March 1992, Page 12

Repeating History

Israel Derails the Peace Train Again

By Rachelle Marshall

On Jan. 25, 1955, Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharrett noted in his diary that, according to U.S. emissaries, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser "believes in coexistence with Israel and knows that negotiations will open some day." On Feb. 10, Sharrett wrote that Nasser had agreed to meet with Israeli officials and that "the initiative is now up to Israel."

Three weeks later, however, Israeli forces launched a devastating attack on an Egyptian outpost in Gaza, killing 39 people including a 7-year-old boy. Sharrett reported the consequences: "There were good chances that things would develop in a positive way, but then came the attack on Gaza and naturally now it's off." Sharrett later quoted from a briefing by Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan, who explained why peace was not a desirable goal.

Israel, Dayan said, "must see the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it must invent dangers and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation and revenge."

Israel's assassination on Feb. 16, 1992, of Sheikh Abbas Musawi in Lebanon shows that 37 years later the intentions of Israeli leaders have not changed. The helicopter-fired rockets that burned to death the Party of God leader, his wife and 6-year-old son, and at least four others in his party, were aimed directly at the peace process itself.

Shortly afterwards, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens denounced the sheikh as "a man with blood on his hands," saying his assassination was Israel's response to terrorism, a statement calculated to rub raw the already inflamed feelings of Lebanon's Shi'i Muslims who regarded the sheikh as their religious leader.

The predictable result came within three days, when tens of thousands of mourning men and women marched through the streets of Lebanese towns shouting for revenge against Israel and America. Fighting in southern Lebanon immediately intensified as Shi'i militias fired on Israeli troops and were reportedly joined for the first time by members of the Lebanese army, which last year had fought to clear the area of Palestinian fighters in order to reduce the danger of confrontation with Israel. Israel responded with heavy bombing and shelling, recalling for apprehensive Lebanese the Israeli raids that preceded the 1982 invasion.

The timing of Israel's action suggests its true purpose. Two days earlier, Arab assailants had stabbed to death three Israeli soldiers in a military camp near Haifa. Israel immediately responded in its usual fashion, bombing two Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and killing at least four people, including two children. But the attack against Sheikh Musawi was unrelated to those events. According to New York Times correspondent Clyde Haberman, military experts believed the ambush of Sheikh Musawi required careful planning and could not have been "cobbled together" as a reprisal for the killing of the three soldiers.

The ambush of Sheikh Musawi required careful planning.

The record suggests why it occurred when it did. Last November, just before the Madrid conference was to open, Israel bombed and shelled Lebanese villages for six straight days, claiming it was in retaliation for attacks on Israeli soldiers. Thousands of Lebanese were forced to evacuate their homes and were allowed to return only after Secretary of State James Baker asked Arens to end the military operation so the peace process would not be jeopardized.

On Jan. 10, just two days before the second round of peace talks, Israeli war planes bombed and rocketed a Bedouin camp just south of Beirut, killing 12 people including five women and four children. The destroyed camp, which Israel described as "a terrorist target," was in an area that had been taken over by the Lebanese army 10 months earlier. There were no guerillas there, only shepherds and their families.

The assassination of Sheikh Musawi took place only a week before the third round of talks was to take place, on Feb. 24. The day before he was killed, officials from Syria and Lebanon announced in Damascus that they would go to Washington "to give peace a new chance." Nothing could have been better calculated to change their minds than an outcry from Shi'i Muslims throughout the Arab world at the ruthless murder of a Shi'i leader and his family.

Israel has devoted even greater efforts to making it difficult for Palestinian leaders to support the peace process. Even while the Madrid conference was in session last fall, Israeli police banned peace demonstrations on the West Bank and Gaza, as if to tell the Palestinians that their hopes were futile.

Israeli Provocations

During the months that followed, Israel placed tens of thousands of Palestinians under curfew for periods lasting up to two weeks; doubled its military forces in the West Bank and Gaza, including masked death squads; barred Palestinians from walking on roads at night; allowed settlers to rampage through Palestinian towns and villages, beating and terrorizing the inhabitants; backed the seizure of Palestinian homes by Jews in East Jerusalem; ordered the deportation of 12 Palestinian leaders, in violation of international law; and tortured to death at least one Palestinian being held in detention, 35-year-old Mustafa Akawi. Finally, in an arrogant last-ditch effort to subvert the February peace talks, Israel put under preventive detention two members of the Palestinian negotiating team.

Israeli officials claimed most of these measures were a response to the murders of four Israeli settlers by unidentified Palestinians. During the same 30-day period in which these occurred, Israeli forces killed six Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and bombed a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon-incidents that received far less publicity.

Despite the relentless provocation, Palestinian leaders seem determined that the negotiations must continue. Their spokeswoman, Hanan Ashrawi, implied there was no other alternative when she said, after the Israeli bombing of two Palestinian refugee camps, "This has to stop, and the only way it will stop is to have a peace settlement." But peace advocates on both sides will need considerable patience and endurance.

The cries of "Death to Israel" in Lebanon are echoed in the shouts of "Death to Arabs" in Jerusalem. The Palestinians who stab Israeli citizens to death reject peaceful coexistence as fervently as Shamir and his supporters. But there the parallel ends. When 16,000 Palestinians out of a population of less than 2 million are in prison at any one time, when almost all Palestinians face daily humiliation, loss of jobs, and total denial of freedom, it isn't surprising that a few commit enraged and irrational acts of violence. But on Israel's side the wanton violence is on a mass scale, and the perpetrator, whose acts threaten the peace of the entire Middle East, is the government itself.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. She is a member of New Jewish Agenda and writes frequently on the Middle East.

< Prev		Next >