|
|
|
|
|
|
Israel News Digest
David Dolan, Christian Friends of Israel, Jerusalem I will also rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in My people; And there will no longer be heard in her the voice of weeping and the sound of crying. (Isaiah 65:19) As the violent Palestinian uprising enters its third month, it is becoming increasingly clear that international efforts to resurrect the slain Oslo peace process have little chance of success. Instead, anger, bitterness and violent strife are growing like a viciously malignant cancer between Arabs and Jews in this tumultuous part of the globe. A new regional war, and not another grand Mideast peace conference, seems to be the most likely outcome of the escalating crisis. Increasingly both Arab and Jewish residents of the region are pondering when, and not if, such a conflict will come. While United Nations, American and European officials continue to talk about sending an international commission to determine who started the violence in late September (such a commission has already been established, headed by George Mitchell, a US diplomat of Arab descent), the question by now seems absurdly moot. Things have progressed far beyond the point where the region can go back to square one. Indeed, the always volatile Middle East seems poised on the brink of another major war, with US military forces in the region being heavily reinforced, Israel calling up many reserve army soldiers, and Saddam Hussein parading a large "volunteer force" that he claimed would soon total six million men; ready to give flesh to his October call for an Islamic holy war to destroy the detested "Zionist entity." In just over two months, the hopes and dreams of finalizing a Palestinian-Israeli peace accord any time soon have been completely obliterated. Seven years of torturous diplomatic attempts to build a lasting peace edifice have been blown to bits. It is as if a Hizbullah rocket, or one of Saddam’s deadly Scuds, had pulverized the peace facade to smithereens. Even more ominously, signs are growing that Egypt--with a 22 year history of formal relations with Israel--may be backing away from its 1978 peace treaty commitments. Just the threat of an Egyptian policy change gives nightmares to Israeli military planners, who would be forced in any conflict to station indispensable troops along the Sinai border to counter any potential Egyptian military movements. Things seemed to be calming down a bit in late October and early November. Israeli military analysts said that Yasser Arafat’s eager young Palestinian protesters were apparently running out of steam. Their almost daily processions to IDF military checkpoints outside of Arab towns like Ramallah, Bethlehem and Nablus were becoming routine. The international media was tiring of filming or describing the same predictable scenes over and over again: Hundreds of young brave jihad warriors, slingshots, stones and occasionally homemade firebombs (and indeed rifles) in hand, confronting heavily-armed Jewish soldiers wearing helmets and flack jackets, and--most importantly--carrying rifles or tear gas canisters. The news was slipping in the ratings, and thus in its ability to stir the world to view the Palestinians as innocent "Bosnians" confronting the "wicked Serbs." Lessening world attention forced Arafat to reassess his uprising strategy. He might not succeed after all in getting the UN, US or United Europe to rush to his side and force the Israelis to accept his negotiating demands, especially his insistence that Israel evacuate every single "illegal settlement" along with "every centimeter of occupied Arab east Jerusalem." His Fatah Tanzim militia forces had tried hard to provoke a major military response to their frequent armed assaults on apartment buildings in the sprawling Gilo neighborhood in southwest Jerusalem. They had also shot incessantly at the Jewish community of Psagot, located on a hill due east of Ramallah, at Jewish neighborhoods in Judaism’s second holiest city, Hebron, and at many other locations. All to no avail. Backed by a bare majority in his inner security cabinet, the embattled Israeli Prime Minister, who also serves as Defense Minister, would not let his military respond with anything like its full force. Ehud Barak still had his eye more firmly focused on world and regional opinion (and on his "good friend" Bill Clinton who had helped him get into office) than on the growing numbers of his outraged and insecure citizens who were calling for a greater army response. He would give Arafat "just one more chance" to calm the violence and return to the peace table. One chance turned into three, and then five. But the violence never stopped; not even when Clinton himself hurried to the region, or when Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres met with his bearded peace prize partner in the Gaza Strip. TROUBLE IN AMERICA, BIG TROUBLE HERE Several Israeli commentators said Arafat was not at all pleased with Barak’s relative restraint. What the Palestinian leader really wanted was the reaction usually attributed to Israeli leaders--eye for eye and tooth for tooth. No doubt that Binyamin Netanyahu, with a far more hawkish constituency, would have pounded Arafat’s armed militia forces long before now. But Barak was keeping his cool, talking about a "smart" response and saying that "boiling blood" should not dictate government actions or, more to the point, reactions. He would not be baited by Arafat’s blatant attempts to draw him into a major conflict that would end with international intervention and/or a major Mideast war. But then something quite unexpected occurred far overseas that completely tipped over Barak’s steady-as-you-go apple cart. Israel’s powerful ally, and the only nation with any chance of keeping Arafat, Egypt and other Arab states in line, suddenly switched into intense introspective mode. For the first time in anyone’s living memory, the quadrennial US presidential vote was not a model of tidy democracy in action. It ended up a seriously hung jury--indeed it ended up hotly contested in court. With the reigning Superpower’s large population and influential media naturally absorbed in the confusing, frustrating and increasingly contentious presidential stalemate, Arafat perceived a golden opportunity to act. In the days when the world was closely watching before the US vote ended on a cliff-edge, he had to appear at least somewhat restrained in his attempts to goad Barak into a major military response--one that would give him the excuse to bring United Nations and/or neighboring Arab and Iranian forces into the picture. After all, he had publicly promised Clinton, UN head Kofi Annan and other world leaders at the Sinai summit in October that he would rope in the violence. Then suddenly the world was not watching any more, or at least not very closely. With CNN, the BBC and other American, European and world media focused on the tense Bush/Gore standoff--and with most governments presumably similarly focused as well--Arafat felt free to pull out all the stops. A huge explosion of terror attacks followed, producing a rising tide of Israeli blood. More Jewish civilians and soldiers were killed in the two weeks after the stunning US election result became known than in the five weeks of Palestinian uprising violence that preceded the vote. Sure, Palestinians were still dying in significant numbers as well, but that was seemingly not of too much concern to Arafat. His media and "political parties" would willingly hail each new death as another glorious martyr for the Palestine liberation cause, and the bereaved family would receive a financial reward of around $10,000--a small fortune to many of them. Barak did not have the same luxury. Unlike Arafat, he had not been consistently hinting to his people that the prickly path of violence was the best way to achieve their lofty goal of lasting peace. Arafat had never stopped saying, if mostly indirectly, that the road to Palestinian freedom was the road paved with the copious blood of holy war martyrs. But Barak had promised to sign a final peace treaty with Arafat, and with Syria, within one year of taking office. Instead, pudgy civilian men with full-time jobs are slipping into their reserve army military gear and kissing their wives and children goodbye. Then they trundle off to fight Arafat’s armed, and less armed Palestinian forces--and possibly the Syrians, Iraqis and their allies as well. It was not at all what Barak, or the people who voted for him, had in mind. CENSURE AGAIN How did the world react to the latest Palestinian terrorist murder spree? With the usual equal denunciations of both sides! There was little international recognition that one of the parties to the growing conflict was under deliberate and sustained attack, and the other just basically responding--even if with superior armed might (at least until nearby Arab states and Iran join the fray). Government spokesmen and media outlets kept making the point that a greater number of Arabs were dying than Jews, as if the party under attack has to apologize for adequately defending itself. Listening to the "balanced condemnations" issued by French, Russian and even American leaders (and implied in most media reports), it seemed as if Barak had been discovered enticing Arafat’s rifle bearers and stone and firebomb throwers to march to the nearest Israeli outpost so that he could show them who was boss. The most glaring example of this apparent political need to be "evenhanded" at all times (no doubt due to the fact that Arafat’s Muslim cousins control two-thirds of the world’s known oil resources) came from US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Just a day before she spoke, the State Department had accused Israel four times of using "excessive force" in attempting to end the murderous spree. Speaking just hours after a terrorist car-bomb explosion left two Israelis dead and over fifty people wounded in the coastal town of Hadera on November 22, Mrs. Albright unequivocally condemned the attack. But feeling that need to balance her remarks like a high wire acrobat, she added that, "Israelis were not the only victims today. This morning in Gaza, a number of Palestinians were killed by IDF forces in circumstances that remain unclear." In fact, the circumstances were quite clear, as Israeli officials pointed out. The dead Palestinians were hardly innocent victims like Shoshana Reis, blasted into eternity while standing on a street corner casually talking with her mother on a cell phone, or Meir Bahrame, a father of three who was ripped to shreds while riding a city bus an hour earlier than normal on his way to serve Jews and Arabs at a popular Hadera restaurant. What can one say about 18 month-old Thara Abu Hussein, an Arab baby girl who was seriously burned when flames leapt out of the bombed civilian bus and set her and her passing father on fire (he remains in serious condition)? The dead Palestinians were a senior Fatah militia leader and his three armed bodyguards, who were shot dead while attempting to crash through an Israeli army roadblock. The "moral equivalence" of the two sets of "victims" is hardly apparent. At the same time, it became standard media practice in November to repeat a mantra that went something like this: "Well over two hundred people have died in the violence, almost all of them Palestinians." In fact by the end of the month, nearly one-sixth of the dead were Israelis. On top of that, no one pointed out that only a few Palestinian women had been killed, as opposed to a growing number of Israeli female civilians who were shot dead while riding in cars in the southern Gaza Strip and on a road north of Jerusalem, or who were slaughtered in insidious terror attacks on a public street near the main Jerusalem outdoor market, on an Israeli school bus in the Gaza Strip or while talking on a telephone in the coastal town of Hadera. Adding to the tragedy, three of the women were mothers and all were in their 20’s or 30’s. It is a sad fact that two Arab women in their 50’s were killed during the month when a rocket was fired from an Israeli army helicopter at the car of a senior Tanzim militia leader in the town of Beit Sahur. A German doctor who resided with his Palestinian wife in nearby Beit Jala was fatally struck by shrapnel while on his way to help treat injured people. But the former deaths came during a military operation to take out the commander of Tanzim forces in the Bethlehem area, who was directly responsible for almost nightly machine-gun attacks against Gilo and for many other assaults in the area that left three Israeli soldiers dead and another severely wounded. The doctor was killed while IDF forces were trying to stop yet another armed assault against civilian apartment buildings in the south Jerusalem Gilo neighborhood--attacks that deliberately target women and children, as well as men. The international community has also continued to focus on the deaths and wounding of dozens of Palestinian teenagers, and several children (a tragedy indeed). Israel has come under scathing censure for the untimely deaths as if most of the youths and children perished in the exact same manner as the cowering lad who was shot to death in his father’s arms during an exchange of fire in the first days of the violent new uprising. The truth is that most were active participants in the daily attacks upon isolated Israeli positions, or they were parentally unsupervised youngsters who had come perilously close to the violent clashes. They were certainly not school children on their way to class in a bus, or a baby being held in her father’s arms on a crowded city street when a car bomb suddenly blew up. It is clear that there have been innocent, uninvolved young and old victims on both sides (there always are in war), but the Jewish civilian deaths were almost entirely from deliberate out-of-the blue attacks meant only to kill and maim. WHO IS TO BLAME? There are several other glaring problems with politically correct neutrality. For one thing, the two sides to the current conflict are not morally equivalent, shocking as that statement may seem to some. Let’s take a moment and step back a bit in history. It was always a reflection of deep-seated anti-Semitism (among the traditional Christian community, but even more so among Muslims) for regional Arab leaders to reject any Jewish return to Judaism’s historic hallowed ground. Quoting the Quran, most Muslim leaders and preachers insisted early on in the 20th century that the Jewish people could never be allowed to become a sovereign nation again, lest they spin an evil web over their Arab Muslim neighbors. To prevent that from happening, armed Arabs were encouraged to attack Jews in 1921, in 1929, in the years between 1936 and 39, and (in the form of soldiers and terrorists) in every decade since then. In the process of a series of regional pogroms, uprisings and wars, many Arabs were killed or wounded and others became refugees. Jews, of course, suffered and died as well. The result was the realization of a self-fulfilling Arab prophecy: "We are suffering at the hands of Jews, therefore Jews must indeed be the evil beasts that we were taught was the case from the beginning." This hugely-popular Arab assessment is hardly colored by the fact that Jewish immigrants were simply returning to their beloved ancestral homeland; many to get away from the passing century’s anti-Jewish dictators like Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler and Nasser. The proposed International Commission of Inquiry must look much further than last September if it wants to truly determine what is going on here. It is entirely clear that the Palestinian people are suffering, but so are traumatized Israelis who are once again living their lives on a razor’s sharp edge--fearful it might cut into their flesh at any moment. Who can dispute that the several million Palestinians who are registered as refugees from the 1948 or 1967 wars (a majority today are actually offspring of refugees) have been dealt a bad hand? The obvious thing to say, as most Palestinians do, is that it was nefarious Jews who dealt them that losing hand. But is that the case? As someone who has researched the topic in depth for a book, I can report that it was Arab Islamic leaders who threw the proverbial first stone (and the second and third for that matter). Their insistence that Jews could never be good neighbors became another self-fulfilling prophecy. Violent Arab outbursts in the 1920’s and 30’s--in which the chief rabbi of Hebron was hung on a public pole and skinned alive for instance--naturally produced an armed Jewish response. Attacking isolated Israeli army outposts north of Ramallah, at Rachel’s Tomb on the northern edge of Bethlehem, and in other similar places is guaranteed to produce a response today, plain and simple. Being the clever man that he is, Yasser Arafat certainly realizes that. Is it an excessive response, as world leaders and the press obviously believe? Maybe at times it has been. Who can really say from an arm chair abroad? But one thing is indisputably certain: It is a response to attack, as it was in 1948, 1967, 1973, and even 1982 (although Menachem Begin’s response to heavy PLO shelling of his northern border and a wave of terror attacks at home and abroad was ultimately judged excessive even by many Israelis). The only time that Israeli military action was not a response was during Saddam’s 1991 Scud attacks--when there was no response at all! SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT Amid all of the recent smoke and noise, it is becoming harder to recall that we were nearly at the point of the signing of a final peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians when the violent new uprising "spontaneously" broke out. Many international leaders, and no doubt the bulk of the world media, immediately switched into reverse gear when the "Al Aksa uprising" began. It was as if the history of the past decade had suddenly gotten wiped off the screen by a vicious computer virus. In knee jerk fashion, everyone immediately fell back in time and began repeating the same responses they had mouthed to the original intifada uprising that ended around eight years ago. In such a scenario, the 1991 Madrid peace conference, in which Likud Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir agreed--even if reluctantly--to recognize UN "land for peace" resolutions 242 and 338 as the basis for further negotiations, did not occur. Neither was there such a thing as a 1993 preliminary Oslo peace accord, containing an historic, and to many an unimaginable, Israeli commitment to negotiate the final status of Judaism’s holiest city on earth, along with a pledge by Yasser Arafat to renounce all violence and to negotiate any bumps that might occur along the road. There was no Israeli pullout from 90% of the Gaza Strip and Jericho in 1994, nor in late 1995 from most other major West Bank towns. The world did not witness a subsequent Likud leader agree in 1997--if also reluctantly--to pull Israeli forces out of most of Hebron, Judaism’s second holiest site on earth. Arafat did not build an airport and port in Gaza, or set up TV and radio broadcasting facilities, or form armed police and other security forces, or issue stamps and collect taxes, or allow an Austrian company to build a gambling casino in Jericho to rake in Israeli money. It was all a desert mirage. Since none of this had actually taken place, we immediately began hearing about Israeli helicopters and tanks shooting at Palestinian positions in the "occupied territories." We heard of mounting Palestinian frustration that had "inevitably" led to the late September uprising explosion, since we had not been on the very brink of a final peace accord that would lead to an Israeli-recognized Palestinian state. We heard, at least from most Arab media, that Ehud Barak was worse than any other prime minister before him (some said worse than Hitler) since he had not agreed to hand over almost all of the Golan Heights to Syria, and most of eastern Jerusalem, including parts of the Old City, to Palestinian control. It was all another dream--possibly the result of too much ice cream before bed. Let’s set the record straight: All of these things did occur, and that is the main reason why any international inquiry is a farce in the extreme. Despite the loss of his coalition majority, Barak was at the point of handing Arafat sovereign control of at least 92% of the disputed territories when the violence broke out (Arafat already controlled around 40%). He was also prepared to abandon many Jewish settlements in Judea, Samaria and in the Gaza Strip, despite the predictable firestorm this would generate inside Israel. He would make up for the missing 8% by handing Arafat an equal amount of Israeli land near Gaza or elsewhere. To the screeching howls of many inside his own Labor party, not to mention opposition politicians, the former general was even prepared to order 10,000 residents of the strategic Jordan valley out of their homes and hand the vital area over to Palestinian control. When Barak made his stunning offers at Camp David in July, over 95% of the Palestinian population was already living under complete Arab sovereignty, not under Israeli occupation. Recent rioters have had to march to Israeli positions well outside of their towns to "confront occupation forces" since they were no longer occupying their places of residence. Apart from some villages in Judea and Samaria, only three Palestinian centers still had IDF forces within their boundaries: Hebron, the northern rim of Bethlehem and the southern rim of Nablus. Troops in those places were there guarding sacred Jewish holy sites, and in the case of Hebron, a small Jewish community. ALL WERE IN PLACE WITH THE SIGNED AGREEMENT OF ARAFAT! Sure, he had made clear that he would demand their removal as part of the expected final status peace accord, but that would be a matter of negotiation, not rioting. Don’t be shocked if I tell you that many Israelis are now seething with as much anger as that demonstrated by their Arab cousins. They gave and gave, as emotionally painful and politically traumatic as that was (it led to the first assassination ever of an Israeli leader in the country’s short modern history). They kept giving after Yitzhak Rabin was gunned down, and even after a spate of suicide terrorist attacks left hundreds of civilians and soldiers dead and maimed. The Israeli people have passed a decade spent in gut-wrenching contortions, trying to find a solution to their neighbor’s wounds even though most believe those wounds were largely self-inflicted. And what have they gotten for all their tortured efforts? Not merely a slap in the face, but a bullet in the heart--from a gun they allowed the shooters to possess. Israel’s local and regional neighbors must beware if simmering Israeli anger is forced to the surface. For if it breaks out, it will prove to be as fierce as anything the Muslim world can muster or imagine. HAPPY END Several have recently reminded me that I predicted in some detail the very crisis we are now in during my message at the CFI Shavuot conference in Jerusalem last May. My talk was not based on some crystal ball or tea leaves, or even on a message I received in a dream or from a prophetic word. I was simply quoting Faisal Husseini and other Palestinian officials who were even then openly stating that a new uprising would be launched over the issue of Jerusalem, since Palestinian leaders had already concluded they would never get their minimal demands met as part of the Oslo peace process. They wanted and needed all, or nothing at all. I mentioned that since the Palestinians now had guns, Israel would be forced to respond with heavier weapons than during the 1987-93 uprising. The televised use of tanks and helicopter gunships would draw condemnations from the world, I predicted, and the stage would then be set for foreign intervention, be it UN or Muslim forces. Arafat and company are now demanding foreign intervention every day. So far, it is of the "peacekeeping" type. But if Israel is forced to re-conquer Beit Jala and/or other locations, or some other major military action takes place following more terrorist outrages, the formal call will undoubtedly go out for Saddam and his ilk to intervene. After all, why should Arafat ignore his friend’s generous offer of holy war assistance from several million jihad warriors? Arafat’s cry for military help is probably not imminent, but the stage is clearly being set for the same. Look for his formal statehood declaration--probably in early January--to be the catalyst for stage two of his "Al Aksa uprising." With President Clinton in his last weeks in power (and the possibility that court challenges will still be raging to determine who exactly will succeed him), and with the Israeli government in political hot water, or even facing new elections, the chances for a return to the peace table will be nil. Then, the holy war for Jerusalem will begin in earnest. I realize these are sobering and even frightening words, but I believe they reflect the reality that is set before us. Still, there is an even greater reality that we must always keep in mind: the Lord reigns! It is not the first time that the Middle East is heading down a dark foreboding road, and according to the Bible it will not be the last. Yet the growing crisis itself proclaims that the end of this sin-sick world is nearing. Indeed, the most telling sign of that is the increasingly violent struggle over Jerusalem. The prophets of old foretold that these days would come, but they also revealed that the Desire of Ages would come as well. That is our blessed hope in days like these!
© 2000 Christian Friends of Israel. Used with permission. And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
|
|
