[Peace-discuss] The real occupation (2)

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The following clear and impressive piece on the other, much longer
occupation is by a friend of a friend.  Gordon is a protege of my old
friend Peter Walshe, the author of the first major study of the ANC.
--CGE]

	Published on Saturday, September 20, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
	Sharon's Preemptive Zeal
	by Neve Gordon
 
No more than a month ago I sat with a friend drinking coffee at the Hillel
Café in Jerusalem. Today it is a shattered edifice, with blood stains on
the floor. Indeed, this was the first thought that crossed my mind after
hearing the news about the horrific suicide attack that left another 7
Israelis dead and 45 wounded.  "I could have been there," I said to
myself.

It is a frightening thought, one that has crossed the mind of many an
Israeli, particularly since the eruption of the second Intifada in
September 2000 -- a period in which 244 suicide attacks have been carried
out. Just as disturbing, though, is the thought that this bloody reality
has been accepted by the Israeli public as part of their daily routine; so
much so that the same people who are terrified to leave their homes now
consider Israel's gory mode of existence as their karma, as if the
political realm were in some odd way predetermined.

But politics, as the great Jewish thinker Hannah Arendt repeatedly stated,
is the realm of freedom, where humans actually have the opportunity to
begin something new through speech and deed. Even "in the epochs of
petrifaction and foreordained doom," she claimed, the faculty of freedom,
"which animates and inspires all human activities and is the hidden source
of production of all great and beautiful things" usually remains intact.

What Israelis and Palestinians have been witnessing in the past few weeks
is a concerted effort to destroy the road that might have led the two
peoples out of a foreordained doom and into a new beginning.
Notwithstanding the impression some people might have, this myopic effort
has been led by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, not only by Hamas. His
strategy is one of preemptive strikes.

Approximately two months ago, the different Palestinians factions decided
to implement a houdna (ceasefire in Arabic) and to stop attacking Israeli
targets. Despite the fact that numerous militant groups operate without a
central command in the Occupied Territories, for almost a month and a half
the houdna managed to hold up. While one assault was perpetrated in the
West Bank by a small splinter group, the violence had subsided and it
appeared as if serious negotiations would resume.

Then, suddenly, as if out of the blue, the Israeli military invaded Askar
refugee camp, killing four Palestinians, including two members of Izzeddin
Al-Qassam, Hamas' military wing. The operation was a preemptive strike,
the Israeli spokesman explained.

The Palestinians decided not to retaliate.

Less than a week later, on August 14, Israeli troops entered Hebron and
killed a member of the Islamic Jihad. Another preemptive attack. Only this
time the Palestinians did respond, and on August 19 a suicide bomber
exploded inside a public bus. Israel, in turn, used its forces to carry
out a series of extra-judicial executions, and now a month after the
preemptive assault on Askar camp, the streets between the Jordan Valley
and the Mediterranean Sea are once again covered with blood.

The logic of preemptive strikes, however, does not merely inform Sharon's
policy of extra-judicial executions; it is the logic that has informed his
actions throughout his military and political careers.

Three examples will have to suffice: the Jewish settlements, the Lebanon
War, and the separation wall.

Sharon is considered by many to be the father of Israel's unruly
settlement project. He earned this title while serving as Minister of
Agriculture during Menachem Begin's first government. Sharon had hoped to
become Defense Minister and was disappointed when Ezer Weizmann received
the appointment, but minor details of this kind have never stopped him
from pursuing his goals.

Weizmann opposed the settlement project and opined that Israel should
withdraw from the territories within the framework of a peace accord.
Sharon, on the other hand, believes in the Greater Israel, and, in order
to preempt the possibility of any future agreement based on land for
peace, he initiated, as the chair of the government's Settlement
Committee, a massive settlement enterprise. Whereas Israel built 20
settlements between 1967 and 1976, within less than four years Sharon
managed to build close to 50 new settlements, totally changing the
landscape of the West Bank.

In August 1981, Sharon became Defense Minister. Four years earlier, he had
told an Israeli reporter that "the Arab states are swiftly preparing for
war, and we are sitting on a barrel of explosives wasting our time on
nonsense. The Arabs," he continued, "will launch a war in the summer or
the fall."  The war did not come, at least not until Sharon assumed
office.

The story of how Sharon led Israel into Lebanon, hoping to establish a
puppet government in order to preempt attacks from the north, is by now
well known. When Israel finally withdrew its forces 20 years later,
thousands of civilians and soldiers lay buried in the ground, hundreds of
thousands of people had been displaced, and much of Lebanon was in
shatters, but Sharon held on to the logic of the preemptive strike.

Not unlike the settlement project, Lebanon War, and extra-judicial
executions, the separation wall should also be conceived as a preemptive
attack. While Sharon declares that the wall is being built solely for
security reasons, he neglects to say that it is not being erected on the
1967 borders, and is actually being used as an extremely effective
mechanism to expropriate Palestinian land and create facts on the ground
so as to preempt any future agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
Its effect is not less violent than the assassinations and suicide
bombings. Already in this early stage, the wall has infringed on the
rights of more than 210,000 Palestinians, some of whom now live in ghettos
between the wall and Israel.

The crux of the matter is that Sharon's preemptive logic undercuts all
form of dialogue and negotiations. Its rule of thumb is violence, and then
more violence, whether it manifests itself as a military attack or as an
aggressive act of dispossession. So while it may seem that the bloody
routine is in some way preordained, it is actually Sharon's preemptive
zeal alongside Hamas' and Islamic Jihad's fundamentalism that has clouded
the horizon and concealed, as Arendt might have said, the possibility for
a better future.

[Neve Gordon teaches politics and human rights at Ben-Gurion University
and can be reached at ngordon at bgumail.bgu.ac.il]

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