On Fri, 7 Dec 2001 [Pearl Harbor Day (boo) and Doug's Birthday (yay!)], Bryan Atinsky wrote:
[A great deal of intelligent stuff that I wish I could retrieve from the archive but I can't! So I can't reply directly. But I've been thinking about it in the back of my mind ever since.]
One of Bryan's main points, which I think is incontestable, is that Israel's high command thinks -- as does the Israel public in general -- that assasinations increase the number of suicide bombings. And we agree they're right. And more specifically, both the high command and the public know that it is nearly certain that killing high officials in terrorist groups (like Abu Hannoud or Abu Ali Mustapha) will bring terrible bombings within the next week or so as a direct result. And yet the high command persists in doing it. And a majority of the Israeli people support the policy (at least as registered in the Yidiot Aharonot poll Bryan posted, which looks pretty reliable as polls go).
Insofar as the leadership is concerned, I think the solution to this paradox is simply that they are thinking like military men, in terms of a military solution. I hasten to add that I think that's where they're wrong. And I'm sure I agree with Bryan and with just about everyone else on the list and the left in asserting that the Israel/Palestinian problem can only have a political solution. But, once we made clear that we think their premise is wrong, I think the rest of their policy is relatively consistent and straightforward.
If you assume terrorism can be stamped out by force, you assume that the terrorists form a relatively discreet bunch of people. And that there are a finite number of leaders who planning the operations, channelling supplies and training the kids. And that, theoretically, you can find them and wipe them out. Yes, there are always more kids where the others came from, but leaders are harder to replace. And if you make clear that you know who the leaders are -- and that therefore these organizations are completely infiltrated, either electronically or through personnel -- there will be even fewer candidates to be new leaders. And even if you can't get every last one, wiping out a lot of them will make the bombers that do get through less effective -- they will be less well trained, and their missions will be less well planned. And when you add to that the heightened security that their existence has called into being, a greater percentage of them will blow up en route.
And that's essentially what the Israeli high command is trying to do: to kill all the leaders one by one through assasination. And when they can't accomplish it by assasination, to find a pretext for the occupation of an area where they think a hideout is located, and do what they can under cover of the occupation. And then leave.
As for causing bombings in return, they accept that as the price of the operation. That again is how military people think (at least non-American ones): every campaign has a cost in your own people's lives. You don't dwell on the point in public, of course, but you know it. The only importance it has strategically is, Will it undercut support for the policy? And in this case, no. In fact it builds support.
As for revenge, that surely plays a big role in the feelings of average people on both sides, and it has a great deal to do with the support on both sides. On both sides, people know that killing the Others will bring down more killing on their heads. And on both sides, the majority at the moment still think it is worth it -- that not only killing is justified, but that killing that causes your own people to die is justified. In a situation like that, peace is a long way off.
But as far as the Israeli leadership is concerned, I think to some extent they are tring to keep revenge from getting in their way -- they are trying not to kill "extra" people, not out of the goodness of their hearts, because they know full well, just like us, that the more they kill, the more Israelis will die in return. So every time a suicide bomber goes off, the Israel send in fighter jets to blow up PA buildings. But fewer people tend to die in these raids than in the assasinations or the occupations, in part because they are so ritualized that everyone now knows when they are coming, and pretty much what they are coming for, and they evacuate the likely buildings. To that extent, the infamous "reprisals" seem now to be largely a ritual show put on to assuage domestic cries for revenge while killing as few people on the other side as possible -- not, once again because they care about Palestinian lives, but because they know that reprisal killings are counterproductive. They seem different in this way than earlier reprisal policies, for example in Lebanon. But when the Israeli military conducts an assasination, they seem to do it in a completely different frame of mind, without making any effort to minimize the deaths of innocent bystanders. Then it seems their only goal is to be sure of killing their target, and they don't care how many children they have to go through to do it.
So on this reading, the Israeli leadership are not stupider than we are, and they are not devious. We just differ fundamentally about what is just and what is possible. We think that causing more deaths is senseless because we have a vision of a political solution, which, if achieved, would result in no deaths, and which is made farther away with every person killed. And because we think of the killing as senseless we think of it as evil. People who support the assasination policy start from the opposite premise, that no political solution is possible. And from that premise if follows that some deaths are their own side are inevitable and that killings against the other side are justified.
I think Bryan and I and most people on this list also agree in thinking think that the military solution to Palestinian terrorism totally misconceives the problem -- that in this case the terrorists are not a discrete set of persons who can be wiped out, but the active expression of a whole people's hatred, who as personnel are almost infinitely renewable until its source is removed. But this is simply another variant of the fundamental difference: why we think a political solution is the only possible solution. And arranged differently, the right uses the same evidence to conclude that a political solution is impossible. It finally comes down to a difference in worldviews.
Sadly, even we justandlastingpeaceniks must admit that peace is nowhere on the horizon at the moment. Both sides are more violently intransigent now than they've been in a decade, if not longer, and that goes for both their leaderships and their public opinions. It looks like it will take a lot more dying before both sides tire out.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com