[E-rundbrief] Info 1038 - Avnery: The Return of the Generals

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 1038 - Uri Avnery (Israel): The Return of the Generals.

Bad Ischl, 19.8.2011

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

================================================

Uri Avnery

August 20, 2011

				The Return of the Generals

SINCE THE beginning of the conflict, the extremists of both sides have 
always played into each other’s hands. The cooperation between them 
was always much more effective than the ties between the corresponding 
peace activists.

“Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” asked the prophet Amos 
(3:3). Well, seems they can.

This was proved again this week.


AT THE beginning of the week, Binyamin Netanyahu was desperately 
looking for a way out of an escalating internal crisis. The social 
protest movement was gathering momentum and posing a growing danger to 
his government.

The struggle was going on, but the protest had already made a huge 
difference. The whole content of the public discourse had changed 
beyond recognition.

Social ideas were taking over, pushing aside the hackneyed talk about 
“security”. TV talk show panels, previously full of used generals, 
were now packed with social workers and professors of economics. One 
of the consequences was that women were also much more prominent.

And then it happened. A small extremist Islamist group in the Gaza 
Strip sent a detachment into the Egyptian Sinai desert, from where it 
easily crossed the undefended Israeli border and created havoc. 
Several fighters (or terrorists, depends who is talking) succeeded in 
killing eight Israeli soldiers and civilians, before some of them were 
killed. Another four of their comrades were killed on the Egyptian 
side of the border. The aim seems to have been to capture another 
Israeli soldier, to strengthen the case for a prisoner exchange on 
their terms.

In a jiffy, the economics professors vanished from the TV screens, and 
their place was taken by the old gang of exes – ex-generals, 
ex-secret-service chiefs, ex-policemen, all male, of course, 
accompanied by their entourage of obsequious military correspondents 
and far-right politicians.

With a sigh of relief, Netanyahu returned to his usual stance. Here he 
was, surrounded by generals, the he-man, the resolute fighter, the 
Defender of Israel.


IT WAS, for him and his government, an incredible stroke of luck.

It can be compared to what happened in 1982. Ariel Sharon, then 
Minister of Defense, had decided to attack the Palestinians and 
Syrians in Lebanon, He flew to Washington to obtain the necessary 
American agreement. Alexander Haig told him that the US could not 
agree, unless there was a “credible provocation”.

A few days later, the most extreme Palestinian group, led by Abu 
Nidal, Yasser Arafat’s mortal enemy, made an attempt on the life of 
the Israeli ambassador in London, paralyzing him irreversibly. That 
was certainly a “credible provocation”. Lebanon War I was on its way.

This week’s attack was also an answer to a prayer. Seems that God 
loves Netanyahu and the military establishment. The incident not only 
wiped the protest off the screen, it also put an end to any serious 
chance of taking billions off the huge military budget in order to 
strengthen the social services. On the contrary, the event proved that 
we need a sophisticated electronic fence along the 150 miles of our 
desert border with Sinai. More, not less, billions for the military.


BEFORE THIS miracle occurred, it looked as if the protest movement was 
unstoppable.

Whatever Netanyahu did was too little, too late, and just wrong.

In the first days, Netanyahu treated the whole thing as a childish 
prank, unworthy of the attention of responsible adults. When he 
realized that this movement was serious, he mumbled some vague 
proposals for lowering the price of apartments, but by then the 
protest had already moved far beyond the original demand for 
“affordable housing”. The slogan was now “The People Want Social 
Justice”

After the huge 250,000-strong demonstration in Tel Aviv, the protest 
leaders were facing a dilemma: how to proceed? Yet another mass 
protest in Tel Aviv might mean falling attendance. The solution was 
sheer genius: not another big demonstration in Tel Aviv, but smaller 
demonstrations all over the country. This disarmed the reproach that 
the protesters are spoiled Tel Aviv brats, “sushi eaters and 
water-pipe smokers” as one minister put it. It also brought the 
protest to the masses of disadvantaged Oriental Jewish inhabitants of 
the “periphery”, from Afula in the North to Beer Sheva in the South, 
most of them the traditional voters of Likud. It became a love-fest of 
fraternization.

So what does a run-of-the-mill politician do in such a situation? 
Well, of course, he appoints a committee. So Netanyahu told a 
respectable professor with a good reputation to set up a committee 
which would, in cooperation with nine ministers, no less, come up with 
a set of solutions. He even told him that he was ready to completely 
change his own convictions.

(He did already change one of his convictions when he announced in 
2009 that he now advocates the Two-State Solution. But after that 
momentous about-face, absolutely nothing changed on the ground.)

The youngsters in the tents joked that “Bibi” could not change his 
opinions, because he has none. But that is a mistake – he does indeed 
have very definite opinions on both the national and the social 
levels: “the whole of Eretz Israel” on the one, and Reagan-Thatcher 
economic orthodoxy on the other.

The young tent leaders countered the appointment of the establishment 
committee with an unexpected move: they appointed a 60-strong advisory 
council of their own, composed of some of the most prominent 
university professors, including an Arab female professor and a 
moderate rabbi, and headed by a former deputy governor of the Bank of 
Israel.

The government committee has already made it clear that it will not 
deal with middle class problems but concentrate on those of the lowest 
socio-economic groups. Netanyahu has added that he will not 
automatically adopt their (future) recommendations, but weight them 
against the economic possibilities. In other words, he does not trust 
his own nominees to understand the economic facts of life.


AT THAT point, Netanyahu and his aides pinned their hopes on two 
dates: September and November 2011.

In November, the rainy season usually sets in. No drop of rain before 
that. But when it starts to rain cats and dogs, it was hoped in 
Netanyahu’s office, the spoiled Tel Aviv kids will run for shelter. 
End of the Rothschild tent city.

Well, I remember spending some miserable weeks in the winter of the 
1948 war in worse tents, in the midst of a sea of mud and water. I 
don’t think that the rain will make the tent-dwellers give up their 
struggle, even if Netanyahu’s religious partners send the most fervent 
Jewish prayers for rain to the high heavens.

But before that, in September, just a few weeks away, the Palestinians 
– it was hoped - would start a crisis that will divert attention. This 
week they already submitted to the UN General Assembly a request to 
recognize the State of Palestine. The Assembly will most probably 
accede. Avigdor Lieberman has already enthusiastically assured us that 
the Palestinians are planning a “bloodbath” at that time. Young 
Israelis will have to exchange their tents in Tel Aviv for the tents 
in the West Bank army camps.

It’s a nice dream (for the Liebermans), but Palestinians had so far 
showed no inclination to violence.

All that changed this week.


FROM  NOW on, Netanyahu and his colleagues can direct events as they 
wish.

They have already “liquidated” the chiefs of the group which carried 
out the attack, called “the Popular Resistance Committees”. This 
happened while the fire-fight along the border was still going on. The 
army had been forewarned and was ready. The fact that the attackers 
succeeded nevertheless in crossing the border and shooting at vehicles 
was ascribed to an operational failure.

What now? The group in Gaza will fire rockets in retaliation. 
Netanyahu can – if he so wishes – kill more Palestinian leaders, 
military and civilian. This can easily set off a vicious circle of 
retaliation and counter-retaliation, leading to a full-scale Molten 
Lead-style war. Thousands of rockets on Israel, thousands of bombs on 
the Gaza Strip. One ex-military fool already argued that the entire 
Gaza Strip will have to be re-occupied.

In other words, Netanyahu has his hand on the tap of violence, and he 
can raise or lower the flames at will.

His desire to put an end to the social protest movement may well play 
a role in his decisions.


THIS BRINGS us back to the big question of the protest movement: can 
one bring about real change, as distinct from forcing some grudging 
concessions from the government, without becoming a political force?

Can this movement succeed as long as there is a government which has 
the power to start - or deepen - a “security crisis” at any time?

And the related question: can one talk about social justice without 
talking about peace?

A few days ago, while strolling among the tents on Rothschild 
Boulevard, I was asked by an internal radio station to give an 
interview and address the tent-dwellers. I said: “You don’t want to 
talk about peace, because you want to avoid being branded as 
‘leftists”. I respect that. But social justice and peace are two sides 
of the same coin, they cannot be separated. Not only because they are 
based on the same moral principles, but also because in practice they 
depend on each other.”

When I said that, I could not have imagined how clearly this would be 
demonstrated only two days later.


REAL CHANGE means replacing this government with a new and very 
different political set up.

Here and there people in the tents are already talking about a new 
party. But elections are two years away, and for the time being there 
is no sign of a real crack in the right-wing coalition that might 
bring the elections closer. Will the protest be able to keep up its 
momentum for two whole years?

Israeli governments have yielded in the past to mass demonstrations 
and public uprisings. The formidable Golda Meir resigned in the face 
of mass demonstrations blaming her for the omissions that led to the 
fiasco at the start of the Yom Kippur War. The government coalitions 
of both Netanyahu and Ehud Barak in the 1990s broke under the pressure 
of an indignant public opinion.

Can this happen now? In view of the military flare-up this week, it 
does not look likely. But stranger things have happened between heaven 
and earth, especially in Israel, the land of limited impossibilities.

http://www.avnery-news.co.il/english/index.html

-- 

Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
Wolfgangerstr. 26, A-4820 Bad Ischl, Austria,
fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
Impressum in: http://www.begegnungszentrum.at
Spenden-Konto Nr. 0600-970305 (Blz. 20314) Sparkasse Salzkammergut,
Geschäftsstelle Pfandl
IBAN: AT922031400600970305 BIC: SKBIAT21XXX

--

Ausgezeichnet mit dem (österr.) "Journalismus-Preis von unten 2010"

Honoured by the (Austrian) "Journalism-Award from below 2010"