[GushShalom] The best show in town - Uri Avnery

[Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)]

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[] The best show in town - Uri Avnery
[] Same provocation - same purpose. Press release - June 22, 2003

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http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/article255_heb.html


Uri Avnery
21.6.03

			The Best Show in Town

      The most talented director could not have done better. It was a 
perfect show.
     Television viewers all over the world saw heroic Israeli soldiers on 
their screens battling the fanatical settlers. Close-ups: faces twisted 
with passion, a soldier lying on a stretcher, a young woman crying in 
despair, children weeping, youngsters storming forward in fury, masses 
of people wrestling with each other. A battle of life and death.
     There is no room for doubt: Ariel Sharon is leading a heroic fight 
against the settlers in order to fulfil his promise to remove 
"unauthorized" outposts, even "inhabited" ones. The old warrior is 
again facing a determined enemy without flinching.
     The conclusion is self-evident, both in Israel and throughout the 
world: if such a tumultuous battle takes place for a tiny outpost 
inhabited by hardly a dozen people, how can one expect Sharon to 
remove 90 outposts, as promised in the Road Map? If things look like 
that when he has to remove a handful of tents and one small stone 
building - how can one even dream of evacuating real settlements, 
where dozens, hundreds or even thousands of families are living?
     This must have impressed George Bush and his people. 
Unfortunately, it has not impressed me.
     It makes me laugh.
     In the last few years I have witnessed dozens of confrontation with 
the army. I know what they really look like.
     The Israeli army has already demolished thousands of Palestinian 
homes in the occupied territories. This is how it goes: early in the 
morning, hundreds of soldiers surround the land. Behind them come 
the tanks and bulldozers, and the action starts. When despair drives 
the inhabitants to resist, the soldiers hit them with sticks, throw tear 
gas grenades, shoot rubber-coated metal bullets and, if the resistance 
is stronger, live ammunition, too. Old people are thrown on the ground, 
women dragged along, young people handcuffed and pushed against 
the wall. After a few minutes, it's all over.    
     Well, they'll say, that's done to Arabs. They don't do this to Jews.
     Wrong. They certainly do this to Jews. Depends who the Jews are.
      I, for example, am a Jew. I have been attacked with tear gas five 
times so far. Once it was a special gas, and for a few moments I was 
afraid that I was going to choke to death.
     During one of the blockades on Ramallah we decided to bring food 
to the beleaguered town. We were some three thousand Israeli peace 
activists, both Jews and Arabs. At the A-Ram checkpoint, north of 
Jerusalem, a line of policemen and soldiers stopped us. There was an 
exchange of insults and a lot of shouting. Suddenly we were showered 
with tear gas canisters. The thousands dispersed in panic, coughing 
and choking, some were trampled; one of our group, an 82-year old 
Jew and kibbutznik, was injured.
     I have witnessed demonstrations in which rubber-coated bullets 
were shot at Israeli citizens (generally Arabs). Once I was in the gas-
filled rooms of a school at Um-al-Fahem in Israel.
     If the army had really wanted to evacuate Mitpe-Yitzhar quickly and 
efficiently, it would have used tear gas. The whole business would have 
been over in a few minutes. But then there would not have been 
dramatic pictures on TV, and George W. would have asked his friend 
Arik: "Hey, why don't you finish with all the outposts in a week?"
     In other words, this was a well-produced show for TV.
     A few days before, the leaders of the settlers met with Ariel Sharon. 
As they left and faced the cameras they uttered dark threats, but 
anyone who knows these people and looked at their faces on TV could 
see that there were no strong emotions at work. Of course, the "Yesha 
rabbis" (Yesha is settlerese for the West Bank), a group of bearded 
political functionaries, called on the soldiers to disobey orders and 
requested the LORD and the messiah to come to their help, but even 
they lacked real passion.
     Why? Because all of them knew that everything has been agreed in 
advance. The army chiefs and the leaders of the settlers, comrades 
and partners for a long time, sat together and decided what would 
happen, and, more importantly, what would not happen: no sudden 
attack, no efforts to prevent thousands of young people from reaching 
the place well in advance, no use of sticks, water cannon, tear gas, 
rubber-coated bullets or any other means beyond the use of bare 
hands. The soldiers would not wear helmets nor be equipped with 
shields. The settlers would shout and push, but would not hit the 
soldiers in earnest. The whole show would be less violent then a 
normal scuffle with British soccer hooligans, but would look on TV like 
a desperate battle between titanic forces.
     Ariel Sharon has some experience with this kind of thing. A dozen 
years ago he directed a similar show when, following the peace treaty 
with Egypt, he was ordered by Prime Minister Menahem Begin to 
evacuate the town of Yamit in the northern Sinai peninsula. At the 
time, Sharon was Minister if Defense. And who was one of the leaders 
of the dramatic resistance? Tsachi Hanegbi, now the minister in charge 
of the police.
     All the arms of the establishment cooperated this week in the big 
show. The media devoted many hours to the "battle". Dozens of 
settlers were invited to the studios and talked endlessly - while, as far 
as I saw, not a single person belonging to the active peace camp was 
called to the microphone.
     The courts, too, did their duty: the handful of settlers that were 
arrested for resisting violently were sent home after spending a day or 
two in jail. The courts, who never show any mercy when Arabs appear 
before them, treated the fanatical settlers like erring sons.
     The whole comedy would have been funny, if it did not concern a 
very serious problem. Such an "outpost" looks like a harmless cluster 
of mobile homes on top of a god-forsaken hill, but it is far from being 
innocuous. It is a symptom of a cancerous growth. Not for nothing did 
Ariel Sharon - the very same Sharon - call upon the settlers a few 
years ago to take control of all the hills of "Judea and Samaria".
     The disease develops like this: a group of rowdies occupies a 
hilltop, some miles from an established settlement, and puts a mobile 
home there. After some time, the "outpost" already consists of a 
number of mobile homes. A generator and a water-tower are brought in. 
Women with babies appear on the scene. A fence is set up. The army 
sends some units to defend them. They declare that for security 
reasons, Palestinians are not allowed to come near, in order to prevent 
them from spying and preparing an attack. The security zone becomes 
bigger and bigger. The inhabitants of the neighboring Palestinian 
villages cannot reach some of their orchards and fields any more. It 
someone tries, he is liable to be shot. Every settler has a weapon, and 
he has nothing to fear from the law if he uses it against a suspicious 
Arab. All Arabs are suspicious, of course.
     As it so happens, I have some experience with Mitzpe Yitzhak, the 
particular outpost that figured in this week's show. Some months ago 
we were called by the inhabitants of the Palestinian village Habala to 
help them pick their olives in a grove near this "outpost". When the 
pickers came near to the outpost, the settlers opened fire. An Israeli in 
our group was wounded when a bullet struck a rock at his feet.
     The "unauthorized" outposts were in fact established 
systematically, with the help of the army and according to its planning. 
When several outposts take root in a region, the Palestinian villages 
are choked between them. Their life becomes hell.  The settlers and 
officers clearly hope that in the end they will give up and clear out. 
     Will Sharon really evacuate them by the dozens? That depends, of 
course, on his friend George W. If the "hudna" (truce) between the 
Palestinian Authority and Hamas is achieved, Bush may perhaps exert 
serious pressure on Sharon. When I visited Yasser Arafat yesterday, 
he seemed to be cautiously optimistic. But he, too, said that there are 
no more than four months left for getting things moving: starting from 
November, the American President will be busy getting himself 
reelected.
     This means that Sharon has only to produce a few more shows of 
this sort for television, and then he and the settlers will be able to 
breathe freely once again. 


[] Same provocation - same purpose. Press release - June 22, 2003

[The following is the translation of a press release sent out by Gush 
Shalom to the Hebrew media.]

Hebron: same provocation - same purpose

"The governmental and military decision makers do not even bother to 
conceal or at least vary their acts. Again and again they get back to 
the same provocation and with the same purpose. Each time that the 
negotiations between the Palestinian factions seem to get somewhere 
close to a positive conclusion - and the possibility of achieving a cease-
fire which would end the suicide bombings becomes a concrete option -
they are in a hurry to carry out another "liquidation". Thus, the 
government is offering to Hamas on a silver platter a pretext to refuse 
the requests of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). 

As the majority of the public already understands, such actions are not 
intended to prevent the terrorist attacks. This government is interested 
in them; they serve its policies.  


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