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In
late May 2004, interviewed on CBS's 60
Minutes, former
US
general Anthony Zinni castigated US Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his coterie of
neo-cons with regard to their misconceptions concerning the war in
Iraq.
He had already published his views in a book called Battle Ready,
co-authored with Tom Clancy.
Zinni
claims that political ideologues have hijacked American policy in
Iraq. It was the wrong war at
the wrong time, he says, because "Saddam was effectively contained," whereas
the real problem facing
America was the war on terror.
Moreover, on the way to achieving and justifying their end, the Pentagon and
the civilian heads of the Bush Administration made every conceivable error:
They relied on mistaken intelligence that was infected with ulterior
motives. They underestimated the force that would be needed to rebuild
Iraq. They disregarded
international criticism and belittled the UN.
We find a similar phenomenon in
Israel.
On
June 10, 2004, Amos
Malka,
head of Military Intelligence (MI) from 1998 until 2001, was interviewed in
Ha'aretz. He castigated the
reigning Israeli conception with regard to the Palestinian leadership. This
conception is the product of Amos
Gilad, head of research in
MI from 1996 until 2001 and Coordinator of Activities in the Territories
from 2001 until 2003. The Gilad conception goes
like this: The Oslo process was nothing more than a Trojan horse designed by
Yasser Arafat to destroy the State of Israel. Arafat never intended that
there should be two states living side by side; he claims the right of
return for the Palestinian refugees in order to achieve his goal by
demographic means; he planned and initiated the current Intifada.
Gilad's conclusion: only Arafat's disappearance
from the political arena will make a reasonable solution possible.
After four years of public
silence, Malka states that his assessment, all
along, has been completely different: At Oslo, the strategic goal of Arafat
and the PLO was a viable Palestinian state beside
Israel.
Arafat wanted all along to reach a political solution, but his flexibility
was limited by Palestinian public opinion. He asked for recognition in
principle of the Palestinian right of return, but he was ready to apply that
right in a merely symbolic form. When the negotiations at
Camp David
failed, the Intifada broke out from the grass-roots level and quickly
assumed proportions that Arafat did not want. He "rode the wave" to survive.
The massive firepower used by
Israel
escalated the confrontation to a point where it could not be wound back. If
Israel
were to make a new offer today, keeping within the "red lines" that had
constrained Arafat at
Camp David,
he would still be interested. (Ha'aretz
June 13)
This conception of Amos
Malka, published four years late, has recently been seconded by a
number of central figures in the field of intelligence, including Ephraim
Lavie, former head of the Palestinian section in
the research division of MI; former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon; and
Arab-affairs expert Mati
Steinberg.
We say "four years late," because for the last
four years the Gilad conception has stood alone,
and it has had enormous effects. It justified former PM Ehud Barak in taking
the position, after the debacle at
Camp David,
that "there's no one to talk with." Steinberg, interviewed by Danny
Rubinstein in Ha'aretz on
June 16, points out that in a situation where one side is much stronger than
the other, a mistaken conception by the stronger tends to become a
self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, if you have decided that you cannot
reach a political agreement with the Palestinians, your decision leaves
them only two choices: either they surrender to
your dictates or they rise up against them at all costs.
Israel led the Palestinians to
feel they had nothing to lose. "That's the background to the emergence of a
culture of suicide bombers… the most alarming development that has occurred
during the intifada has been the appearance of
suicide terrorists who are not devout Muslims." Then Steinberg continues:
"When we adopted an approach
which does not discriminate between the Palestinian streams, and when we
destroyed the governmental center, a huge gap was left in the heart of
Palestinian society. Hamas has taken root in this situation - and not just
Hamas: there's also
Hezbollah,
Iran,
and, heaven forbid, Al-Qaida.
The effects of the reigning
Gilad conception do not end there. On its basis,
the Labor Party joined a national-unity government with the Likud, in
2001-2002, in order to put down the Intifada. The same conception served as
the background for isolating Arafat and attempting to replace him with Abu
Mazen. It lies today at the root of the plan to disengage unilaterally from
Gaza.
Allow us to note: Despite the reigning
Gilad conception, accepted at times by Labor and
even Meretz, Challenge has
consistently held to its own assessment: Since the outbreak of the second
Intifada in September 2000, we have maintained precisely what Ephraim
Lavie said on June 13, 2004 in
Ha'aretz: that this Intifada
"began from below, as a result of rage that had accumulated toward Israel,
Arafat and the PA. Arafat hitchhiked on it for the sake of his personal
needs." (We do not agree with Amos Malka,
however, that Arafat was interested in a viable state beside
Israel.
At
Oslo, we think, he settled for less, but
he could not sell it to his people.)
Thus the American regime
and the Israeli establishment both acted on basic misconceptions. The
Americans pressed to topple Saddam as part of their plan to control the
Middle East
and its oil. The elimination of Saddam was an end in itself, intended to
shock and awe any potential opposition to the American empire.
In contrast with the
US,
Israel adopted the
Gilad conception of "no partner" after it failed
to impose a permanent solution on Arafat at
Camp David. This failure capped a long process of
disillusionment. Following the first Gulf War in 1993, we recall,
Israel's Labor Party had raised
the status of Arafat from that of an isolated, weakened leader to that of a
partner, in order that he should do his part in bringing about its vision of
a new
Middle East. Arafat, however, did not play the role
for which Israel had appointed him – he did not function as Israel's
executive arm in the Territories – for the simple reason that he got too
little from Israel in return (apart from the establishment of an apparatus
for oppressing his people). When the Israeli purpose failed, instead of
analyzing and criticizing its goals and its behavior toward the
Palestinians, Israelis leveled their barbs at Arafat the man, trying to
replace him with Abu Mazen. In other words,
Israel sought to do the same
thing again. When Abu Mazen too proved unable to deliver the goods, the way
was prepared for announcing a unilateral disengagement.
Israel's
intelligence assessments were influenced, even perhaps
determined, by the country's
political need for a partner who would fulfill its wishes, and not, as they
should have been, by disinterested analysis. "Gilad,"
wrote Akiva Eldar in
Ha'aretz on June 11, "…has the
primary influence in PM Sharon's decision to shift to unilateral measures.
It was he who supplied
Sharon's predecessor, Ehud Barak, with
professional support for the theory that 'there is no Palestinian partner.'
This theory, known in the intelligence community as the 'Conception', has
won the credence of most Israelis, and it has also gained many devotees
abroad. It was easy to absorb this notion into a soil already soaked with
the blood of the Intifada's victims."
There is almost no
precedent for the debate that is taking place in
Israel
today with regard to the "Conception". Suddenly we hear contradictory
assessments, grave in their implications, which Malka
and his colleagues had kept under lock and key for four bloody years. What
has moved them to speak publicly at last? Where have they been? A large
price has already been paid for Gilad's
"Conception". Irreparable damage has been done to both societies,
Palestinian and Israeli, as a result of the lies. These lies won the backing
not only of shady researchers but also of two American presidents, Bill
Clinton and George W. Bush. They have cost dearly in human life on both
sides. They have left Palestinian society and property in ruins. They have
erected walls of cement and hatred between the two peoples. The damage will
endure for generations.
In the
US
there is already a consensus that the war in
Iraq was a mistake, and the
debate that is now underway between Democrats and Republicans concerns
damage control. In
Israel, the "no partner"
Conception has led
Sharon into a trap. On June 28
Palestinians fired four Kassam rockets from
Gaza into the town of
Sderot in
Israel. There had been many such
firings in the past, but none had caused fatalities. This time a man and a
child were killed. The next day the Israeli army entered the area from which
the Kassams had been fired, but the rockets kept
falling in Sderot. These events explode the
notion that a mere wall – or unilateral disengagement – will make a
difference.
Israel cannot disengage from the
Palestinian territories because it cannot disengage from the Palestinian
problem.
To return to our question: What aroused the
opponents of the "Conception" from their four-year slumber? Perhaps it was
their opposition to unilateral disengagement. Suddenly they have
re-discovered that there is, after all, a "partner".
The revelation of this truth is largely
irrelevant today for two reasons: First, even if
Israel
is ready, in coordination with
Egypt, to give Arafat and the PA
a symbolic role in the administration of "liberated"
Gaza, the Arafat of today is not the
Arafat of 1993, nor even the Arafat of summer 2000. Today's Arafat is the
mere vestige, the peel, of another conception, which dates back to the early
1990's, when the world reconciled itself to the fact that the
US was its sole remaining
superpower. Since then we have had
September 11, 2001, and
since then we have had the war in
Iraq.
America has lost its greatness.
The Palestinian arena, like the Iraqi, is careening out of control.
Insurgents with unconventional methods are setting the agenda, thanks to
America's – and
Israel's – megalomaniac drive
for power.
Let us suppose that it were possible to repair
the image of Arafat, as Malka and his colleagues
appear to want to do.
Israel
would still come up against the same wall: the Palestinians would refuse to
accept its dictates. Even Ephraim Lavie, quoted
above, admits that the Intifada broke out not just because of the
Occupation, but also because of Palestinian disappointment with the PA. To
bring real peace to the region and to make the radical reforms that are
necessary, there is a need for a change of "conception" indeed – but a much
more basic one. Such a change will require a different world leadership, a
new global order, including the
Middle East in its sphere. A change of such depth
will not come from
America or
Israel, which seek to rule
through the creation of puppet regimes. The needed change will have to come
from massive political movements, from opposition parties that will place,
at the head of their platforms, peace and development, jobs and the common
good.
Roni Ben Efrat
is one of the editors of
Challenge, a bi-monthly leftist magazine focusing on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict within a global context, where this article
first appeared. Published in Jaffa by Arabs and Jews, Challenge features
political analysis, investigative reporting, interviews, eye-witness
reports, gender studies, arts, and more. Please visit their website and
consider supporting their important efforts.
Articles
by Yacov and Roni Ben Efrat
*
Disengaging
Sharon
* Gaza
Striptease
* Unilateral
Delusion
*
The Geneva Accord: Beyond Time and Space
*
Euphoria and Reality in Palestine
*
Not Stalingrad
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