Daoud Kuttab
The Palestinian Police
In my view, one of the most pleasant surprises of the Gaza-Jericho
First Agreement has been the Palestinian police. Made up mostly of
battalions of the Palestinian Liberation Army, the new force carne
into the Palestinian territory with very little local preparation,
in unfamiliar territory.
For the most part, members of the new Palestinian security forces
were middle-aged, experienced and a bit overweight. To Palestinians
they provided a fatherly figure, cool, patient and reasonable. For
Israelis who happened to see them (mostly settlers and Israeli
soldiers), they were relaxed and at ease, declining to retaliate
when provoked.
However for armed activists from the Fatah Hawks who wanted to join
the force, the training program for joining the police was too
much. Seventy percent of these undisciplined activists abandoned
the course, ending up stripped of their unjustifiable arrogance as
well as their arms.
The Voice of Palestine
The Voice of Palestine has been broadcasting from Jericho to most
of the Palestinian territories since the arrival of PLO Chairman
Yasser Arafat in the oldest city in the world. The first ever
Palestinian radio station broadcasting from Palestinian soil
started almost from scratch. With a skeleton staff, the station's
director, veteran journalist Bassem Abu Sumayya has been doing
rather well. Mustafa al Kurd, a well-known Palestinian singer, is
responsible for the music section, which is a pleasure to listen
to. Contrary to expectations, the new Palestinian station has not
turned out to be a carbon copy of most Arab stations. News about
the revered leader of the land and his every move is not the
dominant news item. Opposition voices and news are not
ignored.
The Voice of Palestine Gaza studio on the other hand lacks
journalistic professionalism. The news from Gaza is read in a
monotonous way, and it seems there is nothing news-worthy to the
nearly million Gazan residents aside from who President Arafat met,
what he said, or what others say about the President, the leader,
the symbol, etc.
The difference between the Jericho broadcasts and the bulletins
from Gaza reflect one of the main problems facing Palestinians
living in Palestine: a difference in mentality, in style of
operation and in a way of life. This difference doesn't necessarily
correspond to one between the people of Gaza and those of the West
Bank - although there is a lot to that. But the main difference is
between the traditional authoritarian way of the Arab world and
that of a more open, pluralistic and democratic way of life. Which
side will win this internal struggle has yet to be seen. If
self-rule is restricted to Gaza and tiny Jericho, then it is more
likely that the authoritarian way will be victorious. If the rest
of the West Bank falls under Palestinian national authority and
elections take place, then democracy will have a fighting
chance.
Closing the Door to Peace
The response of the Israeli authorities to the non-violent campaign
of Mubarak Awad to open Palestinian homes closed by Israeli
officials was most frustrating. I thought the idea of unsealing the
homes seemed perfect in the atmosphere following the signing of the
Cairo Agreement and the beginning of the release of political
prisoners. Over two-thousand homes have been closed since 1967
(nearly 350 during the Intifada). Homes of Palestinian security
offenders have been either closed or demolished.
Mubarak Awad and volunteers from his Non-Violence Center chose
those individuals who had been released for some time, yet their
homes continued to be sealed. The Israelis responded by
demonstratively re-closing two houses and arresting eight people,
including a 65-year-old man: his only crime was that he had not
stopped the volunteers from unsealing his house after twenty
years.
Why did the Israeli officials have to do that? My only explanation
is that they were unhappy with the fact that Palestinians were
taking the initiative rather than coming to ask for mercy. I have
no doubt that, if Palestinian negotiators wanted to, they could
have gotten the Israelis to agree to the unsealing of homes. But at
what price?
The unsealing of homes exposed not only Israeli reluctance for
unilateral gestures, but also the shallowness of the peace process
and the utter impotence of the Palestinian national movement to do
anything outside the negotiating table.
Dan Leon
Freedom with Slavery
In the "sticker war", in which Israel's drivers express their
political preferences on the windscreens of their cars, instead of
Peace Now slogans like Better peace than a Greater Israel, the
tendency is to stickers like The people is with the Golan or Hebron
now and for ever. Recently a counter-attack has been launched and
large road signs sponsored by government supporters reading We want
peace (Rotsim Shalom in Hebrew) have appeared all over the
country.
The catch phrase to which I personally most object says quite
simply Peace with the Golan. Now since the Golan Heights belong to
Syria, this makes this sort of slogan akin to Equality with
discrimination or Freedom with slavery. Can 13,000 Golan settlers
prevent about five million Israelis and twelve million Syrians from
enjoying the benefits of peace between their countries?
Half of Zero
It is reported that Israeli Water Commissioner Gideon Tsur said
during the tough negotiation with Jordanian representative Munther
Haddadin on the limited water resources in the region: "Let's
suppose that the water rights are recognized. Let's now divide the
water. We all know there is a lack of water so the end result will
be zero". To which the Jordanian replied very aptly: "If that's the
case, we want half of zero". So the bottom line is how to finance
new measures such as desalination, reservoirs to trap flood waters,
or the grand Red Sea-Dead Sea Canal.
The Fanatics
Rabbi Shlomo Goren, a former Chief Rabbi, declares that according
to Halacha (religious law), since Israel is a Jewish state,
decisions on the future of Eretz Yisrael which rest upon the votes
of non-Jews, i.e. democratically elected Arab Knesset members, are
invalid. Goren also issued a Halachic ruling that every Jew is
commanded to kill Yasser Arafat according to the Biblical precept
that "thou shalt not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor"
(Lev. 19:16).
Another respected Rabbi and educator, Rabbi Aharon Lichenstein of
the Alon Shvut Settlement, called Baruch Goldstein of the Hebron
massacre "a Jew who is killed because he is a Jew - a martyr",
comparable to a Holocaust victim - "a God-fearing man who did good
deeds, loved people and saved lives".
Which Holocaust?
Anyone who participated, as I did, in the invasion of France in
1944 can never forget the fiftieth anniversary of what heralded the
beginning of the liberation of occupied Europe from the Nazis.
However, this mighty Allied action came too late for European
Jewry: six million Jews, one third of the Jewish people, including
over a million children, were slaughtered in the Nazi
Holocaust.
Ever since then I have been accompanied in my life by a sense of
identification with the six million and by a quest to reach an
understanding of the significance of the Holocaust. Ironically,
five decades after the event, the theory that the Holocaust never
took place, or has been exaggerated for Jewish and Israeli
propaganda purposes, is becoming increasingly fashionable. I read
that in Europe it is claimed, for instance, that Anna Frank's diary
was faked by her father Otto, who was the only member of the Frank
family to survive the death camps.
Now Anna Frank's diary, which was translated from the Dutch into
over thirty languages, has brought the Holocaust home to countless
millions for whom the figure of six million is too enormous and
monstrous to comprehend. For many readers from new generations,
Anna Frank, who died in Bergen-Belsen in March 1945 at the age of
sixteen, was the personification of the Holocaust.
The "revisionist" historians are still outside the mainstream and
often have to defend themselves in court. However, could all this
not change as the survivor generation dies out, leaving no personal
witnesses to the Holocaust?
Hitler wrote exactly seventy years ago in Mein Kampf (My Struggle)
that "the great masses of the people ... will more easily fall
victim to a big lie than a small one".
