Rebellion, Revolution -or Opportunity?
Ya'ari, Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud
Rebellion, Revolution —or Opportunity? Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising—Israel's Third Front by Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari Simon and Sinister. 1990. 352 $22.95 Reviewed by Bezalel...
...At its best, Intifada reads like John Le Carre's thriller...
...Intifada is interesting, informative and likely the definitive Israeli work on the subject...
...They suggest "administrative withdrawal" from the territories plus a "Gaza First" testing of Palestinian self-govern-menl...
...At its worst, ihe book offers dry, listless recitations and explanations of current events...
...Overall, however...
...We read of manipulation, intrigue and psychological warfare pilling Israel's Shin Bet (Security Services) against the Palestinians' shadowy Unified National Command and their religious zealots of the militantly Islamic Hamas organization...
...Still, the intifada has its dark and bloody side for the Palestinians themselves...
...Frequent strikes and official Israeli retaliation in the form of harsher tax collection and the imposition of new license fees have combined 10 reduce standards of living drastically for Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza...
...Israeli Arabs display shifting loyalties, even using the ethnic designation "Israeli Palestinians...
...One need nol be a bleeding-heart liberal to fret about the intifada's consequences for Israel's souls after reading about 18-year-old Israelis beating and making 70-ycar-old Palestinians bark like dogs, taunting grandmothers wuh sexually abusive gestures and forcing schoolchildren to shine their boots...
...The economic costs are almost as difficult lo measure as the psychic costs—and no less considerable...
...At leasl two things are certain: No one has emerged a winner, and the intifada has scrambled forever the politics of Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians...
...The intifada has affected (some would say, infected) Israel's Arabs—who comprise one of every six Israelis—like no other event in their turbulent history...
...Hussein has relinquished all claims to the West BOOKS Bank, while Tunis-bound Arafat has conceded tactical power to indigenous leaders on the from lines...
...Most Israeli politicians have demanded that the army solve the problem, while refusing to listen to ihe IDF's insistence that the solution can only be political, not military...
...This is a type of confrontation unfamiliar to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and, because of its scale, to police riot squads as well...
...It can be argued that the PI.O's Yasser Arafat and Jordan's King Hussein are the big losers...
...This third stage, consisting of grisly internecine violence, is marked by gangs of masked Palestinian "avengers" murdering alleged "collaborators" in gory actions that are deplored even by the hardly squeamish PLO leadership...
...Therefore, Palestinian leaders now speak of the intifada as a revolution rather than a rebellion...
...they know that the "green line" separating Israel proper from the territories is less a barrier than a membrane through which ideas, modes of behavior and concepts of national identification have flowed by osmosis...
...Similarly, psychologists and concerned parents worry thai their children are being conscripted noi into a people's army, but a national occupation force that is violently repressing a subservient population...
...Little Drummer Girl (Knopf, 1983...
...They even call it the "mother" of Palestinian self-determination...
...Even hardened, no-nonsense [OF officers know there is a serious morale problem...
...Bui Lhe misery of the intifada has of-len been outweighed in Palestinian consciousness by lhe psycho-sociological gains of enhanced self-image...
...352 $22.95 Reviewed by Bezalel Gordon Ze'ev Schiff, defense editor of Ha'areU and Ehud Ya'ari, Middle East affairs correspondent for Israel Television, who co-wrote Israel's Lebanon War (Simon and Shuster, 1984), have joined forces again to produce an intelligent and engrossing—if uneven—account of Israel's latest travail...
...A "shoot the messenger" mentality is manifest in the polls that call for limiting freedom of the press...
...Israeli consumers may feel a slight pinch as the economy groans under the pressure, but Palestinian families have fared much worse...
...Schiff and Ya'ari are not doves (they might be classified as moderates), but a hawkish government would never consider their approach...
...Most chilling is the book's final sentence: "At the very least, the intifada is forcing Israelis to take a fresh look in the mirror, and what they see is the emergence of dark spots on their democracy, blemishes that threaten to mar the face of their society for years to come...
...The establishment of "popular committees" to direel the intifada (which for a long time succeeded in frustrating the Israelis), the cohesion shown by Christian and Moslem elements, the emergence of women and youths as "heroes" and "martyrs"—all have combined to heighten Palestinian self-esteem and transform the society in the territories from a motley collection of downtrodden refugees into a nation-in-the-mak-ing...
...Perhaps most troublesome are the indications lhal many Israelis—especially the younger generation—are willing to sacrifice democratic principles to buy a sense of false security...
...Economists estimate thai disruptions in the labor force and marketplace, not counting hefty direct miliiary expenditures, may have cost Israel SI billion in 1988 alone...
...Moreover, the intifada seemed to take Israel's authorities completely by surprise—an intelligence lapse that the authors find worrisome and inexcusable...
...Schiff and Ya'ari are sensitive to assaults on democratic tenets...
...Schiff and Ya'ari lay bare the blunders committed by IDF commanders and analysts, Israeli civil administration functionaries in the territories and the cabinet ministers responsible for Israel's security policies...
...To Israel's preoccupations with conventional warfare and terrorism, the intifada adds a new and different operational theater (the "third front" of the title): sustained revolt pitting Israeli forces against a seething civilian populace...
...Preferring "political disengagement" to the fruitless exercise of "bending Palestinians to the Israelis' will," the authors prescribe in their epilogue a bold yet sensible Israeli initiative to end confrontation and begin a dialogue...
...Incidents of stressed-out IDF recruits attacking journalists and smashing cameras became so commonplace lhat the army had 10 start study sessions on the v-alue of a free press in a democratic society...
...Schiff and Ya'ari trace the evolution of the intifada from its first stage of violence directed against Israelis to a second stage of attempted non-violent civil disobedience...
...No war, indeed, no chapter in Israel's struggle for survival has been as complex, protracted or fought so close to home as the intifada...
...Intifada draws to a close just as a newly violent cycle has begun to, manifest itself, this one inner-directed...
...The only cold comfort is that the scope and direction of the intifada caught the other major players by surprise as well...
...Bezalel Gordon is a Washington writer and former news director of the Israel Government Press Office...
Vol. 15 • August 1990 • No. 4
