[Peace-discuss] Israeli-Palestinian "cycle of violence"

[parenti susan rose]

The man who wrote this article, Gershon Baskin, was my host when I was In
Israel-Palestine with the humanitarian clown troupe in December. He's a
fine person.

Is there a way for AWARE to be a part of 'international intervention'?
Could we in AWARE, via e mail, make a connection to people over there,
and be a conduit for news from Israel and Palestine to our home town?

Any other ideas?
Susan

On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, David Green wrote:

> I agree with the basics of this analysis from an
> Israeli peace advocate, but unfortunately I don't
> share the "optimism" regarding "new" Palestinian
> leadership. My guess is that this leadership conforms
> to Arafat's style of appeasement and collaboration.
> Baskin is right in concluding that only constructive
> international intervention will make a difference.
>
> David Green
> ____________________________
>
> Cycles
>
> Gershon Baskin*
>
> Protracted violence and conflict continues to be the
> main characteristic of the Israeli-Palestinian
> relationship. The cycle of horrific violence
> continues with no end in sight.  Until the bus bombing
> in Haifa last week, Israelis had been speaking about a
> period of relative quiet, but
> during that period Israel increased its attacks
> against the Palestinian population centers.  In
> February alone more than 70 Palestinians were
> killed by the Israeli army - most of them were not
> "ticking time bombs". As a Haaretz Editorial stated
> last week: "Of the 72 Palestinians killed
> in the Gaza Strip and West Bank in February, 25 were
> civilians, including three children under the age of
> 10. A pregnant woman and two youths were among the
> dead in El-Bureij." Palestinian extremists efforts
> to hit Israel didn't stop for a single day but most of
> those efforts to attack Israelis were successfully
> stopped before reaching their targets.
>
> Israeli experts on Palestinian affairs such as Danny
> Rubenstein from Haaretz and Ronny Shaked from Yediot
> Ahronot have been speaking out more and more about the
> direct link between Israeli violence against
> Palestinians and Palestinian violence against
> Israelis. The cycle of revenge gets deeper and deeper
> with each passing day.  In the aftermath
> of the Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Ibrahim
> Maqadmeh in Gaza this weekend, Abed el Aziz Rantisi, a
> senior Hamas leader said that the
> Palestinians would be guided by the Old Testament
> adage of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth".
> In this region where that philosophy
> was first inscribed, we are really talking about each
> side trying to take 100 eyes of the other side for
> each eye of their own. And as Mahatma Gandhi said, an
> eye for an eye will simply make a lot of blind
> people. But it seems like those who implement the
> policies of continued revenge have proven their
> blindness a long time ago, be they Israeli or
> Palestinian.
>
> In a recent conversation with an Israeli military and
> security analyst for a major Israeli daily newspaper
> who has recently spent a lot of time
> interviewing members of Israeli Senior Command - all
> of the rank of General, I asked how could so many of
> the most senior officers of the Israeli army not be
> voicing criticism of what seems to me to be a
> hopeless and dangerous strategy for fighting terrorism
> that in my view, has no chance of succeeding. His
> response was: there is criticism - but
> it is that they still are not using enough force!  I
> have been writing since the very beginning of the
> intifada that there is absolutely no military solution
> to this conflict and that there is a direct
> correlation between amount the force that Israel uses
> against the Palestinians and the amount of force
> Israel receives in return - usually in the nature of
> suicide bombers. The more force that Israel uses
> against the Palestinian population, the more the
> Palestinian public supports, publicly or in their
> hearts, the use of all means of violence,
> including terrorism, against Israelis. This is so even
> though there has been a steady increase in the numbers
> of Palestinians who believe that
> it has been a huge error to militarize the intifada
> and to launch attacks against Israeli civilians.
>
> Despite the demands for real political and military
> reforms in Palestine by the Palestinian public, recent
> attempts of reaching an agreement of
> all Palestinian factions to issue a unilateral
> ceasefire have failed. The attempts were serious and
> the meetings of the factions held in Cairo
> with the support of the Egyptian government and the
> European Union were very important, but in the end,
> there was no agreement achieved and
> recent Israeli assassinations of leading Hamas figures
> and increased attacks in Gaza will push the chances of
> agreement further away.
>
> Over the past few days I was witness to a discussion
> of several Palestinian ex-officials of the former
> Palestinian security-intelligence
> apparatus - the Preventive Security.  This was one of
> the main forces that fought against Hamas and Jihad
> prior to the intifada and from the general sense of
> their discussion, it was clear that they would be more
> than happy to go back to their jobs and their task of
> fighting against Hamas and Jihad.  These former senior
> Palestinian officers were most
> definitely of the opinion that Hamas and Jihad are
> working against the national interests of the
> Palestinian people. They are also of the
> opinion that Hamas is one organization and not a
> political -social organization on the one hand and a
> military organization on the other. In their view,
> each part of Hamas constructs the whole and the whole
> is a major danger to Palestinian society and national
> interests. They are also of the opinion that the
> growth in the public strength for Hamas is
> the outcome of a predetermined Israeli plan. They
> believe that the true Israeli intention is to apply
> continued pressure to the Palestinian
> population so that they will embrace the most extreme
> elements of Palestinian society and thus the option
> for peace, meaning Israeli withdrawal becomes
> impossible.  Whether or not this is the true
> intention of the Israeli government and security
> forces is somewhat irrelevant, because this is what is
> happening on the ground. As the cycles of violence
> and revenge continue, the support for Hamas and Jihad
> are on the rise at the same time that the Israeli
> occupation is deeply entrenched in all Palestinian
> cities and villages.  The Israelis
> have come back to reoccupy all of Palestine. The
> difference between this occupation and the occupation
> that existed until the Oslo period is that
> now Israel refuses to accept full responsibility for
> the welfare of the Palestinian people and the
> Palestinian Authority has not yet decided to
> turn that full responsibility over to the occupation
> authorities.  There are Palestinians out there who
> call this phenomenon collaboration with
> the occupation and who call for the Palestinian
> Authority to dismantle itself and put the full
> responsibility for the health, welfare,
> education and economy of the Palestinians on Israel.
>
> At the same time, with tremendous pressure coming from
> the Palestinian political factions - mainly Fatah, the
> United Nations and from Europe,
> Arafat has taken up the challenge of governmental
> reform.  Abu Mazen is about to become the first
> Palestinian Prime Minister while the
> negotiations are on within the Palestinian political
> circles on the authority that the PM will have. Abu
> Mazen would like to appoint his own government and to
> thereby insure the loyalty of the key people in the
> Authority.  This would be a positive move, but the
> real test of change will be the Israeli response to
> that change.  In the aftermath of Iraq, the United
> States will be called upon to implement the "Road Map"
> and to bring about a full Israeli-Palestinian
> re-engagement.  The US should open the door to the new
> Palestinian PM as should Sharon who will need a
> Palestinian partner if he is going to fulfill his
> campaign promises of security and peace.  At this
> point there is no reason to believe that
> the US or the Israeli intentions about
> Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking are real.  The US led
> Quartet's Road Map might be a good place to begin,
> but Sharon has already indicated that he plans to
> remove from it any elements of real Palestinian
> sovereignty.
>
> While the international community readies itself for
> the war in Iraq and the aftermath and parts of the
> international community have been working
> on an implementation plan of the Road Map, some groups
> of Israelis and Palestinians, including in IPCRI, with
> the support of the International
> community have been working diligently on plans for
> real international involvement in Israel and
> Palestine.  One of the plans being examined
> looks towards the establishment of a Transitional
> Administration in Palestine that together with a
> Palestinian government which would take
> control of most civil affairs, an international
> authority led by the United States would take over
> security responsibilities which would
> enable the Israelis to withdraw from the occupied
> territories and to remove settlements along with the
> withdrawal. The international transitional
> administration would be in place for as long as
> necessary,based on performance based benchmarks, to
> lead to the creation of an independent Palestinian
> state that would be in the position to reach a
> full peace treaty with Israel. The basic idea is that
> in order to facilitate a full Israeli withdrawal from
> the occupied territories there must be some authority
> to turn the responsibility over at a time when
> Israel will not turn the authority directly over to
> the Palestinians. Such transitional administrations
> have worked in the past in other places in the world
> and now this model is being examined in depth to
> determine how it could be applied here.
>
> One thing is quite clear, whether it is the Quartet's
> Road Map or some other plan, with the total
> non-existence of any trust between Israelis
> and Palestinians, the international community will
> have to play a significant role in the verification,
> monitoring, compliance processes and dispute
> resolution of any Israeli-Palestinian agreements in
> the future.  Neither Israelis nor Palestinians believe
> that any piece of paper signed between them or any
> public verbal undertakings has any
> value in terms of the chances that they will be
> implemented with real good intent. The international
> community will have to serve as mediator,
> dispute revolver, judge, and perhaps even have to come
> in with military power to enforce agreements and to
> separate forces on the ground.  IPCRI
> and others are working with groups of Israeli and
> Palestinian experts as well as experts from the
> international community on these issues.
>
> During the past months we have once again noted a
> surge in Israeli-Palestinian activities, both in IPCRI
> and at other Israeli,Palestinian and international
> non-governmental organizations. Many of
> these activities have been classic Track II
> discussions of working groups on economic issues,
> civil issues, political issues - such as the
> future of Jerusalem, and environment and water issues.
> The main problem these days faced by all of those who
> are organizing and running such
> activities is the severe limitation on movement
> imposed by Israel against the Palestinians. It is
> impossible to convene such meetings in
> Israel because the Israeli military refuses to allow
> Palestinians to sleep over in Israel.  It is
> impossible to convene such meetings in
> Palestine because it is illegal for Israelis to enter
> the Palestinian territories.  The only option is to
> hold the meetings abroad.  Turkey, Greece and Cyprus
> have become the main places where Israelis and
> Palestinians convene.
>
> The Israeli army makes it extremely difficult as there
> are increasingly enlarging lists of Palestinians who
> are prohibited by the Israeli
> intelligence service from leaving the country.  In
> most cases the Israelis don't allow Palestinians to
> travel via the Israeli airport and
> then the logistics involved in having Palestinians
> travel via Jordan or Egypt are a nightmare. We have
> petitioned the Israeli government and
> military to establish a special category for travel
> permits for Palestinians who are participating in
> Israeli-Palestinian peace meetings.  We have asked
> them to create a special category to allow
> Palestinian peace activists to receive regular entry
> permits into Israel.  The Israelis have done this to
> allow Palestinian businessmen to enter Israel. We
> believe that it is high time to recognize the unending
> efforts of our Palestinian colleague to continue their
> peace work on the Palestinian streets despite all of
> the opposition they face.  The
> minimum that should be done is to allow them to meet
> freely with their Israeli counterparts in order to
> advance all of the non-governmental
> efforts of peacemaking.  We believe that if movement
> of these Palestinian activists would be made easier
> there would be an even larger surge of activities and
> the process of Israeli-Palestinian re-engagement
> would speed up. This is essential and must be
> encouraged at a time when at the governmental level
> there are still almost no contacts at all.
>
>
>
> Gershon Baskin, Ph.D.
> Co-Director, IPCRI
>
>
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