Ha'aretz
September 28, 2001
By Akiva Eldar

On the morning of Thursday, September 13, 2001, less than two days after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, and minutes after the media reported an "imminent" meeting between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Javier Solana relaxed in his armchair at the headquarters of the European Union in Brussels. "Everything leaks with you too fast," the EU's political coordinator complained. "I am not so sure the meeting will take place."

Solana had already heard about the effort of the Israeli right to turn Arafat into Osama bin Laden's terrorist twin and bury the Mitchell Report under the ruins of the Twin Towers.

"The terrorist attacks in the United States show precisely that leaders of stature must find a way to advance the peace process," he said. "Despite the difficulties of the moment, everything must be done to stop the violence."

Solana, who was a member of the commission led by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell that formulated a plan to move ahead with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, remains convinced that the correct recipe for a cease-fire exists in the panel's report. It's worth taking note of his formulation that "conditions have to be created for the implementation of the whole agreement."

Off the record, senior officials in the EU and in European foreign ministries say that they don't believe Arafat can put a stop to the violence without Israeli paying in the form of "confidence-building measures" in the territories. They are referring mainly to the prolonged closure and to the economic debacle. (The official in charge of economic ties with Israel and the Palestinians in the French Finance Ministry relates that of all the deals with the Palestinian Authority, the only one that is left is for trucks that are used to haul stones from rock quarries in the territories to the settlements.)

According to the Europeans, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted to them that he fell into the trap that Sharon set for him during his last visit to Jerusalem. Powell agreed at that time, that Israel alone would be the one to decide whether the result, not the effort, gives Arafat a passing grade to the next stage of the Mitchell Report.

Until September 11, the White House rebuffed disdainfully the pressure by the secretary of state to make common cause with the Europeans in order to salvage the Madrid-Oslo process. The French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, was appalled at the indifference displayed by President George Bush. In an interview with Le Figaro, he called Bush "Pontius Pilate," and it would be hard to find a more stinging insult to a pious Christian than to be compared with the person who sent Jesus to be crucified.

Last Wednesday, Vedrine accompanied President Jacques Chirac on his way to the White House. Bush invited the French leader and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in order to coordinate positions on how to wage war on terrorism. They asked for a coordination of positions regarding how to deal with the territories. Vedrine says that Europe cannot be a substitute for America in the peace process. Therefore, France is persistently focusing its efforts on trying to pressure Bush into intervening for the sake of European and American interests alike.

This time, after the attacks on new York and Washington, the Europeans burst through a wide open door in the White House.

Sharon rejected Bush's request that he permit Peres to meet with Arafat and proposed, instead, Israeli help for the anti-terrorism coalition. The inexperienced Bush did not pound the table. Instead, he broke off the conversation with the excuse that he had to attend a meeting with his advisers. Sharon will not easily forget the next phone call he got from Washington. And before Interior Minister Eli Yishai (Shas) repeats the contention that there is no real American pressure on Israel, he should insist on getting a transcript of that conversation. He will learn that Sharon heard that he was the only leader to turn down a request from the United States since the terrorist attacks. Sharon retorted: "Not true, I am ready to offer any assistance to the coalition against terror." His interlocutor cut in: "Excuse me, but when I ask you for A and you suggest B, I consider that a refusal."

The immediate effect of that conversation was that the prime minister's son, Omri, and the director-general of the Foreign Ministry, Avi Gil, met with Arafat, that and a leak to the patriotic American press that Sharon was the only leader who turned his back on the president of the United States.

Peres was delighted. He believed that when push came to shove, the alliance with the United States was more important to Sharon than his alliance with cabinet minister Avigdor Lieberman. However, even after hearing on the radio on Sunday that the partnership with Shas is the limit (or the excuse), Peres is not in a rush to hand over the keys to the resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians. A few days ago he said that it's not such a bad thing that Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and Avraham Burg are unable to resolve their conflict over the leadership of the Labor Party. That perpetuates his status as party leader.

Learning from Mandela

On the one hand, Osama bin Laden has made terrorism unfashionable, as even without the attacks in the United States that mode of action did not enhance the Palestinians' status in the international community. On the other hand, the Palestinians are not taking seriously the possibility that the Sharon- Ze'evi government will reward them for a cease-fire by ceasing the occupation. How then is the place of the Palestinian problem to be kept on the world agenda without the daily report on CNN about the situation in the territories? Who said it's impossible to get headlines even without killing civilians?

The Palestinians have heard on many occasions from their black friends in South Africa that freedom fighters can obtain a potent place in the world's consciousness even without violence, or with measured violence. The idea of sending a hundred thousand or half a million Palestinians, including women and children, on a quiet march toward the checkpoints on the eastern boundary of Jerusalem is not foreign to them. Would Israeli soldiers be able to open fire on civilians carrying posters denouncing terrorism and the occupation?

Dr. Khalil Shikaki from Ramallah, who for years has monitored the frames of mind in the territories and Israel, says that at the beginning of August 2000, after the collapse of the Camp David summit, he proposed to Arafat that he adopt a new approach toward Barak. "I reached the conclusion that only a nonviolent confrontation with Barak will convince him of the need to implement Israel's commitments in the interim agreement, namely the third redeployment" in the West Bank. However, his proposal "was met with utter rejection from Arafat and some of his key advisers."

Shikaki explains that Arafat's opposition was due to his fear that "such a confrontation could turn violent and could easily turn against Arafat himself." Shikaki emerged from that episode "believing that Arafat would be highly opposed to any process that would not be under his full control."

Arafat became convinced that he was right after the episode in which French Premier Lionel Jospin was stoned in March during his visit to Bir Zeit University in the West Bank.

And what now? Is Arafat in fact interested in a cease-fire and does he have the power to impose one?

Shikaki believes that Arafat is looking for a way to calm the situation in the territories. "Most groups and individuals will not seek to embarrass Arafat and will not do that, at least not immediately. But there will be a few (from within and outside Fatah) who will remain determined to ensure that the cease-fire does not hold."

Shikaki presses his point: "Can you imagine Sharon engaged in such a viable process? If you can, then the cease-fire will hold, and Arafat will enforce it. If not, then it will not." The "Palestinian street," he says, has many complaints about some aspects of the intifada, but nevertheless "the blame will continue to be placed on Israel.

"The Israeli policy of collective punishment and siege creates hatred beyond imagination among the Palestinian man in the street. This is an intifada in which very few Palestinians participate, but those who suffer, as a result of Israeli punitive measures, are all Palestinians. Israeli military and political leaders seem to learn little while they are engulfed in their own anger and frustration. Those leaders are destroying all that was good in the relations between the two peoples that developed in 1995-96."

Arafat has an interest in supporting the international campaign against terrorism, Shikaki says, in order to bring about international pressure on Israel. On the one hand, he sees an opportunity here to effect a change in Israeli policy, as occurred in 1991-92; but on the other hand, the only way remaining for him to get the world's attention is "through large-scale events, such as suicide attacks and Israeli large-scale reprisals. But the Islamists and the nationalists fully understand that if they do that, the universal anti-terrorism sentiments would immediately turn against them. They would lose a great deal of local and regional support" and would be subjected to monitoring and sanctions.

Shikaki apparently does not believe that his proposal to change the intifada into a nonviolent confrontation will have any buyers. His forecast is that, in the absence of a political breakthrough in the near term, the intifada will focus on an armed struggle against the settlers and soldiers in the occupied territories.

The settlers have landed

The name of the Sharitah family, on 600 dunams of whose land settlers built a new settlement not far from Sussiya, east of Hebron, is not mentioned in the just released State Comptroller's Report. The report states dryly that "Not a single case involving a land dispute in the territories that are under the jurisdiction of the prosecutions department of the Judea and Samaria police got as far as the serving of an indictment." All the cases involve the takeover by settlers of land belonging to Palestinians. According to the head of the unit, most of the cases involving land disputes and disturbances of the peace are eventually closed without any charges being laid. And how do the law enforcement officials explain their habit of closing cases that deal with the plunder of Arab land?

You have to read it twice to believe it: "The difficulties in handling disturbances of the peace and land disputes derive mainly from the non-cooperation of the accused, as these are offenses committed against an ideological background, as well as from legal problems in proving ownership of the land."

Three weeks ago the defense minister's bureau announced that the regional commander had issued an order stopping construction of the new settlement near Sussiya. If the settlers had been Arabs, the mobile homes and the electricity poles would have long since been reduced to a heap of rubble, like the tents and water wells of 15 residents of the nearby caves. Their "ideological background" was not adequate to protect them from the inspectors of the Civil Administration, who at the beginning of July mounted an assault against their wretched hovels.

It will be interesting to see how the friends of State Comptroller Eliezer Goldberg, a former Supreme Court justice, react to the petition filed with the court this week by attorney Shlomo Lacker on behalf of the dispossessed Sharitah family.

The petition includes a 1997 letter from the then defense minister, Yitzhak Mordechai, to MK Anat Maor (Meretz) stating that following an examination of the matter it emerged that "the lands are owned by local residents from the Yata area." Mordechai also promised to update Maor at the conclusion of the investigation into the Palestinians' complaints. The update can be found in the State Comptroller's report: zero prosecutions against the Jewish land robbers.

The situation has not changed since Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer from the "peace camp" assumed responsibility for order in the territories. Nor did another guardian of the law, Public Security Minister Uzi Landau, send his police officers to dismantle the illegal settlement. The settlers, for their part, are laughing all the way to the "new outposts."

While the world follows the events surrounding the destruction of the Twin Towers, Israelis are being invited in radio advertisements to join a settlement drive during the Sukkot holiday next week. "During the intermediate days of Sukkot, settlement groups will proudly and in the presence of multitudes move on to the land," settler activist Daniella Weiss declares on Channel 7, the settlers' pirate radio station. "Together with us there will be thousands of supporters, including rabbis, cabinet ministers and public figures." The ads make a point of stating that "all the new sites are authorized under the law." Why not? The Mitchell Report, after all, states that until the Palestinians stop the violence, Daniella Weiss is entitled to expand her villa as far as the outskirts of Tel Aviv. As long as they call it "Kedumim 13."

Jerusalem, too, where real estate brokers can't remember the last time they sold an apartment, insists on showing the Palestinians who's boss. So what if 60 percent of the 2,000 homes that were built in the neighborhood are empty, even though tax payers are offered a subsidy of tens of thousands of dollars? In a letter to Housing Minister Natan Sharansky, MK Mussi Raz (Meretz) asks why Sharansky's party, Yisrael b'Aliyah, isn't allocating funds to new immigrants or young couples, instead of spending its time staging political demonstrations on the lands of the village of Beit Sahour.

The French connection

The population of France stands at about 60 million, of whom six million are Muslims and 600,000 are Jews, the third largest Jewish community in the world. About 60 percent of them are registered in one or more community institutions. About 30,000 children are studying in 40 Jewish schools scattered around Paris. Only the number of new mosques can compete with the number of synagogues and kosher butcher shops.

There is no other place outside Israel where tension between Jews and Arabs runs so high. Hardly a week goes by without Muslim youngsters from the suburbs storming cafes on the Champs-Elysees, which are frequented by Jewish yuppies. A few weeks ago, a Muslim fired a shell at the home of the deputy mayor of a French town. The man, who is known to the police anti-drug unit, chose to adorn his forehead with a ribbon reading "shahid" [martyr in Arabic].

The Jewish community in France is also undergoing a process of religious and national radicalization. The weekly sermon of the chief rabbi, Joseph Sitruk, a penitent who became a "popular leader," attracts hundreds of new admirers every time. What did the rabbi have to say after the terrorist attacks in New York (he spoke in fluent Hebrew)? "What happened there is part of the war of Gog and Magog between Esau and Ishmael. We know the cause of the war - who takes Jerusalem. It is stated explicitly that the war will be with Aram Naharayim, meaning the Gulf War. You remember that Saddam Hussein said he would stop the war if we gave back Jerusalem? In the second stage the war has to be in the realm of Esau. Until now we didn't know where that was. Now we know: it is in America. I hope that in the end all will work out for the best and the whole world will see who the true enemy is and what we are enduring."

While the world was preoccupied with the tragedy in America, the Jewish community in Paris was preoccupied with the wars of the Jews, which were waged so shamefully in the newspapers of the gentiles. The war was launched with an open letter to Prime Minister Sharon written by Theo Klein, who until a few years ago was the president of the representative Council of the Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF). In an article entitled "Sharon and the Honor of Israel," which appeared in the prestigious Le Monde on September 6, Klein wrote:

"When will you admit that the Israeli tanks and missiles are fanning the flame of the uprising that is nourished every day by the roadblocks and the searches, the systematic suspiciousness that gives our neighbors the feeling that they are suspected of terrorism only because they are not Israelis?" Klein quotes the verse "Not by might nor by power, but by My spirit, said the Lord of Hosts," and calls on Sharon to go to the Palestinians and offer them "bread and salt, peace and good neighborliness." In a more practical vein, he suggests that Sharon give them a state.

The new president of the CRIF, Roger Cukierman, sent the paper an article in reaction, in which he reminded Klein that a wolf (meaning Arafat) who colors his skin pink is still a wolf. It's a disgrace, Cukierman wrote, to write an article like Klein's at a time that Israel and Zionism are under attack in Durban: "Everyone here is against Israel now and things could easily take the form of anti-Semitism. We are especially worried about what will happen during the [Jewish] holidays. In the meantime the atmosphere is that it's not nice to be an anti-Semite but that it's all right to be against Israel, because Israel is the strong side. We are told, `You blame us because the Vichy regime did terrible things, but look what you are doing to the Palestinians.' When Sharon was here, I told him that it was essential to create a ministry of propaganda, like Goebbels. Money has to be invested in it and journalists have to be invited to fine hotels. That is what King Hassan [of Morocco] did - he had a terrible reputation and he wanted to correct that impression."

Cukierman is especially angry at the French Foreign Ministry. Since the period of de Gaulle, he says, there has not been a foreign minister who was sympathetic to Israel. "That is the result of 50 years of anti-Israeli, Catholic, rightist-anti-Semitic education, which the diplomats drank at their mother's breasts." With elections looming next spring, Cukierman discerns the first signs of political attempts to appease the Jewish population. Fortunately, he says, many politicians don't realize that the Jews constitute barely 1 percent of the country's population. His assistant at the Rothschild Bank once wanted to show that he was well-informed about Jewish community affairs. In reply to a question from a guest who wanted to know how many Jews there are in France, he replied confidently that there are no fewer than three million.