THE COMPLEX
ART OF SIMULATION

Tanya Reinhart

Yediot Aharonot,

June 6, 2003

Translated
from Hebrew by Bryan Atinsky; quotes expanded

[The article went to Print
a few hours before Israel's attempted assassination of Hamas spokesman in Gaza,
Abdel Aziz Rantisi.]

The Israeli public discourse
has been storming around "Sharon's revolutionary change of mind".
The extensive debate on his psyche focuses on the question whether he has changed
from the inside, or whether it is all just U.S. pressure.  Either way,
Sharon has turned suddenly into the beloved leader of the Israeli "peace
camp". The right wing is furious and the peace camp celebrates, yet both
sides agree on the substance of what they perceive has occurred: Sharon's Israel
has already taken the fatal historical step, and gave up on the occupation.
- "In Akaba, the State of Palestine was founded"! - declared the headline
of Yediot Aharonot  on June 5. This is because, following in the
tradition of Oslo, the mere declaration of a willingness to give away something
at some future time, is by itself the most painful and crucial of concessions.
As stated by Abraham Burg in his excited address of appreciation to Sharon,
"even if you will regret this later; even if you will not stand the pressure
of your own party, you already made your contribution, because you said occupation,
you said evacuation, you said peace, you started to believe" (Yideot Aharonot,
June 5, 2003 ).

In the Israeli consciousness,
it is not the test of actions that matters, but the test of words - the complex
art of the simulation of peace, which so eased our conscience during Oslo. In
this perception, Bush and Sharon are the indubitable proponents of world peace.
Who would stop to notice what actually occurs in the real world?

From May onward we began to hear that:

"Hamas leaders openly declared their willingness this weekend to enter
a temporary cease-fire (hudna) with Israel, for the first time since the
establishment of the movement in 1987. If such a cease-fire is attained,
it would mean a cessation of terror attacks against civilians in Israel.
A senior Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, who usually represents
movement hardliners, said on Friday: 'The Hamas movement is prepared to
stop terror against Israeli civilians if Israel stops killing Palestinian
civilians ... We have told (Palestinian Authority Prime Minister) Abu Mazen
in our meetings that there is an opportunity to stop targeting Israeli civilians
if the Israelis stop assassinations and raids and stop brutalizing Palestinian
civlilians" (Ha'aretz, Arnon Regular, May 25, 2003).

What could be more suitable for a new peace initiative
then starting with a period of some calm - quiet for the Israelis without terror,
quiet for the Palestinians without the constant presence of the IDF in their
midst?  Not in Sharon's view, who repeatedly rejected this proposal. On
the eve of the Aqaba summit, the headline in Ha'aretz declared: "The prime minister:
A Palestinian ceasefire is not enough"; and the text continued to explain that:

"in his meeting with U.S. president George Bush at the Aqaba summit, prime-minister
Ariel Sharon will seek the U.S. backing of his demand that the Palestinian
authority will use forceful [military] means against the terror organizations
and their  infrastructure in the territories, as a precondition for
any diplomatic advance. Sharon will tell Bush that it is not acceptable
to settle just for agreements between the Palestinian organizations to a
cease fire (Hudna)...In return Sharon will promise Bush that Israel will
evacuate illegal outposts in the West bank" (Ha'aretz Hebrew edition,
Aluf Ben, June 2, 2003). (1) 

In other words, until
the Palestinian organizations willingly begin to kill one another, the IDF will
continue to do this job for them.

In the plans of Sharon
and the army, the situation in the territories will remain precisely where it
stands today: IDF soldiers present everywhere, demolishing, killing, abusing,
and causing starvation. Each week, another piece of Palestinian land is stolen
under the auspices of the Separation Wall project.  Even during the week
of the peace summits, when in the world of simulation the headlines heralded
an easing of the closure, the IDF made sure to clarify that nothing would change.
On the contrary, the restrictions over Palestinian movement were increased.
(Ha'aretz, June 3, 2003, see (2) below). The diabolical aspect of this plan
is that from now on, only the Palestinians will be accused of whatever happens. 
Since the Aqaba summit, Palestinians shouldn't show any resistance to the IDF,
because in the Israelis' perception, Israel has already fulfilled its part of
the bargain when Sharon declared that he has had enough of the occupation, and
will even evacuate a number of outposts (most of which are empty). Now it is
the turn of the Palestinian Authority to fulfill its part of the generous agreement
and to prove that it is capable of controlling terror, even without any change
in the situation on the ground.

Thus, the People of Israel
are left to wait for the next inevitable terror attack, following which, we
will sigh and declare, "what could we do, we tried again, but with the
Palestinians, making peace is just impossible."

No doubt that the deterioration
of the Intifada into armed struggle brought disaster upon the Palestinians. 
No doubt that it would be better to return to a path of non-violent struggle,
but for that, one basic condition must exist that Israel will make this path
possible for the Palestinians. The only significant sentence in the Road Map
text requires that already at the first stage, Israel should withdraw from Palestinian
areas that it entered since the beginning of the Intifada and allow for a restoration
of the status quo existing then. If a peace camp had actually existed in Israel,
instead of marveling at the wonders of Sharon's soul, it would demand that he
implements at least this minimum requirement. 

        

(1) Is it just an incident that in the internet English version of Ha'aretz,
this piece of information was eliminated altogether, and the headline announced
only Sharon's willingness to evacuate outposts?

(2) Here is the full report
of Arnon Regular on the closure situation at the week of the summits, in Ha'aretz,
Tuesday, June 3, 2003

No signs of eased conditions
in West Bank By Arnon Regular

"The picture that emerged yesterday after a day of driving
up and down and back and forth across the West Bank is of tens of thousands
of people who have seemingly been thrown back into the Middle Ages, when the
only mode of transport was by foot."

On road to Ramallah, thousands
still travel by foot from village to city and back Haj Yusuf Musa, 77, is on
his way back to his village, north of Ramallah, after he made

the trip to the city to get medicine for his bad back.

He makes his way - on
foot - down the road to the checkpoint that marks the start of the area where
Palestinian vehicles are not allowed to travel. From there, he makes his way
down a steep hill, for about 500 meters into a wadi, and then back up another
hill, for another 500 meters, to reach another checkpoint. Only when he's through
that checkpoint can he look for a Palestinian taxi to take him to his village.

Yesterday, like every
day, thousands of people crossed this checkpoint on foot. Cripples on crutches,
elderly people and children, women, the pregnant, old and infirm, some on horses
others on donkeys, everyone goes through the humiliation. Those who need medicine
or those who want to visit family.

Adal, a handicapped man
from Silwad, needs his crutches to stand. He's sweating in the hot sun after
somehow making his way down the 500 meters and then back up the 500 meters.
The pity of the others goes out to him. Someone offers him water, another suggests
he lean against a railing. After he catches his breath, he explains he couldn't
find a car that would take him.

Like him, thousands of
people have to go through the Surda checkpoint at the northern entrance to Ramallah
every day. And the long queues are characteristic of all the checkpoints.

At the Halhul and Sa'ir
checkpoints, the same picture was seen yesterday as it was at Qalandiyah and
at the Gush Etzion junction.

At first, it seemed the
Surda checkpoint only handed the tens of thousands of villagers from north of
Ramallah, on their way to the city, but the checkpoint explains the reality
created during the nearly three years of intifada. People from Nablus, Jenin,
Tul Karm and Qalqiliyah, who have made their way through four, five and sometimes
six previous checkpoints to reach this one, line up.

Palestinians are not allowed
to use the thousands of kilometers of new highways and "bypass" roads
built in the territories over the past decades. Only settlers and the army are
allowed on those roads. They aren't allowed on Highway 60, the main road in
the West Bank.

Hundreds of mounds of
dirt and mobile and stationary checkpoints force them onto the side roads, old
one-lane roads, sometimes made of dirt, often in bad repair, and those who want
to go to Ramallah from Nablus, for example, have to take the narrow village
roads. Eventually, they all end up at Surda.

A few months ago, the
civil administration decided to let Palestinian buses move on main roads. But
the lengthy security checks required to get a pass to use the buses, has kept
them empty. There are parking lots with the buses in Halhul, al Khader, and
in the northern West Bank. A lot of buses. Very few passengers.

The picture that emerged
yesterday after a day of driving up and down and back and forth across the West
Bank is of tens of thousands of people who have seemingly been thrown back into
the Middle Ages, when the only mode of transport was by foot. Nobody is allowed
to take a vehicle from a village to a city. Instead, they must get off at checkpoints,
walk the extra few hundred meters, and then, if they have the money, take a
cab to the next checkpoint, where again they have to walk the few hundred meters
- sometimes more - to the next point where they can get a taxi.

The Palestinians might
have heard about Israel's easing conditions for travel, but they haven't seen
this on the ground. In fact, there are signs that nothing at all has changed.
Take the little checkpoint at Ein Ariq, west of Ramallah, used by hundreds of
villagers from the area. It's a relatively small checkpoint, consisting of a
couple of jeeps that sometimes are there and sometimes not. On Friday, less
than 24 hours after the summit of prime ministers in Jerusalem and announcements
of abatements, an Israel Defense Forces bulldozer showed up for the first time
in the intifada and dug a channel across the road, ending the possibility of
using a car to get through the checkpoint, even if the jeeps aren't there. Thus,
the thousands of villagers in that area yesterday joined their brethren at checkpoints
elsewhere in the West Bank, lined up at the blockade. A line of about 1,000
people lined up in front of the checkpoint, on their way by foot to Ramallah.