arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

The failure of Israel's post-Oslo strategy

Amira Hass
Haaretz October 4, 2000

RAMALLAH - Israel's defense establishment is bombarding Israelis with the learned axiom that Palestinian
Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat is in full control of his public. The defense establishment is infected with
the virus of contempt for the Palestinians: In its eyes, the Palestinians are nothing more than robots, and all
Arafat has to do is to press the right button in order to turn them off.The Israel Defense Forces is a people's
army. And the Israeli nation, just as was the case on the eve of the Intifada in 1987, is not listening to what
the Palestinians are trying to say during these violent days of bloodshed, and what they have been trying to
say for close to seven years - ever since the IDF withdrew from Palestinian population centers and
entrusted the maintenance of law and order there to the Palestinian Authority.

No matter what their social position - whether they are senior leaders who have been pampered with the
privileges extended to them by Israel as they spat blood in order to ensure that Israel honored yet another
subclause in the Oslo agreement, or whether they are ordinary citizens for whom the Oslo process means
imprisonment in enclaves of limited home rule surrounded by IDF outposts and flourishing Jewish
settlements - the Palestinians have been trying to say that this is not the reward they expected to receive for
maintaining law and order and for playing the role of national pacifier that was assigned to Arafat. All of the
Palestinians' attempts to explain their position - petitions, demonstrations, protests, articles, boycotts,
isolated clashes, speeches delivered overseas, explanations, and warnings of an outburst of violence - have
broken against the high, solid wall of Israeli unwillingness to understand or to know the facts. Thus it is easy
for Israel to present the current situation as if what we have here is a war between two armies - a war in
which the aggressors are, of course, the Palestinians.

Thanks to a convenient case of amnesia, no one is addressing two basic issues: The behavior of the Israel
Police at the Al Aqsa Mosque on Friday, September 29, and the precise and deadly fire by IDF and Israel
Police snipers on Friday afternoon and Saturday.

During opposition leader and Likud chief Ariel Sharon's visit last Thursday to the site of the Al Aqsa
mosque, the Israel Police demonstrated great restraint. Why did the police not continue to demonstrate
understanding for the storm of emotions that was generated by this visit of someone who, in the eyes of
Palestinians, symbolizes at least four decades of bloody persecution? The Israel Police, which is under the
ministerial responsibility of a university history professor, insisted on maintaining a massive and hostile
presence on the plaza of the Al Aqsa mosque during the Friday prayer services there, although police
spokesmen said intelligence experts had predicted the situation would remain calm.

Having accumulated much experience in violent clashes, the Palestinians are convinced that rock-throwing
can be stopped through nonlethal methods. It is quite possible that, had the police not tried to show in such
an arrogant, aggressive manner who the real boss is on the Temple Mount, the rocks might not have been
thrown in the first place. The police chose to respond immediately with a massive hail of metal,
rubber-coated bullets directed toward rock-throwers behind whom were tens of thousands of worshipers.
The Palestinians are convinced that what was at work here was a desire for revenge, after the police had
sustained so many injuries the day before.

The Palestinians feel pain - for the men and women who had come to pray and whose blood was shed on
the very spot that unites all national and religious sentiments, for the wail of the terrifying sirens of yet more
and more ambulances, for the cries of the muezzin calling on people to donate blood for the wounded, for
hands armed with rocks. Only those who are totally indifferent to the pain of others could possibly argue
that there was any planning here.

During the first few hours, the Palestinian police officers stood on the sidelines. They were tense, afraid,
emotionally dissociated from what was going on. They did not use their firearms. However, reports began
to pile up concerning the initial number of persons wounded by IDF bullets. These people suffered injuries
to various parts of their bodies: head, eyes, chest, abdomen. The Palestinians concluded that those who
caused these wounds took careful aim before firing and were following "shoot-to-kill" orders handed down
from the top.

The fatal shooting of a young boy, Mohammed al Duri, whose death was broadcast on television screens
throughout the world, is not the only evidence that serves to corroborate this conclusion. There are also the
hundreds of injured whose wounds have been hidden from the eyes of Israeli television audiences. And this
was the point at which Palestinian security personnel and armed Fatah members could no longer stand on
the sidelines doing nothing.

What were the considerations behind the order to fire precise shots at the upper parts of the bodies of
Palestinian children and youths? Perhaps the upper echelons that make such decisions hoped that precise
hits at young Palestinians would deter their peers from joining in the fight and from expressing their opinion
with rocks and Molotov cocktails. Perhaps they assumed that this was the only way to prevent these young
people from getting near the Jewish settlements. Perhaps the Israelis hoped that Arafat would immediately
conclude that they meant business and that he would instantly dispatch his police officers to hold back the
masses, to carry out arrests and to disperse - by gunfire if necessary - the crowds who had gathered to
confront the Israeli forces. Perhaps the Israelis were angry that Arafat had not done from the outset what he
had been expected to do.

International diplomatic pressure might succeed in bringing about a sort of cease-fire in this barrage of
bullets and rocks. However, the last few days prove that the strategy Israel has adopted since the signing of
the Oslo agreement has failed. On one hand, this strategy aimed at developing and perpetuating a new
method of controlling the Palestinians. On the other hand, it aimed at preparing Arafat and his government
to serve as subcontractors who would suppress any expression of Palestinian resistance to the continuation
of this control and to a humiliating life of inequality in this land