29.1.05
The
Stalemate
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.