A Pessimistic Optimist Ruminates on the Intifada
SCHIFF, ZE'EV
ON MY MIND A Pessimistic Optimist Ruminates on the Intifada The intifada erupted primarily because of the distressed conditions of the Palestinians. Daily hardship oiled the wheels that sparked...
...The Palestinians, like the Israelis, are finding it hard to make a decision as to how and where they want to go...
...Daily hardship oiled the wheels that sparked the uprising in the refugee camps...
...There is pressure on the senior military command from below, too—from the rank and file...
...Almost all these detainees had worked in Israel and the decisive majority spoke reasonably good Hebrew...
...Although they can certainly be classed as behind-the-lines artillery, such measures have been avoided because a large portion of the Israeli public wants their country to be ruled by law...
...Chief of Staff Dan Shomron and General Amram Mitsna have been telling their officers time and again: "We must think about the future, we must not forget the people we have to live with, perhaps negotiate with...
...I do not see any of them producing the next Sadat of the Middle East...
...The army can quell the uprising if the order is given, but the army cannot eliminate the reasons for the uprising...
...The facts on the ground caused the change...
...The younger Israeli generation is going through an exceptional experience that is forcing many of them to act brutally...
...I am not sure for how long this will be so...
...But morale is unshaken...
...I would call myself a pessimistic optimist...
...let us make no mistake about it...
...Even without the PLO, the insurgence would have happened...
...It can make the insurgents pay a heavy price...
...Should Israel do as the Iraqis did to the Kurds...
...Unfortunately, the intifada is having an unprecedented brutalizing effect on the Israeli forces...
...But in its origins the intifada was primarily a demonstration by the economically exploited classes, a Palestinian proletariat born after 1967...
...In a subsequent survey of several thousand detainees, a remarkable fact was noted: A large number seemed unaware of the political issues...
...Junior officers and their soldiers want greater freedom to fire, fewer restrictions on their use of arms...
...A high rate of young national service recruits, however, are volunteering for commando and elite units...
...And there is frustration...
...It is an army that has always been careful to preserve its human image, even in war...
...Out of seven reasons listed • by the detainees for the outbreak of the intifada, the national factor came last...
...I am an optimist, nevertheless, because the intifada has not wrecked all chances...
...Pessimistic because it seems obvious to me that the present generation of leaders, both Israeli and Palestinian, will not lead the two nations to negotiations...
...In fact, it has brought us to the possibility of a mutual awakening and recognition.—Ze'ev Schiff...
...The problem lies elsewhere...
...But the division is not only between the military and the politicians...
...Many detainees complained that they had been treated unjustly...
...The solution may be thoroughly negative, but it shows anxiety about the future...
...Signing up young officers for a military career may be a problem because these young men don't want to spend their military service smothering the intifada...
...Everyone had a story to tell, about work, wages or humiliation on the way to work and back...
...or, as in 1970, the Jordanians did to the Palestinians...
...It was rather the outcome of the soldiers' sense of humiliation and frustration in this unfamiliar type of struggle...
...An army that was once a byword for superb professionalism, for rebuffing the Arab regular armed forces, for controlling terrorism with a flick of the wrist, has been performing a police job...
...There won't be any needless shooting while we're around...
...Questions about the right to self-determination, or the Palestinian manifesto, seemed incomprehensible to them...
...The media are a major weapon, a new type of artillery in modern warfare...
...In the early stages of the intifada I was convinced that army morale would suffer a serious blow...
...This is bound to affect standards, even if only those in the reserves...
...The swing to the right in Israeli public opinion is an expression of the occupier's sense of humiliation, of the ruling masters' rage against the insurgents...
...Instead of breaking down barriers, close contact with Israelis had erected a wall of hostility...
...Remarkably, the men in uniform tend to be more liberal...
...But it cannot make the reasons for the uprising go away...
...So far, however, Israel has dismissed the suggestion of shutting down Arab newspapers and the various information bureaus in the territories...
...Be careful not to burn all our bridges...
...Many argue that had the army been free to deal with the uprising more forcefully at the outset, there might have been more casualties at that point, but the intifada would have been nipped in the bud and many Palestinian lives would have been spared in the long run...
...Instead of defending the border settlements, many soldiers now have to act as a buffer between angry Palestinians and angry settlers...
...We'll have to wait for the next generation of leaders in both camps...
...The real danger lies in the possibility that groups of settlers will take the law into their own hands— settlers who may want to avenge injury to members of their families...
...They rebel confident in the knowledge that what happened at Al Hamma will not happen to them...
...This army must now guard detention camps holding thousands of civilians...
...or the Saudis to the Iranian pilgrims, the present upsurge would be quelled...
...When the first batch of Palestinian detainees, a few hundred of them, arrived at the prison camps, the majority were found to have no police record or previous detentions...
...no trees uprooted...
...But it is widely and plainly understood that Israel, in that case, would no longer be the same...
...The most modern aircraft, the Merkavah tanks, the crack commando units and the excellent intelligence service cannot solve the problem...
...The rising call in Israel for a transfer of the Arab population from the territories to Jordan reaffirms an awareness of the demographic problem, and of the Palestinian problem...
...While we saw a sharp swing to the right among junior officers and soldiers that surfaced in the very early stages of the intifada, I do not believe this was an indication of any ideological change...
...The Palestinians were motivated by the need to settle accounts with the harsh Israeli administration...
...If the Palestinians will recognize Israel and renounce terrorism, they can start a dialogue with the United States that could well lead to a new political initiative in the Middle East...
...or the Syrians to the Al Hamma insurgents...
...Even officers and soldiers from the kibbutzim, known for their liberal views, are undergoing this transformation...
...He will have to decide if he is the leader only of the right-wing camp in Israel or the leader of all Israel...
...The Palestinians need to understand that, for the first time since 1948, they have a chance to change the trend of the conflict, that the ball is now in their court...
...Clearly, the insurgents also want to end the Israeli occupation and to achieve an independent national entity...
...I have seen battalion commanders in the reserves, men holding central jobs in the kibbutz movement...
...If that holds true for the two superpowers, it certainly applies to a state as small -as Israel...
...The intifada has taught Israel what the United States learned in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan—-under certain political circumstances a military power can be rendered powerless...
...From the military standpoint, this is a deluxe uprising...
...Since Likud has now won the election, Yitzchak Shamir will likely continue as prime minister—this time at the head of a Likud-led government...
...The principal reason was the economic situation, the sense of there being no way out of poverty...
...A territory that for the past twenty years most Israeli strategists have regarded as a security asset, a safety belt, now proves to be a burden on security...
...Both Israelis and Palestinians are at a crossroads...
...What we need is a political solution...
...He must decide whether his mission is simply to fulfill the right-wing ideology...
...Within a few days these same officers are requesting leave to use greater force and to uproot plantations used as hiding places for molotov cocktail throwers...
...when they arrive in the field, they say: "Don't you worry...
...The question of how much military force should be deployed against the insurgents has been a controversial issue within the Israeli leadership, especially between Israel's political and military ranks...
...It is the wish to teach the insurgents a lesson...
...It is common knowledge that above all it is a contest over international public opinion...
...Territories are not always an added buffer zone to those who hold them...
...That is one of the painful changes...
...This large group hardly ever listened to the daily PLO transmissions from Baghdad...
...The danger today is not that the intifada will spread, or that the insurgents will use arms instead of stones and molotov cocktails...
...In comparison with the political leadership, the generals today show greater restraint...
...Then the army will have to keep them and the Palestinians apart and move against both sides—the insurgent Palestinians and the law-breaking settlers...
...if so, the intifada will go on and the conflict will deepen...
...The geography in which the army finds itself has changed...
...I am not saying that territory is no longer of any consequence in the strategic equation, but what's inside also matters...
...And yet I find that those on the right also realize, perhaps for the first time, that there's a problem in the territories...
...no unnecessary use of force...
...Israel can quell the intifada by military force and expulsion...
...Many of the insurgents know this...
...For many units, the refugee camps represent the border...
Vol. 14 • January 1989 • No. 1
