After the invasion of the Balata refugee camp by a regular brigade of the IDF, the brigadecommander appeared on television and said that he had expected the Palestinians to fight liketigers, but that they behaved like pussycats.
This is a frightening sentence, because it discloses a startling fact: the Brigade commanderdoes not understand in what kind of campaign he is engaged. He has to be told, with all duerespect: “Sir, you are fighting the wrong war!”
Clearly, he believes that he is engaged in a conventional war between armies. The enemy issupposed to stand up and fight like men, assault rifles against tanks and fighter planes.
The commander and all his colleagues, including the Chief-of-Staff and his deputy, would bewell advised to read a good book about guerilla warfare, such as Mao Tse-Tung’s treatise,which tells the guerilla fighter: Never confront the regular army. When the army attacks, youdisappear. When the army is not ready, you attack.
For example: The army surrounds Arafat in Ramallah, Destroy a Merkava tank in Gush Katif. Awhole brigade invades Balata; Get out and send a single fighter to kill the team of acheck-point near Ofrah. A brigade attacks Jenin; Get out of their sight and infiltrateAtzmona settlement.
The statement by the brigade commander indicates that the IDF is fighting on a front that doesnot exist, and is not prepared for fighting on the front that is there. It’s like a generalsetting out to conquer Syria and holding a map of the Sudan in his hands.
Since Chief-of-Staff Mofaz and his senior officers don’t even understand the nature of thisstruggle, they are failing. Out of frustration and anger they shoot in all directions andcommit a small massacre every day, without any purpose or chance of success. Since they werenot trained for this kind of struggle and do not understand it, they are condemned to commitevery possible mistake. One after another, they use all the methods that have already failedin Algeria, Kenya, South Africa, Vietnam and a dozen of other countries.
They try to starve the inhabitants into submission (“closure”), and inadvertendly turn theminto potential suicide-bombers with nothing to lose. They assassinate the chiefs of thefighting groups (“targeted prevention”), and clear the way for younger, more efficient andmore energetic commanders. The kill massively (“you have to strike them”) and turn therelatives of the victims into avengers.
If this is the way of the generals, the “political echelon”, composed of pensioned generals,is worse. They imprison Arafat in Ramallah in order to prove that he is “irrelevant”, and turnhim into the most relevant person in the entire Middle East. As a result, all internalcriticism of Arafat has ceased. Practically all Palestinians admire their President, who istaking part in their lot, suffers like them and is risking his life like them.
And beyond that: tens of millions of Arabs, who see rousing reports from beleagueredPalestine every hour on al-Jazira TV, compare the courageous Palestinian leader to their ownrulers, who are now very worried indeed. In response they sounded the alarm in Washington andhave compelled President Bush to do something.
Sharon and Ben-Eliezer declare that if the Palestinians are made to suffer more and more, theywill eventually surrender and agree to live in several Ghettos, as proposed by Sharon. Inpractice, the opposite is happening: the more the pressure on them mounts, the more theirunity grows, their methods of resistance improve and their readiness to suffer and not tosurrender increases.
Thousands of Palestinians are ready to undertake actions leading to certain death, and theirnumber is growing. How many Israelis are ready to go into action if there is no chance at all ofcoming out alive? Palestinians know full well that they are fighting for their veryexistence; Israelis know that they are fighting for the settlements and bankruptpoliticians.
The Israeli government cannot win this struggle. After paying a terrible price – slaughterand destruction – this will become clear to the public, the government will fall and we shallmake peace according to the Saudi Crown Prince’s excellent proposal.