[NYTr] Avnery: The Language of Force - The Only Thing Both Sides Can Understand?

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[A fascinating column by Uri Avnery, with some much-needed history for
today's largely ignorant Yanqui supporters of all sides in the
conflict over Palestine. -NY Transfer]

Gush Shalom - Aug 25, 2007
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1188106753

The Language of Force

by Uri Avnery

SOON AFTER coming to power, Ariel Sharon started to commission public
opinion polls. He kept the results to himself. This week, a reporter of
Israel's TV Channel 10 succeeded in obtaining some of them.

Among other things, Sharon wanted to know what the public thought about
peace. He did not dream of starting on this road himself, but he felt
it important to be informed about the trends.

In these polls, the public was presented with a question that came
close to the final Clinton Proposal and the Geneva Initiative: Are you
for a peace that would include a Palestinian state, withdrawal from
almost all occupied territories, giving up the Arab neighborhoods of
East Jerusalem and dismantling most settlements?

The results were very instructive. In 2002, 73% (seventy three
percent!) supported this solution. In the next two years, support
declined, but it was still accepted by the majority. In 2005 the
percentage of supporters slipped under the 50% line.

What had changed in these years?

The TV presenter painted in the context: in 2002 the second intifada
had reached its climax. There were frequent attacks in Israeli cities,
people were being killed. The majority in Israel preferred to pay the
price of peace than to suffer the bloodshed.

Later, the intifada declined, together with the Israeli public's
readiness for compromise. In 2005, Sharon carried out the "unilateral
separation". It seemed to many Israelis that they could manage without
an agreement with the Palestinians. The readiness for peace dropped
below the half mark.

A POPULAR Israeli saying has it that "The Arabs understand only the
language of force." This poll may confirm what many Palestinians think:
that it is the Israelis themselves who don't understand any other
language.

Both versions are true, of course.

I have often said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a clash
between an irresistible force and an immovable object. A clash is a
matter of force.

The present lamentable state of the Palestinians, with half of them
living under occupation and the other half as refugees, is a direct
result of the Palestinian defeat in the 1948 war. The first part of
that war, from December 1947 to May 1948, was a clash between the
Palestinian people and the Hebrew community (the "yishuv"). It resulted
in a resounding defeat for the Palestinians. (When the armies of the
neighboring Arab states then entered the fray, the Palestinians became
irrelevant to the struggle.)

That was a military defeat, of course, but its roots extended far
beyond the narrow military field. It followed from the lack of cohesion
of Palestinian society at the time, its failure to set up a functioning
leadership and a unified military command, to mobilize and concentrate
its forces. Every region fought alone, without coordination with the
next one. Abd-al-Kader Husseini in the Jerusalem area fought
independently of Fawzy al-Kaukji in the North. The yishuv, in
contradistinction, was unified and strictly organized, and therefore
won - in spite of the fact that in numbers it was hardly equal to half
the Palestinian population.

HAMAS LEADERS mock Mahmoud Abbas and his supporters in Ramallah for
expecting an Israeli withdrawal without armed struggle.

They point out that even the Oslo agreement (to which they object) was
achieved only after six years of the first intifada, which convinced
Yitzhak Rabin that no military solution was possible.

They aver that Ehud Barak left South Lebanon in 2000 only after the
resounding success of the Shiite guerillas

Their conclusion: even a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders will
not come into being unless the "Palestinian resistance" inflicts on the
Israelis sufficient casualties and damage to convince them that it is
in their interest to withdraw from the occupied territories.

The Israelis, they say, will not give up one square inch without being
compelled to do so. Sharon's poll may well reinforce them in that
belief.

The people around Abbas respond by mocking Hamas for believing that
they can win against Israel by force of arms.

They point to the immense superiority of Israeli forces. According to
them, all the violent actions of the Palestinians have only provided
Israel with a pretext to reinforce the occupation, steal more land and
increase the misery of the occupied population.

And indeed, the personal situation of the Palestinians in the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip is now incomparably worse that it was on the eve of
the first intifada, when they could reach any place in the country,
work in all Israeli towns, bathe on the Tel-Aviv sea-shore and fly from
Ben-Gurion airport.

Both views contain much truth. Yasser Arafat understood this. That's
why he did everything to keep the Palestinians united at any cost,
encourage the Israeli peace forces and gather international support,
without giving up the deterrence of the "armed struggle". He succeeded
in this up to a point, and as a result was removed.

PALESTINIANS WHO worry about the fate of their people are asking
themselves where all this is leading to.

Their situation has reached its lowest point in over 20 years. They are
politically almost isolated throughout the world. Israeli public
opinion has become indifferent and united around the mendacious mantra:
"We have no partner". In the peace camp, many are dispirited. And, most
importantly, the Palestinian national movement has split into two
factions, and it seems that the hatred between them is growing from day
to day.

Splits are not uncommon in national liberation movements. Actually,
there has hardly been one liberation movement that did not undergo such
a crisis. But a situation where two warring factions control two
different territories, both under foreign occupation, is almost unknown.

IT MAY be interesting to compare this situation with that of our own
underground organizations before the foundation of the State of Israel.

There is some similarity (not ideological, of course): Fatah is a
little bit like the large Haganah organization that was controlled by
the official Zionist leadership; Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which reject
the PLO leadership, are like the Irgun and Stern group. Fatah's al-Aqsa
Battalions can be compared to the Palmach, the regular fighting force
of the Haganah.

Between these Hebrew organizations, a burning hatred developed. Haganah
members considered the Irgunists as fascists, the Irgun fighters
considered the Haganah men as collaborators with the British occupation
authorities. The national leadership called the Irgun and Stern group
"secessionists", the official Irgun designation for the Haganah was
"shits".

Matters reached a climax in the "saison" (hunting season), when the
Haganah abducted Irgun members and turned them over to the British
police, who interrogated them under torture and then deported them to
internment camps in Africa. But there was also a short period when all
three organizations coordinated their actions under the umbrella of the
"Hebrew Rebellion Movement".

Israeli politicians like to recall the Altalena incident, when
Ben-Gurion gave the order to shell an Irgun ship loaded with arms off
the shore of Tel-Aviv. (Menachem Begin, who had come on deck, was
narrowly saved when his men shoved him into the water). Why doesn't
Abbas dare to do the same to Hamas?

This question ignores a salient point: Ben-Gurion used the "sacred
cannon" (as he called it) only after the State of Israel had already
come into being. That makes all the difference.

The bitter hatred between the Haganah and the Irgun, and to some extent
also between the Irgun and the Stern group, simmered down only
gradually, during the first years of the State of Israel. Nowadays
streets in Tel-Aviv are named after the commanders of all three
organizations.

More importantly: historians now tend to view the struggle of all three
as a single campaign, as if it had been coordinated. The "terrorist"
actions of the Irgun and the Stern group complemented the illegal
immigration campaign of the Haganah. The growing popularity of the
Irgun and the Stern Group convinced the British that they should reach
a modus vivendi with the official Zionist leadership, lest the
"extremists" take over the entire Hebrew community.

This analogy has, of course, its limitations. Ben-Gurion was a strong
and authoritative leader, like Arafat, while the position of Abbas is
much weaker. Menachem Begin was resolved to prevent a fratricidal war
at any cost, even when his men where abducted and turned over to the
British. I don't believe the Hamas leaders would react like this in a
similar situation. Unlike the Irgun and its supporting political party,
Hamas has won the majority in democratic elections.

But it is possible that in the future, after the state of Palestine
comes into being, historians will say that Fatah, Hamas and the Islamic
Jihad really complemented each other. President Bush is pressuring Ehud
Olmert into making concessions to Mahmoud Abbas, in order to prevent
the complete takeover of the West Bank by Hamas. Perhaps it is
precisely the turning of Gaza into Hamastan that will enable Abbas to
utilize his weakness to achieve things that he could not get any other
way.

ANYWAY, in order to accommodate President Bush's request, Olmert is now
ready to cooperate with Abbas in writing something like a "framework
agreement" that will lay down the principles of an agreement that may
be achieved later on - but without details or a time-table.

According to the leaks, the agreement will repeat more or less Ehud
Barak's proposals at Camp David, including some of the bizarre ones,
such as Israeli sovereignty "beneath" the Temple Mount. The Palestinian
state will have "temporary" borders, with the "permanent" borders to be
fixed some time in the future. Olmert demands that the Separation Wall
will serve as the "temporary" border. This, by the way, confirms what
we have been saying from the very first moment, and what was violently
denied even before the Supreme Court: that the path of the Wall does
not reflect security considerations, but was designed to annex 8% of
the West Bank to Israel. In this area, the "settlement blocs" were set
up, those that President Bush has generously promised to attach to
Israel.

The whole exercise is very dangerous for the Palestinians. True, if
such a document is indeed completed, it will officially fix the minimum
that the Israeli government is ready to give, but it can be interpreted
as setting down the maximum that the Palestinians will be allowed to
demand. In political life, not much is more permanent than the
"temporary".

It is also dangerous for the Israelis. It may encourage the illusion
that such a "solution" would put an end to the conflict. In fact, no
Palestinian will see this as a real solution, and the conflict will go
on.

How will public opinion treat this plan? Olmert is certainly
commissioning polls to find out. We don't know the results. Like
Sharon, he keeps his polls secret.