Countdown to B-Day

Israeli administrative law mandates that two weeks must pass between the Interior Minister's signature on a construction project and the moment when work on the ground may actually begin. The circumstances of the Har Homa affair transformed this administrative waiting period of two weeks into something very similar to an ultimatum preceding war.

As "Bulldozer Day" drew nearer, Palestinian leaders -- including many of the most well-known moderates -- sharpened their tone, as did Netanyahu and his ministers. Justice Minister Hanegbi openly threatened that "Arafat and his wife might soon be refugees again". (Hanegbi made the threat in a period when he was undergoing repeated police interrogation. He might just have sought public attention for something else than the ongoing corruption scandal.)

At the same time, a fast reconciliation was taking place between Arafat and the Palestinian opposition, both Islamic and Nationalistic, forming joint plans for mass protests against Har Homa. Some 150 Hamas prisoners were freed from the PA jails -- including some members of the organization's military wing -- with Arafat waving aside the Israeli objections.

Meanwhile, the Palestinians were scoring successes on the international diplomatic and media fronts. As far as public relations were conserned, Arafat's visit to the U.S. seemed "a victory procession", as alarmed Israeli diplomats wrote to the Foreign Ministry, also complaining that the American media was more than ever receptive to the Palestinian case. Articles and news items showing sympathy to Netanyahu were so rare that the Foreign Ministry's monitoring service made special notice of each.

At the U.N. Security Council, the United States cast its veto vote, alone against all other fourteen members -- lamely explaining that, though it too was against Har Homa, Washington did not regard the U.N. as being "the proper forum". Thereupon, the issue went into the General Assembly where there are no vetos, and the resolution was passed by an overwhelming vote of 130 nations against two (Israel and the U.S) -- and with members of the European Union conspicuous in their denounciation.

The United Nations Organization has never been very popular in Israel, and Israeli governments have a long record of ignoring its resolutions and engaging in a bit of UN bashing to gain domestic popularity. Nevertheless, Israel has not experienced such international isolation for many years, and since the peace process started many Israelis had begun to hope it will never occur again. Moreover, a country so universally condemned does not become more attractive to foreign investment; the Wall Street brokers and entrepreneurs, who were very favorably impressed by Netanyahu during his first visit to the U.S., expressed growing misgivings about the idea of investing in Israel (Yediot Aharonot, March 21).

To give the Palestinians some compensation for its U.N. veto, Washington sent a representative to the "Last Minute International Conference" convened by Arafat in Gaza. The step was taken in spite of sharp protests by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, which attempted to mobilise AIPAC, the Israeli Lobby on Capitol Hill -- with, to say the least, mixed results: AIPAC managed to obtain no more than twenty senatorial signatures on a letter supporting Netanyahu, a record low for a lobby which for many years used to have sixty to seventy U.S. Senators practically at its beck and call.

And what have we, the Israeli peace movement, done during these critical weeks of growing tensions? Certainly many of us made enormous efforts, spent sleepless nights in organising protest actions -- but the result was wholly inadequate to the need of such a crucial time.

It began well enough, with dozens of activists arriving to various preperatory actions by Gush Shalom and Meretz, at the very beginning of the crisis; this should have been the spark which would start much bigger actions -- only this time, the spark did not catch.

Gush Shalom did succeed to let hundreds of well-known Israelis sign a last minute appeal to stop the bulldozers, published as paid ad. But when Peace Now tried to mobilise a wider circle, they did not succeed to bring to the streets the thousands or tens of thousands who should have been there in such a situation, as the Palestinians had a right to expect of us at such a time.

Why did so many people who on other occasions turned up stay home this time? It seems that the Jerusalem taboo, though considerably weakened, still has the power te prevent people from being actively involved. 'This Har Homa is stupid but what does it matter, a bare hill on which nobody lives. The Palestinians are going to have their state anyhow.' All in all, the Israeli peace movement remained largely demobilised at a very critical turning point -- a failure on which we will long have to ponder.

The Storm

A few days before the bulldozer deadline expired, the center of diplomatic activity shifted to Jordan -- whose King Hussein has maintained semi-official relations with Israel many years before peace was officially signed, and is the only Arab leader who is popular among the general Israeli population. The unprecedented sharp letter sent by the King to Netanyahu, and the PM's equally sharp rebuttal quickly found their way to the newspaper headlines -- bringing Israeli-Jordanian relations to one of their lowest points ever.

On the following day, a Jordanian soldier who was later said to be mentally deranged went on a shooting spree and shot to death seven Israeli school girls -- the first blood shed over Har Homa. By a cruel irony, the tragedy occurred on a small island in the Jordan River which in more optimistic days had been named "The Island of Peace."

And on the day following that, the Israeli cabinet met and adopted unanimously a resolution to start work on Har Homa within a week, disregarding the dire predictions presented to them by the security services.

The Jordanian assailant had been apprehended and imprisoned by fellow soldiers. This was far from enough for King Hussein; determined to wipe what he regarded as a stain on his kingdom's honor, he personally arrived in Israel and visited in person the homes of all the seven mourning families.

Casting aside his royal dignity, he knelt down to speak with the grieving familiy members, who were sitting on the floor in accordance with traditional Jewish mourning customs. The king's dramatic gesture, broadcast on Israeli as well as Jordanian TV, was highly appreciated by Israelis -- but critised by many of his own subjects and even more by the Palestinians, who pointed out that no Israeli leader ever did something remotely similar, on any of the occasions when Palestinian civilians were killed by members of the Israeli armed forces.

The king's visit certainly had more purposes than just condolences. With his magnanimous gesture, which certainly no other Arab leader could or would have made, he hoped to be able to gain from Netanyahu a counter gesture -- one large enough to appease the Palestinian anger and bring the peace process back on track.

Watching the king's smiling, confident face on TV that Sunday night, many of us thought he had gotten something substantial from Netanyahu. As it turned out, he thought he did -- in their private conversation, the prime Minister seemed to promise that Har Homa would be the very last settlement project undertaken by Israel.

That idea did interest Arafat, to whom it was conveyed on the following morning. But Netanyahu's bureau quickly denied that any such promise was ever made, and instead offered to the Palestinians the same pathetic "package of confidence-building measures" as before. As a kind of special favor, the right of landing in the already-completed Gaza International Airport was granted to Arafat's personal airplane, but to nobody else. Such a ludicrous small bribe amounted to an additional insult; on that night, contacts between Israel and the Palestinian Authority were officially severed by the Palestinians.

On the following day -- Tuesday, March 18 -- Netanyahu seemed to have some final doubts. He called several meetings with advisers and security experts, and the radio teemed with contradicting rumors about whether or not the bulldozers would indeed start. Sometime by mid-day he had finally made up his mind; around 2.30 P.M., the bulldozers started work on Har Homa -- the only building project in the world to have live coverage by several dozen TV camers.

We have visualised this moment years ago, with Har Homa always a looming threat in the uncertain future; always, with fine dramatic flourish, we imagined Israelis and Palestinians lying down together to block the bulldozers' way. Nothing of the kind was remotely possible; the whole area, kilometres around the working site in all directions, was guarded by a thick cordon of police and army; there must have at least 2,000 of them massed around this little hill.

A bit off this cordoned area was the tent camp established by the Palestinians; there was a protest march of Palestinians and some Israelis, among them Uri and Rachel Avnery, in the direction of the bulldozers, a scuffle when it encountered the cordon, some people thrown into the mud -- and the Palestinian leaders firmly forbade any closer confrontation, forbade the youngsters to pick up stones and returned to the tent to register a frustrated protest to the waiting journalists.

For those who were there, or those who watched it on TV, or those who participated in the small Hadash vigil outside the Defence Ministry and endured unusually hostile reactions from by-passers, it was a bleak and bitter day -- like the day after the last elections, or the deportations in December 1992, or the invasion of Lebanon in June 1982.

There was no immediate repetition of the armed confrontations which followed The Tunnel in September 1996. On the next morning, the newspapers reported only a few scattered Palestinian protests, and Israeli newspaper commentators claimed, with typical arrogance, that "the Palestinians had tacitly accepted Har Homa".

Peace Now supporters showed even less inclination than before to join the protests still planned for the coming days. The right wing was exultant, with the settlers choosing this day to fulfill a long-planned design -- to occupy five more houses in the heart of East Jerusalem's Silwan Village.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, in high spirits, asked his helicopter pilot to hover for several minutes over Har Homa so that he could watch the bulldozers at work. And he was not quite joking when later on the same day he told CNN: "Israel is the only real superpower, you know, we are the only ones who can defy te whole world and win". Netanyau's euphoria lasted about forty-eight hours; it ended when the suicide bomber exploded himself in Tel-Aviv's Apropos Cafe, taking three young Israeli women with him.

*** * ***

The Apropos building is part of my childhood scene, very near to the apartment where my parents still live. As a child I played in the boulevard in front of it, and passed it countless times on my way to school. I know many people who go on Friday afternoon to Apropos to meet friends, most of them a kind of intellectuals, yuppies with atleast a general inclination towards the peace movement. I could have been there myself, had I not been demonstrating at that time in Har Homa. It was a terrible murder of three totally innocent women in the prime of life. And still, I cannot really blame the Palestinians who had condemned past terrorist attacks and failed to condemn this one. I cannot even blame the Palestinian Legislative Council for adopting by acclamation a resolution offering condolences to the suicide bomber's family, while ignoring the families of his victims.

The Tel-Aviv bombing did not leave the government with many options for action. They of course imposed a closure on the territories, again depriving Palestinian workers of their livelihood -- the automatic, knee-jerk response. They declared the talks with the Palestinians suspended -- forgetting that the Palestinians already suspended them on the day the bulldozers went in; they suspended the act of handing the Palestinians the lands promised in the "further redeployment" -- forgetting that the Palestinians already refused to accept that small pittance. They started a systematic campaign to accuse Arafat of having "given a green light to terrorism" and an acrimonious debate with the Americans, who were far more cautious about accusing the Palestinian leader. And for all the accusations of Arafat, they made shrill demands that he help out against the same terrorists to whom he supposedly gave that infamous "green light".

Meanwhile, the popular Palestinian protests against Har Homa mounted, giving the final lie to that "tacit consent" and amounting to a new Intifada. A new kind of Intifada, at the all too numerous confrontation lines strewn throughout the West Bank: the dividing line bisecting the long-suffering city of Hebron, Rachel's Tomb left as a fortified Israeli enclave in the middle of Bethlehem, the military roadblock at the southern approaches of Ramallah (where the bloody confrontations of last September started). At these, and many other spots, daily confrontations became the rule -- confrontations between stone-throwing Pales- tinian youths and Israeli soldiers, which on TV looked nearly indistinguishable from the visions of 1987-1991.

Yet there were significant differences. For one, this time, unlike in the original Intifada, the Israeli soldiers made a considerable -- and mostly succesful -- effort not to kill anybody; they were strickly enjoined to use tear gas and rubber bullets, and reserve live ammunition for "real emergencies". This was clearly the army's lesson from last September; it is far too dangerous to shoot and kill unarmed demonstrators, when just behind them are Palestinian police who might, under pressure, start shooting back...

As long as the soldiers did not shoot to kill but merely to wound, the Palestinian Police were willing to play their part, and from time to time stop the enthusiastic youths -- stop them, but always partially, always letting some new confrontation break through and provide fresh "Intifada footage" for CNN. Already for more than a week, Palestinian Security Chief Jibril Rajub plays a fine game of brinkmanship, keeping tensions alive and yet preventing a total explosion. And meanwhile Arafat went on a long world tour, mobilising Islamic and Arab diplomacy on behalf of the Palestinian cause and letting Israelis and Americans implore him to come back and take things in hand...

Meanwhile, the daily cooperation between the Israeli and Palestinian security services, on which the former had become increasingly dependant as a shield against Hamas terrorism, has been suspended as long as bulldozers work on Har Homa -- possibly the sharpest sanction against Israel which the Palestinians could find in their arsenal.

So far have we come. This is being written in the night of March 29 -- the day on which a Palestinian demonstrator was, for the first time in "The New Intifada", killed by Israeli soldiers; the day on which U.S. mediator Dennis Ross arrived and reportedly tried to reconcile the Netanyahu's demand for "an end to terrorism and violence" with the Palestinian definition which includes bulldozers among the most agressive forms of violence; one day before "Land Day", when widespread demonstrations are expected by both Palestinians in the Territories and their compatriots who are Israeli citizens...

• Adam Keller
  Tel Aviv, 29.3.97

Postscript, 7.4.97

To Netanyahu's chagrin, the linkage between terrorism and bulldozers has become well established -- in the international public opinion as well as in a significnt part of the Israeli one. (Just yesterday, the writer S. Yizhar, 'The Conscience of Israel', published in Yediot Ahronot an article entitled: Har Homa is Terrorism, too!.) Netanyahu seems likely to meet the same linkage between settlements and terrorism in his encounter with President Clinton later today. Will the Americans this time put real pressure on our Prime Minister? So many times since 1967 did we ask ourselves this question, with so many presidents and so many prime ministers, and the answer turned out to be 'no' far more often than 'yes'. Will Clinton break the pattern, this time? And if not him, will the Europeans dare, for once, to use their economic leverage?

In a confrontation with the White House, if any, Netanyahu can no longer rely with certainty on the support of the organised American Jewish Community. In the middle of the Har Homa crisis, the PM yielded to his Orthodox coalition partners and rammed through the Knesset a bill giving their rabbis a monopoly on conversions to Judaism. The Reformed and Conservative communities, which form the majority of U.S. Jewry, came up in arms -- which might make them less than eager to engage in lobbying on behalf of an Israeli government with whose policies they already for a long time can hardly identify.

In the meantime, the situation on the ground seems to settle into the routine of a war of attrition.

The army had been prepared for a resumption of direct armed confrontations between its troops and the Palestinian Police, and made detailed plans to use its full force and avenge the humiliations of last Septmber.

The Palestinians have so far given no pretext -- opting instead for the far more diffuse and elusive struggle of stone- throwers, which they could maintain for years on end. After all, they already did it once, and a new generation of Palestinians -- little kids during the first Intifada -- seem eager to pick up the torch, or rather: the stone.

Israeli tanks were placed in the entrances to Palestinian cities -- but the Palestinians, expert at making Molotov Cocktails and reputed to possess secret stockpiles of anti-tank missiles, refuse to be intimidated. And on international TV screens, the Israeli tanks and bulldozers, with their equally heavy threads cutting the earth, once more display the ugly image of the Israeli Goliath...

A war of attrition it is, with many fronts -- on the hills of the West Bank; in the halls of diplomatic conferences (the Arab foreign ministers threatening to end all normalisation with Israel); even in the board rooms of major companies (two directors of Israel's biggest concerns, Benny Ga'on of 'Koor' and Aharon Dovrat of 'Klal', made dire predictions on the economy and the peace process, linking the two...).

In the short term, it is Israel which wields the most effective economic whip -- the closure. The Palestinian population faces the specter of hunger, or of life at a bare subsistance level -- which can but increase the militancy of desperate youths. But meanwhile, among Israelis there is an atmosphere of confusion and fear, as long as the Palestinian Security Services remain 'on strike'. 'Our security cooperation with Israel was buried under the bulldozers', was how Palestinian Security Chief Jibril Rajoub put it in one of his many interviews on Israeli TV

It is not the best of times for mass peace activity. Yet at last we had a peace rally in Tel-Aviv's Rabin Square -- initiated by Dor Shalom, the organization which we had more or or less given up after it started to put all its energy only in 'dialogue' with the most extreme settlers and in organising such activities as 'a salute to the army' (after the February helicopter crash in which 73 soldiers got killed).

The April 5 rally was badly organised, and far smaller than the rallies at the same square in the past -- and still, it was heart-warming to come home and see it on TV screens and newspaper front pages, rank behind rank of youths with the green signs A whole Generation demands Peace!.

There is no way of knowing how long this war of attrition will last. And in such a war, the Palestinians -- a people united in a struggle for bare survival -- have a better chance than Netanyahu, a Prime Minister who led his divided country into a struggle which it does not really believe in. (The Labor Party chose this moment to come out dramatically in favor of a Palestinian state -- albeit 'with a limited sovreignty'; polls indicate a majority of the Israeli Jewish population concurring.)

Weighing all of these factors together, one finds still reasons for hope in the long run. But the whole setup does not bode well for the immediate future. And then we come up with a jerk, remembering that not so long ago we hoped to be within handreach of an end to the times of confrontation and conflict, that we expected the rest of the road to peace between Israel and Palestine to be traversed under somewhat more civilized conditions. That was not to be.

We can only grit our teeth and do our best, in the days ahead.

[THE OTHER ISRAEL is the newsletter of the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, P.O.Box 2542, 58125 Holon, Israel.
Phone/Fax: (03) 5565804
Editor: Adam Keller
Coeditor: Beate Zilversmidt