 Letters from Palestine 2 March, 2006 - One month ahead of the Israeli general elections, Israeli political parties are vying to woo the increasingly jingoistic Jewish public to their respective camps.. And as expected, their main tool of attracting voters is hateful anti-Palestinian rhetoric. This week, a spate of vitriolic, racist and even bellicose statements against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, colored the Israeli election campaign. The often idiotic litany started immediately after Hamas’s electoral victory on 25 January when Likud Chairman Benyamin Netanyahu compared the Islamic movement’s triumph with Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in the mid 1930s. “Hamas cancer has to be contained…We will deprive the Hamas of any money or economic benefits, unlike what Olmert is doing. This is a policy of strength.” - Netanyahu in interview with
Netanyahu, a poor politician by any standard but a master of bombastic sound-bites, didn’t bother to explain how a ravaged people languishing under a sinister military occupation who have a hard time feeding their own children and even a harder time accessing their schools, hospitals, and places of work, thanks to ubiquitous Israeli army roadblocks, can be compared to the nefarious Third Reich which destroyed Europe and caused the deaths of tens of millions of Europe.
Take for example, Tzivi Livni, the former Likud extremist, who now serves as Israel’s foreign minister.
This week, Livni, who vehemently opposed the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, referred to PA president Mahmoud Abbas as “irrelevant” because he asked Hamas to form the next Palestinian government.
Well, for those who don’t know, “irrelevant” according to the Israeli lexicon , means a lot of things, including “non-partner,” “terrorist,” and even “a potential target for assassination.” Indeed, this is how things started with the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. First he was declared non-partner, then irrelevant, and eventually came his mysterious death.
Interestingly, Livni’s boss, Ehud Olmert, Head of the Kadima Party, who has the best chance of becoming Israel’s next prime minister, didn’t really rebuke her or even seek to dissociate himself. Instead, he was quoted as saying that he stood behind her, adding though that he hoped that Abbas would remain in his office.
Other Israeli parties, especially on the right and the extreme right, continue to argue over which approach should be adopted toward the “so-called Palestinians.” The more pragmatic parties, such as the Likud, propose apartheid-like arrangements in the West Bank, where Palestinians are packed in Bantustans and enclaves until they become fed up with their misery and subsequently emigrate.
The more Talmudic-minded parties, such as National Union, National Religious Party (Mifdal), propose three alternatives for dealing with Palestinians: Enslavement whereby non-Jews living under Jewish law are forced to become “water carriers and wood hewers,” expulsion, or outright extermination.
Interestingly, these “alternatives” encompass not only Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, but Israel’s Palestinian citizens as well.
Narrow horizons
Putting Talmudic whims aside, the Israeli government has actually stepped up its efforts to further narrow Palestinian horizons, employing a combination of psychological war, vitriolic propaganda and disinformation as well as draconian and extremely repressive measures on the ground.
Indeed, while telling the international community that Israel is not interested in starving Palestinian children, Israeli officials have indicated that they are willing and ready to starve Palestinians by blockading Palestinian population centers and inducing starvation, as suggested by Israeli government official Dov Weisglass last week.
Israel has also indicated that financial assistance to the PA would be blocked or even confiscated by Israel upon arriving in the occupied territories.
In the past, Israeli occupation soldiers, acting like armed robbers in broad daylight, stormed Palestinian banks and seized millions of dollars in cash.
Indeed, there is no guarantee that the perpetually nervous Israeli political-military establishment won’t do it again to realize the ultimate Israeli goal of bringing the Palestinians to their knees.
As if severe economic pressure and the gangster-like act of seizing Palestinian tax money were not enough, one Israeli security official actually threatened this week to assassinate Ismael Haniya, the next Palestinian Prime Minister, if a “single terrorist act” was carried out.
Avi Dichter, former head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s chief domestic intelligence agency, said that Haniya and his colleagues had no immunity from assassination.
Needless to say, this must be music to the ears of hundreds of thousands of anti-Palestinian Jewish voters who will not have a hard time choosing a candidate of their choice on 28 March.
The propinquity of the Israeli elections is certainly a factor in these spasmodic statements. After all, the popularity of Israeli leaders is often measured by the extent to which they are hostile to the Palestinians. Indeed, it is well known in Israel that the most effective way of gaining support among the Israeli Jewish public is by demonstrating a given candidate’s harshness, bloodiness, and criminality toward the Palestinians. This explains the election by Israelis of such notorious and certified war criminals as Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, to mention just a few.
Non the less, it seems amply clear that Israel views the election of Hamas by a majority of Palestinians, a clear political challenge to Israel and her claimed commitment to peace with the Palestinians.
Hamas is also asking the international community to pressure Israel to define its physical borders before considering the issue of recognition. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh,
Of course, these intrinsic and most fundamental questions are anathema to Israel which seeks to dilute the entire peace process by claiming that the occupied territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem are actually “disputed territories” subject to negotiations and bargaining between the nearly vanquished PA and an insolent Israel, which also has America at her beck and call.
There is no doubt that Hamas will be forcefully making these arguments in the coming few months, which will be met with understanding by the international community, including the EU, and especially the Arab-Muslim world.
Israel realizes that these scenarios will undermine the Israeli stance, expose its prevarication , equivocation and mendacious hasbara and ultimately hurl the ball back onto the Israeli court.
Hence, Israel is trying in earnest to carry out a propaganda offensive against Hamas and the PA by building up an “international coalition” against legitimizing Hamas unless the latter recognize Israel, and in return for nothing, just as the PLO formally did 1993.
In doing so, Israel hopes to have sufficient time to complete its unilateral plans and designs in the West Bank, namely to annex up to 60% of the occupied territory, which will reduce Palestinian population centers to isolated Bantustans, cut off from each other and isolated from the rest of the world. Needless to say, this is in fact Israel’s prescription for a viable Palestinian state living peacefully side by side with Israel.
In light of this, Hamas rightly believes that the upcoming period will not witness any serious efforts toward the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Indeed, this seems to be an accurate reading. Israel spent more than 13 years toying around with Fatah and the Palestinian Authority despite their full recognition of Israel. Israel actually declared the former PA leader Yasser Arafat “irrelevant” and “non-partner” not because he didn’t recognize Israel, for he did, but rather because he insisted on a genuine peace settlement that would reflect international law and human rights, not the obscenely oblique balance of power which reduced the PA to a nearly decimated supplicant begging for everything from Israel, from a travel permit between Gaza and the West Bank to a removal of a given checkpoint or roadblock from outside the PA headquarters in Ramallah.
Hamas has actually studied thoroughly and deeply the dismal Oslo process with all its disgraceful and disastrous aspects to fall in the same trap again.
This is going to be the main task facing the next Palestinian government, which is expected to be a government of national unity.
This week, Abbas, while on a visit to Yemen, vindicated Hamas’s posture, saying he didn’t blame Hamas for insisting on an Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state on 100% of the occupied Palestinian territories.
“I don’t blame them,” said Abbas, adding rather bitterly, “ we recognized Israel in 1989, but look what happened after that.”
Khalid Amayreh is a professional journalist and political analyst from Dura, 10 km. south west of Hebron in the West Bank. His writings appear frequently in Al-Ahram Weekly and Al-Jazeera.
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The naked cheapness and childish idiocy of Netanyahu’s analogy drew no negative reactions from the Israeli society. Quite the contrary, leaders of nearly all Jewish political parties, including the Labor Party headed by the purportedly “moderate” Amir Peretz, sought to outmaneuver Netanyahu by prominently featuring a decidedly anti-Palestinian discourse.
Hamas has been arguing loudly and convincingly of late that it is wrong to demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel while not demanding that Israel recognize Palestine, e.g. a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, in return.