12 - 18 July 2001
Issue No.542
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 12 - 18 July 2001 Issue No.542 |
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Mixed signals
The Israeli leadership has spent much of the last week saying one thing and doing another. It is a dangerous twitch, writes Graham Usher from Jerusalem
There is an old political adage that a regime is never so dangerous as when its signals are mixed. And rarely has a state projected so many conflicting signals as Israel over the last week.
A Palestinian youth is arrested by Israeli border police in Shuafat refugee camp on Monday. Backed by hundreds of Israeli police, bulldozers razed a dozen Palestinian homes in one of the largest demolitions of recent years as Israel continued its flagrant disregard of international law. (photo: AP)
The confusion is evident at the very pinnacle of government, as its formal policy of "restraint" starts to fray at the seams. The cord is being stretched, on the one hand, by the army's renewed penchant for political assassinations and, on the other, by an upsurge in Palestinian resistance, including suicide bombs, roadside charges and the first mortar pitched into Israel from Gaza in over a month.
"If an Israeli attack topples the Palestinian Authority and brings about a new force instead of [Yasser] Arafat, that would not be a negative result for Israel," said Likud Environment Minister Tzachi Hanegbi at a stormy meeting of the Israeli cabinet on Monday.
Ariel Sharon bridled under the charge that his advocacy of "restraint" could be mistaken for weakness. "Nobody will tell me how to deal with terror," he said. But "this region is not going to war. Everyone is responsible enough to keep the situation balanced."
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres supported his Prime Minister, reaffirming that while Israel "would protect itself," it would not "deviate from the Mitchell plan and Tenet document." He also advised ministers like Hanegbi to cease calling for the Palestinian leader's head because Arafat is "not only the Palestinians' elected representative, but also their authentic representative."
Finally, he announced that he had it from very good sources (in fact from Palestinian Speaker Ahmed Qrei at a meeting with Peres on Sunday night) that Arafat was about to "take very serious steps to calm the [occupied] territories." These included, said Peres, "arrests, preventing terrorists from entering Israel and clear instructions to implement the Tenet agreement."
And yet -- even as Peres was preaching "restraint" -- Israeli police and soldiers were acting with ruthless abandon. While the cabinet was in session -- and reportedly unbeknownst to either Peres or Sharon -- hundreds of Border Police protected bulldozers tearing down 14 "illegal" houses on the outskirts of Shufat refugee camp in occupied East Jerusalem.
The demolitions were watched by representatives from diplomatic missions in Jerusalem and drew an unusually sharp rebuke from the US State Department. "We have urged the Israelis to desist from the demolition of Palestinian homes," said US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher on Monday.
Israel's reply to this chastisement was to unleash its worst assault on Palestinian civilians and property in over a month. On early Tuesday morning eleven tanks and four bulldozers ploughed their way through a segment of Rafah refugee camp on Gaza's border with Egypt. In a two-hour operation, 18 houses and six stores were destroyed and 150 Palestinians were left homeless for the umpteenth time in their lives. The incursion was met with fierce Palestinian resistance, leaving three Israeli soldiers and seven Palestinians wounded.
The razed buildings were abandoned, routinely used by Palestinian guerrillas and anyway on a terrain under Israel's control, said the army. The PA countered that Palestinian civilians lived in all the homes (even if they did not always sleep there) and the army's incursion went 100 metres into Palestinian-controlled territory. And for once the US State Department agreed with the Palestinians.
"We are very concerned about the entry of Israeli forces in areas of Palestinian control and of the destruction of homes in Jerusalem and Rafah," repeated Boucher on Tuesday. "Such actions are very provocative, damage trust between the two sides and make it difficult to re-establish quiet and progress in the implementation of the Mitchell report."
The incursions and demolitions also "convinced" the French government that "an impartial mechanism of international monitoring [for the cease-fire] is necessary between Israel and the Palestinians."
This last was music to the ears of the Palestinian leadership. For the past week Arafat has been hawking a new Palestinian "initiative" to all and sundry based on the Tenet cease-fire, a timetable for implementing the Mitchell report and international observers to judge the adherence of the PA and Israel to both. Needless to say, Israel has dismissed the initiative out of hand.
And the Israeli press has been awash with leaks and stories that Sharon and the army are readying to destroy the PA once and for all and "re-occupy" at least some West Bank Palestinian towns. Peres, meanwhile, is readying for his first trip to an Arab capital in over two months -- Cairo for a meeting with President Hosni Mubarak on Sunday.
The signals remain as mixed as ever -- and the danger almost certainly as real.
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