So, not wanting to lose them, here they are:
1.
True Security Threat: Withdrawal
By Yisrael Medad
May 08, 1998 in print edition B-9
For many in Israel, the recent negotiations here and in London over territorial percentage figures are simply irrelevant to the core issues of peace and security.
One could quibble about percentage points, but in doing so, what is being avoided and what is crucial for Israel’s future is the simple fact that the essence of Oslo has been unrealized.
The Declaration of Principles signed on the White House lawn in September 1993 was presumed to have ushered in a new era in the Israel-Arab conflict. Yasser Arafat and his PLO had promised to fulfill obligations, something they had never done–not with their “Zionist enemy” or even with their Arab compatriots.
Later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed himself to following through with the guidelines and signed agreements, hundreds of pages long in certain instances, which the previous Labor-led government had bequeathed to the new Likud coalition. The government of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres avoided the issue of Jewish civilian presence in the areas that the Palestinians presumed would eventually be relinquished. Rabin, despite his deriding the approximately 150 Jewish settlements, provided unprecedented security measures for them including bypass roads and increased military personnel and equipment.
There are those who refuse to recognize the strategic and tangible security value of these communities. They reject, on their own ideological and political prejudices, any Jewish presence and seek the ethnic cleansing of the post-1967 territories. Paradoxically, for them, peace is not intended to be between peoples. They ignore the fact that without these communities, a Palestinian state would have been a reality five years ago. And that is the true security threat to Israel: an independent and sovereign PLO state.
With all due respect to First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, a PLO state is in no one’s long-term interests, neither the Israelis’ nor the Palestinians,’ given Arafat’s sorry human rights record and embezzlement of public funds.
Israel’s security is linked unalterably to the upholding of agreements. On the contrary, the Palestinian Authority is notorious in its policy of violating the most central of these agreements. Terrorism, a threat, is exploited by Arafat as an instrument of policy. Illegal arms have not been confiscated nor have murderers been extradited. Incitement to violence is frequently published in the official Palestinian press together with vile anti-Semitism. The Palestinian Covenant, demanding elimination of Israel, has not been invalidated.
In just one day this week, one Jewish man was stabbed to death, another was injured in a second stabbing incident and there was an attempted kidnapping of a policeman.
Israelis regard the consistent infractions and the continuation of the terror as indicative that Oslo was a mistake. That error can only lead to one conclusion: Israel’s security–personal and national–is still at risk.
At present, more than 90% of those Arabs who consider themselves Palestinians reside under Arafat’s municipal rule. Even the superhawk Netanyahu handed over in January 1997 most of Hebron, the last outstanding issue that he inherited. In exchange, the United States joined in assuring him that future moves would be conditional on full compliance with Oslo by Arafat, which has not been the case.
It is the presence of almost 200,000 Jewish civilians that prevents Arafat from achieving his goal, never really disguised, of attaining a military position from which Israel’s security can be effectively challenged. Why should Israel continue to hand over the most tangible of elements–land–when all evidence points to greater security difficulties?
The Jewish communities across the former “green line” border are indispensable. Their locations essentially deny Arafat his vision of statehood. They protect the main population centers and Ben-Gurion Airport and prevent the development of a hostile eastern front.
In principle, Israel should not be expected to give up the heartland of its historic homeland. On very practical grounds, it cannot be expected to yield on this issue. Security is not a psychological comfort, but the assurance that the future of Israel and its citizens is not to be in doubt.
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2.
Palestinian Authority Is Too Corrupt to Govern
By Yisrael Medad
August 10, 1998 in print edition B-5
Even in Israel, few people doubt that in May 1999, Yasser Arafat, chairman and erstwhile president of the Palestinian Authority, will declare the establishment of the independent and sovereign state of Palestine. A grand if not dress rehearsal was held a decade ago in Algeria when a declaration of independence was read at a session of the Palestine National Council. That charade followed Jordan’s King Hussein’s announcement absolving himself of responsibility for the area recognized as the West Bank, which incidentally his grandfather annexed, an act devoid of international legality.
Arafat, despite seeming successes, foremost the creation of a beachhead on what he considers Palestinian soil, has made many mistakes over the years. For sure, many countries already acknowledge the existence of Palestine as a state. Embassies and other diplomatic trappings have served the needs of the Palestine Liberation Organization as it evolved from a terrorist organization. But to declare a state of Palestine would be a mistake if only because it would be committing the most grievous injury a leader can cause his people. I believe Palestine must be saved from itself. For if the Palestinian people are to be served and their best interests are to be catered, a separate state of Palestine is the last thing they need.
Just days ago, the much hailed Hanan Ashrawi, minister for tourism, resigned from Arafat’s new Palestinian Cabinet. Her reason? Not enough was being done to stop corruption in the Palestinian Authority. The new Cabinet has been widely criticized because last year a special internal report accused many of the ministers of corruption.
Further criticism regarding corruption came from a Palestinian human rights group that insisted that the expanded Cabinet will continue corruption and will deprive those in greatest need of their human rights.
In ignoring recommendations for change, Arafat is perceived as harming democracy. The Palestinian Authority has been accused of oppressing its people and intimidating its press.
This is not a Zionist claim but one put forth by a radical Israeli, Roni Ben Efrat, editor of the Challenge monthly, who herself spent time in prison for supporting one of the PLO groups a decade ago. In an address delivered in Athens this past May , Ben Efrat stated that imprisonment without trial is the norm. Numerous security organizations vie with one another in extortion, and big brother is everywhere. The curbing of the press is merely a part of this general picture. The most alarming aspect in the story has been the speed with which the press agreed to lay down its weapon, the pen.
Perhaps the most well-publicized incident, but not the most serious, was that of Daoud Kuttab, who runs an independent television studio. Palestinian legislators fought for the right to have their sessions broadcast directly. They finally won this at the beginning of 1997. Viewers watched with interest. Too much, it appears. When corruption was on the agenda, all kinds of static broke out on the screen. As manager of the broadcasting company, Kuttab complained about this to the Washington Post. He found himself in jail for a week.
Arafat’s Palestine, even limited as it is, is but one more authoritarian entity. The people in charge embezzle; Arab real estate agents who preferred to do business with Jews were murdered; other Arabs suspected of crimes were tortured and killed.
Israel, too, has not enjoyed the fruits of Oslo. Palestinian breaches of the accords include weapons smuggling, a larger-than-authorized police force and failure to combat terrorism. The murder of two young Jewish residents of a community in Samaria, near the large Arab city of Nablus, was not condemned by Arafat. His spokesman, Marwan Barghouti, implied that settlers, viewed as “terrorists” by Arabs, are fair game. Arafat has ignored his obligations to extradite Arab murderers of Israelis who are kept in his lax correctional units, usually with the cell doors open.
The Palestinian Authority promised to collect all illegal weapons in its territories and work together with Israel on granting gun licenses to civilians. Nothing has been done on the matter. The Palestinian police force continues to be significantly larger than was agreed on. Some of these policemen are wanted former terrorists, including some with “blood on their hands,” that is, who have killed Israelis.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is lambasted by U.S. State Department officials in public and behind the scenes. He is insisting on the paramount concern for Israel’s security, without which the Oslo peace process will not proceed. Netanyahu’s is a forceful voice.
But who will speak for the unfortunate Palestinians?
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3.
The Breaking of the Barak Myth
By Yisrael Medad
May 24, 2000 in print edition B-9
Ehud Barak sat opposite Israel’s TV Channel One diplomatic reporter this past Monday night and was asked if he had made a mistake in his early troop redeployment last week of an army outpost in southern Lebanon. Barak, Israel’s prime minister and, by his own election propaganda, Israel’s most-decorated warrior, smiled and niftily avoided the trap. “I never look back but always to the future,” he said. The viewers, left in the vacuum of a politician’s self-enhancement, gained an insight into what is perhaps the empty void that now stands at the top of the country’s administration.
Barak may be in a process of political deconstruction. His most recent problems began when, despite his magnanimous gesture of altering the status of three Arab villages overlooking Jerusalem, gunshots rang out in Ramallah and Gaza. Bullets from rifles delivered by Israel wounded Israeli soldiers and sent civilians in nearby Jewish civilian communities scurrying for cover.
In his May 15 Knesset speech, Barak sarcastically referred to the knights of the Hasmonean Tunnel and Joseph’s Tomb, the bloody incidents of September 1996. Those disturbances were former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s responsibility. But within hours, Barak’s own shining armor was bestained as the sounds and pictures of the Palestinian violence were broadcast on television screens. Stunned, Barak assumed an assertive stance but, nevertheless, the shooting continued and, at week’s end, one soldier had been shot in the head and an infant was torched by a firebomb in Jericho.
Left with little choice, Barak’s plans were adjusted. His secret Stockholm channel of final-status negotiations was interrupted, and his representatives were called home to Jerusalem. More ominously for a politician, he is being threatened with internal coalition desertions, and the transfer of the three villages was put on hold. And then, with an echo of Jeremiah’s prophecy, the troubles began in the north.
For months, Barak has informed all and sundry that Israel will leave the south Lebanon buffer zone, with or without an agreement. Israel’s populace assumed that in either case their security concerns and those of their allies–the soldiers of Gen. Antoine Lahad’s South Lebanon Army–were being taken into consideration in the planning of the retreat. We may never know exactly what those plans were because, in the past few days, the several hundred-strong Hezbollah terror militia sprung a surprise on the brilliant strategist who is Israel’s prime minister and defense minister as well.
Talks on Israel’s withdrawal to the international border had been held with U.S. officials, United Nations’ diplomats and other Middle East players. Yet for all the planning, the concept of an orderly rearrangement along the border collapsed as did the SLA units that, with survivalist cunning, smelled the developments that Barak overlooked.
At present, fully 70% of Kiryat Shemona’s population has left the town and the rest are in underground shelters. Upward of 3,000 SLA personnel and family members are knocking on Israel’s gates. The new security fence is being built only meters from homes at Metulla and other kibbutzim along the Galilee panhandle. And the Hezbollah has announced further territorial demands: the lands upon which sit seven agricultural communities and the military base at Shaba, on the Mt. Hermon slopes. In other words, the Hezbollah struggle is far from over, and the Syrians are still demanding all of the Golan Heights and the shores of the Sea of Galilee.
Critics have pointed out that for all his bluster, Barak failed last month to use effectively the military might he has at his disposal when Katyusha rockets fell, during the day, on Kiryat Shemona. Moreover, by denigrating the worth of the South Lebanon buffer-zone, his response to future attacks on Israel can only be at the risk of a major confrontation with Syria, something that has been avoided until now. Barak hasn’t solved the problem of border attacks but perhaps has only cleared the decks for a better shot.
Barak’s “brilliance,” so skillfully nurtured during his election campaign, still needs to be tested. The fear, though, is that the price for his failure will be paid by those who are less able to do so, even if they enthusiastically voted for him a year ago.
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