"An alternative for bloodshed" by Erik Ader, former Dutch Ambassador...

an alternative for bloodshed

On the 25th of April 1948 twenty tons of ordnance rained down on Jaffa, sending its frightened population into exile. Most of them ended up in Gaza. This act of terrorism, with the aim to cleanse the city of its Palestinian population, is extolled on the walls of a museum near Jaffa, dedicated to “the liberation” of that city.

Today, as in 2008/2009 and 2012, more ordnance is raining down on these hapless refugees and their descendants. This time they have nowhere to run to. They get killed, wounded, traumatized and their properties and infrastructure ruined. Their lives were already made utterly miserable by a suffocating blockade.

Israel has no choice but to defend its citizens. That is obvious, but there are different ways of doing this. If the choice is for military means then Israel is bound by conventions which constrain the use of force. One of them is the principle of proportionality. Israel’s Dahiyeh-doctrine is based on disproportionality: inflict so much pain on the civilian population that it will turn on the resistance. It doesn’t work and is immoral. A military solution is not going to solve the conflict, full stop. You cannot bludgeon a whole people into submission, as the fighters in the ghetto of Warsaw showed us already.

The alternative approach is a negotiated resolution of the conflict: a sustainable peace, based on a minimum of justice and dignity for the Palestinians. We all know what the outcome should look like. The question is how genuinely Israel wants this alternative.

Israel so far systematically sabotaged it. Even its staunch ally, the US, had to admit, after the failure of the last round of negotiations, that Israel was to be blamed.

Does this surprise us? Whoever followed all the peace processes cannot but conclude that Israel acted in bad faith. The Camp David Framework for Peace of September 1978, leading to the Treaty between Israel and Egypt, contained text which promised full withdrawal of Israel from the occupied Palestinian territories within five years, i.e. 1983 latest. It didn’t happen. Israel’s former Chief of Military Intelligence, Yehoshafat Harkabi, said about it: “I am deeply troubled by how evasively Israel has conducted itself in its first agreement with an Arab state.”

At the peace conference of Madrid, which began in October 1991, Israel did not act in good faith either, as Shamir explained a few days after he was ousted as Prime Minister (in June 1992). He expressed regret that he would not be able to expand the settlements any longer: “I would have carried on the autonomy talks for ten years, and meanwhile we would have reached half a million people in Judea and Samaria.”

Rabin was the exception. He came to understand that a negotiated solution was unavoidable, so he was killed in November 1994. Not by a loner but by a representative of Israels uncompromising right which understood that he was a threat to their project of annexation of the West Bank. Fortunately for them in 1996 Likud came back in power. While Prime Minister Netanyahu negotiated in Wye in October 1998, Minister Sharon urged Israel’s youth to grab all the hill tops in the occupied territories.

Whoever visited these territories saw that while Israel was talking about a two state solution it worked hard to make that impossible with ever more settlements and settlers. Barak’s “generous” offer in Camp David in the summer of 2000 was not good enough, but it could have been the basis for a breakthrough to a peaceful resolution. That’s why Sharon made sure it wouldn’t, by provoking the second Intifadah in September 2000. 

With fourteen amendments he sabotaged attempts to stem the violence and revive the peace process via the Roadmap. While Israel withdrew its settlers from Gaza in 2005, it stated as its purpose to put the peace process on formaldehyde. And that is where it has been since.

Annapolis and Olmert’s plan and Kerry came and went and haven’t changed that one iota. All that was achieved was more time for Israel to create facts on the ground. Meanwhile Shamir’s target of half a million settlers has been more than met.

Israel’s agenda is clear: implement the Allon-plan of 1967. That is: annex 60% of the West Bank with as few as possible Palestinians in it and as much as possible resources, and give the Palestinians in the remaining 40% of the land some kind of self-rule in four well separated areas. 

Mere Bantustans, as Sharon put it. While the peace process was continuing the Palestinian Authority kept the West Bank quiet, Gaza had to be kept in submission by incursions and bombardments every two to three years. 

So far Israel has been successful in implementing the plan. In the long run it will prove suicidal. As Zeev Maoz, former head of the academic programme of Israel’s Defence College, wryly remarked: “The notion that force in fact exacerbates anti-Israeli violence is not part of the strategic discourse in Israel.”

On numerous occasions Hamas has expressed its willingness to conclude truces, for periods up to fifty years. In September 1997 Hamas expressed interest in a negotiated solution. Netanyahu responded with an attempt on the life of Khaled Meshal. The founder of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, went on Israeli record accepting the State of Israel in exchange for a Palestinian State alongside it. 

Former Mossad chief Halevy considers Hamas an organisation that stands by its words and can deliver. Israel never seriously explored these openings. Nor did it respond to the peace proposals tabled by the Arab League in 2002, reiterated in 2007. They entail peace in exchange for an end to the occupation.

In 2006 an unique opportunity to solve the conflict was wasted. Hamas was standing in the elections for the Palestinian parliament, thereby partaking in the political and democratic process and ready to assume the responsibilities that come with it. The outcome of these free and fair elections in Palestine were disliked by Israel and the Quartet and the Government that came of it was confronted with three conditions. 

UN-envoy De Soto and Halevy called them unnecessary and unrealistic. As if this political ban wasn’t enough the US-government of the day was instrumental in bolstering Fatah’s strongman Dahlan to topple Hamas in Gaza. It backfired: Fatah was driven out in a pre-emptive strike by Hamas in June 2007.

Kanwisher et al (see link)., three researchers attached to American and Israeli top universities, looked into the question who was responsible for reigniting violence between Israel and the Palestinians between September 2000 and October 2008. In 79% of the cases it was Israel, 8% was to be blamed on the Palestinians and 13% was a shared responsibility. 

Figures to be remembered when Netanyahu talks about the need for Palestinians to rescind violence. (Doing so hasn’t brought them any nearer to the fulfilment of their political aspirations.) These findings fit in a larger pattern of Israeli rejectionism as researched by Maoz, and Amit and Levit.

Israel reignited violence again with its incursion into Gaza 4 November 2008. Former Mossad-chief Halevy told the Israeli cabinet in December 2008 that Hamas was prepared to accept Israel in exchange for Palestinian Statehood within the borders of 1967. 

Shin Beth told the cabinet that Hamas wanted a continuation of the existing truce. Israel opted for the horrible violence of “Operation Cast Lead”. Former President Jimmy Carter, who had had the public courage and wisdom to talk to Hamas, called this operation an unnecessary war: it could have been avoided had Israel positively responded to Hamas’ reasonable requests.

In November 2012 Israel killed with an airstrike Hamas’ military commander Ahmed Jabari while he was reviewing the details of a truce proposal. Israel’s negotiator, Gershon Baskin, called it in the columns of this newspaper: “..a preventive attack on the possibility of a long term truce and a serious blow for the few more moderate leaders of Hamas.” These wars were clearly not unneccesary as far as Israel was concerned: they were needed to thwart the territorial concessions that would come with peace.

After the failure of the Kerry-initiative, courtesy Netanyahu, the Palestinians created a new unity Government. This government, under president Abbas and comprising technocrats only, went as far as accepting the Quartet-conditions. Instead of welcoming this development Netanyahu denounced and obstructed it. 

When two individuals abducted and killed the three Jewish teenagers Hamas got the blame, without any proof so far, and Israel used it as an excuse to go on the rampage in the West Bank in general – raiding 1500 houses and arresting 570 people – and to wage war on Hamas in the West Bank in particular.

The Palestinians live in an ever shrinking area, under deteriorating economic and social conditions, under attack with impunity by settlers and the IDF alike, who arrest and kill, destroy property and steel their resources, while the rest of the world mumbles toothless admonitions. 

There is no end in sight to their plight, nothing to keep the flames of their hope burning. Utter despair is the well from which Palestinian terrorism springs. 

Nurit Peled, mother of a victim of a Palestinian suicide bomber, understood this when she confronted Benjamin Netanyahu with the words: “Israel is raising terrorists … They are sacrificing themselves because we have made their lives valueless in their own eyes.”

Fifty years ago we made a tragic mistake not to understand that for the Vietnamese communism was just a vehicle for national liberation, not part and parcel of a grand communist strategy of world domination. It would be equally tragic not to understand that Palestinian support for Hamas is not a reflection of extreme religious beliefs nor part and parcel of an Islamist conspiracy of world domination. It should be seen as what it is: an expression of frustrated national aspirations.

Israel never distanced itself from the acts of terrorism committed in the process of creating the State and thereafter. The most prominent perpetrators became presidents and Prime Ministers. Albert Einstein and other Jewish Americans called them fascists in a letter to this paper, with good reason. Netanyahu stands in their political tradition. 

The condemnation of Palestinian terrorism from his mouth sounds hollow and insincere as long as he, his party and his coalition partners haven’t unequivocally distanced themselves from the deeds of Israel’s founding fathers rather than glorifying them, and as long as they adhere to the Dahiyeh-doctrine which is based on the principles of terrorism.

Israel does not want peace, based on a minimum of justice, Israel wants submission. It will only lead to further radicalisation in Palestine and ultimately to Israel’s demise.

Erik Ader, August 4, 2014

- The parents of Erik Ader are on record at Yad Vashem for having saved over 200 Jewish compatriots during the German occupation. 

- Many of them and their descendants live in Israel. 

- His father paid with his life. 

- Erik Ader is a former Dutch Ambassador with assignments in Beirut, Hanoi and Oslo. 

- Over the years he has made many trips to Israel and the Occupied Territories, including Gaza, the last one in May this year.

Gepubliceerd op August 13, 2014