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Israel News Digest
David Dolan, Christian Friends of Israel, Jerusalem
FADING LIGHTNING Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak found himself the target of intense Arab fire during April after the recently revived peace process with Syria came to a screeching halt. The thrashing verbal attacks -- from Damascus, Beirut and Cairo -- were amplified by the fact that renewed negotiations with the Palestinians made little progress during the month. Opinion polls showed Barak’s popularity sinking fast among Israeli voters, especially among those who forsook their usual right-wing Likud home to cast ballots for the former Armed Forces Chief of Staff. Not a few Labor party members also expressed increasing disappointment over their leader’s perceived peace and domestic policy failures. It was only one year ago that Barak, a relative political novice, flashed into office with an impressive landslide victory. Expectations were high for the military-man-turned-politician. Acting upon the advice of his American campaign handlers, Barak virtually promised the moon during the run-up to the May 17 vote. He promised he would restart frozen negotiations with the Palestinians and Syria and bring about swift and secure peace accords with both parties; pull Israeli forces out of Lebanon within one year of taking office; bring down soaring unemployment and spur on economic growth; unite Israel’s fractured society and fulfill a host of other pledges. Tired of Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial three-year rule, which featured frequent coalition battles and several major scandals on the back of a dramatic economic slide -- not to mention a barely-breathing peace process producing widespread regional and international condemnation -- a significant majority of Israelis cast their ballots for the new, somewhat "braggadocio" kid on the block. After all, Barak had a tremendous military record behind him. If anyone could lead in these trying times, surely it was he. Now, polls show a growing number of voters question their electoral choice. Israeli political pundits say Barak’s main mistake during his first year in power was to place most of his dovish peace eggs in a tenuous Syrian basket. This highly debatable move, they assert, stemmed from his main personal fault: the former general rules in a quasi-dictatorial fashion, often keeping his top advisors and cabinet colleagues completely in the dark about his intentions and actions. (Ironically, this was also one of the main complaints leveled against his Likud predecessor). Analysts say Barak ignored warnings from several political cronies and many opponents that he was erring in focusing so intently on the Syrian mirage while neglecting the more promising Palestinian peace track and festering domestic concerns. DISAPPOINTMENT A year after Ehud Barak was elected to the highest office in the land, Israel’s battered political and financial spheres remain in a state of disorder. Economic growth -- one of the main focuses of Barak’s campaign -- has been marginal at best (although a huge pool of natural gas, discovered off the coast of Ashkelon in April, should free Israel from the need to import gas for the foreseeable future). Over 9% of the work force is still unemployed, medical and public sector workers and others strike for higher wages, as they often did under Netanyahu, and coalition squabbles continue to threaten government stability. Meanwhile fighting still rages in Lebanon, terrorists attack Israeli civilians, and Arab "peace partners" launch fresh verbal volleys against Israel. While few voters expected Barak to solve all these issues, most anticipated more progress than has been evidenced so far. Indeed, the former ruling party issued a scathing assault on Barak during April, saying he has failed to deliver on all major election pledges. "A year ago, someone promised to bring change to the country," noted popular Likud Knesset member Silvan Shalom during a no-confidence debate. "If Barak cannot do so, he should step aside and allow others the opportunity." Shalom -- expected to challenge Ariel Sharon as party head in 2001 -- concluded that Barak has "earned a very negative grade" during his first year in power. Sharon agreed, and announced that he would lead a fight to topple the government in the coming months. Statements of support from many backers countered the sharp attacks on the embattled Premier, even from some of his Labor party colleagues. They pointed out that Barak inherited all of the problems he is now grappling with. Still, critics said he made the bed he is now being forced to sleep in by insisting during the election campaign that he could and would handsomely handle Israel’s outstanding problems. Demonstrating growing disappointment with his rule, opinion surveys taken in April showed Netanyahu pulling almost even with Barak. This was especially embarrassing for the current Premier in that his political rival is not even an official candidate for office! The result was doubly humbling since the survey was taken just days after Israeli police investigators recommended that Netanyahu be tried for several alleged criminal offenses, including bribery, attempted fraud and theft of state property. IT’S ALL OVER NOW Any lingering doubts that renewed "land for peace" negotiations between Israel and Syria are truly over were quashed on April 13. That was the day PM Barak officially lifted a building freeze on the disputed Golan Heights. He had imposed the construction ban after US President Bill Clinton announced last December that formal peace talks would resume between the two bitter foes. Speaking during a news conference with visiting Chinese President Jiang Zemin, Barak said "projects that had been delayed for several months on the Golan Heights now have permission to move forward." The frozen projects include expansion of the popular Hamat Gader hot springs tourist site, a new hotel complex on the eastern shore of the historic Sea of Galilee, and construction of new roads and sewage facilities in several Golan towns. Sighing deeply in relief, most Golan Heights residents praised Barak’s decision to thaw the building freeze, even though all realize that the explosive issue of their continued existence on the verdant plateau will not go away for good. Community spokesman Uri Heitner called upon the government to initiate new industrial and agricultural projects to further enhance Israel’s hold on the high ground. Sami-Bar Lev, a council official in the main town of Katzrin, said Barak’s welcome decision will allow many new Russian-speaking immigrants and young Israeli families to move to the Golan Heights, in accordance with their declared intentions. Most Israeli politicians welcomed Barak’s decision. Predictably, Education Minister Yossi Sarid was not among them. Noting that senior government ministers were not even consulted about the action, the leader of the third largest party in Barak’s patchwork coalition blasted the move as "very wrong." He predicted that negotiations with Syria "will be resumed one day, and then the new settlers, sooner or later, will have to leave the region." Sarid’s complaint was another reminder that his ten-seat Meretz party does not call the shots in the current government, as it generally did when the late Yitzhak Rabin was in power. Admitting that Bill Clinton’s risky peace initiative is dead in the water, the State Department spokesman in Washington uttered the usual rebuke that is traditionally issued when Israel builds in contested land: "We believe that settlement activity complicates efforts to make peace." For the most part, other world governments released no statements regarding Barak’s announcement (the visiting Chinese leader, who rules over a land nearly 500 times the size of tiny Israel, said nothing), apart from expected condemnations from all Arab capitals. Naturally, the harshest censure came from Syria. State-controlled newspapers in Damascus called the building-ban suspension a "dangerous and provocative move" that might lead to war. Suggesting that Syria could initiate new military aggression, the Syrian Times warned, "the whole peace process will collapse" if new Golan construction takes place. BATTLE LINES Syrian leaders are especially angry that the White House is blaming them for the negotiating breakdown with Israel. "The ball is now in Syria’s court" said President Clinton soon after his failed Geneva summit talks with Syrian dictator Hafez Assad in March. In other words, Syria must back down from its strident demand that negotiations cannot proceed unless Israel first agrees to cede one-sixth of the Sea of Galilee shoreline, and part of the Jordan River north of the lake. Although Clinton desperately wants to go down in history as the American leader who helped produce a final Israel-Syria peace accord, he knows he cannot force Barak to accept Assad’s outrageous demand. Even if he could somehow do so, he realizes that the Israeli public would never approve such a suicidal concession in a public referendum. The Syrians, of course, blame Israel for the new, and potentially explosive, impasse. They contend that under UN Resolution 242, Assad is fully justified in demanding an Israeli pre-negotiating commitment to hand over every inch of territory which Syria occupied the day before the Six Day War broke out. "The June 4, 1967 line is on the northeastern shore of the lake, and not at any other place" said Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shara in a mid-April speech at a conference in Cuba -- a fellow police state. He insisted that an Israeli evacuation of the shoreline "accurately reflects Security Council Resolution 242," adding that "the red lines are those which are defined by UN resolutions and principals of international law, and not statements and articles issued by some Israeli extremists and their supporters." The Syrian official went on to threaten Israel’s vital water supply if the lakeshore property is not handed over. "Israeli public opinion should understand that most of their water resources come from Syria and Lebanon, and they should therefore realize that their need for a just peace equals their need for secure water." In other words, if Barak does not allow the Syrians to camp out once again on the northeast shores of the biblical lake, then liquid gold may not flow as before into the Jordan River’s four main tributaries. FACTS It is precisely Israeli awareness of the precarious nature of northern water supplies that unites public opinion against a withdrawal to the pre-Six Day War lines. The need to secure that precious water supply was what prodded British Mandate authorities in the early 1920’s to insist that the entire Sea of Galilee remain under their control, along with the Jordan and its tributaries. Understanding that water flows down, Britain also lobbied hard for the inclusion of the Golan Heights in her League of Nations Mandate. This reasonable position was initially sanctioned by post World War One negotiators, busy carving up the defeated Turkish Ottoman Empire. Looking out for her Syrian clients, France insisted that all of the Golan plateau, and part of the lake below it, be appended to their mandated territory. A compromise was agreed to in 1923 which left the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River entirely under British control, while the Golan Heights with its Hermon peaks and foothills remained under French jurisdiction. This was the basic border that prevailed after Israel gained independence in 1948. It is the line that Barak is apparently ready to return to today, but nothing beyond it. It is an undisputed fact that Syrian soldiers were sitting on the northeast shores of the Galilee lake on June 4, 1967, and controlled both banks of the Jordan just north of it. However, this was only because the regime in Damascus had forcefully occupied the area in military skirmishes between 1948 and 1967. It is also a fact that UN Resolution 242 was not designed to act as a substitute for negotiations over Israel’s final borders. Therefore, Menachem Begin did not hand over the Gaza Strip to Egypt in the Camp David peace accord even though Cairo clearly occupied the area on June 4, 1967. In the same way, Israel is not obligated to reward Syrian aggression before 1967 with a complete pullout to the pre-Six Day War lines. If that is Assad’s condition for signing a peace treaty with Jerusalem, then there will be no agreement. That this is his unalterable position was confirmed by his son and heir apparent, Bashar, who indicated in a newspaper interview in April that he will be no more flexible than his ailing father if and when he takes hold of the dictatorial reigns of power. If it is an "extremist" position to deny Assad’s declared wish to jump off of Syrian sand into the Sea of Galilee -- Israel’s only natural above-ground water reservoir -- then most Israelis are extremists, as many Arabs maintain. The most prominent left-wing Jewish politician, Yossi Sarid, said after the failed Assad-Clinton summit, "all of Lake Kinneret must remain outside Syrian territory and under full Israeli sovereignty." This position was even supported by the ultra-dovish Peace Now organization, which advocates a withdrawal from the entire Golan Heights, as does Sarid. "We have no opposition to the Syrian’s swimming in the lake, as long as they have to pass through an Israeli border to get there," said Peace Now leader Gabi Lasky. Israeli officials say Foreign Minister Shara actually agreed last January that the shoreline sovereignty issue could be negotiated. "He specifically stated at peace talks in West Virginia that control over Lake Kinneret could be discussed," said an unnamed official quoted in the Jerusalem Post. However, when Clinton brought this up in Geneva, the Syrian dictator flatly denied that his subordinate had made such a commitment. According to US and Israeli press reports, it was then that the US leader realized it would be useless to sponsor further peace talks between Barak and the intransigent Assad, who obviously wants all, or nothing at all. CAUTION TO THE WIND When Ehud Barak promised to pull his soldiers out of Lebanon within one year of his assumption of power, he was nearly certain it would be in the context of a Syrian-Israeli peace accord. He ignored warnings from several Israeli experts on Syria that the Damascus despot had quite a lot to lose, and not necessarily much to gain, by signing a deal with Israel. A peace pact would threaten his illegal, but lucrative, hold on Lebanon; anger his closest ally, the Islamic fundamentalist state of Iran; and take away his main excuse for maintaining his oppressive and brutal regime -- opposition to the hated "Zionist entity." Many doubted that Assad would risk upsetting his autocratic apple cart simply to regain control over one of Mount Hermon’s majestic peaks and the area below it, as much as he would like to have the land back under his belt. Barak made clear in April that his promised army withdrawal would be completed by this July, no matter what. A formal notification to this effect was given to the UN on April 17. The very next day, a convoy of army trucks carrying portable housing was spotted exiting the Security Zone. However, in the absence of an accord with Assad, many fear that another hellish chapter is about to unfold in the bitter Arab/Israeli conflict. Some are even warning that an unstable Lebanon may once again become the catalyst for a Syrian-Israeli military clash, as it did in 1982. The warning gained credibility as a series of warlike words and actions rose from the Land of the Cedars during the month. To begin with, Prime Minister Salim Hoss called the announced withdrawal "a resounding victory for Lebanon and its historic resistance and steadfast people, and a crushing defeat for Israel." Lebanese Foreign Minister Ghazi Zaiter suggested that Syrian forces should be deployed right up to the Zionist border; not only to harass northern Israel, but to place Syrian missiles within range of Tel Aviv! (In fact, advanced long-range missiles can already reach Israel’s metropolitan center from deep inside Syria). Fortunately, Syrian officials were publicly cool to the suggestion. Lebanese leaders declared that in the absence of a Syrian-Israel accord, they would not feel obligated to secure peace along the border. President Emile Lahoud sent a letter to UN chief Kofi Annan warning that Palestinian refugees living in south Lebanon may "launch constant little wars" if they are not transferred from the area as part of an Israel-Palestinian peace deal. Lahoud also demanded "UN guarantees against further Israeli attacks on Lebanon" even if cross-border shelling continues from Lebanese territory. Barak has already made clear that Israel will forcefully respond if such assaults continue after the army pulls out. While not promising to defend Lebanon from Israeli attacks, Annan did pledge to beef up UN peacekeeping forces in south Lebanon, who have served there since 1978. This came after UN, US and European Union leaders officially welcomed Israel’s withdrawal decision, which Barak promised would not leave one soldier stationed on Lebanese territory. HATEFUL HIZBULLAH The main military threat along the Israel-Lebanon border is expected to be posed by Syrian and Iranian-backed Hizbullah forces and their allies. The leader of the militant Islamic group, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, announced in Beirut on April 12 that his jihad warriors will not fully rest until "the Zionist entity is no more." Two days later, he pledged that violence will continue until Israel releases all Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli jails, especially Hizbullah Sheik Abdel-Kareem Obeid (under orders from the Supreme Court, Barak reluctantly freed 13 other Lebanese prisoners just before Passover). He also suggested that his group would fight "until all 350,000 Palestinian refugees living here are free to move back to occupied Palestine." Nasrallah’s menacing statements came soon after retiring Israeli secret service chief Ami Aylon told a Knesset committee that Iran is using Hizbullah to build a terrorist infrastructure inside Israel. He said his security agents have detected growing organizational links between Hizbullah and Hamas forces. Israeli Army intelligence officers said Hizbullah is forming a new offensive militia in Palestinian refugee camps around Sidon. In light of this and other developments -- including the possibility that civil war may break out once again in south Lebanon after Israeli soldiers leave the scene -- Armed Forces Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz told the legislators that he is "preparing for the possibility of attacks upon northern Israel." He also noted that over 100 rockets had been fired at Israeli and allied South Lebanese Army (SLA) forces in the first three months of this year, a fourfold increase over the same period last year. Several Hizbullah rockets landed inside Israel just before Passover, including one that destroyed a chicken coop in a farming community located along the border. The attacks added fuel to growing protests by northern residents, who held public demonstrations several times to demand additional government security aid. At the same time, officials in Jerusalem revealed that over 900 Israeli apartments had been leased from June 1 for SLA members and their families. Several kibbutz settlements also expressed willingness to offer sanctuary to SLA fighters, who have been placed under death threats by fanatical Hizbullah leaders and their political backers in Beirut. Noting that the SLA was originally established as the Free Lebanese Forces before Israeli troops first entered Lebanon, SLA commander General Antoine Lahad said his men are grateful for the housing offers, but will not abandon their homes. He reminded journalists that the late Lebanese General Saad Hadad had established the Maronite-dominated force in order to fight against occupying PLO gunmen, who flooded into south Lebanon after Yasser Arafat’s failed coup attempt against Jordan’s King Hussein in 1970. Lahad then indirectly revealed his opinion on the unilateral Israeli pullout: "If Israel wants to withdraw without ensuring peace and security in the north, then that is an internal Israeli problem. But we will protect our interests and defend ourselves from any aggression." Analysts said the latter comment may reflect a quiet commitment from Barak to maintain some military and financial assistance after Israeli forces evacuate the Security Zone, although Lebanese press reports said Israel will virtually disarm the SLA before it quits the border enclave. NEW UPRISING? Lameduck President Clinton summoned both Barak and Arafat for separate meetings during April as Final Status peace talks made little headway near the US capital. During their April 11 meeting, Barak reportedly told Clinton that he was prepared to hand Arafat up to 80% of Judea and Samaria. The meeting came soon after the PLO chief told his Palestinian Authority (PA) cabinet that talks with Barak are "a waste of time" and called for greater US intervention: "It’s necessary for the Americans to participate because of the intransigent Israeli position." In an Egyptian newspaper interview, Arafat maintained that "Barak does not respect his word, and has become the leader of the extremists." His attacks were echoed by Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, who said the "peace talks are in crisis because Barak’s government is no better than Netanyahu’s." The comments prodded Barak to admit that his May 13 deadline for reaching a Final Status Framework Accord will probably be missed, as was the earlier February 13 date. Israeli officials said the real intransigence was displayed by Arafat’s negotiators. They handed over an inflexible document on April 11 dubbed "The Five No’s" in the Arabic press. The document demanded a full Israeli withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 West Bank perimeters (another ceasefire line from earlier skirmishes, and not an international border as Arafat maintains), a complete evacuation of eastern Jerusalem and all Jewish settlements, no Israeli military forces anywhere inside the 1967 lines, no postponement of any Final Status issue, especially Jerusalem, and the return of all Palestinian refugees who fled their homes in 1948 and 1967. The PA leader held talks with Clinton at the White House on April 20. Afterwards, the US President said he had agreed to meet Arafat’s demand for stepped-up American involvement in the Final Status talks. Arafat indicated again that he would establish a sovereign state by September 13, whatever happens in the negotiations. Visiting Washington before him, PA Minister for Jerusalem Faisal Husseini warned that a new violent uprising would be launched if his people do not achieve full control over eastern Jerusalem. "Nothing can convince us why the Old City should not be under Palestinian control," he said, warning, "there are a lot of forces who will choose the violent path" if negotiations fail to secure this goal. Husseini also praised Hizbullah for "its great achievement in driving Israeli occupation forces out of Lebanon," gushing that the militant Lebanese group is a "model for the Palestinian people." LOOKING UP As this month’s News Digest amply illustrates, Israel faces extraordinary problems and momentous decisions in the coming weeks and months. All this at the same time that her president may resign due to a personal money scandal; her previous premier faces indictment over alleged abuses of power; her sitting prime minister is under investigation for purported campaign financing illegalities; her former defense minister has taken a leave of absence from the current cabinet because of serious sexual abuse allegations; and one of her most revered rabbis is under police investigation for incitement to violence. If ever Israel needed her Messiah, it is now! Despite all this, Jews continue to pour into the Promised Land from around the world. Immigration from the former Soviet Union rose a significant 45% last year as nearly 78,000 people moved to the country -- an overall increase of 38% from 1998. More Jews than ever before are arriving from South America, and thousands hope to immigrate from Ethiopia, which was visited by Interior Minister Natan Sharanksy during April to examine eligibility questions (It should be remembered that he was but a new immigrant himself just over a decade ago, and an imprisoned Jew before that). So while we await Messiah’s promised arrival -- or Second Coming as we Christians believe -- all believers in the God of Israel can take heart that the Bible reveals He has everything under control, no matter how bad things look from our one-dimensional viewpoint!
© 2000 Christian Friends of Israel. Used with permission. And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
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