The General as Pseudo-Dove

[bluesoul]

By Uri Avnery

Up to now, Ya'alon's gospel was far from the teachings of the gentle Jewish preacher from Nazareth. His doctrine was: Hit the Arabs on the head and they will give in. If that isn't enough, hit them harder. Make the life of every single Palestinian unbearable, prevent him from leaving his village or town, destroy the livelihood of his family, take his land away.

This was an almost mathematical formula: when one blow follows the other, the lives of the Palestinians will reach breaking point. They will not be able to resist. They will raise their hands, lower their heads and accept everything the government of Israel is good enough to offer them. They will turn over their fighters ("terrorists" in the parlance of the occupation, "national heroes" in the parlance of the occupied.) They will live in the enclaves Israel allows them, or look for a better life in another country.

Now, suddenly, the C-o-S distances himself from this strategy. He tells the public that the government's policy--whose staunchest supporter he has been--is "destructive". Instead of liquidating terrorism, he says, it produces terrorism. The lives of the Palestinians must be eased, they must be given hope.

So what has happened?

<snip>

http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery11142003.html

[bemildred]

1. One of Mr. Avnery's better efforts.

It was a dumb strategy to start with, and it is still
a dumb strategy, and a reading or the history of such wars
would have told anyone with an open mind that it was a dumb
strategy. Graduated application of pressure simply produces
a graduated resistance. If you attempt to sweep problems under
the carpet through use of force, you create a new status quo in
which you have to apply more and more force to keep the problem
swept under the carpet, indefinitely. They would have done far
better had they long ago taken all the money dumped in the toilet
for "defense" and used it to address, as well as might be done, the
legitimate grievances of the refugees.

It seems that Ya'alon and his generals
have reached the conclusion that their campaign has failed. Any
further pressure on the Palestinians will be counter-productive:
producing more hatred, more hostility. So there will be more
attacks, compelling the army to mobilize more troops and invest
more resources, without achieving anything.

Ya'alon the Hawk turns into Ya'alon the
Pseudo-Dove. But his new remedy, too, is based on false assumptions:
Instead of "hit them on the head" it is now "ease
their situation". How? Allow some thousands to work in Israel?
Let some hundreds of merchants into Israel to buy Israeli goods?
(The Israeli economy could certainly use that.) Remove some roadblocks
here and there? Use the stick less and the carrot more?

That, too, is a recipe for a predictable
failure. Because, like the old recipe and all the false forecasts
along the way (Remember Yom Kippur!) it is based on a bottomless
contempt for the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular.
But, as the extreme right-wing Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky
already understood some 80 years ago: you can't buy the Arabs
off. Changing total hell into a less than total hell will not
induce them to give up their national goals.

Even if the occupied territories turn
into a paradise on earth and the military government provides
every male inhabitant with 70 virgins (as promised for the Islamic
paradise), the Palestinians would still want an end to the occupation.
They want a state of their own in the whole of the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

[Jack Rabbit]

2. I agree with much of what Avnery has to say, but . . .

It is wrong for him to berate General Ya'alon for having been on the wrong side of the moral issue for so long. Ya'alon did not come around for moral reasons, but practical ones.

Ya'alon has simply come to the conclusion that there is no military solution to the Intifada. The Palestinian resistance can be pummeled and homes bulldozed, but it cannot be crushed. The Palestinians will have an independent state and don't need the permission of the Israeli right wing to act on their own.

Ya'alon now wants to try something else. Avnery characterizes it thus:

Ya'alon the Hawk turns into Ya'alon the Pseudo-Dove. But his new remedy, too, is based on false assumptions: Instead of "hit them on the head" it is now "ease their situation". How? Allow some thousands to work in Israel? Let some hundreds of merchants into Israel to buy Israeli goods? (The Israeli economy could certainly use that.) Remove some roadblocks here and there? Use the stick less and the carrot more?
That, too, is a recipe for a predictable failure.

Avnery is right to say that the policies of repression will fail and that even repression with a velvet glove will fail. If this is Genral Ya'alon's new position, Avnery is right to ridicule it.

Ya'alon is not suffering from a sudden attack of humanity. He senses that the Israeli public is gradually turning away from his strategy. Even laymen are starting to realize that he has failed. Ya'alon is changing course because the public is starting to change course.

Peraps Ya'alon is a man with no moral compass. Perhaps he would continue to pulverize the Palestinian resistance if he thought it would work. Nevertherless, Ya'alon is a pragmatic man. He has come to realize that wht he is doing doesn't work. However, this has nothing to do with Ya'alon's assessment of the mood of the Israeli public. It has to do with his assessment of the mood of the Palestinian public. He knows that no amount of brutal force will result in their surrender. In due time, Ya'alon the pragmatist will come around to realizing that his new solution is a loser as well.

What would help, of course, would be if pragmatic men became ascendent on the Palestinian side as well as on the Israeli side. We know that there are such men among the Palestinians. They would say things like attacks on civilian achieve no prositive results (never mind that they are monstrous) and that Israel is too strong to be obliterated. The Palestinian statesmen who met with memebers of the Israeli opposition in Geneva know this much at least. Then they can reach a deal that exchanges land on Isreal's side of the Green Line for land on which some settlements already exist that would be too hard to dismantle, settle the issue of rights of return and agree to what kind of defense forces the Palestinian state shall have.

There will be problems beyond that, of course. There are bitter enders on both sides. They will have to be dealt with, probably with long prison sentences. However, in the end, no one can demand that the Israelis and Palestinians must love each other, only that they each respect the other's right to live as a free people in a sovereign and independent state.

[Violet_Crumble]

3. I've got to agree with Uri Avnery on what he said...

If Ya'alon has come to the conclusion that there isn't a military solution to the Intifada, then it'd appear to me that he'd have come to the conclusion that the occupation has to end. If all he's come to the conclusion of is that allowing thousands to work in Israel and removing a few roadblocks here and there (all of which would be beneficial to the Israeli economy) is all that has to happen, then he's got a long way to go, imo....

What would help, of course, would be if pragmatic men became ascendent on the Palestinian side as well as on the Israeli side. We know that there are such men among the Palestinians. They would say things like attacks on civilian achieve no prositive results (never mind that they are monstrous) and that Israel is too strong to be obliterated.

After seeing the hoo-haa over Hanan Ashrawi where she was called a supporter of terrorism, etc, I think there's extremists who either see all who could be Israeli leaders as pragmatic men seeking peace and all who could be Palestinian leaders as terrorists, or the other way round. Unfortunately, it seems right now with the leadership of Israel and the PA, people who want to see a peaceful and fair end to the occupation are few and far between...

Violet...