What the hell is going on in the Middle East?!
By Yitzhak Frankenthal
The current violence in the Middle East is incomprehensible. In the face of it, we remain aghast. Unfortunately, there is nothing new under the sun, and it seems that the future holds more of the past in store.
During the past 39 years, since June of 1967, Palestinians have lived under oppressive occupation. Nothing I could hope to write about it, would accurately reflect the reality as it is on the ground. Over the years, only a handful of people have understood what I mean when I say that occupation is the worst form of terror.
I recently had the opportunity to visit Mohamad Elian: a Palestinian lawyer, a peace activist, a father and a dear friend of mine, who lives in G’bel Mukaber (a one-minute drive from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Talpiot). On many occasions, he has invested time and effort to assist the Arik Institute in its endeavors towards reconciliation.
Mohamad’s son, fourteen, had been sent to the corner store by his mother, to buy some bread. On his way back from the store, only 150 meters from his house, the son was stopped by a soldier (named Assaf) at the IDF blockade right outside their property. Assaf, following standard procedures, requested to see the son’s ID. Still too young for an adult ID card (they are only issued at 16), Mohamad’s son gave the soldier a copy of his birth certificate instead. After examining the black and white picture, Assaf arrived at the conclusion that it was a forgery, and did not allow Mohamad’s son through the blockade.
As time went by, and the Elian family got worried about their son, they sent his elder brother to find out what was taking so long. When he discoveried what had happened, the brother naturally decided to go back home to get their father.
The soldier, in the meantime, had begun taunting and harassing Mohamad’s son. By the time Mohamad approached the blockade, the situation had escalated to physical violence. Realizing the implications, Mohamad ran to the blockade and separated the two youngsters from each other. Assaf detonated a stun-grenade at Mohamad’s feet, disorienting him, and accused Mohamad of assaulting him. Assaf proceeded to handcuff Mohamad and his children. Mohamad and his children spent 5 grueling hours being taken back-and-forth between the blockade and the police headquarters, being repeatedly interrogated by different police officials, and finally being released on bail, set at NIS5,000.
When I went to visit him, I encountered his wife. A resident of the territories, Mohamad’s wife has a green ID card. She told me that she too had suffered unnecessary animosity at the hands of IDF soldiers, during the twenty-one years she had been married to Mohamad.
She recalled numerous occasions that she could not leave her house, knowing from bitter experience that if she were to be detained by security personnel, she would inevitably have to face arrest, followed by immediate deportation to the occupied territories – where she would be left alone with no means of getting back home to her family.
Only yesterday, she concluded, was she arrested and deported to Bet Lehem. She recalled how she was forced to make her long way home by foot, avoiding main roads and blockades on the way.
All this, I thought to myself, just to reach her home; her husband; her children.
As if this wasn’t unbearable enough, I know from conversations that I have had with him that Mohamad won’t drive with his wife in their car, for fear that if caught and inspected the car would be impounded for thirty days, the family steeply fined and his wife, as above, would be deported to some location in the occupied territories. For the sake of accuracy, let me note that Mohamad and his family, despite living in a perpetual state of fear for many years, live outside the occupied territories and are therefore spared from the majority of the occupation’s oppressiveness.
Let me point out that a society existing in such a state of fear, by definition lives in terror, making the cause for their terror – occupation, in our case – terrorism.
During the years that Israel has occupied Palestinian territories, its governments have endorsed inhumane policies and actions vis-?-vis the Palestinian population.
Among Palestinians, there are those who possess Israeli IDs (and yet are not really Israeli citizens) and those who don’t. Those who do, experience a ‘watered-down’ version of the occupation. Those who don’t, by contrast, live in awful fear and poverty, are subject to collective punishment, daily suffering, to the point that desperation is so engrained in them that they have nothing left to lose.
"Yitzhak, my brother, believe me: I have educated my children all their lives to respect the Israelis. After what they experienced at the hands of that Assaf, how can I hope to talk to my children about reconciliation?" Mohamad asked me, when we were alone.
Israel has ignored the results of the Palestinian’s democratic election, ignored the Hammas, and has toughened its policies towards the Palestinian public. Over the past year, Israel has continued to build the wall, completing another 130 kilometers of the concrete barrier. The construction of the wall is dividing Arabic communities and Arab families, already causing terrible injustices and daily suffering to tens-of-thousands of Palestinians.
The majority of the Palestinians are un-employed and without income. Now they are being walled-in like animals. What do they have left to lose? Does anyone actually think that they won’t just dig thousands of tunnels beneath it? That these walls will stop Qassam rockets (which are flying farther and higher every month)?
Despite equating the strategic importance of Netzarim (a settlement in the Gaza strip) to that of Tel-Aviv and stating that we would never evacuate it, within but a few months Sharon did exactly that, by evacuating every settlement in the Gaza Strip in the process of the "disengagement" plan. We shouldn’t mistakenly consider this as part of a peace process: it was unilateral, without any negotiations with the Palestinians.
Palestinians who remained in Gaza found themselves living in a Ghetto, lacking the ability to uphold even basic economical structures. Frustration from their economical situation and the continuation of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank led the Palestinians to launch Qassam rockets at the Israeli city Sderot (located near Gaza). In response, Israeli artillery has been pounding Gazan territory with hundreds of shells every day. Many innocent Palestinians have been killed, including infants, children, women, elderly and youngsters as a result of IDF activities. Israel has been kidnapping Palestinians during military campaigns for years. During the recent months, Palestinians dug a long tunnel which, on Sunday the 25th of June, they used to surprise, wound, kill and kidnap Israeli soldiers. The Hammas leadership knew nothing of this.
Since they were elected, nearly six months ago, they have not been recognized as a legitimate government, yet suddenly demands are being heard from every front that they capture the kidnappers, to find the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and to return him to Israel alive and well. I still remember how Arafat was blamed for all the attacks against Israel. How for years it was claimed that he, alone, was the source of all the terrorism in our region. How it was determined that he was "illegitimate" and "irrelevant".
Abu-Mazzen, upon replacing him, was dismissed as incompetent – incapable of being a partner in any negotiations. The Hammas, on the other hand, have not displayed any evidence of political leadership since they were elected. They have not had the sense to change their organization’s terminology – and utilized ‘sub-contractors’ to continue their armed struggle against Israel.
In recent Israeli elections, a new government was put into power under the slogan of "convergence, either through negotiations or through unilateral steps. The Palestinians were supposed to (according to the convergence plan) receive some 90% of the West-Bank territories. The Hammas did not internalize this, and consequently did not change its slogans. For many long months, Israeli peace activists and organizations tried to hold meetings with the Hammas leadership, and were answered with the likes of "not yet…", "we need to think it over…", etc. etc.
In the meantime, a rotten state of anarchy was spreading throughout the Gaza Strip. The situation there deteriorated to the point where different factions within the Palestinian society were murdering each other. The distinct impression was that Gaza’s internal affairs had gotten completely out of control. Lacking leadership, law and justice, this state of anarchy, coupled with the terrorism in Europe and the US, facilitated global support for Israeli punishment of the Palestinians.
The world, evidently, does not perceive occupation as terror. We must continually remind ourselves that the construction of the wall continues, independent of all else. More and more Palestinian cities are becoming ghettoes, the economic sanctions against the Palestinian government have brought hundreds-of-thousands of families down to a loaf of bread (no, this is not a clich?). Literally, people are starving in the West Bank, and even more so in Gaza. The levels of despair are rising. People who provided for their families are now being humbled and humiliated by the reality of not being able to feed their children.
A catastrophic situation is looming ahead. Six months after the Hammas was elected into power, the Palestinian public is paying for its choice of a Hammas government, through collective punishment, an increase in the rate of the wall’s construction (along with the Israeli public’s growing belief in it), Public starvation due to withdrawal and seizure of finances and the recent bombing of electric and water stations in Gaza, along with the destruction of other municipal infrastructures.
We need to understand that the situation in Gaza at the moment is truly a catastrophe. People, who have been living in terrible poverty for years, are now exposed to altogether new types of problems. Tens-of-thousands of Palestinians are currently without either water or electricity. In hospitals too, people dependent on machines to live are being disconnected due to lack of electricity. Undoubtedly, as an Israeli, I want to see the kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit returned safely to his home. However (and this is a big "however"), are we allowed to – is it indeed ethical to ¬¬– collectively punish the Palestinians, including those who truly had nothing at all to do with either the kidnapping or the rockets?
How can we cry out against the collective punishing that the Jews experienced for millennia – what right do we have to make claims when we were hated, world-wide, because of the actions of a few? We must know that that which is ethical is white and that which is unethical is black. There are no shades of grey in between, there cannot be a "half-ethical" act. What we, the Israelis, are doing today in Gaza – is completely unethical.
For almost thirteen years I have been working to advance peace and reconciliation. More than once or twice, I have asked myself why we are hated so much. Each time I encounter collective punishment, I ask myself "what would I do, if I was a Palestinian?" I want to make it very clear: I am against all violence of any form. "Enough!" – Enough with these petty accusations of guilt, of "who started it", who’s in the right and who’s in the wrong. The time to reconcile and make peace is now.
It is quite possible that in light of everything that is going on today in Gaza, the Hammas government will cease to exist. Then what? Will another government be elected? Will the Palestinian public lend its hand to ousting the very government that it itself chose?
Where do we go from here? Towards dialogue with the Hammas government, or towards entrenching the state of chaos to the point that, G-d forbid, chemical or biological warfare is used against Israel. What would follow from such an attack? After burying our dead, how would we respond?
It is time that we awoke from our illusions, and fully understand that occupation is the worst form of terror.
I would like to dedicate this article to Mohamad my friend, his wife, his ninety-year-old parents and to his entire family.