Last update - 00:00 12/03/2008
The third intifada is already here
By Israel Harel
No strategic national goal has ever been defined for any of those responsible for our security, from any branch. They fight for "Israel's security" as they understand it - so that most of the population will somehow keep functioning, day after day. They are also not accustomed to analyzing the sequence and scope of events from a historic perspective. Therefore, they propose measures, almost always reactive, whose goal is to "manage the conflict" - not to win it.
Politicians and defense officials, especially lately, operate on the basis of assumptions that derive from their own imaginations. For instance, that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is a "partner," and that his Fatah organization is better than Hamas. For instance, that incidents of stone-throwing in the North are no more than "disturbances of the peace" by frustrated youths. For instance, that it is possible to "pacify" Hamas without a large-scale military operation in Gaza (Fact: Calm has arrived!). Both the army and the police, it seems, find it convenient to act on the basis of what they wish were true.
Police Commissioner David Cohen dismisses those who foresee a third intifada. It's not wise to discuss this, he says; it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin also sees a "low probability" of the intifada resuming. And indeed, just as they say, there is no reason to discuss another intifada, or self-fulfilling prophecies - for what we refer to as the "first intifada" never ended. For the past 21 years, with ups and downs - like those of the past few days - there has been an ongoing chain of terror attacks. Dividing them into different intifadas is meant to prove that the previous intifada, which began to wane after Operation Defensive Shield, had ended. That is self-deception.
Thousands of Qassam rockets have landed in the South since the "end" of the second intifada. And even in Judea and Samaria, the attacks have not ended because we won and the enemy laid down his arms. Far from it. And that is so even if a daily war is being waged - successfully, for a change - against the incessant attempts to perpetrate terror attacks in the population centers of the coastal plain.
Only when the terrorists no longer have the strength to keep going - and that is something that is in our hands - will it be possible to say "We won." But that day, as is evident from the eight years of rockets on the South, last week's attack in Jerusalem and the stones - stones also kill - thrown in Judea and Samaria, the Galilee, the inland valleys and the coastal plain, is still far off. It is not far off because, in the past, we were unable to prevent the deaths of hundreds of Israelis and thousands of Arabs and the suffering of millions. It is far off because those responsible for the war on terror, like Cohen and Diskin, use magical thinking: The flames are low, even tolerable, today? So let us also sit quietly and let the children of Sderot play on their slides and seesaws. If we would only "think positive," perhaps the rockets really would stop flying in the South and there would not be an upsurge in stone-throwing in the North. Who said that what was is what will be, and that history must repeat itself?
What we have done, and are continuing to do - even now, when it would still be possible to put out relatively easily the fires, which are still fairly small, in the inland valleys and the North - is deny reality: Who says that stone-throwing portends more serious violence? "Israel is not the territories." And if Hamas has ceased to rain rockets, perhaps we should give it a chance. Those responsible for this restraint overlook the fact that thanks to all the successful self-restraint of the past, the front has already reached Ashkelon. And thanks to the Katyusha rockets that continue to pour into the Gaza Strip, it will be able, once Hamas has recovered its strength and returned to its natural habits, to reach Ashdod as well.
The "third intifada" has been here all along. It is 21 years old, and it has spread, as any sensible person knows, into Israel as well. And if we had defeated it, as was possible, back in the "period of the stones" - that is, soon after it began, it 1987 - this might have prevented the rift, which by now may well be beyond healing, between us and Israel's Arab citizens. We should not have put them to the impossible test of an endless war between their country and their people.
Now, it is late, but perhaps not yet too late. If the police would unhesitatingly take preventive action against the stone-throwers, the burners of tires and those who take over state lands out of nationalist motives, it might be possible to prevent the next stage: a general outbreak. And that might also prevent a final rupture between Arab and Jews in this country. But the police commissioner, and those above him, prefer to remain in denial. After all, as he said, it might become a self-fulfilling prophecy.