[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [GushShalom] The stalemate - Uri Avnery
Al Kagan
akagan at uiuc.edu
Sat Jan 29 19:45:36 CST 2005
Begin forwarded message:
> From: "Gush Shalom" <otherisr at actcom.co.il>
> Date: January 29, 2005 3:14:22 PM CST
> To: intl at mailman.gush-shalom.org
> Subject: [GushShalom] The stalemate - Uri Avnery
>
> GUSH SHALOM - pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033 www.gush-shalom.org/
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> http://www.geocities.com/keller_adam/Avnery_heb.htm
>
> THE STALEMATE
> by Uri Avnery, 29.1.05
>
> Perhaps the second intifada has come to an end. Perhaps the
> cease-fire in the Gaza Strip will develop into a general, mutual
> cease-fire.
> For me, the words “cease fire” have an extra resonance. When I
> was a soldier in the 1948 war, I twice experienced what it means to
> wait for a cease-fire. Each time we were totally exhausted after heavy
> fighting in which many of our comrades had been killed or wounded. We
> hoped with all our hearts that a cease-fire would really come into
> effect, but did not allow ourselves to believe in it. In both cases, a
> few minutes before the appointed hour, along the whole front line a
> crazy cacophony of firing erupted, everybody shooting and shelling
> with everything he had. To attain some last-minute advantages, as it
> appeared afterwards.
> And then, suddenly, the shooting stopped. An eerie quiet settled
> in. We looked at each other and left unspoken what we all felt: We are
> saved! We have been left alive!
> I understand, therefore, the feelings of the fighters on both
> sides, who are now hoping that the mutual cease-fire will come into
> effect and hold. After four and a quarter years of fighting, everybody
> is exhausted.
>
> The first question at the end of the fighting is: Who won?
> Naturally, each side will claim victory. The Palestinian
> organizations will assert that it was only the Qassam rockets and the
> mortar shells which compelled Israel to agree to a cease-fire. The
> Israelis will claim that the Israeli army has crushed terrorism and
> compelled the Palestinians to give up.
> So who won? In fact, nobody. The fighting ended in a draw.
>
> The Israeli army has not won, since it did not succeed in putting
> an end to the attacks, much less in “destroying the terror
> infrastructure”. On the eve of the cease-fire, the Qassam rockets and
> mortar shells have turned life in the town of Sderot into hell. The
> inhabitants don’t hide that they are nearing the breaking point.
> Moreover, the organizations reached a new level by undertaking
> more complicated attacks, real guerilla actions. The destruction of
> the army outpost on the “Philadelphi axis” involved blowing up a
> tunnel beneath it and storming the post on the ground. Similarly, the
> attack on the Karni checkpoint combined the explosive demolition of a
> wall with an attack by fighters. These actions were reminiscent of
> those of the Irgun and Stern Group in the last years of the British
> mandate.
> Our army had no answer to the Qassams and the guerilla actions.
> Haven’t they tried everything? Brutal incursions. Shelling by tanks,
> killing fighters and bystanders. Demolition of thousands of homes.
> Targeted assassinations.
> Nothing helped. There remained only the method advocated on TV
> by Israel Katz, a cabinet minister: to bomb and shell the Gaza Strip
> towns, open the border to Egypt in one direction and drive hundreds of
> thousands of inhabitants out into the Sinai desert. (That is what
> Moshe Dayan did to the Suez canal towns during the War of Attrition,
> in the late 1960s.) It has been reported that Ariel Sharon himself
> proposed, after the Karni incident, the bombing of towns and villages
> in the Gaza Strip. But nowadays this is not possible: neither the
> Israeli public, nor world public opinion would stand for it.
> The simple truth is that the generals are bankrupt. But they have
> no reason to feel ashamed: no other army has won such a contest in the
> last hundred years. The French in Algeria arrived at the same point,
> in spite of torturing thousands of men and women. The same happened to
> the Americans in Vietnam, in spite of burning down dozens of villages
> and massacring their inhabitants. Even the Nazis did not succeed in
> putting down the French resistance, however many hostages they
> executed.
> Our generals, like all the generals before them, made the
> understandable mistake of thinking in terms of war. But this was no
> conventional war. A war is a confrontation between armies, and it is
> fought with methods that have evolved throughout the ages. The
> confrontation between an army of occupation and resistance forces is
> quite different. The factors governing that are not taught in
> officers’ courses.
> True, the Israeli army tried to improvise, with some success. But
> it could not win. Because victory means breaking the will of the
> opponent to resist. And that did not happen.
>
> If that is so, did the Palestinian fighting organizations win?
> Interestingly enough, this questions is not posed openly, not
> even by the Palestinians themselves. First of all, because the idea
> has been accepted throughout the world that the Palestinian resistance
> is “terrorism”, and who would dare to assert that terrorism had won?
> The more so since the Palestinians – like the Israelis – committed
> fearful atrocities.
> Also, the propaganda war between Israelis and Palestinians is a
> kind of world championship of victimhood. Each side presents itself as
> the ultimate victim. Each side publicizes pictures of dead children,
> weeping mothers, demolished homes.
> Because of this, the Palestinian spokespersons do not boast of
> the fighting of their compatriots. They avoid pointing to the
> thousands of their fighters who sacrificed their lives, the children
> who confronted the tanks, the hundreds of commanders who were
> “liquidated” and for each of whom a substitute was found, for whom in
> turn a substitute was found, and so forth. About this, books will be
> written, songs will be sung, tales will be told in future generations.
> Another fact: Palestinian society has not been broken. Israeli
> tanks roam their streets, hundreds of roadblocks prevent movement from
> village to village, the economy is shattered, most men are unemployed,
> hundreds of thousands of children suffer from malnutrition. And in
> spite of this, miraculously, Palestinian society continues functioning
> somehow, life goes on, fatigue and exhaustion have not forced it to
> surrender.
> Does this mean that the Palestinian side has won? The
> organizations can claim that Sharon would not have talked about
> withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and evacuation of the settlements there
> if the attacks had not taken place. That is certainly true. But Sharon
> has not yet begun to consider leaving the West Bank. On the contrary,
> the settlement activity there is reaching new heights and the land
> grab is in full swing in the shadow of the “separation fence”. One
> cannot call that a Palestinian victory.
>
> All this points to a deadlock. The Israeli army knows that it
> cannot vanquish the Palestinians by military means. The Palestinians
> know that they cannot throw off the occupation by military means.
> For the Palestinians, a draw is a huge achievement. The
> inequality between the two sides is immense. If one takes into account
> only the strength of arms and the size of forces, without considering
> the moral factors, the Israeli advantage is astronomical. In such a
> situation, a draw is a victory for the weak.
> We should admit this without hesitation. It is not wise to
> present the Palestinian side as if it were beaten and broken. Not only
> because this is untrue, but also because it is dangerous. The boasts
> of the army propagandists, as if Abu Mazen has folded up under Israeli
> pressure, are at best stupid, and at worst they are intended to demean
> and provoke the Palestinians to new violence (or to acts of madness).
> The Egyptian victory at the beginning of the 1973 war set the scene
> for Anwar Sadat to make peace with Israel. The Palestinian pride in
> their steadfastness can make it more acceptable for them to keep the
> cease-fire.
> Now, both sides are exhausted. Palestinian suffering is manifest.
> Israeli suffering is less obvious, but, nonetheless, real. The costs
> of the occupation amount to tens of billions, hundreds of thousands of
> Israelis have sunk beneath the poverty line, the social services are
> collapsing, foreign investment has not recovered, the level of tourism
> is pitiful. And, more importantly: during the intifada, 4010
> Palestinians and 1050 Israelis have lost their lives.
>
> That is the background of recent events. Both sides need the
> cease-fire.
> But a cease-fire is only an interlude, not peace itself. If
> wisdom prevails in Israel (since it is the stronger side) negotiations
> for a final settlement will start at once, with the general aim agreed
> in advance: a Palestinian state in all the territory of the West Bank,
> the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
> If wisdom does not prevail (and in politics, the victory of
> wisdom would be something new), this cease-fire will end up like many
> before: just an interval between two rounds of fighting.
> We are faced with a road sign pointing in two opposite
> directions: one end directed towards peace, the other towards the next
> violent confrontation
>
>
>
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Al Kagan
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
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akagan at uiuc.edu
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