Rosh Hashana (holiday marking the begining of the : Jewish new year). Activists of Gush Shalom and Committee Against House : Demolitions started calling each other, mobilizing within a few hours : via : phone and email a tiny vigil - including of course Uri Avnery - at the : Prime Minister's residence in Jerusalem, with as its most remarkable : event: a religious bypasser, supporter of the Shas Party, complaining : "why : did Sharon have to do it the day before Rosh Hashana. Now I can't go : pray : at the Wailing Wall." : On Sunday, Oct. 1, at 8.00 o'clock - after public transportation : restarted : at the end of the two-day Holiday, and after another day of violence and : bloodshed - and the spreading of the terrible pictures of the killing of : a : so obviously innocent child. On the pavement in front of Dizengoff : Centre, Tel-Aviv main shopping mall, as central a place as can be found : to : address the metropolitan public, we arrive, some forty peace activists. : We : know most faces, though some have not been seen for years. Different : groups are represented: Gush Shalom, Committee Against House : Demolitions, : Hadash, Women for Political Prisoners, Nuclear Whistleblowers... in : fact, : many participants have overlapping organizational affiliations. Some : have : brought signs with them. Others take up marking pens and improvise their : own slogans, sitting down on the sidewalk. Soon, two ragged lines take : up : position, holding both sides of the intersection. Sign after sign is : displayed to the bypassers and the motorists halted at the traffic : light: : "Stop shooting!" - "Down with the Occupation" - "Stop the murder of : demonstrators!" - "We have no children for unnecessary wars!" - "Get out : of the Territories - Now!" - "Killing Palestinians is not the way to : peace" - "Hands off Temple Mount" - "Sharon sets the fire, Barak kills" : - : "Enough blood has been shed" - "Yes to the 1967 borders" - "29 dead : Palestinians on Rosh Hashana - Happy New Year!". We have come with some : trepidation to this site. During the Intifada, on days similar to this : one, peace demonstrators have more than once been violently assaulted on : this very spot. But this evening there is nothing of the kind. There : are, : in fact, astonishingly few reactions of any kind. Most bypassers just : glance at the signs and continue on their way. How are we to interepret : this indifference? As lack of support for what the army and police are : doing? As lack of moral concern? Probably a bit of both - and what does : that say about Israeli society at the start of the Third Millenium? : A police patrol car stops by, then another one. A mild-mannered officer : approaches the line. -"Who is your leader?" -"We have no leader". -"Who : is : responsible for this demonstration?" -"We all are". -"Who organized it?" : -"The Internet". He scratches his head. For a moment he seems about to : arrest us, or at least some. Then he goes back to the patrol car. Half : an : hour later, he comes again, accompanied by a female colleague. "Listen, : you guys! Do you know that the whole of Jaffa has burst out in violence? : More than half our force is over there, and here you are tying up two : patrol cars. Can you not end this, so that we can go to reinforce our : fellows over there?" We find it difficult not to laugh. Just before the : officer came over we had held a quick consultation and decided to pack : up : the signs and go to Jaffa so as to stand in the way of the police which : had reportedly started shooting the (not so innocuous) "rubber bullets". : Could the outbreak of spontaneous anger of Arabs in one of the most : miserable slums in Israel be combined with the more measured protest of : middle-class leftist Jews? But when we pile into taxis and private cars : and arrive in the Ajami Quarter of Jaffa - a short distance, yet worlds : away, from downtown Tel-Aviv - we find Yeffet Street, the main : throughfare : of Arab Jaffa, completely empty: pavements strewn with stones, many : smashed windows, some scorched patches on the pavement, no : demonstrators. : At home on a later hour, we hear - among all the dispatches from further : away - a report of "a new outbreak in Jaffa, ending the shaky ceasefire : agreed between the police and the Jaffa Arab leadership". Of our own : action, not a word. On such a day, editors do not seem to consider a : demonstration without violence to be news. : Today (Monday) we are more than a hundred, outside the Defence Ministry. : From the outside there is not much to see of the nerve centre of all : that : is going on in the Territories. But as soon as we take up positions on : the : parking lot opposite the main gate, an armed sodier in full battle gear : crosses the street in between and approaches us, with a suspicious look : on : his face, talking quickly into a small communications device. A quite : unusual sight. We demonstrate here quite often, and in general the only : soldiers you encounter are unarmed office staff going out to grab a : quick : lunch. : Again, as yesterday, there responses are surprisingly mild. Not many : pass : here on foot, but the traffic on the narrow Kaplan Street is heavy and : congested. Civilian and military drivers pass slowly and get a full : sight : of our ranked slogans, especially of the giant banners prepared by Gush : Shalom and Hadash; they could hear the full-throated chanting "Peace - : Yes! Occupation - No!" and "How many children did you kill today?". Yet : the amount of heckling, the number of reactions of any kind, seems no : greater than in vigils held here on normal days. At the very end, just : as : we are about to pack up, a lone TV crew at last appears. We discover, : however, that it is of the Japanese Television. For the mainstream : Israeli : media, our protest is still non-existent. : A phone call from Jerusalem: some 170 people, mostly youths, had turned : up : for the simultaneous demo outside the Prime Minister's residence. That : event had a quite complicated history. It was originally called by Peace : Now; this movement seems, however, in crisis - many of its leaders : shying : away from any criticism of Barak, the Labour Prime Minister which : practically all of us supported in last year's elections. The Peace Now : manifesto published today in Ha'aretz apportioned blame for the violent : outbreak between Sharon and the Palestinians, effectively clearing Barak : of share. A few hours before it was to take place, Peace Now called off : the action, apprehensive lest "radicals" like ourselves would appear : with : their own slogans and turn the protest in "unwanted" directions, Still, : a : dissident faction, mainly from the more militant youths, decided to hold : the demonstration anyway, though not under the Peace Now name - and did : it : quite well, with help from Meretz youths as well as the Jerusalem : activists of Hadash, the Bat Shalom women and Gush Shalom. : Another phone call - from Lili Traubman, Bat Shalom activist at Kibbutz : Meggido in the north. They had their own women's vigil - right there, : very : near the storm center of the riots inside Israel. The Arab women who : planned to join could not arrive - roads blocked by police - but : expressed : support on the phone and told of shootings and police brutality at their : doorstep. : Ten Bat Shalom women stood at the highway, with signs reading "Peace : will : win" and "Jewish-Arab parnership". They did get many reactions - no : indifference at that part of the country. Some positive reactions, many : hostile. In a sad harmony, some Jews and some Arabs had the same : reaction: : "Peace? What peace? There can never be peace with THEM!" : And so, it is late evening - another evening after a long day of : escalation and violence and bloodshed which we could not stop. And how : many hale young people, living and breathing at this very moment, will : be : in their graves by tomorrow night? : *** : How did we come to be in this miserable situation - two months after the : high hopes of Camp David, less than a week after Barak and Arafat met : for : what was described as a "highly cordial meeting" in the living room of : the : Israeli PM's private home? Obviously, the fuse was lit by the notorious : Ariel Sharon, leader of the opposition Likud Party, in a calculated : provocation - designed, at least in part, to bolster his position in the : right-wing against the intended comeback of former PM Netanyahu. There : was : no need of the accumulated wisdom of the US State Department pundits to : guess what would result from the trumpeted "visit" of a man whose : entire : military and political career consisted of fighting Palestinians and : killing them. A visit to the sensitive Temple Mount/Haram A-Sharif : Compound, made even more sensitive since the failure of Camp David. (To : add insult to injury, it took place precisely on the anniversary of the : 1982 massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, a : massacre : carried out by the armed militias which Sharon as Defence Minister had : let : into these camps.) : But it is far too easy to put the entire blame on Sharon - as the : Americans and some Israelis do. The conflagration would not have : started, : if not for the decision of Prime Minister Barak to let Sharon trample : into : this sensitive spot, exactly at the moment when an a web of delicate : international diplomatic formulas was being woven to find a : mutually-acceptable arrangement for the holy place's future. In fact : Barak : - and the PM's second in command, Prof. Shlomo Ben-Ami, the prominent : "dove" who holds a unique combination of the Foreign Affairs and Police : portfolios - did more than let Sharon into the Mount. They provided the : Likud leader with an escort of more than a thousand police and : semi-military "Border Guards", effectively reconquering Temple Mount : (actually, it was a far bigger Israeli force than that which originally : conquered the place in 1967). Add to this the well- known fact that : Israeli police in general, and its "Border Guards" in particular, tend : to : regard Arabs as dangerous enemies - and the result was inevitable. : Even that does not fully explain the extent and fast spread of the : conflagration: forty Palestinians and four Israeli soldiers dead within : a : single weekend, with the number steadily rising by the hour; hundreds : of : wounded, many of them maimed for life; widespread riots all over the : Palestinian Territories, often escalating into full-scale battles : involving not only handguns but also anti-tank misslies, machine guns : and : helicopter gunships; the angery outburst spilling over to the Arab : citizens of Israel itself, with large riots at practically all Arab : population centers and the blocking of main highways. : By this evening, at least seven Arab citizens of Israel have been shot : to : death by "their" police force... : Such conflagrations do not result from a single provocation, gross and : insulting as it may be. There had been quite a lot of fuel building up, : mounting anger and frustration among the Palestinians. The normal : routine : of occupation, which rarely gets into the media: another row of olive : trees uprooted by order of the Israeli miltary governor; another : settlement extending itself over a parcel of land which a Palestinian : family had cultivated for generations; another rough search by Israeli : soldiers at a roadblock; another late-night raid on a Palestinian home : by : Israeli "special units" - all made the more unenduarable when peace : negotiations are supposed to be going on with the declared aim of : putting : a definite end to the conflict, and when Barak has managed to convince : much of international opinion that "Palestinian intransigence" is to : blame... : At Camp David, and ever since its failure, Barak has striven to block : off : the Palestinians' option of declaring independence unilaterally; using : the : particular conditions of the US elections year, Barak got the : administration and Congress to take an openly biased position, : condemning : "a unilateral Palestinian step" while turning a blind eye to the ongoing : settlement extension and other unilateral Israeli steps; also the United : States' European and Japanese allies effectively withdrew their pledge : to : recognize the independence of Palestine. Barak had been striving to : dictate rather then negotiate, repeatedly proclaiming that "the ball is : in : Arafat's court" and demanding that the Palestinians accept terms that - : while more generous, on some issues, than offered by previous Israeli : PM's : - still fall short of the minimal Palestinian aspirations, especially : with : regard to Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees. Altogether, there was : very much reason for all Palestinians - grassroots and leadership, : Arafat's followers as well as those of the opposition factions - to feel : frustrated and dissatisfied; Sharon's provoaction united them as nothing : else could have. : Israel's Arab citizens had their own load of long-standing grievances - : decades-long discrimination in all spheres of life; an unemloyment rate : double or more that in the Jewish sector; a government bureaucracy which : treats them not much better than their brethern under occupation. And : just : recently, they have been stirred into anger by a series of inflammatory : racist remarks uttered by Alik Ron, commander of the Gallilee Police. It : might be more than a coincidence that Ron is rumored to be seeking a : political career that he is known to have recently held a series of : meetings with Sharon... : "The New Intifada", as Palestinians now call it, has changed the focus : of : public opinion, both in Israel and internatioanally. From the debate on : diplomatic formulas it returned to the harsh reality on the ground - the : reality of occupation, once again flooding the international TV screens. : Particularly poignant episodes were seen in living rooms across the : globe, : such as the 12-year old boy Muhammad Al-Dura - caught with his father in : a : cross-fire outside Gaza City, desperately seeking shelter behind a small : barrrel, and shot to death by the relentless fire of Israeli soldiers. : (The soldiers claim they did not know it was a child.) : For Israelis, a public debate was opened (or rather, reopened) by the : death of two soldiers in defence of settlement enclaves, inhabited by : religious- nationalist fanatics and located in the midst of Palestinian : territory. "He sacrificed himself for Netzarim, for this settlement : which : is perhaps not at all necessary" said on TV the cousin of David Biri, : the : soldier killed in a Palestinian ambush while on settler convoy duty. : This : kind of sentiment could, in time, develop into a mass movement which may : sway government policies - as happened with regard to Lebanon - but it : would take quite a bit of time and far too much bloodshed. : Is there still a chance of a more immediate solution, of a revival and : successful conclusion of the negotiations which seemed moribund even : before the present outbreak? Paradoxical and cynical as it may seem, : earlier episodes in our region's history have shown vilolent outbreaks : and : confrontations serving as a catalyst to deadlocked diplomatic processes. : The "Tunnel War", as the armed confrontations of September 1996 came to : be : known, bore much similarity to the present outbreak, both having an : Israeli provocation around Temple Mount starting the immediate : conflagration throughout the Palestinian territories - and in 1996 it : ended with Netanyahu signing an agreement with Arafat and agreeing to : withdraw from Hebron (most of Hebron, anyway). Earlier, it was the Yom : Kippur war which broke a logjam in Israeli-Egyptian relations and : eventually led to peace between the two countries and Israel's : withdrawal : from the whole of Sinai. But on more than one occasion, conflicts and : violent confrontations have also been known to spiral uncontrolled, : beyond : what anybody planned or intended... : With all the carnage, both sides so far avoided anything irrevocable; : the : Israeli tanks placed around Palestinian cities have not been sent in - : not : even to relieve the sorely-pressed garrison at Joseph's Tomb, in the : heart : of Palestinian Nablus; and though Hamas fighters are reportedly taking : active part in the fighting, there have been so far none of the : spectacular terrorist attacks which can rouse the people of Israel's : main : population centers to fear and anger. Clearly, room is still left for : renewed negotiations. Indeed the basic maxim of recent Israeli politics : - : that an agreement with the Palestinians is vital to Barak's political : survival - is, if anything, reinforced by recent events. And the : alternative ploy occasionally mooted by Barak aides - getting Sharon : into : a "National Unity Government" - has just become far more illegitimate, : inside and outside Israel. : It is a tragic feature of what is going on now that at Camp David, Barak : in principle agreed to give up many of the positions which are at : present : being ferociously fought over (for example, the settlement enclaves in : the : Gaza Strip). He agreed to give them up - but only at a stiff price of : Palestinian retrocessions, some of them very unpalatable and others : completely unacceptable to the Palestinian side. Will he now soften : these : positions, at least to some degree? Having gone already so far at Camp : David, can he not simply get out of the occupied territories? : One can only hope and do what can be done, to protest and pressure. At : the : initiative of Gush Shalom, a venerable peace sticker, first published in : 1982 with the slogan "Bring the Soldiers Back from Lebanon" and : subsequently published again and again, was given a new lease of life. : Now : bearing the caption "Bring Them Back from the Territories", it should : soon : become a frequent sight in the streets of Tel-Aviv. : Adam Keller : Beate Zilversmidt : P.S. We pass on the request for instant financial help to the Makassad : Hospital in East Jerusalem where the wounded have been streaming in. : Because the situation is so desperate, and the need so immediate, please : send donations by wire transfer (USD preferably) directly into their : bank : account. The account is at the Mercantile Discount Bank Ltd., Jerusalem, : Salah al-Din Branch. The Swift Code is BARDiLit The Branch number is : 638. : Their account number is 400335. : Alternatively, you can send cash donations by mail to: : Makassed Hospital : P.O. Box 19482 : Jerusalem : Or, if you, or anyone you know, is in a position to send surgical or : pharmaceutical supplies, please contact the hospital directly at : telephone : number +972 2 627-0222. Ask to speak to Dr. Khalid, Director of the : hospital. : ============================================================= : JERUSALEM CAPITAL OF THE TWO STATES - ONLY WAY TO PEACE : Add this to all your mail : (and suggest to your friends to do the same) : ============================================================= : ============================================== : The Other Israel is the newsletter of the : Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace : pob 2542, Holon 58125, Israel - ph/fx: +972-3-5565804; : http://members.tripod.com/~other_Israel/ : ============================================== : Subscribe/unsubscribe requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. 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