“Israel’s Contingency Plan,”
by Marwan Bishara

Overview:

Imagine the following scenario: An Israeli prime minister decides to withdraw Israeli forces from a strip in the south of Lebanon. He hopes such a move will embarrass Syria, secure the northern borders, and allow Israel to consolidate its position vis-á-vis the West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000? Actually, this scenario refers to former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in 1949, according to Israeli journalist Tom Segev in his book, 1949: The First Israelis.

Five decades later—after independence, five wars, and seven years of the “peace process”—Barak followed the same logic when he withdrew from south Lebanon six months ago. As Ben-Gurion hoped would be the case in 1949, Israel’s withdrawal this past summer improved its international image and allowed it to refocus its energies and military strength on the Occupied Territories.

Yet in the present global context, Israel cannot act out the same ethnic cleansing policies it used in 1948 and 1967. Because of this, Barak has had to develop a new strategy. He took the Palestinians to Camp David this past summer to ratchet up the stakes. Either they accepted his four “no’s”—no to the right of return, no to the 1967 borders, no to dismantling the settlements, and no to Palestinian sovereignty in East Jerusalem—or they would get nothing. For his part, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat knew he could not sign a piece of paper that did not recognize Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem or the Palestinian refugees’ right of return, at least in principle.

As a result of these developments, the last few weeks have seen a qualitative change in the political and security environment in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Israel has used more force during this uprising—even against Palestinian citizens of Israel—than during previous disturbances, and has attempted to win the media war despite Israel’s internationally condemned policies. At the same time, the Palestinians are more organized than in the past. In light of these changes, a return to the status quo ante is not possible.

Israel’s Emergency Plan:

Following the Palestinians’ rejection of his “no’s,” Barak opted to break their national will through the use of military emergency plans. Barak has taken the following steps to ensure maximum control and to avoid Israeli casualties, especially among the military.

These steps include:

• deploying a special unit of snipers to target field leaders and agitators, including children. The unit was responsible for most of the deaths in the first three weeks of the uprising.
• allowing the military to use M-24s instead of M-16s, which are more accurate at long distances and are more likely to cause casualties.
• using formidable force, including tanks and helicopter gunships, to intimidate the Palestinian population and political leaders.
• imposing closures on the Occupied Territories without creating, at least for the moment, starvation on a large scale, and without cutting off electricity or water, which could incite the entire population and bring about international intervention.
• opening the way for the takeover of certain strategic locations, and perhaps the annexation of large areas of the West Bank to Israel.

The Palestinians in Israel:

Israel has long considered the one-fifth of its population as a potential fifth column. Today, it is clear that it views the Palestinian minority in Israel as an “internal enemy.” Demonstrations by Palestinian Israelis this fall were met by Israeli contingency plans similar to those used in the Occupied Territories. Israel’s violent repression of these protests resulted in the deaths of 13 Palestinian Israelis and hundreds of wounded.

Israel’s alienation of its Palestinian minority, and its insistence on a military—rather than a political—solution for dealing with them, has heightened the level of racism in Israel, a development that will mark Israel for a long time. Israeli authorities continue to conduct a scare campaign about the “demographic danger” of this Palestinian minority. Some on the right are even demanding expulsion of Palestinian citizens or limitations on their birth rate.

The Media War:

Given its increased violence against Palestinians, Israel needed to develop a new media strategy. To confuse the media and to blur the difference between a war against civilians and a conventional war, the Barak government went on the offensive, blaming the victims for the violence. This move was necessary to persuade Western journalists that when a child and a tank meet, the child is the aggressor.

As part of this strategy, Israel has accused Palestinian parents of sending their children out to die for the cause. This argument is similar to one made by the British Mandate forces against the Jews, when Jewish children were wounded by British soldiers. French journalist and author Charles Anderlain wrote that in 1945, British forces shot into a Jewish demonstration in Tel Aviv. They killed six people and wounded many more—a number of whom were children. The British press reported that cowardly Jewish parents sent their children out to die.

As for the presumably new radical enemy the tanzim (or “organization”), the story is especially bizarre. No coherent group of fighters called the tanzim existed until Israel began assassinating Fatah leaders. The tanzim story started when Israel began losing the media war. Suddenly, the press began talking about the military arm of Fatah, the tanzim. But Fatah is the tanzim—that is how Palestinians refer to Fatah, as the “organization.”

The Palestinians who use guns against the Israelis—and they are not more than a hundred or so—are not necessarily from Fatah, nor do they claim that this is the case. Whoever these gunmen are, they certainly do not constitute an organized body that demands such a strong response in the press.

A story in Jane’s Defense Weekly even claimed that the tanzim was one of three suspects in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen. This type of story gives Barak a renewed license to declare war on Palestinian demonstrators, with the blessing of the United States. Even in light of Israel’s ongoing violent repression of the uprising, on November 14, President Bill Clinton asked Congress for $450 million in additional military aid to Israel.

Palestinian Aspirations:

Instead of developing a calculated strategy like their Israeli neighbors, the Palestinians have been improvising. Yet regardless of how spontaneous their actions may be, they are in no way aimless. Compared to previous uprisings, Palestinians are now more clearly striving for independence as the goal. But once again it seems the Palestinians, particularly because of the relative success of Israeli propaganda, must prove that their national aspirations are just. This is again the case despite repeated United Nations resolutions supporting their cause. It took the Palestinians 40 years to prove that they are the David of the conflict and Israel the Goliath, and now it seems it will take many more years to prove that they are not the ones responsible for the current violence.

What Next:

In short, Israel has demonstrated once again that it cannot be democratic while maintaining an occupation. Israel has lost credibility as an honest partner for peace when leaders like Barak prove themselves to be more, not less, dangerous than those on the Israeli right. The Palestinians in Israel have joined together with their counterparts in the West Bank and Gaza, and there will be no turning back on this unification. Confrontations will continue until Israel begins to pull out of the Occupied Territories. Until then, a return to the negotiating table to discuss final status issues is highly improbable. Israel’s ultimatums and use of force will not calm the Palestinians—rather, the opposite is true. What will be necessary is for Palestinians to see an ending of the occupation as a reality.

Marwan Bishara is a Palestinian author and journalist. The above text, based on a presentation at Palestine Center’s November 17 conference titled, “Beyond the ‘Peace Process’: Toward a New Framework,” may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the author and to the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine. This Information Brief does not necessarily reflect the views of the Palestine Center or The Jerusalem Fund.

This information first appeared in Information Brief No. 53, 22 November 2000.