November 2000

Behind the Arab-Israeli explosion

In October, seven years of negotiations since the 1993 Oslo Accords fell apart in a rain of bloodshed and recrimination, as Israeli troops continued to fire upon Palestinian civilians armed mainly with stones, along with the occasional lightly armed Palestinian policeman. By the end of the month, the toll stood at well over 100, with a more than 10-to-1 ratio of Arabs to Jews killed, and thousands injured.

The conflict broke out on Sept. 28, after Israeli Likud (conservative) leader Ariel Sharon made a provocative visit to a major Muslim religious site in East Jerusalem. Palestinians had not forgotten that, as the commander of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Sharon had allowed his Lebanese Christian allies to massacre hundreds of Palestinian women and children at Beirut's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. He was found guilty of this horrific war crime, not only by international opinion, but also by an official inquiry undertaken by the Israeli state itself.

Since 1967, Jews have been able to pray in East Jerusalem at the most important religious site anywhere for Judaism, the Western or Wailing Wall at the base of what they call the Temple Mount. Muslims have done so at its top portion, which they call Haram al Sharif, where there are two major Muslim sites that together are the third most important one for Islam, after those at Mecca and Medina. Sharon's visit to the top of this small hill, backed up by 1,000 Israeli police plus helicopters, was a clear attempt to assert Jewish sovereignty over these Muslim religious sites, although even he did not dare to actually enter them.

As expected, his visit outraged Muslims, who had to be kept back by police. The next day, as angry Arab youth on the Haram al Sharif stoned Jews worshipping at the Western Wall below, Israeli troops opened fire. As smoke from the fighting wafted skyward and was shown on television around the world, this gave the (incorrect) impression that the Muslim sites themselves had caught fire. Muslim demagogues around the world seized upon this, falsely accusing the Israelis of burning the third most important mosque in the entire Muslim world.

Barak's Intransigence

In the next few days, as the throwing of stones and Molotov cocktails by Palestinian youth continued, Israeli troops killed dozens of Palestinians. The rioting also spread from East Jerusalem to the other occupied territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In a particularly shocking incident, also broadcast around the world on television, Israeli forces killed a 12-year-old Palestinian boy who was seeking cover from a furious crossfire with his father, while the father begged the Israelis to cease firing.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, an avowed supporter of the peace process who until now had seemed ready to make serious concessions to the Palestinians, inflamed things still further by refusing to criticize Sharon's provocation or the actions of his own troops, blaming instead alleged "incitement" by Palestinian Authority leader Yasir Arafat and his colleagues.

As one Israeli peace activist wrote, "Permission to kill has become 'self-evident.' It is permissible to kill a child in the arms of his father. It is permissible to shoot missiles at demonstrators. Human life is important only when the human is not Arab" (HAARETZ, Oct. 8).

Next, the unrest spread to Israeli citizens of Arab descent, who took to the streets of Nazareth and other towns, also to be fired upon by soldiers. The fact that these Arab citizens of Israel solidarized with the Palestinians shocked much of the Israeli Jewish public, which had seemingly forgotten the second-class status of their fellow citizens.

In the ensuing days, some of the most chilling events since the 1980s took place, which will poison Israeli-Arab relations for years to come. After Israel evacuated the dubiously named Joseph's Tomb (the supposed grave of that patriarch of 3,500 years ago), located in the middle of a Palestinian-ruled portion of the West Bank, a Palestinian mob quickly overcame a weak force of Palestinian police and destroyed much of that religious site. Soon after, a Jewish mob in Nazareth attacked Arab neighborhoods, shouting "Death to Arabs." Police did nothing to protect these Israeli citizens of Arab descent, but did kill two who were resisting the mob.

The next day, a Palestinian mob lynched two Israeli soldiers who had been captured by the Palestinian police and were being held at the town jail in Ramallah on the West Bank. This gruesome event was also televised. Barak responded with air attacks on Palestinian offices, not only in Ramallah, but also on the building in Gaza City where Arafat's own office is located.

FANNING THE FLAMES

The Israelis continued to fan the flames. Former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, a supposed peace supporter who had been appointed special envoy to Europe, was asked by a French reporter why "there have been three Israeli deaths but 100 on the Palestinian side." He responded, "Nothing justifies throwing stones" (LE MONDE, Oct. 13).

After nearly three weeks of bloodshed, Clinton managed to convene a meeting in Egypt attended by Arafat, Barak, and the leaders of several Arab states. A new ceasefire was declared, but it only lasted a couple of days, after which Israel once again responded to stone throwing youths with gunfire.

How could such horrific violence break out, only weeks after Israel and the Palestinian Authority had come closer than ever before to a final peace agreement last July at Camp David, and after Barak had made unprecedented concessions on Jerusalem?

At a general level, whenever peace has seemed to draw closer, religious and other fanatics, both Arab and Israeli, have tended to escalate their attacks in order to make any type of compromise impossible. That was certainly Sharon's aim on Sept. 28. It was also the aim of the Muslim fanatics who threatened Arafat's life if he gave up "one inch" of Jerusalem at Camp David, even the Western Wall that is so sacred to Jews. In addition, it played into the hands of those Middle Eastern regimes that have always sought to direct their people's anger at their oppressive conditions externally, against Israel.

MAKING MOCKERY OF OSLO

Another major part of the answer lies in six years of Israeli intransigence since Oslo in 1993. This intransigence has made a mockery of promises to grant Palestinians autonomy and possibly an independent state composed of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and to consider the issue of Jerusalem.

Instead of truly relinquishing control of Gaza and the West Bank, a succession of Israeli regimes since 1993 have refused to remove the Jewish settlements that honeycomb the Palestinian territories. When he seemed to move in that direction, Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish fanatic. Under the reactionary Netanyahu government of 1996-99, these settlements were even expanded by the housing minister, who was none other than Sharon.

Until this summer, when Barak did so at Camp David, no Israeli prime minister had dared even to broach the subject of redividing Jerusalem. After doing so, Barak promptly lost his parliamentary majority, as the right-wing religious factions, which hold the balance of power between Barak's Labor Party and the conservative Likud Bloc, deserted him en masse.

On the Palestinian side, anger kept building after 1993, as Oslo came increasingly to be seen as a sham, with areas of Palestinian control viewed as little more than bantustans. The corruption and authoritarianism of Arafat's rule has also been a major source of disillusionment. All of this increased support for every variety of rejectionism, but with the collapse of the Arab Left after 1989, the rejectionist sentiment expressed itself more and more in Islamic fundamentalist language, whether that of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or the Lebanon-based Hezbollah. The latter advised Palestinians to drive out the Israeli occupiers by force, just as they claimed to have done in southern Lebanon.

Once again, the old rejectionist cry of retaking the "whole" of Palestine, by which was meant every square inch of Israel proper, was heard, sending chills down the spines of Israelis who had thought that Oslo meant an acceptance by the Palestinians of Israel's right to exist.

FUNDAMENTALISM REVIVED

The fact that Sharon chose a Muslim religious site as his point of provocation served only to increase the popularity of both Jewish and Arab religious fundamentalists. The latter were already flexing their muscles in Gaza City on Oct. 14, the day after Israeli planes had attacked. As crowds gathered to protest the Israeli attacks, smoke suddenly blew skyward from the Gaza Hilton. Palestinians rushed over to protest what they thought had been another Israeli air raid, but discovered that Hamas had bombed the hotel to protest its serving of alcohol.

While Hamas is hardly about to wrest power from Arafat, the current conflict will have very negative regional implications. It will strengthen authoritarian Arab and Muslim regimes, from Syria and Iraq to Iran, all of which claim to be more militant than Arafat in opposing Israel and which never accepted the Oslo Accords.

This point was made by an Iranian student activist, now in exile under a death sentence after having suffered prison and torture for having helped to lead the summer 1999 protests at Tehran University: "The sooner peace is established, the sooner one will see the end of the Islamist regime in Iran."

Inside Israel, some courageous voices are also honestly addressing the core issues. A statement signed by feminist peace activist Gila Svirsky and other Israeli Jewish and Arab intellectuals demanded in part: "(1) An immediate and unilateral Israeli commitment to evacuating the provocative settlements and zones that are to be included in the Palestinian state-including those in the Gaza Strip, Hebron and the Jordan Valley. (2) That Israel accept Palestinian sovereignty over all Arab neighborhoods and mosques inside Jerusalem, while Israel will maintain sovereignty over the Western Wall" (THE NATION, Oct. 30).

Unfortunately, such voices, whether Jewish or Muslim, are very isolated in the Middle East today.

--Karl Andrews