Another bigot??
Uri Avnery
15 November 2003
Ya'alon's 70 Virgins
What has happened to the Chief-of-Staff,
Lieutenant-General Moshe ("Bogie") Ya'alon?
"Until recently, he was the most aggressive hawk
in the army, perhaps in the whole country.
Suddenly he is almost turning into a dove.
Has he had a divine revelation like Rabbi Saul
of Tarsus, who went to Damascus to persecute the
Christians and arrived there as an apostle of
Jesus?
Up to now, Ya'alon's gospel was far from the
teachings of the gentle Jewish preacher from
Nazareth. His doctrine was: Hit the Arabs on the
head and they will give in. If that isn't enough,
hit them harder. Make the life of every single
Palestinian unbearable, prevent him from leaving
his village or town, destroy the livelihood of his
family, take his land away.
This was an almost mathematical formula:
when one blow follows the other, the lives of the
Palestinians will reach breaking point. They will not
be able to resist. They will raise their hands, lower
their heads and accept everything the government
of Israel is good enough to offer them. They will
turn over their fighters ("terrorists" in the parlance
of the occupation, "national heroes" in the parlance
of the occupied.) They will live in the enclaves
Israel allows them, or look for a better life in
another country.
Now, suddenly, the C-o-S distances himself from
this strategy. He tells the public that the
government's policy - whose staunchest supporter
he has been - is "destructive". Instead of
liquidating terrorism, he says, it produces terrorism.
The lives of the Palestinians must be eased,
they must be given hope.
So what has happened?
The first part of the plan has worked beyond expectation.
The life of the Palestinians has indeed become hell.
Most of them live below the poverty line,
many on the threshold of hunger,
some in an actual state of hunger.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children
suffer from malnutrition.
Every village has become a prison camp,
completely surrounded by roadblocks.
Traffic is well-nigh impossible.
Many Palestinians cannot reach their place of
work, hospital, university or school or bring their produce to market.
Israeli troops prowl in the towns and villages,
demolishing homes, arresting or killing activists
and, at the same time, women and children, too.
The distant sound of an airplane engine is enough
for the whole population to hold their breath.
In this sense, all of Ya'alon's aims have been
achieved. It would be difficult to imagine a more
terrible situation, barring actual massacres.
According to plan, the Palestinians should have
broken a long time ago.
But, wonder of wonders, this has not happened.
The Palestinians have not given in.
They have managed to exist even
in these appalling circumstances.
The mutual assistance of all the members
of the extended Arab family has helped.
Moreover, the great majority of the Palestinians
continue to support the violent attacks
("terrorism" in the parlance of the occupation,
"armed resistance" in the parlance of the occupied.)
The suicide bombers are viewed with pride and admiration.
For every "martyr" who blows himself up,
a hundred are pressing to follow in his footsteps.
The only discussion among the Palestinians is
whether they should go on with suicide attacks
inside Israel or limit themselves to attacking settlers
and soldiers in the occupied territories.
It seems that Ya'alon and his generals have
reached the conclusion that their campaign has
failed. Any further pressure on the Palestinians will
be counter-productive: producing more hatred,
more hostility. So there will be more attacks,
compelling the army to mobilize more troops and
invest more resources, without achieving anything.
Ya'alon the Hawk turns into Ya'alon the Pseudo-Dove.
But his new remedy, too, is based on false
assumptions: Instead of "hit them on the head"
it is now "ease their situation".
How?
Allow some thousands to work in Israel?
Let some hundreds of merchants into Israel
to buy Israeli goods? (The Israeli economy could
certainly use that.)
Remove some roadblocks here and there?
Use the stick less and the carrot more?
That, too, is a recipe for a predictable failure.
Because, like the old recipe and all the false
forecasts along the way (Remember Yom Kippur!)
it is based on a bottomless contempt for the
Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular.
But, as the extreme right-wing Zionist leader
Vladimir Jabotinsky already understood some 80
years ago: you can't buy the Arabs off.
Changing total hell into a less than total hell will not
induce them to give up their national goals.
Even if the occupied territories turn into a paradise
on earth and the military government provides
every male inhabitant with 70 virgins (as promised
for the Islamic paradise), the Palestinians would still
want an end to the occupation. They want a state
of their own in the whole of the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
But the "easing" promised by Ya'alon will be far
from creating paradise. It will be like a drop of
water on a hot stone. And in the meantime,
the monstrous "security wall" is daily destroying
the livelihood of thousands more people,
robbing them of their land and cutting them off from
the world.
Ya'alon is not suffering from a sudden attack of
humanity. He senses that the Israeli public
is gradually turning away from his strategy.
Even laymen are starting to realize that he has failed.
Ya'alon is changing course because
the public is starting to change course.
A man of principle would go to the Prime Minister,
put his general's insignia on the table and declare:
"Sir, I have failed. I resign. And, by the way, Sir,
I would advise you to do the same." |
