Info 22 from Jonatan Peled

["Jonatan Peled" <peled_j at maabarot.org.il>]

Info 22


From the burning Middle East...


Asked the cannibal: what is good and what is bad?
Answered: Good is if I eat your woman. Bad is if you eat my woman...

Asked Rabbi Hillel about 2000 years ago: what  the essence of moral is ?
 Answered - Whatever you hate - don't do to your human friend.


In the present situation everybody has to be asked: which side are you on?
Instead of preching about good and bad, presented to you an article written
by the Peace Activist
Uri Avneri a few days ago:

A SECOND NAKBA?

I was giving a lecture last week to a group of Palestinian intellectuals
and foreign diplomats in East Jerusalem, when a Palestinian professor
asked: "Do you think that a second Nakba is possible?"
I was going to answer with a categorical "No". But suddenly I was seized by
doubt: Was I lying to him? Was I lying to myself?
When a Palestinian says "Nakba" (disaster), he means the expulsion of more
than half the Palestinian people from the territories that became the State
of Israel in the course of the 1948 war. Can the present confrontation lead
to a similar disaster? On the face of it, it seems impossible. How indeed?
Who even thinks about it? Are Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres capable of it?
Definitely not!

But this week some disturbing speeches were made in the Knesset. Doubly
disturbing, because they were broadcast on television without anyone being
shocked or protesting. It was said that if the Palestinians continue with
their violent acts, they should not be surprised if a second nakba befalls
them.
Who said this? Not Minister Rehavam Ze'evi, who is already boring the
public with his endless prattle about "transferring" the Palestinians. Not
Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who looks and sounds like an extra-terrestrial
from a distant Russian planet, but the "moderate" Minister of Justice,
Me'ir Shitreet and the Ecology Minister, Tzachi Hanegbi, both members of
Sharon's own party.

If some German neo-Nazis or the Austrian Joerg Haider had said anything
like that about the foreigners in their countries, there would have been a
world-wide protest. Here the speeches were met with indifference, as if
they concerned the weather.
That's scary, because it shows that these things are "in the air". Massive
expulsion, "transfer", "nakba", are gradually becoming legitimate, even
routine threats.

In the 1948 war, some 750,000 people were uprooted from their homes and
lands. It is not so important exactly how this happened - how many fled in
order to save their children from the approaching fighting, how many fled
in panic after Dir Yassin and similar massacres, how many were physically
expelled by the victorious Israeli forces. It's more important to realize
that the expulsion was an integral part of that war. The Jewish side wanted
to acquire as much territory as possible in order to establish a
homogeneous Jewish state, without Arabs. The Arab side wanted to prevent
the establishment of a Jewish state and give the whole country back to the
Arabs. Therefore, there was no need for a special decision on expulsion -
things were done more or less automatically. Whether the intention was
there beforehand or not - when the opportunity presented itself, it was
seized. Now Ariel Sharon says that the present confrontation ("Arab
violence") is a continuation of the 1948 war. Sharon was a soldier in that
war, therefore he knows what happened then. Meaning: the possibility of
ethnic cleansing is indeed hovering somewhere in the air.

There is no need for Sharon and Peres to sit down and take an official
decision. It is enough to tell the army that every officer has a "free
hand" - as they already have been told. Nothing more is needed. When the
opportunity arises, it may happen.
In the last few days, a question was raised in several of the media: Is
Israel interested in escalating the confrontation? The commentators who ask
this question point to the facts, but wonder about the reasons. The facts
say that there is now a fierce competition between army officers,
especially the brigade and battalion commanders, about who can escalate
more. It is orchestrated by Shaul Mofaz, the chief-of-Staff, who in turn is
pushed by Ariel Sharon and his hatchet-man, Fuad Ben-Eliezer.

The escalation process is manifest. First snipers were employed to kill
unarmed demonstrators. Then helicopters, tanks and cannons were engaged.
Now fighter planes are sent into action. The incursions into the
Palestinian territories have become routine. Acts like the killing of the
five sleeping policemen in Beitounia and the bombing of the nine
prison-guards in Nablus are announced on television like the weather
report, even if some day they may reappear in indictments of an
international war crimes court.

This is just the beginning. The escalation is built into the process:
Palestinian mortars and Israeli fighter planes, Islamic suicide bombers and
Jewish settlers. Acts that today seem extreme may be looked upon tomorrow
as moderate, acts bordering on war crimes are considered as expressions of
self-restraint.

What motivates Mofaz and his officers? The naive answer is that they act
like officers in every colonial war. Generals facing a popular uprising do
not understand the phenomena and are not trained to deal with it. They are
lost. Their only answer is force, more force and even more force, until the
whole colonial apparatus comes crashing down. That's what happened to the
French in Algeria, to the British in all their colonies, to the Americans
in Vietnam, to the Soviets in Afghanistan, to the Russian in Chechnia. Now
it is happening to us. But one can find a much more sinister reason for the
escalation. When Shitreet and his like say that the escalation may lead to
a second nakba, one can turn the sentence around; in order to make a second
nakba possible, there must be an escalation. This can be a conscious,
semi-conscious or even unconscious intention.
It is possible to foresee that in a few weeks or months Israeli escalation
of the conflict will lead to the massive employment of fighter planes,
tanks and infantry against the civilian population, in order to induce
hundreds of thousand to flee. It will be explained as a "reaction" to
Palestinian attacks. The settlers will cooperate enthusiastically,
helping to cleanse the villages and to eradicate them from the face of the
earth. Their spokesmen already demand just that.

Militarily, this will not be difficult. Even now, all the Palestinian
enclaves are surrounded by soldiers and settlers.

Is it possible politically? The heart wants to answer with a categorical
"No". The brain is not so sure. After the Americans put a veto on the
sending of an international peace force to the Palestinian territories and
desisted from preventing just such a calamity - who knows what they will do
tomorrow, after an intensive brain-washing campaign? Will Europe, which has
always been silent, speak out in such a situation? Will the feeble United
Nations be able to intervene in spite of the American attitude? Will the
"world's conscience" wake up? Will "enlightened international public
opinion" rise up?
Quite possibly, yes. There is a vast difference between 1948 and now. Then,
Israel was seen as the state of the holocaust victims, which could do no
wrong. Then, there was no television, which could bring the dreadful scenes
into every living-room around the world. Then, there were no active peace
and human rights groups in every country, able and ready to influence
public opinion. The world after Kosovo is not the world before Kosovo, a
fact Ariel Sharon, the enthusiastic supporter of Milosevic, should ponder.


Israel is a strong country, but not strong enough to withstand the
onslaught of an aroused world public opinion. If I were a brigade commander
in the Israeli army, I would start right now to read the protocols of the
Hague trials very carefully.
But as an Israeli, I put my trust in the Israeli public. In spite of the
intensive brain-washing that is going on in Israel these days; in spite of
the general silence of the lambs while terrible things are happening every
day in the occupied territories; in spite of my bitter disappointment with
our media; I am certain that at the right moment Israeli public
opinion will rise up against an act of mass expulsion. The hundreds, who
even now demonstrate almost daily against the actions of
|Mofaz-Sharon-Peres, will turn into hundreds of thousands - as happened
after Sabra and Shatila.

At the decisive moment, the Israelis will say: NO.

Updated articles about the situation can be found on the website:
http://friendshipvillage.homestead.com/home.html ;

 Israeli Settlements in Palestinian territories:
http://friendshipvillage.homestead.com/ArticlesApril121Settlers.html;

The Mitchell Report about roots of the violence:
http://friendshipvillage.homestead.com/ArticlesMay113Mitchell.html;

Compexity of the Conflict:
http://friendshipvillage.homestead.com/ArticlesMay117TheyandWe.html;



Jonatan Peled
Friendship Village