From: Christian Friends of Israel
To: news@cfijerusalem.org
Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2000 8:57 AM
Subject: ISRAEL NEWS DIGEST -By David Dolan - Nov. 2000
"…It was a true report that I heard in my own land…" (1 Kings 10:6)
ISRAEL NEWS DIGEST – NOVEMBER 2000
Crisis in the Middle East
"The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble. And He knows those who take refuge in Him." (Nahum 1:7)
It is difficult to believe that only a few weeks ago, most Israelis were busy discussing such burning issues as legalizing civil marriages and which vegetables were kosher to eat during the then-upcoming sabbatical year. All that changed when the Jewish year 5761 began on September 28. Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, Israel and its Palestinian neighbors entered into a period of intense conflict. While not a full-scale war like the one fought during the month of October in 1973--at least not yet--it has nonetheless had a shocking impact on this troubled little land, with momentous implications for the future of the Middle East and the world.
The most stunning immediate impact is the apparent death of the seven-year-old Oslo peace process. As of this writing, it has still not been declared officially dead by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, or by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. But the actions and words of both men, and especially Arafat, certainly imply that they have concluded whether reluctantly or not, that Oslo has reached the end of the road.
Barak has probably only delayed pronouncing the peace process deceased because of US sensibilities. After all, American President Bill Clinton made the Oslo process the foreign policy centerpiece of his eight-year administration. In actual fact, Clinton had not initiated it at all, but only jumped on board when clandestine negotiations in Norway gained acceptance by both Arafat and the late Yitzhak Rabin. Still, he has long worn the process like a badge of honor on his presidential lapel. With his faithful deputy locked in a close race to succeed him in the Oval Office, the retiring US leader can hardly admit that Oslo is well and truly over.
But Barak knows it is so. How can he ever sell his people on an armed Palestinian force patrolling the streets of eastern Jerusalem and/or its Arab suburbs after those same forces either shot at the Jewish neighborhoods of Gilo and Neveh Yaacov, or turned a blind eye while other armed Palestinians did so? How can he turn over more land to a leader whose forces promised to safeguard a Jewish holy site (Joseph’s Tomb) and then sat back as Arab mobs overran and sacked the site? How can Barak ever convince a majority of Israelis to once again trust a people whose sons gleefully mutilated two reserve soldiers because they took a wrong turn in a road? Barak certainly knows Oslo is finished, but he apparently feels fettered from actually saying so until after the US elections in November.
Arafat has no intention of going back to the shattered Oslo accords. Indeed, it was his failure to command his armed "police forces" to stop the violence--coupled with constant incitement from his Oslo-allowed radio and television stations that urged his people to continue and escalate the riots--that shot the final bullet into Oslo’s fluttering heart.
Arafat had already gotten what he could out of the process: Full control over most Palestinians living in the disputed territories, including all major cities and towns except east Jerusalem and a small part of Hebron, a large armed para-military force, a media network, an airport and a port. He had long ago realized that he would not get most of his other demands via the Oslo process, especially control over eastern Jerusalem and the dismantling of all Jewish communities in territory that he claimed. That is why he long hinted that he would not sign a final peace accord, but instead hold out for international intervention to force Israel to toe his maximalist line. He reckoned that a time would come when the Americans would emulate the Mideast-weary British in 1948 by throwing up their hands and tossing the problem to the United Nations, with its oil-inspired Arabist slant. That time has apparently now arrived.
SHOCKING REALITY
The collapse into literal flames of the up and down peace process has left many Israelis and Palestinians reeling. The implications are enormous and radically negative. Left-wing Israelis are particularly devastated. Most of them simply did not see it coming. Living in an apparent fool’s paradise, they could not read the many and glaring warning signs that have littered the long Oslo road. They discounted Arafat’s secretly taped 1994 fiery speech in a South African mosque, despite its ominous message. Israel’s new "peace partner" said then that Islam’s holy war would continue until Jerusalem was "fully liberated" from Jewish control. They accepted Arafat’s later "clarification" that he was not referring to violent struggle to achieve the same, but only to a peaceful contest.
Many Oslo advocates also ignored or dismissed Arafat’s various public references to the PLO’s 1974 "Phased Plan" to wipe Israel out in stages. The aging Arab leader is only dreaming, they maintained, or he is just trying to keep his radical hard-liners happy. They even ignored his repeated, vulgar statements that Israeli Jews would end up "drinking the water of the Dead Sea" (and therefore become as lifeless as its heavy water) if they bucked his intention to make Jerusalem his seat of government.
The 1995-96 wave of insidious terrorist attacks proved a greater problem for Israel’s "peace camp" (the reality is that all Israelis want peace, but many consistently doubted that the deal with Arafat was the way to achieve it). Such a man as Shimon Peres--one of the architects of Oslo--was even forced to use the dreaded term "war" when the trickle of innocent Israeli blood turned into a river. He unleashed Israel’s mighty armed forces in south Lebanon while declaring that no stone would be left unturned in his quest to crush Islamic suicide terrorism. His peace comrade was expected to help him. But Arafat did precious little to actually reign in Palestinian jihad martyrs, especially after shocked Israeli voters narrowly chose Binyamin Netanyahu over Peres to lead the nation. When the deaths diminished and the passions died down, the left quickly forgot about Arafat’s glaring failings and concentrated on the new enemy before them--the dreaded Likud party leader.
SAVE THE DAY
Ehud Barak was going to save the day, if not the century. All would be cheesy with him on the throne. To most left-wing Israeli voters, it was clearly the incalcitrant Netanyahu government that had made it impossible to successfully complete the Oslo peace process, not Yasser Arafat. This verdict was shared by President Clinton and most other world leaders, and was an established fact to most of the international and Israeli media.
At the Camp David summit in July, Barak offered Arafat more than most Israelis ever remotely imagined would be put on the negotiating table. The Palestinians--whose fathers rejected the 1948 United Nations Partition Plan and thus forfeited full statehood at that time, and the 1967 Israeli offer to withdraw from all of the newly-captured lands in exchange for a final peace treaty--would get total control over 92% of the disputed territories, including most of the strategic Jordan Valley. Barak would dismantle many isolated Jewish settlements and cede land inside Israel to Arafat in "payment" for the eight percent retained by his government. Israel would agree to let Arafat bring in as many Palestinian refugees into his new state as he wished, even if this greatly tipped the ethnic balance west of the Jordan River in the Arab’s favor. And, most significantly of all, Barak would throw out his oft-repeated mantra to never divide Israel’s capital city. Indeed, Arafat would rule over all of Jerusalem’s predominantly Arab neighborhoods.
More than this--and by far most shocking to many Israelis and to Jews around the world--the Palestinians would be granted full control, if not legal sovereignty, over the bulk of the walled Old City and the sacred Temple Mount. Barak would agree to cede the top of Judaism’s most revered site to Arafat’s government, while retaining exclusive sovereignty inside of the ancient walled edifice (where the remains of the Jewish temples are said to be located). To Clinton’s surprise and Barak’s disgust, Arafat would have none of it.
SO WHAT’S NEW?
The lame-duck American leader had apparently learned nothing from his attempts to forge an Israeli-Syrian peace accord earlier this year. Clinton thought he had a firm commitment from the late Syrian dictator to sign on the dotted peace line in Geneva last March. But the crafty Hafez Assad reneged at the last minute, raising new demands that Ehud Barak could never meet. But Arafat was supposed to be from a different kettle of fish. He would not follow Assad’s lead and demand all, or forget the whole deal. He would give way on some of his negotiating demands and compromise with Barak. Maybe Arafat wouldn’t meet him exactly in the middle, but he would stay in the ball game just the same.
As was the case with Assad, Clinton’s rosy (dare I say naive?) assessment was way off the mark. Apparently yearning for the same sort of glory that Jimmy Carter basked in after Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat made peace at Camp David, the US leader had wagered a gigantic bet in calling Barak and Arafat together at the same secluded compound in Maryland where the Egyptian-Israeli peace accord was forged. He threw the dice, and--as in now abundantly clear--he lost.
Arafat was no more willing to bend than Assad had been. The two Arab leaders--bitter enemies for many years--were cut out from the same intransigent cloth. Both preferred to keep their suffering people bound in misery (and in Arafat’s case, to hurl his children to their untimely graves). They would never lose face by signing a compromise peace accord. So Clinton’s Camp David parley failed, and the seeds of the new violent uprising were planted firmly in the Holy Land’s ground. It only took two months of continuous Palestinian media incitement for them to sprout into an orgy of violence not seen here in over a decade.
Unlike the utopian left, most right-wing Israelis, along with some international commentators, are not surprised that the Oslo process has apparently collapsed. This writer and many others have been predicting ever since the ink was drying on the original accord that the Palestinian leader would hold out for a "complete and accurate implementation" of various UN resolutions. In other words, he would never actually do a direct deal with any Israeli leader unless they bowed to his every demand.
Knowing that he would never get anywhere near what he was demanding from Israel, Arafat always planned to instead insist that the "international community" step in at some point and force Israel to give him what he wants--or else. And the "else" was always the thinly veiled threat to return to the path of violence, if not to full-scale Mideast war. After all, it was internationally broadcast street clashes that got him an invitation to negotiate in the Norwegian capital in the first place. He knew such a threat would always concentrate [control?] the minds of world leaders since the price and continued flow of Middle East oil--that economic life force--was at stake.
HOLY WAR FOR JERUSALEM
Yasser Arafat’s marching orders, which were apparently intended to spark the Arab and international political intervention that we have already seen, were just waiting to be given on September 28. In fact, they had already been issued it seems. The popular view may be that the current conflict began when Likud leader Ariel Sharon "brazenly ascended the Islamic" Temple Mount on September 27. But violence had actually been occurring at a low level for many weeks before that. What the rotund Likud leader did do by visiting Judaism’s holiest site was give Arafat and company an unbelievably majestic excuse to toss their explosive hand grenades out into the streets.
In last month’s News Digest, I reported that militant Palestinian Muslim groups--angry and humiliated that Arafat had bowed to Western "infidel" pressure and delayed his September 13 statehood declaration---were busy whipping up passions with calls for a new armed holy war against the detested Jewish State. I noted that the simmering rage was not only building toward Israel, but also toward the United States due to its efforts to secure world support for a statehood postponement. I also quoted Israeli experts who warned that Arafat needed to somehow recover the international high ground that he lost after Camp David. They said his most effective way of doing so would be to unleash his zealous young stone-slingers against the far more powerful "Zionist enemy," producing more television scenes of Jewish Goliaths crushing Palestinian Davids.
A swelling number of Arab attacks took place in the weeks before the controversial Sharon visit. The worst happened just one day before, in the always-volatile Gaza Strip. Mirroring Hizbullah methods in Lebanon, a roadside bomb was detonated as an Israeli army patrol passed by near the Netzarim junction. A 19 year old soldier--whose brother was murdered in a terrorist attack in Hadera a few years ago--was killed in the blast (his best friend, a fellow arms bearer, was so distraught over the incident that he later committed suicide). Intensified shooting attacks were also occurring, especially in Hebron. Several terrorist attempts had been narrowly thwarted, including one near the packed southwest Jerusalem shopping mall. In other words, by the time Sharon toured the holy hill, many Palestinians were looking for virtually any excuse to take to the streets: rifles and slingshots in hand.
There can be little doubt that Sharon’s holiday visit detonated pent-up Palestinian passions beyond Arafat’s wildest dreams, and Barak’s worst nightmares. The reason for that it simple: The core issue at the heart of the decades old Arab/Israeli conflict--at least from the Muslim perspective--has never been land or homes or refugees. It has always boiled down to who has the divine right to rule the Temple Mount. In other words, whose religious beliefs are actually the truth, Muslims or Jews?
Most world leaders, academics and journalists have failed to grasp this quite demonstrable fact, preferring to see things in terms of a semi-colonial "European Jewish invasion" that set off ongoing cultural clashes and warfare. Indeed, that is how many educated Arabs have consistently framed the conflict. But this has never been the actual story. The real question in many minds--certainly in those belonging to the millions of devout Muslims in this part of the globe--is whose deity is God, and whose holy scriptures true? The evidence "on the ground" since 1948, and especially since 1967, seems to strongly favor the God of Israel and the Hebrew Bible. As astounding as it may be to many in the secularly dominated West, millions of Muslims will never really lay down their swords until that humiliating evidence is overturned. Therefore, the "sacred jihad struggle" for Jerusalem will continue, and even intensify.
SINAI SUMMIT
With the price of crude oil blowing sky high, world leaders rushed in to quell the October violence like they were urgently putting out an explosive oil rig fire. The Leader of the Free World dropped his entire schedule (as he has done a few other times this year) and dashed to the Middle East. He was preceded by the UN Secretary General and officials from Russia and the European Union. All did their best to halt the violence, coming up with a verbal accord in the remote Sinai desert that was supposed to do the trick. As most Israelis expected, it did not succeed, prompting PM Barak to declare the obvious--the peace process is frozen, if not dead.
The hasty, lofty summit gathering at a remote Sinai resort was rather astounding when you consider that only some 100 souls had been lost in just over two weeks of violent skirmishes. I am not diminishing the sad loss of life--I have seen it with my own eyes too many times while covering the ongoing Arab/Israeli conflict. It is never anything but tragic to witness and record the seemingly unending stream of dead and wounded, especially when the victims are very young.
However, when you consider the massive death tolls in other conflicts in recent years, especially in parts of Africa and even in southeastern Europe, it seems strange that such a relatively small number of dead and wounded would produce such an enormous and immediate world crisis. But again, it is quite understandable, given that hot Mideast desert sands conceal vast supplies of oil.
Of course, international religious sensitivities play a significant part in stirring up world interest as well. Still, one has to imagine that other, often larger, ethnic groups who are struggling for "independence" against more powerful neighbors are somewhat envious of Arafat’s ability to get international leaders to jump at his every thrown stone. There are many such people groups, like the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq, the Muslims of northern India, the Basques in northern Spain, and the country of Tibet, occupied by China.
The Palestinian leader is undoubtedly hoping that Arab leaders and Iran will come to his political, if not military, rescue. Indeed on the evening of the day when Israeli helicopter gunships, naval boats and tanks went into action after two reserve army soldiers took a wrong turn and ended up torn to pieces in the town of Ramallah, Palestinians in their thousands took to their rooftops to watch out for Saddam’s hoped for Scuds. So convinced were many that the Iraqi dictator would scramble to save them that many actually packed their possessions into cars and drove in the opposite direction of Tel Aviv--just in case Saddam’s Scud coordinates were a bit rusty. When Iraq announced a few days later that it would fully support a new "jihad to wrest Jerusalem from Zionist control," and that four million Iraqi citizens had "volunteered" to actively join the fight, thousands of Israelis rushed to special army centers to update their gas mask kits.
The Israeli public was already nervous over the prospect of war with Syria, which possesses a large missile and chemical weapons arsenal. The possibility of conflict came up when Hizbullah forces, which are allowed to freely operate in Syrian-occupied Lebanon, kidnapped three Israeli soldiers in a daring daylight operation on October 7. Hizbullah said the abductions, which took place inside UN-recognized Israeli territory, was just the first of many actions to "support the Al-Aksa Palestinian uprising." PM Barak issued a stern warning to Syria that it would be held ultimately responsible for Hizbullah’s aggressive action. When a reserve army officer (and possible Mossad agent) was later kidnapped by Hizbullah forces, Barak again said that the government of Syria and its puppet in Beirut were ultimately responsible for not curbing the Islamic militia--adding that he would "chose the time and place to respond" to the four kidnappings.
Syria joined several other Arab states in harshly attacking Israel at an emergency Arab summit meeting in Cairo on October 21-22. Iraq called for an unbridled holy war, and Saudi Arabia announced it was pledging 250 million US dollars toward a one billion-dollar fund to support the new Palestinian uprising. Yasser Arafat charged that his people were facing "a collective massacre." Egypt and Jordan came under pressure to break their peace treaties with Israel. Libya walked out because the two countries said that was not in the cards. Still, the assembled Arab leaders fully backed Arafat’s demands for an Israeli handover of the eastern half of Jerusalem, the abandonment of all Jewish settlements, and the "right of return" for all Palestinian refugees and their offspring--some three to four million people.
EASTERN FRONT
Israeli strategic analysts say the main threat of a wider Mideast war comes from the possible alliance of three countries: Iraq, Iran and Syria. They say there are important signs besides Saddam’s reported massive volunteer force that the three nations may be conspiring to actively support Arafat’s new uprising. They note that Syria and Iran have had a close alliance for over 15 years, while ties between Damascus and Baghdad--broken just before the 1991 Gulf War-- have dramatically improved in recent years.
The most portentous recent indication that a three-state axis might be forming was the unexpected visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi to Baghdad in mid-October. An Iranian statement said he went there to hold "important consultations" with Saddam Hussein. Afterwards, the former enemies said they had "reached agreement on several issues."
The joint Iraqi-Iranian statement came on the very day that US Defense Secretary William Cohen confirmed press reports that US spy satellites and surveillance aircraft had detected unusual Iraqi troop movements toward the border with Jordan (i.e. in Israel’s direction). He said the moving soldiers belong to Saddam’s highly trained Republican Guard. He added that the Clinton administration would react to "any new Iraqi aggression with a very strong response." Meanwhile Iran announced that it is training over 100,000 Lebanese Shiites militants and Palestinian Muslim refugees to join in the coming "Islamic battle for Jerusalem." An Iranian army announcement on October 19 said the militants are preparing "to die in the jihad along with our Palestinian brethren."
Israeli security analysts say the Lebanese holy warriors probably mostly made their way by land to Iran via Syria and Iraq, signifying the growing alliance between the three neighboring states. The fact that Iraq is situated between Iran and Syria produces a strategic land bridge that directly joins all three countries to the Golan and Lebanese borders with Israel. Syria’s role is especially crucial in that its participation in a new eastern front affords the three states the ability to mass hundreds of thousands of fighters along the two borders. However, they note that Israel and the United States would probably not allow such a large force to make it that far. Yet any military action to halt such a convergence would in itself be considered an act of war, putting the onus on starting any new conflict just where the three countries want it--on Israel and America.
The possibility that Arab Muslim citizens of Israel might join their regional Islamic brethren in a "holy war" for Jerusalem had been routinely dismissed by most Israeli political and military commentators and security experts. Not any more. The fierce rioting that shook the Israeli Arab community in early October shocked ordinary Jews and analysts alike, not to mention the Barak government. Few thought that such places as Jaffa and Acre could get caught up in such violence, but it happened nevertheless. The sheer scope and intensity of the clashes, which left eight Arab Israelis dead and hundreds wounded, has forced army leaders to reassess their plans in case of a new Mideast war.
With over 900,000 Muslim citizens living inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders, the prospect that many might turn against the state in time of war means more forces than originally planned will have to be designated to keep internal order. Experts say the town of Uhm al- Fahm--the center of the Arab Islamic movement in Israel--would probably be immediately evacuated in any new conflict. This is because hundreds of its residents demonstrated during the riots that they are able to quickly disrupt traffic on the nearby strategic road that connects Tel Aviv and other coastal areas with the upper Galilee region and the Golan Heights.
NATIONAL EMERGENCY
With violence exploding all around the disputed territories and inside Israel, and opinion polls revealing that around 80% of the public believe that the Oslo process has utterly failed, Ehud Barak’s political popularity has reached a new low. Polls show that Binyamin Netanyahu--who learned in late September that he would not be prosecuted for several alleged crimes--is ahead of the PM by at least 10%. Even the less-popular current Likud leader, Ariel Sharon, has a fighting chance according to the polls, trailing Barak by only 2%. Barak’s Labor party would also lose seats according to the polls, as would other left-wing parties.
As this month’s News Digest goes to press, Barak is still trying to persuade Sharon to join him in a "national emergency government." But the Likud leader says he will only do so if the PM publicly disavows the bankrupt Oslo process. Likud politicians say they do not want to be identified in any way with Barak’s failed policies. Still, with opinion polls showing that the war-nervous Israeli public is clamoring for unity, Sharon may just bite the bullet and join a broad government, at least until the current crisis passes.
There is so much more to report, but no space to do so. What can one say in the midst of Israel’s worst crisis in many years? Maybe the best thing to point out is that the God of Israel, through His ancient prophets, revealed long ago that Israel’s immediate neighbors--and eventually the whole world--will come up to battle against Jerusalem in the last days of human history. We seem to be seeing the clear outlines forming for such momentous wars, whether near or far off. What can we do but bow our heads in fervent prayer, and then look up again--for our redemption is drawing near!
"Even so you too, when you see these things happening, recognize that the kingdom of God is near. (Luke 21:31)
DAVID DOLAN
Jerusalem
The Israel News Digest is published and distributed by Christian Friends of Israel, PO Box 1813, Jerusalem, 91015, Israel. It is written monthly by our Contributing Correspondent, David Dolan, author, speaker and Major News Network Reporter. David has written the Israel News Digest since 1986. Julie Stahl is also a Contributing Correspondent. Contributions are welcome. We encourage the Body of Messiah to use this material for prayer and intercession and to be kept informed regarding current events in Israel today.
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