The routine of death
Editorial
Haaretz, March 9, 2004
Four children and youths, aged 11 to 16, were killed on Sunday during the Israel Defense Forces operation in Gaza refugee camps, in addition to 11 armed Palestinians. Another 80 people were wounded, including five who were said to be seriously wounded. One of them is a child. The IDF Spokesman said the operation was aimed against the terrorist infrastructures and the wanted men who fire mortars and anti-tank rockets as well as bombers. But military sources quoted in Haaretz yesterday admitted that the operation, like a similar one last month in Sejeya, in which 15 Palestinians were also killed, was meant to "provoke" the armed activists into reacting, "to expose themselves to strikes" by the IDF force.
Experience shows that operations in the heart of the densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip end routinely with the deaths of innocent civilians. Often, the operations are indicative of faulty judgment, if not utter indifference, in the uppermost political and military echelons. They don't take into account the long-term damage when a civilian population is terrorized for the sake of the temporary achievement of "provoking armed men into exposing themselves." The version put out by Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon, who said the civilians were killed by Palestinian fire, only reinforces the risks taken in raiding a refugee camp.
The argument that the Palestinians have no compunctions about using children as "human shields" does not absolve the IDF of responsibility for their safety. On the contrary, the commanders must issue orders to the soldiers to take utmost and special care and not to adopt the moral norms of local thugs. A hint of the prevailing approach in the top echelons of the army was evident in Amos Harel's interview with Brig. Gen. Gadi Shamni, the outgoing commander of IDF forces in Gaza, which appeared in yesterday's Haaretz. Shamni referred to the conflict underway in the territories for more than three years as a war between two armies trying to win.
Apparently, Shamni has internalized the view of the chief of staff, who once promised "to sear into" the Palestinian consciousness the uselessness of the violent struggle against Israel. Neither takes into consideration the fact that for the last 37 years Israel has been an occupying power in the territories, nor the theft of land for the settlements, nor the public commitments made by the prime minister about disengaging from the Gaza Strip.
Nor has the political echelon learned the lesson from dozens of similar operations, which intensified the desire for revenge, produced many suicide bombers and led to attacks that killed hundreds of Israelis. Dozens of assassinations, hundreds of house demolitions, and tens of thousands unemployed did not do a thing to improve Israel's deterrent force in the territories. The time has come for the makers of policy and those who implement it to drop the illusion of a military solution to the conflict; until a political solution is found, they should take care to make wise and controlled use of force.
Israel's moral, security and political resilience is not measured by the balance of death and terror in Gaza and Jerusalem. The preparations for disengagement from parts of Gaza and the West Bank must be accompanied by an effort to calm the borders with our neighbors and break out of the cycle of violence.
Separating Siamese twins
By Yoel Marcus
Haaretz, March 8, 2004
By the number of questions with which Washington is bombarding Jerusalem, and the number of emissaries being bounced back and forth, it is obvious that President Bush is not sure why Sharon wants to pull out of the Gaza Strip, lock, stock and barrel. So unsure, in fact, that every week their planned meeting is pushed to the next week, and no actual date has been set. During an election year, presidents can't afford to make mistakes such as falling for Sharon's spin, with its mysterious whys and wherefores.
We natives can only hazard a guess. One possibility is that in his fourth year as prime minister, Sharon has reached the point where he has only one option left: to make a move or lose the game. His steady decline in the polls has led him to the conclusion that something must be done - to distract the public from the police inquiry into his affairs and those of his sons, and to put a brake on his loss of credibility as a leader who has not kept his promise to bring peace and security.
In principle, the idea of pulling out of that vipers' den or rumbling volcano known as the Gaza Strip is an excellent one. But Sharon's mistake - some say a historical one - was in not presenting it to Bush immediately after the occupation of Iraq. At that time, America's power still had shock value, and the terror organizations and Arab countries supportive of terror were feeling the squeeze.
Instead, Sharon came out with the initiative during an election year, at an inconvenient time for Bush, without consulting with him, without laying down clear outlines, without a whopping manual laden with details and maps and a blow-by-blow description of who, what and where.
As Bush gets more and more bogged down in Iraq, and the justice of his motives for going to war are being questioned, the last thing he needs is Israel launching an initiative that turns out to be a dud. The U.S. officials flying over here and Dov Weisglass - who does a better Sharon imitation than Yatzpan but is no great maven on the ins and outs of Washington politics - flying over there, are proof that someone on the other side of the ocean has a barrel of questions and doubts.
Bush, for instance, wants to know to whom the Gaza Strip will be handed over. He wants to know who will get the houses in the evacuated settlements and who will be the big boss. He wants to know what things are going to look like the day after the pullout. Will Hamas and Jihad, now on America's blacklist, hold a victory parade and stage a takeover?
When Israel withdrew unilaterally from Lebanon, it redeployed along the international border with the okay and cooperation of the UN. We knew that Hezbollah would control the territory, but it was determined ahead of time that responsibility for any aggression would lie with the governments of Syria and Lebanon.
In Gaza, there are still questions: Who gets the keys? How can we keep the place from dissolving in chaos and being turned back into a terrorist base? Will Egypt agree to take responsibility for the Philadelphi corridor, and if it does, what guarantee do we have that it won't aid the terrorists? On the other hand, if the IDF does remain after the pullout, and bloodbaths of the kind we saw on Sunday continue, what have we achieved?
Something is pretty jumbled up in this Gaza Strip exodus plan: (a) It was a mistake to go public with it without working things out first with Bush; (b) The planners forgot that nothing moves in an election year, i.e., until 2005 at least, no one is going anywhere; (c) What happens if Bush loses to John Kerry? Has anyone asked Kerry what he thinks of the plan? (d) No one has taken into account that in the absence of a partner, Israel will be negotiating with America. Israel will have to coordinate every last detail with Washington and dance to its tune; (e) In an election year, there is no way in the world - don't even dream about it - that an American president will so much as breathe a promise to foot the bill for the historical mistake known as the settlements, to the tune of billions of dollars; (f) and most importantly, Sharon has not lifted a finger yet to drum up domestic support for this move. Unilateral means the whole thing is on us - no excuses.
Leaving the Gaza Strip is an idea in the right direction. As of now, it's a front-page item as sensational as an operation to separate Siamese twins. Everything hinges on the outcome: the ability to separate - and come out of it alive.
