Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 26 Oct. - 1 Nov. 2000 Issue No. 505
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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States of emergency

By Graham Usher

For the Palestinians, and many Arabs, it was not enough. For the Israelis, it was too much. But whatever the merits and demerits of the Arab summit's concluding statement issued in Cairo on Sunday, it did nothing to abate the Palestinian revolt currently raging in the occupied territories or deter the Israeli army's repressive response.

Over the following two days, at least six more Palestinians died either in or from clashes with the army in the West Bank and Gaza, lifting the overall Palestinian toll from the Intifada of Al-Aqsa to 125 dead and over 5,000 wounded, many of them critically, many of them permanently. This represents 15 per cent of the entire casualty figures in the original Intifada. The difference, of course, is that the original Intifada lasted nearly six years. The Intifada of Al-Aqsa has lasted just over three weeks.

Nor is this the only difference. This revolt is rapidly assuming the features of a full-scale anti-colonial war, with Palestinians using arms against Israeli soldiers and settlements in or near their cities. And the army's response carries all the disproportionate weight of a colonial power.

For example, on consecutive nights the army replied to Palestinian fire on the Gilo settlement in occupied East Jerusalem with tank shells and helicopter rockets on the villages and towns of Beit Jala, Beit Sahour and Bethlehem, sometimes giving notice to their terrified inhabitants, sometimes not. The Israeli press yesterday quoted military sources as saying that should the firing on Gilo not stop, the army would "re-enter" Beit Jala, a village nominally under the Palestinian Authority's control. Nobody believes such reports are any longer bravado.

The struggle for independence rages on. A demonstration in Gaza (photo: Thomas Hartwell)

Nor do many Arabs see Ehud Barak's response to the summit's statement as mere grandstanding. Despite its utterly moderate recommendations, basically barring new diplomatic and economic relations with Israel, but allowing member states to decide alone on their existing ones, the Israeli leader denounced the "language of threats" emanating from Cairo. He then unilaterally declared a "time out" on the peace process and gave a push to negotiations for forming a "national emergency" government with Likud leader Ariel Sharon, whose trip to the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem on 28 September most Arabs see as the cause of the present mayhem.

At the level of substance, Barak's decision was merely a description of reality, since there are currently no negotiations of whatever stripe taking place between Israel and the Palestinians. But at the level of diplomacy it was read, and received, as a deliberate snub to those Arab leaders who had fought to keep the concluding statement moderate rather than extreme. The Arab reactions were not slow in coming.

"To accept [the concluding statement] or not accept it, let him [Barak] go to hell!" was Yasser Arafat's answer. On Sunday, Tunisia cut its low-level diplomatic ties with Israel. Morocco followed suit within 24 hours, a particularly harmful blow to Israel's diplomatic standing, given the strong relations that exist between Morocco's Jewish community and the hundreds of thousands of Jews of Moroccan descent in Israel.

More alarmingly, in the opinion of one Egyptian analyst, Barak's response betrayed a mindset still bent on "fulfilling the goals of Zionism rather than adapting his state to the region where it exists." The Israeli leader's actions in the wake of the summit only appear to confirm this prognosis, never mind the brutal repression he has unleashed on the Palestinians.

One such action is the deliberate preparation of Israeli public opinion for the idea that the present confrontation with the Palestinians is "not going to be over in a matter of weeks, but may continue for a year or more," in the words of Israeli army spokesman Ron Kitri on Tuesday.

Another (and in consultation with Sharon) is Barak's apparent readiness to impose his own "unilateral separation" on the Palestinian areas in the West Bank and Gaza, combined with a blockade on the Jordan Valley and Israel's annexation of the Jewish settlement blocs in or near East Jerusalem. The aim of this would seem crystal clear: to impose by force of arms the settlement Israel tried to impose by force of negotiation at Camp David.

The third is to justify both moves in the name of "national emergency" and under the covenant of a "national unity" government, with Sharon very much his senior partner. Barak's problem is that while Sharon very much wants to be part of a unity government his Likud party does not. They want new elections at the earliest possible date, partly because they see (accurately) that the Intifada does not constitute an existential threat to the state but mainly because the polls show Likud the victor in any upcoming suffrage, especially if Binyamin Netanyahu runs as its prime ministerial candidate.

With the Knesset due to convene in less than a week, there is a growing fear, among many Arabs and some Israelis, that Barak may be tempted to do something desperate to extract himself from what is now a terminal domestic crisis. In recent days, the Israeli media has made much of the supposed build-up of Iraqi forces on the Jordanian border, warning that Saddam Hussein may use the turmoil in the occupied territories as a justification for launching attacks on Israel.

"This could be used as a pretext," admits one Egyptian analyst. But other targets are more likely. The aims of such escalation would be multiple and tempting to a military mind like Barak's. The first would be to "restore Israel's deterrent capability," whose erosion since the withdrawal from southern Lebanon many in the army see as the principal cause of the protests in the occupied territories. The second is to bludgeon the Arab states into resuming negotiations on Israel's terms rather than those of international legitimacy.

And the third is to create an "emergency" to unite the Israeli people behind a leader they are presently poised to remove.

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Related stories:
Intifada in focus
States of emergency
Producing the body (count)
Tempered anger at the summit
Composing the consensus
The electronic Intifada
Horror in your sitting room
Variations on a theme
The big freeze
Solidarity days
'A valid fear'
Meet the press
Also see Focus on Intifada 19 - 25 October 2000

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