By Ramzi E. Khoury
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is very special, however you look at him. After Sharm el Sheikh and two worthless ultimatums to implement “or else,” is it possible he still doesn’t realize that giving Palestinian President Yasser Arafat yet another deadline to stop the Intifida is as futile as to get back the popular support he had amongst his own people before early elections? It seems, yes, it is possible.
Someone needs to tell poor Barak, or his people who feel victimized after they are forced to kill children in cold blood, that the Intifada was not instigated by the Palestinian Authority, and the latter will not kill their own people in cold blood to meet the personal needs of a loser on the enemy’s side. It is very important for Israel to realize that without solid measures to satisfy the Palestinian people, no one will be able to stand in their face, because it is the face of justice and liberty.
The only one who seems to understand this, unfortunately, is Shimon Peres who the Israelis find untrustworthily pro-peace. So much so for the Arafat-Peres meeting which resulted in a cease-fire! A cease-fire is not something anyone can establish between unarmed civilians and an army.
Arafat was not in Gaza when the first Intifada broke out, nor were his men recently ordered to shoot at Israeli soldiers, the reason why very few Israelis were killed whereas over 160 Palestinian civilians, mostly children, are buried although not forgotten. Today these dead bodies, still warm, are the fuel of more determination not to stop until the light appears at the end of a very dark tunnel.
For seven glorious years, children pounded the aggressor with stones, and the aggressor fired back with live bullets. At the end of the seven years, Israel realized that unless these ardent people make some historic stride forward, the “violence” will never stop. This realization produced an authority with Arafat and most revolutionary leaders returning home from an intolerable Diaspora. It also allowed the Palestinian people to build the foundation of their future state.
But after the first Intifada that was meant to liberate the land and live happily ever after, another seven years of peacemaking passed with a Likud-Labor faced Israel attempting to convince the Palestinians that now, since all of the 1948 territories are not up for grabs anymore, it is time to discuss how much of the 1967 territories the Palestinians are willing to lose to permanent occupation. Wrong, only an idiot would think a Palestinian would give up what international legitimacy and historic right have established. Only an idiot would think that without true justice, true peace could be achieved.
This is why the second Intifada started and unless the real reasons behind it are addressed, this Intifada will continue whatever any party says, may it be Israeli or right from the horse’s mouth. No deal between leaders will stop the Palestinians until justice prevails. So what is Barak up to now?
The Future Path of the Grand Idiot
Barak is not the smartest politician to run Israel. Only an idiot would have severed relations with the non-Zionist Shas party which has always cared more about what it can get from the state than what the state is about to give up in land or else in order to reach peace with the Palestinians. Barak, while trying to reach a final settlement with the Palestinian Authority and at a time when he was losing ground amongst Israeli voters who had forgotten what it is like without peace with the Palestinians, went after Arieh Deri, the leader of the Sephardi group, on charges of corruption, decided to shut down the ministry of religious affairs and refused to pay Shas the measly amount of money that would have secured his government from an early elections he is foreseen to lose. What timing to try to prove he is the knight in shining armor who is courageous enough to carry out social reforms and turn Israel into a secular state!
Now, what he needs to do in attempt to stay in power is to woo Shas, kiss their feet and offer them more money and privileges than they had originally asked for. Shas would like that, not because deep down inside they are fond of the man with idiotic illusions, but because early elections under the circumstances could mean less seats for them in the Knesset, and as far as they are concerned, this is what the political game is all about after all. In return for furthering the cause, Deri would be willing to live with the deal and swallow the grudge. He may even win a place in heaven if his racist opportunist master, Ofadia Yossef, promises him one for the pain and suffering he endured. No big deal, after insulting Arabs as subhuman, the Iraqi Jew proved that self-denial is the road to heaven in Shas.
Shas made their whopping 17 seats in the Knesset, for the first time ever, when the peace process was prevailing and Israeli society had started to move away from a nationalistic-patriotic environment to one that is more concerned with a future of flourishing economy and internal harmony. Those who voted for Shas are the religious who started losing their nationalistic enthusiasm to religious morality. It even became possible for them to dream of normalization with a vast Arab World that has not managed to swallow the state that remained a solid substance stuck in its throat and no cup of water was to ease the path.
This is why Barak went wild pushing for a “one-Israel” concept raising the social reform banner. Once fear that the Arab World may devour the Jewish state started subsiding, national harmony in Israel became a serious issue, and people started wondering about secular-religious, Ashkinazi-Sephardi relations versus the possibility of an Arab unity monster headed by a hungry Sadam Hussein, or the ardent spirit of the late Hafez Assad.
Well, if unity was what Barak was seeking when he ordered his troops to shoot Palestinian civilians, unity is what he got: a national unity against him. His inferior negotiating skills with the Palestinians and a series of actions on the ground that has turned Israel into a cold-blooded murderer of civilians again, is not to his advantage, because it is affecting the economy. Polls show him lagging behind the ex-prime minister of Israel, big time loser Benjamin Netanyahu, who is poised again to steal the Likud top seat and pull it from beneath Ariel Sharon. In other words, Barak managed to resurrect Netanyahu from the dead, as if he needed more enemies.
As for Shas, in the case of re-elections, and if the situation remains as is, the nationalistic Likud is sure to win many of its 17 seats; turning its back to a fringe group of ultra-religious fanatics that happen to have some representation in parliament. So it is possible for Shas to accept an unkosher relationship with Labor and it may be possible to get the leftwing Shas-hater Meretz on board for the sake of left-wing survival but what is much more difficult to achieve is to get the Arab vote in the Knesset after Arab Israeli blood was spilt in the streets of Nazareth and Um El Fahem. The Arabs, living as lower beings in Israel, have strategically shifted their politics after the Intifada. No longer will Labor get their vote because Labor is a much better force in the side of the opposition. Not only have they murdered 18 Israeli Arabs in cold blood, but they have furthered peace with the Palestinians far less than the measly achievements of the right wing. In their opinion, the least to say regarding the right wing, they are not in the business of lies and deceit, and as such do not waste time when 7 years of peace making have yielded nothing for the Palestinians.
Is Barak smart enough to go begging the Arab members of Knesset for reconciliation? You can never tell what an idiot will do.
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
