Occupation is the CauseOne day last week a spokesman for the Israeli army said it had struck a major blow against the Palestinian uprising in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. It had brought charges in a military court against four Palestinians who he said were leaders of the uprising ”at the executive level.”
The next morning, before dawn, the army sent 30 border policemen to raid the village of Nahhalin, near Bethlehem. When the raid was over, five Palestinians were dead and 25 wounded.
Those two coincidental events, the military prosecution and the raid, define Israel’s policy toward the uprising. It is to suppress the Palestinians by force: by arrest, detention, beating, shooting.
And those events make something else clear. The policy is bankrupt.
The idea that the intifada is something managed ”at the executive level” is a grotesque misunderstanding of its character. It is a popular uprising – one that started spontaneously, according to Israeli experts, and that is fed by the frustrations of life under occupation.
Nothing is more likely to feed the intifada than a brutal event like the raid on Nahhalin. The deaths naturally arouse the emotions of Palestinians right across the West Bank and Gaza.
How could such an incident happen? To relieve the pressure on the army and its reservists, Israel has recently been using border policemen for occupation duty. This paramilitary force includes many Arabic-speaking Israeli Druse. It has a reputation for harsh treatment of Arabs.
Border policemen began patrolling Nahhalin about a week before the raid, after youths threw stones at Jewish settlers using a nearby road. Villagers said the policemen had taunted them and shouted obscenities at women.
At 3:30 A.M. on April 13 the force of 30 border policemen raided the village. The army said their mission was to gather intelligence and arrest anyone suspected of stone-throwing. They went that early because it is Ramadan, the holy month when Muslims rise early to eat breakfast before the daylight fast.
The people of Nahhalin were already angry at the behavior of the border police in previous days. Youths began throwing stones. Then, somehow, the police began firing live ammunition.
The army appointed a committee of senior officers to investigate. Exactly what happened may never be certain. But the incident in Nahhalin underlines what 16 months of the intifada have shown: that trying to suppress Palestinian nationalism in the occupied territories brutalizes Israel – and does not work.
Prime Minister Shamir has said repeatedly, most recently on his visit to the United States, that the West Bank and Gaza must remain forever under Israel’s control. It is that premise that requires the policy of force – to suppress the Palestinians instead of negotiating with them.
Israel’s intelligence and military chiefs argue with increasing force that the policy will not work. ”There is no such thing as eradicating the intifada,” Gen. Dan Shomron, the Chief of Staff, said in February, ”because in its essence it expresses the struggle of nationalism.”
The policy damages one of Israel’s precious values, its reputation in the world. After Nahhalin the International Red Cross made a rare public protest against ”violation of fundamental humanitarian law,” saying its private appeals to Israel had gone unheeded. It said the border police had fired ”without discrimination and without restraint.”
American friends of Israel are more and more aware of what the occupation is costing. Even the mainline leaders are speaking up. Two months ago Morris B. Abram, then chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said: ”The status quo is not indefinitely acceptable to American Jews. . . . The occupation is the cause of the disturbances.”
Exactly. Raids and repression cannot make the Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza content with occupation. They want what Jews struggled so long to get for themselves: a place where they can control their own lives.
Passover, which begins this week, should be a time for reflection on the crisis of occupation. It celebrates the freedom of the Jewish people from captivity in Egypt – and the establishment of Jewish national identity. The survival of the Jewish state today requires recognition that another people is entitled to its identity, too.
I happened to come across this op-ed (I don’t know why a 15-year-old was reading the Times op-ed page, but let’s not go there just yet). As a teenager, I wasn’t really listening to Lewis’ message. I was just tuned into what I thought was another piece of Israel-bashing, and I had had enough of it. I just couldn’t take it anymore! So, what does a teenage patriot do? He types a letter to the editor on his little computer (what was that in 1989, some kind of IBM compatible?), but of course! Here it is:
To the Editor:
(“Occupation is the Cause”, April 16), “The policy damages one of Israel’s precious values, it’s reputation in the world”. May I add – Mr. Lewis isn’t helping much either.
I am a 15 year old boy living in Haifa, Israel. I have much to say of the status quo in my “mischievous” little country, although a prestigious paper such as yours would obviously rather write “white lies” than print my insignificant letter, therefore I’ll try to make this brisk and harmless (May I add, I am a pure leftist, who would love to see the Palestinian people with a home of their own).
The article says that 30 border policemen were sent to raid the village of Nahalin, which cost the lives of 5 Palestinians and many wounded.
The real story: A) Border policemen are patrolling as usual through numerous villages, and arrive at Nahhalin. B) From the speakers of the mosque, calls for Jihad (Holy War) are heard. C) Hundreds of Arabs attack soldiers with sticks, axes and Molotov cocktails. D) Soldiers are forced to shoot large amounts of ammunition in the air. E) After finishing supplies of plastic bullets, soldiers are forced to use live ammunition to fight them off. F) Five killed.
What I’m trying to say here is this: Mr. Lewis is exaggerating just a bit by using the word “raid” and givng the reader a first impression that the border policemen went into the village with an intention to kill, which I’ve proved is wrong.
But the real point is that this humble exaggeration can give the reader the totally wrong impression he\she should be getting – the right one. I have noticed, since the beginning of the intifidada, that this technique is used not only by Mr. Lewis, but by many other reporters covering the happaenings in the occupied territotries. All this technique does is give some more juice to the article and the reporter’s paycheck. Wonderful, we all gain from it, but someone pays for it. Who pays? Israel. What’s the cost? As mentioned before – its reputation in the world.
This incident suddenly comes to mind. 300 civilians killed in Caracas, Venezuela in one day. Cause: rise of costs for bus fares. Now isn’t that droll? Not to me nor to anyone else. So why don’t reporters chew on that for a while? (Didn’t see any nice juicy headlines for that in this “prestigous” paper, whose motto is nonetheless – “All the News that’s Fit to Print”). I’ll never know. Do you reporters have something against us? If not, get off our case, OK?
Ami Kaufman
Haifa, Israel,
April 18, 1989
Two thoughts that arise from reading your post:
1. It is truly amazing how ill informed we are here in Israel. Yet we never fail to accuse the critics from abroad that they don’t have all the facts and thus their criticism is misguided. The army and the government’s control over the press here skews the reality for us much more than any anti-Israel bias or missing facts do for foreign journalists.
2. The current opposition to the Goldstone Report has a major logic flaw – I have not seen a single remark about the content of the report. It is always about the reasons why the investigation was initiated, about the lack of balance in the conclusions, about the pre-formulated opinions that the members of the committee had, about the fact that the Judge Goldstone is Jewish and therefore felt the need to prove his impartiality by slamming Israel, about how the Report has potentially negative effect on the Afghanistan war and war on terror etc. Not a single criticism I’ve heard dealt with whether the Report conclusions were wrong or based on lies. And that tells a lot. I mean, either Israel did use phosphorus ammunition in civilian areas or it didn’t. Either it used human shields and shot at unarmed, white flag waving civilians or it didn’t. By refusing to deal with the (potentially) factual claims, Israel is creating an impression that it is not able to prove otherwise.
Branko, I couldn’t agree more.
עמי, אחלה פוסט
לדעתי יש בפוסט הזה בדיוק מה שחסר למדינה- פרספקטיבה
בלעדיה היא תמשיך להיות ה”בעל בית השתגע” בינואר, לשקר על זה בפברואר, ולהתפתל במבוכה כשאיזה בעל בית אמיתי פתאום יגיע בספטמבר ויסביר לה על על זכויות דיור
Thanx Jo 🙂
Sometimes I wish Obama would be a bit more of a “ba’al bayit” already…
The op-ed you quoted says: “(…)that trying to suppress Palestinian nationalism in the occupied territories brutalizes Israel – and does not work.”
I disagree. It does works very well. It did worked then and still works now: It brings lots of votes for those politicians that incites this kind of policy. Situation will only change in the moment this simple fact change – on both sides.
Hey Gabriel,
I guess you could look at it that way. It is true, politicians are easy to blame for this – but maybe the people should try harder to hold them accountable for the situation they’re in?
Ami, you are quickly becoming one of my favorite bloggers. One request: please write more often.
Thank you very much, Roi! 🙂
I’ll try to pick up the pace again, but with my wife Karen due to give birth any day (any second!) now, I might have to put the blog on the back burner for a while… We’ll see!
Brilliant … love your honesty, admire the way you admit how life and circumstances have changed your opinions, and appreciate the clear way you express your thoughts. I’m with Roi … I want to hear more from you!!
All the best,
Glenda
Thank you Glenda! 🙂 And welcome aboard…
Jeez, you were quite a nerd at 15. 🙂 At that age, I read James Bond, not the NYT…
I must disagree with Lewis’ “American friends of Israel are more and more aware of what the occupation is costing.”
I doubt they are. And that is one of the most important holdups about the conflict. ‘J-Street’ may be symptomatic of a better realisation of Israel (and America’s) interests, but i find their position to be a seriously minority one. Overall though, the ‘unlimited-support-to-Israel’ is king.
As for Israel being held to higher standards – well, perhaps. Sure, compared to the Khmer Rouge, Israeli soldiers are choir boys.
But perhaps because it’s an occupation situation, unusual as it is in today’s world, that gives the stories an edge.
Palestinians tortured in Israeli jails get more coverage than Egyptians tortured in Egyptian jails (or, for that matter, Palestinians tortured by Palestinians).
The is also an incredible world interest in everything Israel/Palestine. I recall reading somewhere that it’s 0.1% of the world population and something like 18% of the international news globally… (god knows how they got to that statistic, but the point comes across). And it’s a conflict where most everyone has an opinion about.
There’s also the ‘accountability’ point – with 2.4 billion USD/year to Israel in military assistance – that’s 5.5 million dollars a day, just for the army – the US public should be allowed some ‘oversight’ regarding where their money goes.
Finally, there is the fact that Israel loves to declare itself “the middle east’s only democracy”. Well, if democracy it is, it’s only fair that it be held to those standards… A main reason i personally hold Israel to certain standards, and criticise it accordingly.
Oh yeah, and in 1989, it was probably a good 286/386 DX, I reckon… When the cursor was no longer green, but white.
Ah, the Pacman days..:)
Mo, I agree (as usual) with everything.
Especially the part about American friends of Israel. How many times have we heard that Obama will have more support to put pressure on Israel, because even “Israel’s friends in Congress” are fed up? Yeah, a lot of good that did him with the settlement freeze…
Really interesting, thanks for this insight. 20 years ago, I scarcely understood the Intifada, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, etc. Now I’m much more informed, but still as much in the dark.
Hehe… I think we’re all still in the dark 🙂
Great post, Ami. Funny enough, do you know I was an uber-patriot at this age as well? In 1988 I even volunteered for the Likud on election day.
As for our “Americans friends”, I agree with Mohamed. Yes, they were surprised by the Intifada, but they grew to accept the occupation, and their support of Israel didn’t change much – no matter what we did. In fact, I think that without them, Israel couldn’t have maintained its control over the WB.
As for the “double standards” argument, I agree with what Yossi Gurevitch wrote a> about it in his blog: it’s one of the most immoral rationalization we could have come up with
Likud?!? Wow, Noam – talk about 180 degrees… 😉
(I think the link you tried to post didn’t work, I’ll have to take a look at his blog…)
here it is again, this time in the good old copy paste way
Here’s some correspondence about the Goldstone Report you might find interesting and perhaps enlightening also: http://maurice-ostroff.tripod.com/id220.html
Hi Anna,
Quite interesting stuff. Nonetheless, nothing that I read for or against the Goldstone report since it was published would ever change my mind that Israel needs to independently investigate itself on the events of Cast Lead. We owe that to ourselves, even if only 1% of his report is based on fact. I want answers to very simple questions Anna, such as: Did we illegally use white phosphorous, or not? Did we use the illegal “neighbor policy”, or not? And so on. This is MY army, that I support financially and in other ways. I have a right to know. I would have much preferred if we had checked ourselves first, before a judge from the UN, Jewish or not, had to do it for us first.
Here’s an interesting video you may have already seen… but just in case you haven’t, take a look.
Sorry Anna, with all due respect to the Colonel, I still want an investigation. 😉
Have been wanting to comment on this post and the need for self-examination for a while but I couldn’t put my thoughts into words. Thankfully, today, someone else did it for me in an article appearing in the Ha’Aretz weekend magazine. The article was about a rather unknown, unshowy Israeli “gazillionaire”, a renassaince man who dabbles in money, art, even writing music. And this is what he had to say about Israel and Israelis,
“We are very sensitive if foreign politicians, such as Joerge Haider or Jean-Marie Le Pen make anti-Semetic remarks, but our cabinent ministers allow themselves to say publicly things that are far worse.”
But the continuation of this quote is really the jewel:
“We have become desensitized to our own body odor and we don’t grasp the intensity of the stench we give off.”
So yes, I agree, we should do some serious self-examination. But it wouldn’t be the first time. And unfortunately it wouldn’t do any good.
How many “Vad Hakiras” have we been through? How have they changed our behavior? How many leaders who have flagrantly abused the law, specifically the laws of war, have been punished?
After Sabra and Shatilla didn’t Sharon become Prime Minister? (A prime example.)
How can we have effective self-examination if we have become desensitized to ourselves?
Those quotes are excellent.
But your last question is a very good one. Afraid I have no answer for it. And you’re right that there has always been a bit of a knee jerk response of “let’s appoint a committee” to various events throughout the history of the country. But let’s face it, at least there seems to be an attempt to investigate, to question. I would think that the Agranat commission somehow prevented the army from being surprised again like it was on Yom Kippur, or that the Shamgar commission hopefully made prime ministers a bit safer, and so forth.
And although the results aren’t always what we wish for, surely it’s better than living in a place that doesn’t investigate anything, anytime.
I also believe that the public in Israel is finally becoming less patient for crime committing officials, as we’ve seen with Hirschso, Benizri, and hopefully Katsav and Olmert.