Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2007, pages 7-9

Special Report

Rise of Extremist Avigdor Lieberman Makes U.S.-Israel Alliance More Dangerous

By Rachelle Marshall

Israeli policy, whatever the government, is to exert total physical control and to inhibit the smallest embryo of Palestinian economic or political independence. In short, the aim is to snuff out the Palestinian spirit.—The London Economist, quoted in the Oakland Tribune, June 7, 1987.

ISRAEL'S RECENTLY appointed deputy prime minister, Avigdor Lieberman, made the news in late November when he called for the assassination of militant Palestinian leaders. “They have to disappear, to go to Paradise, all of them and there can’t be any compromise,” he said on Israel’s Army Radio. Lieberman added that Israel should also abandon all past peace agreements and ignore Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He had earlier urged the expulsion of Israeli Palestinians from Israel and said Arab members of the Knesset who met with Hezbollah or Hamas should be executed.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz commented on Lieberman’s appointment: “The choice of the most unrestrained and irresponsible man around for the job constitutes a threat in its own right. Lieberman’s lack of restraint and his unbridled tongue, comparable only to Iran’s president, are liable to bring disaster down on the whole region.”

Palestinians who have spent 40 years under Israeli military occupation might ask, why the fuss? Few of Lieberman’s proposals differ from longstanding Israeli policy, and his views are no more extreme than those of many Israelis. A 2005 survey by the National Security Studies Center at Haifa University found that 39 percent of Israelis favor incorporating the West Bank into Israel, and 40 percent oppose returning any land to the Palestinians. In 1983 Israeli Army Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan said, “We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel...We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours.”

It was a crude but accurate description of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Israeli soldiers conduct nightly raids in the West Bank, arresting suspected militants and killing those who resist or try to escape. Nearly 10,000 Palestinians are in prison. Restrictions on movement make it impossible for many Palestinians to earn a living. After evacuating the settlers from Gaza in 2005, Israel shut down the gates except for rare openings, making food and fuel scarce. The cutoff of all aid to the Palestinians following Hamas’ election victory last January has increased suffering to acute levels. According to the United Nations, half of all Gazans eat only one meal a day.

While the West was demanding that Palestinians renounce violence or starve, Israeli missiles were raining down on Palestinian communities. Israel used the capture of an Israeli soldier last June as a pretext for launching a war on Gaza. For five months the air force carried out daily bombing attacks while Israeli troops and tanks invaded Gaza towns, uprooted trees, demolished homes, and wrecked water mains and sewage systems.

The mounting number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces did not catch the world’s attention until Nov. 7, when a sustained artillery barrage aimed at a row of apartment houses in Beit Hanoun killed 19 people, including seven children and six women. Dozens were wounded, and several children lost their limbs. The attack culminated a week in which 62 Palestinians had been killed. A U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s use of excessive force and calling on the Palestinians to stop their rocket attacks was vetoed by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton.

On Nov. 25, Hamas and other Palestinian factions offered to declare a truce, and Olmert agreed. The next day Israeli troops began withdrawing from Gaza, after killing more than 400 Palestinians. Israeli bombs had destroyed Gaza’s sole electric power station, so most Gazans were without lights or enough clean water. Palestinians had killed four Israeli soldiers and two Israeli civilians during the same period. The truce did not totally end the violence.

President George W. Bush met with Olmert shortly after Israel’s assault on Beit Hanoun, but instead of focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the two leaders issued a warning to Syria not to interfere in Lebanon, and declared Iran to be a threat to world peace. The day before the Bush-Olmert meeting, the foreign ministers of 22 Arab nations met in Cairo and renewed their call for comprehensive Middle East peace negotiations under U.N. sponsorship. The talks would aim at implementing a Saudi proposal that Israel withdraw from all of the West Bank and Gaza in exchange for normal relations with the Arab nations.

Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar endorsed the statement, indicating Hamas was willing to coexist with Israel. Soon afterward Hamas’ hard-line political leader, Khaled Meshal, talked about establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Emad Gad, analyst at Cairo’s al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, predicted that Hamas would go on declaring that its goal was to liberate all of Palestine for the next 10 years, but said “I believe if they accept this solution, it will be the permanent solution.” 

Olmert responded with his own offer on Nov. 27. Israel would free “numerous Palestinian prisoners,” reduce the number of checkpoints, dismantle some West Bank settlements, and release Palestinian tax and revenue collections as soon as the Palestinians released Cpl. Gilad Shalit and established a government that agreed to renounce violence, recognize Israel, and accept previous Israeli-Arab peace agreements. The offer was essentially a repeat of Israel’s existing ultimatum to the Palestinians: renounce violence and accept Israel’s peace terms or face continued destitution.

Olmert did say that if Palestinians fulfilled his conditions he would start peace talks aimed at creating “an independent and viable Palestinian state with full sovereignty and defined borders,” and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice repeated those words during her one-day visit to Israel on Nov. 30. Neither Olmert nor Rice specified where the “defined borders” would be.

Actions by the Israeli army in recent months have repeatedly thrown a wrench into tentative peace efforts. Palestinian President Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyah came close to agreement in mid-November on a plan calling for Hamas officials to be replaced by neutral administrators in a government of national unity with Fatah. Abbas would represent the Palestinians in talks with Israel, and the new government would release Cpl. Shalit. But the outrage provoked by the killings in Beit Hanoun forced Haniyeh to request a pause in the talks, and the two sides have yet to reach agreement. Last June, a few days before Abbas and Olmert were to hold a formal meeting to negotiate the release of Palestinian prisoners, the army shelled a Gaza beach and killed a dozen Palestinian civilians, including seven members of the same family. Hamas ended an 18-month cease-fire and the Abbas-Olmert meeting was cancelled.

Six months later the cease-fire that both sides had agreed to on Nov. 25 fell apart when military officials persuaded the cabinet not to extend it to the West Bank. The army continued to arrest and kill West Bank Palestinians, including a 55-year-old woman and a 15-year-old boy, and Palestinian militants resumed rocketing Israeli towns.

A History of Sabotage

The army’s sabotaging of diplomatic efforts began early. In January 1955, while the CIA was trying to arrange closer contacts between Egypt and Israel, a prominent American, Roger Baldwin, reported to the Israelis that Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had told him he would accept coexistence with Israel and was willing to enter peace talks. Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett was interested, but before a meeting could take place the Israeli army responded to a minor incursion by Arabs from Gaza with a surprise attack on an Egyptian army base near Gaza City that killed 39 Egyptians, including a 7-year-old boy, and wounded 30 others. Nasser was unable to follow through on his offer.

The army has had a powerful influence on Israeli policy ever since the state was established. Most prime ministers before Olmert have been high-ranking military officers, and armed force has been an essential element of Israeli governance. The late army chief of staff Moshe Dayan was quoted as saying, “This state...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 may—no, it must—invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation-and-revenge.” (From the diaries of former Prime Minister Moshe Sharett, May 26, 1955).

Dayan’s statement acquired renewed relevance with Lieberman’s appointment as minister for “strategic threats.” Confrontation with Iran is known to be high on Lieberman’s list, and his responsibilities are certain to overlap those of Defense Minister Amir Peretz. If conflict should arise between the two men there is no doubt who would win. There have been several reports that Olmert was angry at the more dovish Peretz and would like to get rid of him.

Because of his hard-line policies the new deputy prime minister has the support of Israeli settlers as well as the one million Russian immigrants his party, Ysrael Beitenu, represents. The 400,000 West Bank Israelis wield considerable power, according to Philip C. Wilcox, Jr., president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. Wilcox writes in the September-October Report on Israeli Settlement: “Settlers have quietly placed their supporters in key positions throughout the bureaucracy and the military. Today they form a powerful network that makes policies and diverts resources with little oversight to expand existing settlements and create ‘outposts’ that are illegal under Israeli law.”

Settlers are virtually above the law, Wilcox asserts. “Well armed, they seize land without authorization, destroy Palestinian property, and attack and harass Palestinians with virtual impunity.”

Israeli courts have declared a number of settlements to be illegal, but only one small outpost has been dismantled. The others remain and enjoy full government services.

Lieberman’s appointment not only will reinforce tough Israeli policy toward the Palestinians but encourage Bush administration ideologues, who share his belligerent stance toward Iran. Seymour Hersh reported in the Nov. 27 issue of the New Yorker that Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief deputy, David Wurmser, are determined to carry out a military action against Iran before they leave office, whether or not Congress approves. The White House continues to insist that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program even though the CIA found no evidence of such a program.

With the same disregard for reality, Bush denies that a civil war is raging in Iraq and blames Iran along with Syria and al-Qaeda for the worsening violence. Iraqi leaders meanwhile are seeking Iran’s help in ending the fighting. President Jalal Talabani held a friendly meeting with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in late November and in a joint press conference afterward said, “We seriously need Iran’s help to restore stability and security.” Ahmadinejad in turn pointed out that “A safe, developed strong Iraq is better for Iran and also for the region.”

The assassination of Lebanese cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel on Nov. 21 gave added fuel to the adminstration hawks. Bush immediately declared that the killing was part of a plan by Iran, Syria, and their allies to “foment instability and violence” in Lebanon. Although a pro-Syrian member of Lebanon’s parliament condemned Gemayel’s murder as “a crime against all of Lebanon,” and Syrian officials called it “despicable,” administration officials and anti-Syrian Lebanese continued to charge Syria with the killing.

The murder of Gemayel intensified rifts in a society deeply divided by class and religious identity. Pierre’s grandfather, also named Pierre, was the founder of a Maronite party with its own private army known as the Phalange, patterned after Hitler’s Brown Shirts. Former Undersecretary of State George Ball wrote in his book Error and Betrayal in Lebanon that Israel provided the Phalange with arms, uniforms and training, and maintained close relations with the elder Pierre’s son Bashir. According to Ball, Ariel Sharon, then Israel’s defense minister, met with Bashir aboard an Israeli gunboat on Feb. 15, 1982, to discuss plans for an Israeli invasion of Lebanon aimed at driving the Palestine Liberation Organization out of Lebanon.

“The grand design,” Ball wrote, was that “the IDF would invade Lebanon and link up with the Phalange; then, with the leverage provided by the IDF’s presence, the Phalange would install Bashir as president of Lebanon. After establishing a government friendly to Israel and amenable to Israeli influence, Bashir would, on behalf of that government, sign a formal treaty of peace.”

Sharon’s dream, according to Ball, was “to extend Israel’s hegemony all the way to Saudi Arabia, thus making it the overwhelming master of the Middle East.”

What followed was Israel’s June 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which caused the death of 20,000 Lebanese civilians and prompted Lebanese Shi’i to organize the resistance group Hezbollah. Bashir Gemayel was installed as president and the PLO left Beirut and moved to Tunisia. After Gemayel was assassinated in September, Israeli troops again entered Beirut and assisted Phalange militiamen as they slaughtered hundreds of Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila camps.

The Israelis were forced to leave Lebanon in 2000, but Sharon’s dream of a pro-Israel Lebanese government free of Syria’s influence remains alive. Consequently some observers are asking, who benefited from Pierre Gemayel’s death? (See p. 26 of this issue.) Jihad Yazigi, editor of Syria Report, pointed out that the Syrians had much more to lose than to gain. “This crime comes at a time when the U.S. and Europe are considering reopening talks with Syria,” he said. “This assassination aims at turning the clock back to a time when Syria was isolated.” The hostility to Hezbollah and Syria aroused by Gemayel’s death will also make it more difficult for Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and his ally Gen. Michel Aoun to secure more seats for their alliance in a more diversified Lebanese government.

The intensity of feeling on both sides is a sign of divisions within Lebanese society that could lead to renewed civil war if the United States and Israel attempt to exploit them. Actions aimed at destabilizing Syria and Iran could ignite a conflict on a par with the disaster taking place in Iraq, which a recent U.N. report described as a place of unrelenting killing, torture, and corruption. Nearly 4,000 Iraqis were slain in October, and the November toll was expected to be even higher. 

Avigdor Lieberman’s rise to prominence makes it more urgent than ever that Washington end its dangerous alliance with Israel and support efforts to achieve a comprehensive Middle East peace, one that promotes the security and independence of all the people in the region.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of the Jewish International Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.

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