After the collapse of the Israel-Palestine talks in April, and the creation of a National Unity government in Palestine on June 2, Israel reacted harshly. A Smash and Grab policy was immediately announced by government ministers.
Expectedly, the following day, the expansion of West Bank Jewish settlements was announced. Less expected was the disclosure by settlers of an ongoing Scare and Rule campaign.
Bar Lev Line
Scare and Rule is a useful subset of the more standard Divide and Rule. Scare people against an imaginary enemy and they will commit any atrocity in the name of the unholy state.
“The Mexicans killed two soldiers in Texas,” the State may claim and deliver the militia. If the report is later found wrong, with the victims being just two squalid squirrels suffocated by the summer sun, it will not make any change; the goal would have been achieved.
Bar Lev Line, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise And Fall Of Suburbia
The most humiliating battle lost by Israel was a decisive Egyptian victory. Operation Badr caught Israel by surprise on October 6, 1973, and achieved Egyptian supremacy in just two hours. Two days later, it was over. All Egyptian goals were achieved. IDF retreated with 400 tanks destroyed, 950 killed soldiers and around 2000 wounded. Egypt lost 20 tanks and 280 soldiers.
The operation’s name is never mentioned in Israel. Instead, a vague reference to the event of the Bar Lev Line is preferred. It dilutes the shame in a large sea of vagueness.
Built in 1968 and 1969, the Bar Lev Line was a fortification along the shore of the Sinai facing Egypt; it was named after IDF Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev, who presented it to the government as impenetrable. Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan described it as “one of the best anti-tank ditches in the world.”
During the slow War of Attrition, the fortifications served well. Unknown to Israel, since 1968, the Egyptian General Headquarters were planning the assault on the Bar Lev Line. By 1973, everything was ready.
Another point seldom mentioned in Israel is that the brilliant breakout of the fortifications was possible due to the help of British and German equipment. In the days surrounding Holocaust Day, occasional articles describing the help of former Nazis in the better-forgotten Bar Lev event can be seen, but that is it.
Egyptian Bridge
Egyptian Bridge in Operation Badr, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise And Fall Of Suburbia
The day after the operation started, five entire Egyptian divisions have penetrated the area controlled until then by the IDF. To Israelis, this was a prelude of Apocalypse.
Knowing that, the shocking quality of the new term coined, Bar Lev Line 2, can be appreciated. The author refers to the total collapse of the State’s defense lines; it is Scare and Rule.
In 2014, it relates to Palestine.
Bar Lev Line 2
There are almost as many peace plans between Israel and Palestine as grains of sand in the desert. Amazingly, all of them are similar. New names are derived only to please the egos of the proposers.
Thus, Mark Langpan use of the term Bar Lev Line is even more important. He was not referring to Chief of Staff Bar Lev, but to his son Omer Bar Lev. A former commander of Sayeret Matkal (IDF’s elite commando unit) and military hero, he currently is a Member of the Knesset for the Labor.
Nowadays, Bar Lev is promoting a unilateral disengagement plan in the West Bank, similarly to the done in 2005 in Gaza.
Langpan claims that Bar Lev is committing an error similar to the one his father made in the Bar Lev Line. He calls the proposed border between Israel and Palestine “Bar Lev Line 2.”
The main points:
“The area of Gaza’s Envelope [see IDF Abandons Greater Gaza] is almost entirely empty agricultural land. In contrast, the areas adjacent to the West Bank host 70% of the Israeli population, 80% of its industrial infrastructure, and its only international airport.”
“Member of the Knesset Bar Lev wants to place American soldiers within the Palestinian state, in Judea and Samaria to protect Israel. Member of the Knesset Bar Lev has no problem with al-Qaida killing American soldiers [al-Qaida in the West Bank? Mr. Langpan has a very rich imagination, billionaire rich], and maybe President Obama has no problem with that, but the American Congress will not allow that…
“In American terms, to throw a middle-range missile from Gaza to Israel is like firing one from a point in North Dakota to another point in the same desert state. Most chances are that it will hit nothing. But firing a missile by Fatah or Hamas from the mounts of Judea and Samaria is like firing one from Brooklyn to Manhattan. For sure it will kill many.”
In a well orchestrated symphony of fear, Langpan describes a future need to conquer the West Bank.
He almost ends the piece with its core message, “Worst than anything else, the unilateral disengagement plan will create a demographic problem, because hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of Palestinian Arabs will be allowed to enter the freed space without the Right of Return problem being solved.”
As increasingly done in recent years, Israel is now slowly changing its policy from the Two States solution adopted during the Oslo Accords to a One State solution, a Jewish State between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Former Speaker of the Knesset and soon President Reuven Rivlin even put its population at 14 million Jews. ((See “Who will replace Shimon Peres?“))
The author compares the Bar Lev current plan to the French Maginot Line, the Nazi Ultra encryption [wrongly referred to by him as “encoding”], and the Titanic. The only solution is annexation. He mentions that he is exposing these ideas in a presentation, apparently in American Jewish communities.
Silently, Israel keeps advancing the idea.
Two Banks has the Jordan
“Two Banks has the Jordan, This is ours and, that is as well;” poem by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, 1929. He is the main ideologist of Netanyahu’s party, the Likud.
Housing Minister Uri Ariel played second violin by publishing 1,500 tenders for housing units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
U.S. Ambassador in Tel Aviv, Dan Shapiro, told Army Radio that the U.S. “opposes settlement construction and notifications of such construction.”
Dutch Ambassador in Tel Aviv, Casper Veldkamp told senior officials in the Foreign Ministry and Prime Minister’s Office that his government disappointed with the decision.
Senior Palestinian Administration member Hanan Ashrawi said that Palestine will appeal to the UN Security Council and the General Assembly, demanding they act against settlement construction.
Nabil Abu Rudeina, adviser to Mahmoud Abbas, added that Palestinian reaction will be unprecedented, apparently referring to an appeal to the International Court of Justice.
The most humiliating battle lost by Israel was a decisive Egyptian victory. Now, Israel is reviving the memory in order to trick its population to attack Palestine. Then, it will remember that historical Likud doctrine considers Israeli both banks of the Jordan River. Pretty soon, dead Israeli squalid squirrels may appear and the Bar Lev Line 2 will be crossed eastwards. “I can see the Persian Gulf,” grandson Bar Lev will exclaim in wonder.