One of the great themes of modern history is the struggle of subjugated
people to gain control over their lives and fate. In April, I visited Israel
and the occupied territories, where one of these struggles has reached a level
of dramatic intensity. A few months earlier, I was in Nicaragua, a remarkable
example of the will and ability of a desperately impoverished country to
survive -- though just barely -- and to resist the assault of a terrorist
superpower. Somehow, whatever the amount of reading and intensity of concern,
it is just different to see it at first hand.
The privileged often regard these struggles as an assault on their rights,
violent outbursts instigated by evil forces bent on our destruction: world
Communism, or crazed terrorists and fanatics. The struggle for freedom seems
inexplicable in other terms. After all, living standards are higher in Soweto
than they were in the Stone Age, or even elsewhere in Black Africa. And the
people in the West Bank and Gaza who survive by doing Israel's dirty work are
improving their lot by standard economic measures. Slave owners offered
similar arguments.
Being so evidently irrational, the revolt of the dispossessed must be
guided by evil intent or primitive nature. Why should one care about
humiliation and degradation if these conditions are accompanied by some
measure of economic growth? Why should people sacrifice material welfare and
rising expectations in a quixotic search for freedom and self-respect? On the
assumption that the basic human emotion and the driving force of a sane
society is the desire for material gain, such questions have no simple answer,
so we seek something more sophisticated and arcane. Two hundred years ago,
Rousseau wrote with withering contempt about his civilized countrymen who have
lost the very concept of freedom and "do nothing but boast incessantly of the
peace and repose they enjoy in their chains.... But when I see the others
sacrifice pleasures, repose, wealth, power, and life itself for the
preservation of this sole good which is so disdained by those who have lost
it; when I see animals born free and despising captivity break their heads
against the bars of their prison; when I see multitudes of entirely naked
savages scorn European voluptuousness and endure hunger, fire, the sword, and
death to preserve only their independence, I feel that it does not behoove
slaves to reason about freedom."
These words kept coming to my mind as I was travelling through the West
Bank, as they have before in similar circumstances. It is a rare privilege to
glimpse a moment of a popular struggle for freedom and justice. Right now the
uprising is just that, wherever it may lead under the conditions imposed by
the occupier and the paymaster.
Repression and Resistance
Israel has tried killing, beating, gassing, mass arrests, deportation,
destruction of houses, curfews and other forms of harsh collective punishment.
Nothing has succeeded in enforcing obedience or eliciting a violent response.
The Palestinian uprising is a remarkable feat of collective self-discipline.
It is quite different from the struggle of the Jews of Palestine for a Jewish
state, with the murder of British officials, the assassination of UN mediator
Folke Bernadotte, the hanging of British hostages, and many atrocities against
Arab civilians. The current Prime Minister of Israel, commander of the group
that assassinated Bernadotte, lauded terror as a moral imperative. "Neither
Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of
combat," he wrote. "First and foremost, terrorism is for us a part of the
political battle being conducted under the present circumstances, and it has a
great part to play...in our war against the occupier."1
Some would have us believe that such thoughts, and the practices that follow
from them, were only the province of extremists, and were abandoned with the
establishment of the state that the press describes as the "symbol of human
decency," "a society in which moral sensitivity is a principle of political
life" (New York Times), which has been guided by "high moral
purpose...through its tumultuous history" (Time).2
There is an extensive record to undermine such delusions. Furthermore, the
political leadership was reluctant to condemn terrorist practices. In
laudatory reminiscences, Isaiah Berlin observes that Chaim Weizmann "did not
think it morally decent to denounce either the acts [of Jewish terror] or
their perpetrators in public...he did not propose to speak out against acts,
criminal as he thought them, which sprang from the tormented minds of men
driven to desperation...."; David Ben-Gurion kept secret the confession of a
close friend that he was among the assassins of Bernadotte.3
National movements and struggles typically have a record of violence and
terror, not least our own, and Israel is no exception to the norm.
During its struggle for independence, the Jewish community in Palestine
could assume some degree of restraint on the part of the British forces.
Palestinians know full well that they could expect no such restraint were they
to follow the course of the Zionists. Even nonviolent actions -- political
efforts and merchant strikes, for example, even verbal and symbolic expression
-- have long been repressed by force, failing for lack of support from
outside, not least among those who laud the virtues of such means. If the
British had treated the Jews of Palestine in the manner of the Israeli
repression over many years, there would have been an uproar in England and
throughout the world. Imagine the reaction if the Soviet police were to deal
with refuseniks in any way comparable to the Israeli practices that briefly
reached the television screens. Israeli commentators have noted the sharp
contrast between the restraint of British forces and Israeli brutality in
response to Palestinian resistance that has remained remarkably disciplined,
something that may not last forever. As I write, the press reports -- in one
single day -- violent protests in Taiwan, France, South Korea and Manila with
firebombs and clubbing of police, and hundreds of injuries, very few among the
demonstrators and rioters. These are not states known for their delicacy;
still, the picture is remote from Israeli practices in less threatening
circumstances.4
There is a double standard, as commonly alleged by apologists for Israeli
violence; it is just the opposite of what is claimed, and has been so for many
years.
Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit compares the "ethos of restraint" of
the South Korean police to the doctrine applied by Defense Minister Yitzhak
Rabin of the Labor Party: that brutal beatings are "necessary...to restore the
soldier's honor in the face of the challenge from Palestinians."5
The difference, he argues, lies in cultural differences with regard to the
concept of honor. Perhaps so, but the factor of racism should not be
overlooked. As the uprising gathered force, Orthodox Jews protesting movies on
Sabbath pelted cars and police with stones and metal frames hurled from
houses; no killings or sadistic beatings were reported then, nor six months
later, when hundreds of Jewish workers broke into the Finance Ministry,
smashing windows and injuring police and officials in a labor protest.6
Margalit comments that "the announced wish of the Israeli government...to
restore `law and order'...has been accurately translated: `to erase the smile
from the face of Palestinian youth'." The phrase is apt. Soldiers beating
Arabs on a main street in West Jerusalem shout that "they dare to raise their
heads." The lesson taught to the Arabs is "that you should not raise your
head," Israeli author Shulamith Hareven reports from Gaza, where the hallmark
of the occupation for 20 years has been "degradation" and "constant
harassment...for its own sake, evil for its own sake." "A man walks in the
street and [soldiers and settlers] call him: `come here, donkey'." A Hebrew
phrase that Arabs quickly learn is "you are all thieves and bastards." A woman
returning from study in the United States is insulted and mocked by soldiers
at the border, who laugh at the "fine clothes this one has" as they display
them to one another during baggage inspection; another is called out at
midnight by a kick at her door and ordered by soldiers to read graffiti on a
wall. Visiting Gaza shortly before the uprising, Prime Minister Shamir called
city officials and notables to meet him, left them waiting outdoors before a
locked door, and when they were finally allowed their say, abruptly informed
them that Israel would never leave Gaza and departed; "humiliation from this
source has a definite political significance," Hareven adds, and did not pass
unnoticed among people who have learned that "the Jews understand nothing but
force."7
These are the conditions of everyday life, more telling than the corpses and
broken bones. The similarity to the deep South in its worst days is plain
enough.
In the May issue of Z, I cited examples of the racism of the
Zionist movement from its origins, including the most admired liberal
elements. The phenomenon is typical of European colonialism, for example,
George Washington, who referred to the "merciless Indian savages" of the
Declaration of Independence as "beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape,"
who must be treated accordingly.8
Today, extraordinary comments pass virtually unnoticed. I will mention only
one example, because of its relevance to the elite media here as well.
While I was in Israel, Times correspondent Thomas Friedman had
lengthy interviews in the Hebrew press in connection with his Pulitzer Prize
award for "balanced and informed coverage," including gross falsification in
the service of Israeli rejectionism, a few examples of which I cited in the
May issue.9
He repeated some of the fabrications he has helped establish, for example,
that the Palestinians "refuse to come to terms with the existence of Israel,
and prefer to offer themselves as sacrifices." He went on to laud his
brilliance for having "foreseen completely the uprising in the territories" --
a surprise to his regular readers, perhaps -- while writing "stories that no
one else had ever sent" with unique "precision" and perception; prior to his
insights, he explained, Israel was "the most fully reported country in the
world, but the least understood in the media." Friedman also offered his
solution to the problem of the territories. The model should be South Lebanon,
controlled by a terrorist mercenary army backed by Israeli might. The basic
principle must be "security, not peace." Nevertheless, the Palestinians should
not be denied everything: "Only if you give the Palestinians something to lose
is there a hope that they will agree to moderate their demands" -- that is,
beyond the "demand" for mutual recognition in a two-state settlement, the
long-standing position that Friedman refuses to report, and consistently
denies. He continues: "I believe that as soon as Ahmed has a seat in the bus,
he will limit his demands."
One can imagine a similar comment by a southern sheriff in Mississippi 30
years ago ("give Sambo a seat in the bus, and he may quiet down"). This passed
with no notable reaction.
It comes as little surprise that after the prize was announced on April 1,
Friedman found it a much happier occasion than when he received the same prize
for his reporting from Lebanon at "a moment very much bittersweet" because of
the bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut shortly before. This time,
however, the award was "unalloyed, untinged by any tragedy," he said, nothing
unpleasant having happened on his beat during the preceding months.10
Current Israeli tactics break no new ground; it is only the scale of
violence that has extended, as the resistance has swept over virtually the
whole of Palestinian society. Years ago, "opening fire in response to throwing
stones" had become "a casual matter" (Davar, Nov. 21, 1980).
Systematic torture has been documented since the earliest days of the
occupation, a fact now conceded by the official Landau Commission, headed by a
respected former Supreme Justice, which recommends "moderate physical
pressure" -- "a euphemistic expression meaning that torture is allowed for a
serious purpose, as distinct from torture for pleasure," Margalit comments.
Take the West Bank town of Halhul. In 1979, according to Mayor Muhammad
Milhem (later expelled without credible charge with a typical parody of
judicial process), the town was placed under a two-week curfew after two young
Palestinians were killed by Israeli settlers in response to stones thrown at a
bus. In further punishment, the authorities banned a wholesale vegetable and
fruit project that was to be the key to the town's development. Several months
later, after settlers claimed that stones had been thrown, the inhabitants of
the town, including women and children, were held outdoors through a cold
rainy night for "interrogation."11
In 1982, a delegation of Labor Alignment leaders, including noted hawks,
presented to Prime Minister Menahem Begin detailed accounts of terrorist acts
against Arabs, including the collective punishment in Halhul: "The men were
taken from their houses beginning at midnight, in pajamas, in the cold. The
notables and other men were concentrated in the square of the mosque and held
there until morning. Meanwhile men of the Border Guards broke into houses,
beating people with shouts and curses. During the many hours that hundreds of
people were kept in the mosque square, they were ordered to urinate and
excrete on one another and also to sing Hatikva [the Israeli national
anthem] and to call out `Long Live the State of Israel.' Several times people
were beaten and ordered to crawl on the ground. Some were even ordered to lick
the earth. At the same time four trucks were commandeered and at daybreak, the
inhabitants were loaded on the trucks, about 100 in each truck, and taken like
sheep to the Administration headquarters in Hebron. On Holocaust Day, ...the
people who were arrested were ordered to write numbers on their hands with
their own hands, in memory of the Jews in the extermination camps."
The report describes torture and humiliation of prisoners by soldiers and
settlers allowed into the jails to participate in beatings, brutal treatment
of Arabs by settlers, even murder with impunity. There was no reaction,
because, as Yoram Peri wrote bitterly, the victims are just "Araboushim" (a
term of abuse, comparable to "nigger" or "kike").12
The Hebrew press provides an elaborate record of similar practices over many
years.
Within Israel, workers from the territories can expect similar treatment.
Under the heading "Uncle Ahmed's Cabin," Yigal Sarna, a few months before the
uprising, tells the "story of slavery" of the tens of thousands of unorganized
workers who come to Israel each day. "They are slaves, sub-citizens suspected
of everything, who dwell under the floor tiles of Tel Aviv, locked up
overnight in a hut in the citrus grove of a farm, near sewage dumps, in
shelters that...serve rats only" or in underground parking stations or grocery
stands in the market, illegally, since they are not permitted to spend the
night in Israel, including "slaving children" and others hired at "the slave
markets of Ashkelon, Jerusalem, Ramat Gan and other places." A few days later
Knesset member Ran Cohen reported the treatment of Arab workers by Border
Guards in a Tel Aviv Hotel: "The Arab workers were cruelly beaten up, and were
compelled to masturbate before the Border Guards, to lick the floor of their
flat and to eat coffee mixed with sugar and tooth paste, and their money was
stolen." They brought complaints to the authorities, but after more than two
months, there had been no investigation.13
The key feature of the occupation has always been humiliation: they must
not be allowed to raise their heads. The basic principle, often openly
expressed, is that the Araboushim must understand who rules this land and who
walks in it with head lowered and eyes averted. If shopkeepers try to open
their stores in the afternoon as a gesture of independence, the army compels
them to close in the afternoon and open in the morning. If a remote village
declares itself "liberated," meaning that it will run its own internal
affairs, the army attacks, and if stones are thrown as villagers try to keep
the soldiers out, the result will be killings, beatings, destruction of
property, mass arrests, torture.
Israeli Arabs too must be constantly wary. An Arab friend drove me one
evening from Ramallah to Jerusalem, but asked me to take a taxi to my hotel
from his home in East Jerusalem (annexed by Israel in defiance of the UN,
while more than doubling the city's area14)
because he might be stopped at a roadblock on returning home, with
consequences that might be severe. On a walk in the old city with an Arab
friend, he reached up and touched a black flag -- many were hung in mourning
after the assassination of PLO leader Khalil Al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) in Tunis by
Israeli commandoes. A Border Guard standing nearby whipped out a camera and
photographed him, following him with the camera trained on him as we walked
on, adding a menacing comment. This man does not frighten easily; he spent
years in an Israeli prison, and after his release has been outspoken in
advocacy of Palestinian rights. But he requested that we go at once to the
nearby Border Guard headquarters to explain what had occurred to an officer he
knew; otherwise, he feared, he might be picked up by the police, charged with
responsibility for hanging the flags, taken for "interrogation," and
dispatched into oblivion. An Israeli friend and I went to the headquarters,
where the words "Bruchim Haba'im" ("blessed are those who enter") appear over
the doorway; in the light of the (well-deserved) reputation of the Border
Guards, one can only imagine the fate of Arabs so blessed. The officer we
sought could not be reached at once (he was engaged in wiretapping, we were
casually informed), but when he arrived, we explained what had happened and he
called the patrol and ordered them to drop the matter. Luckily, there was
"protection" in this case.
The pattern is common. Israeli journalist Tom Segev reports what happened
when an Arab lawyer told him that a random walk through Jerusalem would yield
ample evidence of intimidation and humiliation of Arabs. Skeptical, Segev
walked with him through Jerusalem, where he was stopped repeatedly by Border
Guards to check his identification papers. One ordered him: "Come here, jump."
Laughing, he dropped the papers on the road and ordered the lawyer to pick
them up. "These people will do whatever you tell them to do," the Border
Guards explained to Segev: "If I tell him to jump, he will jump. Run, he will
run. Take your clothes off, he will take them off. If I tell him to kiss the
wall he will kiss it. If I tell him to crawl on the road, won't he crawl? ...
Everything. Tell him to curse his mother and he will curse her too." They are
"not human beings." The Guards then searched the lawyer, slapped him, and
ordered him to remove his shoes, warning that they could order him to remove
his clothes as well. "My Arab," Segev continues, "kept silent and sat down on
the ground" as the Border Guards laughed, saying again "Really, not humans,"
then walked away. "People were passing by and didn't look at the Arab, as if
he were transparent. `Here you have your story', said my Arab." Others are not
so fortunate, and may be beaten and taken away for "interrogation" and
detention without charge. Complaints to the police evoke still further
brutality, as amply documented.15
These are the conditions of daily life for Ahmed, and the background for
the uprising.
Avishai Margalit writes that "within the politics of honor and humiliation
it is difficult even to talk of a political settlement." That may be true of
Israeli society; it is easy to talk of a political settlement among the
Palestinians, and its general form is clear enough and widely accepted. There
is little point continuing to evade these central facts, as is commonly done,
even by the most critical commentators in the United States, for example,
Anthony Lewis, who condemns Israel for attempting to deport a Palestinian
advocate of nonviolence on grounds that he wants "Israel to end its occupation
-- which is the goal long sought by the United States and virtually every
other government on earth."16
In fact, this is the goal long blocked by the United States and its
Israeli Labor Party allies, a goal that has yet to be expressed clearly even
by Peace Now after many years of advocacy of a political settlement by the PLO
and widely under the occupation.17
As long as such illusions persist, nothing will change.
Some Personal Observations
I visited in April at the time of the assassination of Abu Jihad, an act
generally applauded in Israel, and widely condoned here, on the grounds that
he had been involved in planning terrorist acts; on the same grounds, there
could be no objection to the assassination of the Israeli and American
political leadership. The Gaza strip was entirely sealed off because of
protests that led to large-scale killings by the army, and was impossible to
enter. But with very helpful Arab contacts, I was able to visit Arab areas of
the West Bank. Even before the assassination, the region was coming to
resemble a concentration camp. The response is determination and quiet
defiance, an impressive level of popular organization, the firm intent to
develop a self-sustaining subsistence economy at a mere survival level if
necessary, and astonishingly high morale. From leading Palestinian activists,
to organizers of popular committees, to people in villages under military
control, to victims of army and settler terror, the answers are the same: we
will endure, we will suffer, and we will win our independence by making it
impossible for the Israelis to maintain their rule.
In the Ramallah hospital, there were many severely injured patients but no
doctors to be seen, and few nurses, when I visited. A confrontation with
soldiers had taken place a few hours earlier outside the hospital, and the
medical staff risk detention if they attempt to assist the wounded. Patients
and families were at first reluctant to speak to us, wary that we might be
Israeli agents masquerading as journalists. After our guide had established
his credentials, they were willing to do so, describing the circumstances in
which they were beaten and shot. One man, paralyzed from the waist down, with
tubes coming out of his body and five bullet wounds, told us softly as we left
his bedside that "If you have need of a homeland, you must sacrifice." A
13-year-old boy, hit by a "rubber bullet" (a rubber-encased steel bullet),
told us that he had been shot while returning home from a mosque and trying to
leave the scene of a demonstration nearby. Asked how he felt, he replied that
his mood was "higher than the wind." The sentiments are common, expressed
without rhetoric or anger; people lacking means of self-defense, having
endured much suffering and facing more, have stars in their eyes, and a sense
of inevitable victory. In contrast, in Israel, at least among those segments
of the population that are aware of what is happening, there is a sense of
foreboding. One very close friend of forty years asked me, after I had given a
talk at Tel Aviv University on the current situation, whether I thought
Israeli Jews would still be there in twenty years. The mood in the
territories, and the sense that they can survive the mounting repression until
the occupation ends and independence is achieved, may or may not be realistic,
but it was readily apparent.
On Friday morning, with businesses closed, the city of Nablus was quiet,
though Israeli troops were patrolling, in preparation for an expected
demonstration after prayers at the mosque. At the outskirts of the city, a
group of men and boys were clearing a field by hand for subsistence crops. The
United National Leadership had designated this day for preparing a
self-sustaining economy, not reliant on Israel, which has converted the
territories into a market for Israeli products and a source of cheap labor. No
serious effort has been made to organize mass refusals to work in Israel,
because the dependence of the terrorities on this work for survival has not
yet been overcome. One of the organizers, a municipal clerk, guided us to an
apartment in the old city of Nablus, where we were joined by another local
activist, a taxi driver. With its maze of narrow winding paths, the old city
cannot be patrolled by the army, which has erected heavy steel doors at the
gates so that the population can be locked in if need be. The two men
described the network of popular committees, organized by neighborhood and
function (health, production, municipal services, women's groups, etc.), that
run the affairs of the city and social life, receiving regular directives from
the United Leadership on general policy matters, with specific days designated
for particular kinds of activities, to be carried out as the local communities
determine.
Such popular organizations have been developing for years through the
initiative of the (illegal) Communist Party, which has long emphasized popular
organization rather than "armed struggle" and may have gained considerable
credibility by the now-evident success of this strategy, and the various
factions of the PLO, particularly its dominant element Fatah. Their emergence
and development in the past few months is the most striking feature of the
popular uprising, with long-term significance. Shulamith Hareven observes that
the uprising is "not merely a protest against Israeli power, though this is
the basic and most obvious component." It is "a revolt of women and youth
against traditional patriarchal authority," against "women's work" and the
"prosperous elders, with their connections to Israel and foreign countries,"
in "a society where something very important is proceeding and changing before
our eyes, and even if the current disturbances will be quelled, the process
will continue." Reporting from West Bank villages, Zvi Gilat describes their
"socialist autonomy," with mutual aid, provisions distributed to those in need
and popular organization despite Israeli terror, always at hand, as in Ya'bed,
where villagers listen all night to "the prisoners crying out and asking for
food" from the local school, converted (as many schools have been) to a
"prison camp."18
One sees the signs everywhere.
Though Arab police have resigned under orders of the United Leadership,
there is, local inhabitants say, virtually no crime or disorder, apart from
confrontations with the occupying forces. In Nablus, plans are underway to
raise chickens and rabbits, and to farm on the outskirts. The party structure
emerges at the level of the United Leadership (Fatah, the Popular Front, the
Democratic Front, the Communist Party, and in Gaza, the Islamic Jihad). It
appears to be less significant, though it doubtless functions, at the local
level.
The primary emphasis and concern is organization of community life, with a
view towards creating the basis for full independence. The political goal is
to end the occupation. When questions turn to the means for achieving this
end, the answer is always the same: these matters are to be negotiated with
the PLO. There was informed criticism of the PLO for incompetence, corruption,
and worse, and thinly-veiled contempt for several of the figures in Israel
regarded by the media as leaders and official spokesmen, though not all;
Faisal Husseini, director of the Arab Studies Society in East Jerusalem, now
again under administrative detention, was mentioned with particular respect.19
But the Palestinian issue is understood as a national problem, and the PLO is
the national leadership, whatever its faults. It is a fair guess that if
independence is achieved, conflicts submerged in the unity of resistance will
surface, particularly now that local organization has achieved substantial
scale and success.
The activities outlined by local organizers corresponded closely to a
thoughtful analysis by Bashir Barghouti, an influential West Bank
intellectual. His vision, presented with detail and a long-term perspective,
is that an independent life will be established, whatever measures Israel
takes to prevent it, with eventual political independence after the occupation
becomes too costly for Israel to maintain. The network of popular
organizations, and their activities to establish self-sufficiency and
self-government, will provide the basis for the social and political structure
of a West Bank-Gaza state, established alongside of Israel. Whether the plans
are realistic and the prospects realizable, I do not know, but the similarity
of perception and intent over a wide range is as noteworthy as the spirit of
dedication and the ongoing efforts -- and the resemblance to earlier Zionist
history.
One of the first villages to declare itself liberated was Salfit, which
resisted army conquest until three days before my visit. The local committees
"had organized municipal services, including sanitation, as an alternative to
those provided by the Civil Administration" and had "posted guards and patrols
to warn of the arrival of settlers and the army," the Jerusalem Post
reported in its brief notice of the army assault.20
The story of Salfit was recounted to us in the home of Rajeh al-Salfiti, a
well-known nationalist figure and folk singer, who had been arrested by the
British during the Palestine revolt of 1936-9, by the Jordanians when they
ruled the West Bank, and by the Israelis after their conquest. According to
his account, related in vivid detail and amplified by several visitors, he was
one of 80 people arrested when Israel occupied the town with some 1500 troops
in a pre-dawn attack, then released with two others (one seriously ill, one
disabled). The town has a dominant Communist party presence, and was
well-organized. Earlier army attempts to break in had been beaten back by
rock-throwing demonstrators; quite commonly, the confrontations that are
reported, and those that are not, develop in this manner. At first, the army
assumed that the attempt at self-rule could be overcome by sporadic terror.
One man described how two Israeli sharpshooters in civilian clothes climbed to
the roof of a building at the outskirts of the town and shot a person in the
streets chosen at random, after which the killer called to his partner that
they could now leave. Neither this nor subsequent efforts succeeded. The
village remained united in resistance, running its own affairs.
On one occasion, in late March, the army did break into the town on the
pretext of rescuing a tourist bus that had been hijacked, killing a
14-year-old boy and "rescuing" the bus and its occupants. But this tale was
quickly exposed as a fabrication. The travellers were a group of American
academics attending a conference organized by Bir Zeit university (closed by
the army, as was the entire school and university system). They were visiting
the town, where they were welcomed by the local inhabitants. One of those
"rescued" (well after the bus had left the town) was Harvard professor Zachary
Lockman, who reported that a helicopter had been observing the village during
the visit and that he had overheard an army officer tell his commander by
radio that the group "had not been under any threat whatsoever."21
When the town was finally occupied by the army assault, we were told,
soldiers entered the mosque and desecrated it and one climbed the minaret
where he called out in Arabic "Your God is gone, we are in charge here," a
further exercise of humiliation. The same has been reported elsewhere, for
example, in Beit Ummar, where more than 100 windows of the mosque were broken,
holy books and other property destroyed, and tape recordings of Koran readings
stolen during a five-hour army rampage with bulldozers that severely damaged
virtually every building along the main street, destroyed cars and tractors,
uprooted trees and caused general havoc.22
In Salfit, union offices were destroyed and other buildings damaged. The army
entered houses identified by number to seek people designated for arrest; it
was speculated that helicopter flights in the preceding days may have been
aimed at providing detailed maps. In prison, those arrested were subjected to
beatings in the normal fashion. As we were about to leave the village, we
heard boys shouting outside that the soldiers were coming. People were
streaming from the houses, including women and children, to confront the
soldiers once again. Morale evidently remained unshaken, three days after the
army assault. My Arab guides did not want to be apprehended in the town, so we
left in another direction. No attack was reported in the press, and what
happened, I do not know.
I joined several lawyers from the Ramallah human rights group Al-Haq (Law
in the Service of Man) on a visit to the village of Beita, closed under
military blockade that bars all contact with the outside world; gas, water and
electricity were cut off, and there were shortages of milk, flour and
vegetables.23
We reached Beita over a back road and hills, guided by a man from a
neighboring village, and stayed until just before 7PM, when the military
closure is extended to curfew, meaning house arrest. As we left, the back road
over the hills had been blocked with boulders to protect the village from
possible settler or army attack.
Beita achieved notoriety when a Jewish teenager, Tirza Porat, was killed on
April 6 by an Israeli settler, Romam Aldubi, after a confrontation that took
place when 20 hikers from the religious-nationalist settlement of Elon Moreh
entered the lands of Beita -- "to show who are the masters," as one hiker
later told a TV interviewer. Two villagers, Mousa Saleh Bani Shamseh and Hatem
Fayez Ahmad al-Jaber (there are conflicting versions of their names), were
also killed and several were severely wounded by Aldubi, one of two armed
guards accompanying the hikers. Aldubi is a well-known extremist barred from
entering Nablus, the only Jew ever subjected to an army exclusion order; the
second guard and organizer of the hike, Menahem Ilan, also had a criminal
past. A 16-year-old boy, Issam Abdul Halim Mohammad Said, was killed by
soldiers the following day.
The hikers claimed that Tirza Porat had been killed by Arab villagers,
setting off virtual hysteria in Israel, including a call by two cabinet
ministers to destroy the town and deport its population. Within a day, the
army had determined that she was killed by Aldubi, then proceeding to blow up
14 houses while Chief of Staff Dan Shomron reported that "the Arab residents
had intended no harm to the Elon Moreh hikers" and had indeed protected them.
Many people were arrested (60 remained in prison when we visited), and six
were later deported. General Shomron declared that "action had to be
immediate. A failure to act could well have led to other action in the area,"
that is, more settler violence. The collective punishment and expulsions are
"the expected tribute" paid to control the settlers, Nahum Barnea observes,
punishment for their violence being out of the question, because they are
Jews.24
Beita is -- or was -- a lovely, quiet village, tucked away in the hills not
far from Ramallah. A traditional and conservative village, Beita had declared
itself liberated shortly after the uprising began and was attacked several
times by the army, leading to stone-throwing confrontations on the road to the
village, which the army blockaded. During one army raid on February 14,
property was destroyed and three villagers had to be hospitalized with broken
limbs: two teenagers, and an 80-year-old man with an arm, two fingers and two
ribs broken.25
All this being normal, the town remained enveloped in obscurity.
What took place on April 6 is contested. According to villagers, the lands
of Beita were under military closure at the time. They were concerned when
they saw settlers entering these lands and approaching a well, which they
feared the settlers might be planning to poison or destroy; that has happened
elsewhere according to local inhabitants, including Ya'bed, where the well was
blown up by Jewish settlers.26
When Mousa Saleh was murdered by Aldubi in the fields, villagers brought the
hikers to the village to determine what should be done. Aldubi killed his
second victim when he approached with hands raised to ask Aldubi to hand over
his weapon and take the hikers on their way. Aldubi killed Tirza Porat after
he was hit by stones thrown by Mousa Saleh's mother and sister. His rifle was
then taken from him and destroyed. Settler tales about shooting by Arabs are
denied by the army, which issued an official report of dubious accuracy.
Israeli friends in Jerusalem told me that they had no doubt, from the first
television interviews, that the hikers were lying. Though the hikers were
under the control of the inhabitants for several hours after the killings,
none were injured, and they were cared for by villagers, as the army
emphasized in an effort to calm the hysteria that followed these events.
The official claim was that the villagers were given ample warning of the
house demolitions so that they could remove their possessions. That is plainly
false. 10 days later, villagers were still rummaging through the ruins,
searching for pieces of broken furniture, clothes, and stored food that had
been buried in the explosions. According to several independent accounts, the
villagers had been gathered in the mosque and given 15 minutes notice of the
demolitions. We were told that one man was indeed given time to move his
possessions to his father's home, after which both houses were demolished.
These are substantial stone houses; one of those partially destroyed was a
two-story building which, we were told, was more than 100 years old. Apart
from the 14 houses officially destroyed, 16 others were damaged, many
unlivable. I noticed one house with a wall caved in by a concrete block about
ten feet long that had sailed some fifteen feet from the nearest demolished
structure.
The International Commission of Jurists in Geneva denounced the collective
punishments, including the demolitions and expulsions, as yet another
violation of the 1949 Geneva conventions. Polls indicate that 21% of Israeli
Jews opposed demolition of the houses and 13% called for the entire village to
be "erased."27
Some commentary condemned the demolition of the house of a man who had aided
the hikers, but I saw no general condemnation in the mainstream press, and no
call for collective punishment against Elon Moreh after settler provocation
led to Aldubi's killings.
As elsewhere, the villagers described what had happened, and their current
plight, with calm and simplicity. They are prepared to endure. Their responses
were considered and thoughtful. Asked how they would react if Israelis were to
offer to rebuild the houses that had been destroyed (16 of which were damaged
or destroyed "illegally" even by the standards of what passes for law in the
territories), they responded, after consultation, that it would have to be a
political decision: if Jews would come to rebuild in a spirit of friendship
and solidarity, they would be welcome; if they intended only to salve their
consciences or improve the image of "the beautiful Israel," the villagers
would have none of it. I raised the question of rebuilding the houses
"illegally" destroyed with several Peace Now intellectuals in Jerusalem and
was told that the matter was under consideration, but I know of no outcome.
It was raining steadily when we visited Beita. Women were trying to cook
outdoors in the rain, others in semi-demolished houses. A house may have a
dozen or more inhabitants. The number of people left homeless is considerable,
apart from the many arrested and deported. Mousa Saleh's mother and sister,
three months pregnant, are in prison, their homes destroyed. The sister has
been charged with assault, and according to Israeli reports, may be charged
with complicity in the murder of Tirza Porat.28
As for Aldubi, he is not to be charged, because, as the army spokesman said,
"I believe the tragic incident and its result are already a penalty" -- for
the murderer, that is, not the Araboushim who raise their heads.29
Of the victims of the events in Beita, only the name of Tirza Porat is
known, and only the circumstances of her killing merit inquiry and comment.
This is only to be expected in the reigning climate both here and in Israel.
Who would have heard the name of Intissar al-Atar, a 17-year-old Palestinian
girl shot and killed in a schoolyard in Gaza last November 10, or of her
killer, Shimon Yifrah of the Jewish settlement of Gush Katif in the Gaza
Strip, arrested a month later and released on bail because, the Supreme Court
determined, "the offense is not severe enough to order the arrest of the
accused, and in this case there is no fear that Yifrah will repeat the offense
or escape from his punishment"? Or of Jude Abdallah Awad, a shepherd murdered,
his companion severely wounded, when a Jewish settler tried to drive them from
a field on May 5, an incident meriting 80 words in the New York Times
(and none when the settler was released on bail, charged with manslaughter)?
Or Iyad Mohammed Aqel, a 15-year-old boy murdered by Israeli soldiers, his
head "beaten to a pulp" according to a witness, after he was dragged from his
home in a Gaza refugee camp?30
The reaction here and in Israel to the grossly discriminatory treatment of
Arabs and Jews by the courts stands alongside the prevailing double standard
on terror and rights. Palestinian artist Fathi Ghaban receives a six-month
prison sentence for using the colors of the Palestinian flag in a painting. An
Arab worker caught sleeping illegally in Tel Aviv receives the same sentence,
with two-months additional imprisonment if he does not pay a heavy fine. Four
young Arabs are sentenced to fines and three months at hard labor for having
waved a Palestinian flag in a protest demonstration after the Sabra-Shatila
massacres. In contrast, a sergeant who ordered two soldiers to bury four
Palestinians alive with a bulldozer receives four months, and two soldiers,
whose prolonged beating of captured Palestinians horrified Europe after a CBS
filming, received three months probation. Another soldier received a month's
suspended sentence for killing an Arab by firing into a village. A settler
found guilty of shooting directly into a crowd of demonstrators was sentenced
to a rebuke; another received six months of "public service" outside prison
for killing a 13-year-old boy after an incident on a road in which he was
under no danger according to testimony of army observers. President Herzog
reduced the sentences of Jewish terrorists who murdered 3 Palestinians and
wounded 33 in a gun and grenade attack at Hebron Islamic College from life in
prison to 15 years; further reductions are doubtless to come. Three other
members of the terrorist underground were released after 2 years in prison for
the attempted murder of two West Bank mayors, one of whom had his legs blown
off, while a military court sentenced two Arabs from Kafr Kassem, the scene of
one of Israel's worst massacres in 1956, to 21 years imprisonment for
allegedly planting two bombs that exploded with no injuries. The ideologist
and second highest leader of the Jewish terrorist underground, Yehuda Etzion,
convicted of planning the bombing of the Dome of the Rock, organizing the
attack on the mayors and other atrocities, and stealing 600kg of explosives
from a military base, was released to a religious school in Afula after
serving half of a ten year sentence, and a presidential pardon is under
consideration. Palestinian storekeepers are threatened with the same sentence
-- five years in prison -- "if they failed to wash anti-Israeli graffiti off
their buildings and remove Palestinian flags," wire services report.31
Such practices have been an unrecognized scandal since the founding of the
state. One revealing example is the case of Shmuel Lahis, who murdered several
dozen Arab civilians he was guarding in a mosque in the undefended Lebanese
village of Hula in 1948. He was sentenced to seven years in prison,
immediately amnestied, and granted a lawyer's licence on the grounds that the
act carried "no stigma." Later he was appointed Secretary-General of the
Jewish Agency, the highest executive position in the World Zionist
Organization, with no qualms, since his amnesty "denies the punishment and the
charge as well." The record was exposed when Lahis was appointed
Secretary-General, eliciting little interest in Israel, and none here.32
After the assassination of Abu Jihad, curfews were extended to new areas of
the West Bank, among them, the Kalandia refugee camp near Jerusalem. We were
able to enter through a back road, not yet barricaded, and to spend about half
an hour there before being apprehended by Israeli troops. The town was silent,
with no one in the streets apart from a funeral procession permitted by the
army and a few young children who approached us, surely assuming we were
Israelis, chanting the common slogan "PLO, Israel No." In the streets we found
signs of recent demonstrations: metal remnants of the firing of "rubber
bullets," a tear gas canister made by Federal Laboratories in Saltsburg
Pennsylvania, with the warning, still legible, that it is for use only by
"trained personnel" and that fire, death or injury may result from improper
use, a common occurrence. While we were being interrogated, a man who looked
perhaps 90 years old hobbled out of a doorway with his hands outstretched,
pleading that he was hungry. He was unceremoniously ordered back indoors. No
one else was to be seen. The soldiers were primarily concerned that we might
be journalists, and expelled us from the camp without incident.
Most of the participants in an international academic conference I was
attending in Israel joined a demonstration at the Dahariya prison near Hebron,
organized by several of the peace groups, mostly new, that have sprung up in
the past several months. These represent the most hopeful development within
Israel, and American support for them could make a real difference.33
Unlike Peace Now, which remains unwilling to separate itself clearly from
Labor Party rejectionism, they are forthright in calling for an end to the
occupation, and committed to find ways to protest it. Approach to the prison
and the nearby village was blocked by troops, but women and children, later
men as well, gathered on hills several hundred yards away and began to call
back and forth with the demonstrators. A few children drifted towards us,
followed by many others and finally adults as well. At the end, a man from the
village took the microphone and thanked us for having come. A young man wanted
to speak as well, but was persuaded not to. A few days before, he had carried
away the body of his brother, killed by soldiers, and he showed us scars from
beatings he had received the preceding day. There was concern over the
consequences for him after we left, a problem elsewhere as well. While
foreigners were present, soldiers were well-behaved, but there was a good deal
of concern, on all sides, about what would happen later to Arabs they found us
visiting or speaking to. As we left Dahariya, children were carrying our
signs, waving and shouting. What happened afterwards, I do not know.
Four days later, according to the signed affidavit of an army reservist,
young Palestinians were kicked and beaten with plastic pipes and handcuffs
while their commander looked on as they were brought, bound and blindfolded,
to Dahariya prison. One boy 12 to 15 years old who had been crying was raked
along barbed wire, thrown against a wall, kicked and beaten with a club by a
soldier and jailer while he screamed with pain -- facts too insignificant for
report or comment in the Newspaper of Record.34
The Dahariya prison, known as "the slaughterhouse" among prisoners, is a
way station to the new prison camp Ansar III in the Negev desert close to the
Egyptian border. Ansar I was a hideous torture chamber established by Israel
during the Lebanon war for Lebanese and Palestinians taken hostage. Ansar II
is a prison camp established in Gaza, with a similar reputation.35
Ansar III follows suit. Prisoners include "a significant segment of the
Palestinian elite," the Washington Post reports: doctors,
lawyers, trade union officials, students, and university officials, at least
20 journalists, and others. They are denied water, edible food, medical
attention, even an opportunity to wash for many weeks. They are subjected to
such collective punishments as lying with hands bound behind the back for long
periods in the scorching desert sun, forced to walk in single file with heads
lowered, denied newspapers, books, mail or stationary, or the opportunity to
walk about freely or change clothes, sometimes for over a month. They have no
names, only numbers, part of an effort to create a "sense of isolation"
according to prisoners, no doubt on the advice of psychologists. There are no
charges or judicial review. Families are not informed of where they are, why
they were imprisoned or for how long. Journalists, even lawyers, have been
denied entry.36
All of this again falls under the category of humiliation, a pedagogic device
to ensure that they do not raise their heads.
According to Knesset Member Dedi Zucker of the Citizen's Rights Party,
confidential government documents report that there are 10,000 Arabs in jail,
half arrested during the uprising; close to 2000 are under six-month
(renewable) preventive detention.37
Moderates are particularly vulnerable. They are always the most dangerous,
because they raise the threat of political settlement. At Dahariya, each
demonstrator asked to see a particular prisoner. In my case, the prisoner was
Gaza Attorney Muhammed Abu-Sha'ban, placed under administrative detention for
6 months immediately after he spoke at Tel Aviv University where he called for
dialogue and political settlement. There are many similar cases. Five Jewish
editors of the Israeli journal Derech Hanitzotz were arrested and
the journal banned, the first time that Israel's draconian censorship laws
have been applied to ban a Hebrew Israeli journal; they were denied access to
lawyers, police raided the office of one attorney to confiscate files, and two
face charges of association with hostile elements that carry up to 40 years in
prison.38
The sister journal in Arabic was also banned. In an affidavit circulated by
Amnesty International, its editor, Ribhi al-Aruri, reports that he was taken
to the interrogation center in Jerusalem, beaten and kicked for an hour,
handcuffed with a sack over his head, interrogated for days while deprived of
sleep and food, placed finally in a "cupboard" that permits only standing and
kept there for an entire day, then again for two full days without food. He
was allowed to see a lawyer only ten days after his arrest, then placed under
six-month detention without trial. This case, far from the worst, is known
only because he was adopted as an AI Prisoner of Conscience on grounds that
his detention appears to be "on account of the non-violent exercise of his
right to freedom of expression and association."39
If the editor of the pro-contra journal La Prensa had been
subjected to a fraction of the same treatment in a country under attack by the
superpower that funds the journal, the story might have made the press.
Elsewhere under Occupation
Other areas under curfew were only visible from the road, over barriers
erected by the army. When I visited, the refugee camp of Jalazoun had been
under 24-hour curfew for over a month. Jalazoun was a ghost town. No men were
to be seen. A few older women, presumably less vulnerable, were working in
gardens near the houses and there were several children out of doors.
Otherwise, silence. All entrances were barricaded and under military guard.
The inhabitants were not permitted to leave their houses except for a brief
period every few days to purchase food with what meager resources they still
have. There was reported to be very little medical care and a shortage of
medicines. The UN relief official in charge of the camp, Mogens Fokdal,
reports that "people have gone without electricity for a month. They have no
oil or fuel to cook. They are starting to burn old shoes and furniture to make
fires. The situation is deteriorating every day." UN garbage trucks had been
barred by the army from entering the camp since the curfew was declared on
March 16. UN officials had urged the people in the camp to burn garbage to
prevent disease, "but they fear the soldiers will see the fires as a
demonstration," Fokdal explained, a risk they cannot take. Inhabitants said
they had no food except bread and what is left from supplies stored before the
curfew. On April 17, Israeli soldiers turned back a UN convoy carrying food
and other supplies to the camp. Soldiers at the camp entrance deny that there
are shortages.40
According to Attorney Raja Shehadeh of Al-Haq, the curfew was imposed after
an alleged threat to an Israeli collaborator. Israel takes such threats very
seriously. Typically, the "threat" consists of calls on the collaborators, who
are well-known because of their flaunting of privileges afforded for their
services, to come to the mosque, repent, and promise to refrain from serving
as Shin Beit informers. One result of the uprising is that Israel appears to
have lost its network of collaborators and informers.
The village of Biddu was placed under curfew on March 7 after a
collaborator was approached to ask him to repent. In retaliation, the army cut
off water and electricity for 2 weeks in this town of 15,000 people and
demolished four houses.41
On April 24 and May 14, the New York Times mentioned the
killing by soldiers of two more nameless victims in Qabatiya, without,
however, recalling the recent history of this village. Qabatiya was under
military control, with all entry and exit blocked, from February 24 to April
1. Water, electricity, food supplies and medicines were cut off in this
village of about 15,000 people. There was still no electricity when the
village was visited by a North American delegation on April 25. On February
24, villagers had marched to the house of a collaborator, Mohammad Al-Ayed, to
call upon him to repent. Al-Ayed, who like other Israeli collaborators was
permitted to bear arms, began shooting wildly and continued for several hours,
killing a 4-year-old boy and wounding 15 people. He then either killed himself
(as villagers allege), or was killed by villagers. His body was hung on an
electric pole.
The army then invaded the village, killing a 20-day-old child and a
70-year-old man with tear gas. Dozens of people had bones broken from
beatings. Many were arrested; 500 remained under arrest when the curfew was
lifted 6 weeks later. Four houses were demolished and others heavily damaged.
During the curfew, villagers report, soldiers entered the village daily,
arresting and beating people, breaking into homes, smashing furniture and
destroying food supplies. When journalist Oren Cohen entered by back roads in
late March, the smell of tear gas made it difficult to breathe. A house where
he stayed had signs of a fire, caused a week earlier by gas grenades dropped
from a helicopter, the family reported. Food and medicines were in short
supply, the one clinic and pharmacy had been closed, and the town's only
doctor could not handle the many patients.
The visiting delegation were told by villagers that morale improved as the
curfew was extended and the community organized in response. One said: "If you
want to balance the situation -- on the one hand put all the Israeli
practices: torture, hunger, beating, imprisonment. We are ready to accept
them, but not to accept occupation. We would rather continue if that is the
way to get rid of the occupation." Having heard the same things said with
obvious sincerity and simplicity, I do not find it hard to believe that the
sentiment is genuine. The villagers returned to the subsistence economy of
earlier generations, reopening old wells, eating bread and wild greens,
finding wood for cooking in place of kerosene. What most impressed the
delegation was "the consistently bouyant and determined spirit" in Qabatiya,
as elsewhere in the territories (my observation as well). Journalists who
managed to enter Qabatiya agreed. Joel Greenberg of the Jerusalem Post,
visiting just hours before the press was banned from the territories
completely, found the people "surprisingly resilient" and "defiant" after a
month of the curfew, and without remorse over the fate of the collaborator,
who "was morally degenerate, hated by everyone, and was only attacked after he
fired on what was a peaceful march, they said." They are prepared to survive
on herbs from the hills if necessary. Hugh Schofield reported in the Canadian
press that soldiers manning roadblocks at the town entrances were turning away
supplies of food and fuel; much of the town's agricultural land had been
placed off limits; the town was forbidden to export to Jordan from its stone
quarry, employing half the workforce; and of course workers were forbidden to
travel to jobs in Israel, leaving the town without economic resources. "The
residents' spirits are strangely high," he reported: "If the aim of the
Israeli measures is to cow the locals, the effect is, if anything, the
opposite."42
On May 11, 47 villagers were charged with the killing of Al-Ayed, including
one man carried to court by his neighbors, paralyzed from the waist down as a
result of Al-Ayed's shooting into the crowd.43
Few people in Israel seemed aware of these and many similar events in the
territories. The killings and dreadful beatings, sometimes reported, do not
give an accurate picture of Israeli repression or the goals and achievements
of the uprising.
The Political Prospects
The uprising was not anticipated by the Israeli authorities, and it is
possible that they understand very little about it. Thus if Abu Jihad was
assassinated "because army and intelligence officials believed he was
directing the uprising," as reported, then we are observing yet another
failure of the much-overpraised Israeli intelligence services.44
In 1973, the Egyptian-Syrian attack on their territories occupied by Israel
was unexpected, and its early successes came as an enormous shock. Israel had
dismissed Sadat's warnings about the consequences of Israel's rejection of a
peace treaty and its settlement of the northeastern Sinai, even the maneuvers
of the Egyptian army, on the assumption that "war is not the Arabs' game," as
Israelis were assured by former director of military intelligence and Arabist
General Yehoshaphat Harkabi, and many other experts.45
The collapse of this myth caused a severe psychological shock. The same
occurred in 1982, when Israel's forces proved ineffectual against fixed Syrian
defensive positions during the invasion of Lebanon, and particularly after the
war, when Israel was driven from large areas of Lebanon by unanticipated
resistance, causing losses that Israel was unwilling to absorb. But, it was
confidently explained, these are fanatic Shi'ites, unlike Ahmed in Gaza and
the West Bank, docile and controllable. The uprising has shattered this myth
as well, again creating shock waves in Israel.
The pattern is common. In another recent case, until the U.S. Embassy in
Tegucigalpa was attacked by angry crowds in April, U.S. authorities ignored
the rising anger over their treatment of Honduras as a docile client,
including the landing of the 82nd Airborne, bitterly denounced across a wide
spectrum within the country.
The point is that repression and domination breed racist contempt as a
mechanism of self-defense; how can the oppressor justify to himself what he
does, if the victims are human beings? Racist contempt in turn breeds
ignorance, and compels the resort to violence when the Ahmeds of the world
finally explode in anger and resentment.
While I was in Israel in April, headlines in the Hebrew press reported yet
another endorsement of partition by Yasser Arafat, referring explicitly to the
principle of a two-state political settlement, not the borders of 40
years ago. The next day, Defense Minister Rabin of the Labor Party announced
that Palestinians must be excluded from any political settlement, and that
diplomacy can proceed only "on a state-to-state level." In Jerusalem, Thomas
Friedman managed to miss these facts once again, and following the practice
that won him a Pulitzer Prize, reported 4 days later that the problem remains
the PLO, still unwilling to consider a diplomatic settlement because "the
minute Mr. Arafat makes a decision about entering into direct negotiations
with Israel" -- as he has been offering for years -- "the unity of the
Palestinian uprising will explode." Earlier, he had falsely reported that
Peace Now "has expressed support for an independent Palestinian state." A few
days before Arafat's latest call for a diplomatic settlement, Prime Minister
Shamir had informed George Shultz that "UN Resolution 242 does not contain
territorial provisions with regard to Jordan," meaning that it excludes the
West Bank. At the end of April, the Labor Party once again adopted a campaign
platform rejecting Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, and Rabin
clarified that the plan was to allow 60% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to be
part of a Jordanian-Palestinian state, with its capital in Amman. In Jordan in
early April, Shultz announced that the PLO or others "who have committed acts
of terrorism" must be excluded from peace talks, which would leave the
bargaining table quite empty. He also "explained his understanding of the
aspirations of Palestinians," Times reporter Elaine Sciolino
wrote, by citing the example of the United States, where he, Shultz, is a
Californian, and George Bush is a Texan, but they have no problem living in
harmony, so the Palestinian aspirations into which he shows such profound
insight can be handled the same way.46
Official doctrine remains that the U.S. and the Israeli Labor Party seek
peace, blocked by the extremists on all sides. The fact that this pretense can
persist without challenge is evidence of our failure to exploit the
opportunity afforded by the Palestinian uprising.
Despite everything, Israel remains, in many ways, a very appealing and
attractive place, particularly -- as elsewhere -- in its community of
dissidents, who are by no means marginal, and could become a significant force
with American support. Alone, Palestinian courage and determination will not
suffice; with the solidarity of others, it can lead the way to a better
future.
Notes
1 Yitzhak Shamir, Hehazit (LEHI, the
"Stern gang"), 1943; reprinted in Al-Hamishmar, Dec. 24, 1987;
translated in Middle East Report (MERIP), May-June 1988.
2 Editorials, NYT, Feb. 19, 1988, Nov.
6, 1982; Time, Oct. 11, 1982.
3 Berlin, Personal Impressions (Viking,
1981, 50); Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion: a Biography (Delacorte,
1978, 180-1).
4 Boston Globe, May 21, 1988; on the
attack on the US embassy in Seoul, also NYT, same day. Charles
Glass, discussing Israeli violence, estimates the death toll in two years of
violent riots in South Korea at "under ten"; Spectator (London),
March 19, 1988.
5 Margalit, New York Review, June 2,
1988.
6 AP, Dec. 12, 1987; June 1, 1988.
7 Gad Lior, Yediot Ahronot, Jan. 24;
Shulamith Hareven, Yediot Ahronot, March 25, 1988.
8 1783; cited by Richard Drinnon, Facing West:
The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building (U. of Minnesota,
1980, 65).
9 For further examples, see my Pirates and
Emperors (Claremont, 1986; Amana, 1988).
10 "The Man who Foresaw the Uprising," Yediot
Ahronot, April 7; Hotam, April 15. AP, April 1, 1988.
11 Geoffrey Aronson, Creating Facts
(Institute for Palestine Studies, 1987, 189, 216).
12 Chomsky, Fateful Triangle (South
End, 1983, 130f.).
13 Sarny, Yediot Ahronot, July 3;
Menahem Shizaf, Hadashot, July 7, 1987. see my Fateful
Triangle, South End, 1983, for earlier examples.
14 Donald Neff, "Struggle over Jerusalem,"
American-Arab Affairs, Winter 1987-8; Middle East International,
May 28.
15 Segev, Ha'aretz, Jan. 8, 1988. See
Gabi Nitzan, Koteret Rashit, Dec. 30, 1987, for a particularly
harrowing example. Translated by Israel Shahak.
16 NYT, May 15, 1988.
17 See my article in Z, May, for recent
examples; on the earlier record and the distortion of it, see Fateful
Triangle, chapter 3, reprinted in James Peck, ed., The Chomsky
Reader (Pantheon, 1987); Pirates and Emperors.
18 Hareven, op. cit.; Gilat,
Hadashot, April 7.
19 See press release, Arab Studies Society, 13
September 1987; The Other Israel), Nov.-Dec. 1987.
20 April 14.
21 AP, March 28. There was brief and inadequate
notice in the Boston Globe, March 29 and New York Times,
March 28; editorial, JP, March 29, deploring the army's
"blunder".
22 Dan Fisher, Los Angeles Times, April
10; Uri Nir, Ha'aretz, April 13; AP, April 9. A May 3 NYT
report from the village by Joel Brinkley describes none of this.
23 Yizhar Be'er and Munir Man'e, Kol Hair,
April 15.
24 John Kifner, NYT, April 7, 8, 9;
News from Within (Alternative Information Center, Jerusalem), May
10; FACTS Weekly Review, April 3-9, a publication that provides
weekly summaries of the uprising; Shomron, cited from Kifner, April 9, and
JP, April 12; Nahum Barnea, Koteret Rashit, April
13; Peretz Kidron, Middle East International, April 16.
25 News from Within, May 10; Daoud
Kuttab, Middle East International, April 16.
26 Zvi Gilat, Hadashot, April 7.
27 Ha'aretz, April 15; Hadashot,
April 12.
28 In August, she was given an eight-month sentence,
retroactive to her arrest, for "throwing rocks and causing serious bodily harm
to Aldubi"; Joel Greenberg, JP, Aug. 12, 1988.
29 BG, May 25; Al-Hamishmar,
May 17; Joel Brinkley, NYT, April 28.
30 Chronology, Middle East Journal,
Spring 1988; Attorney Avigdor Feldman, Hadashot, Jan. 1, 1988;
AP, NYT, May 6; Mary Curtius, BG, John Kifner,
NYT, Feb. 9; Curtius, BG, June 4.
31 Hadashot, May 16, 1984; Menahem
Shizaf, Hadashot, July 2, 1987; Attallah Mansour, Ha'aretz,
Feb. 5, 1986; Reuter, Toronto Globe & Mail, May 16; John Kifner,
April 20; AP, BG, May 18, 21; Eyal Ehrlich, Ha'aretz,
April 7; Amnon Levy, Hadashot, June 30, 1987; News from
Within, May 13, 1986; Uriel Ben-Ami, Davar, April 11; AP,
BG, May 26.
32 Fateful Triangle, 165.
33 Contributions can be sent to Friends of YESH GVUL
(resisters), 1636 Martin Luther King Rd., #G, Berkeley CA 94709, and DOWN WITH
THE OCCUPATION (Dai l'kibbush), PO Box 3742, Jerusalem, Israel.
34 BG-LAT, May 31; AP, May 30.
35 For Israeli reports on Ansar I, see Fateful
Triangle. On Ansar II, see Al-Hamishmar, Dec. 22, 1986,
Jan. 27, 1987; Ha'aretz, July 13, 28, 1987.
36 Glenn Frankel, WP-Manchester Guardian
Weekly, May 22; Avi Katzman, Koteret Rashit, April 20;
Hadashot, April 29, cited in News from Within, May
10, along with testimonies of prisoners.
37 AP, May 19; Minneapolis Star-Tribune,
June 1; for official figures, see Joel Brinkley, NYT, April 25.
38 Oren Cohen, Hadashot, March 24;
Peretz Kidron, Middle East International, May 14; AP, May 25.
39 AI, March 31.
40 AP, April 17.
41 Raja Shehadeh, personal communication;
FACTS, March 5-12.
42 Cohen, Hadashot. March 27; Database
Project on Palestinian Human Rights, Update, March 21-April 5;
JP, March 30; Globe & Mail, March 31.
43 AP, May 11; Database Project Update,
May 14, 1988.
44 John Kifner, NYT, April 25, 1988.
45 See Amnon Kapeliouk, Israel: la fin des
mythes (Paris, 1975).
46 Ha'aretz, April 12; JP,
April 13; Thomas Friedman, NYT, April 17, Jan. 6, 1988;
Ha'aretz, April 7; Toronto Globe & Mail, April 26; Tony
Banks, Jane's Defence Weekly, May 7; AP, April 8; Elaine
Sciolino, NYT, April 6, 8, 1988.