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[Adventurer]

How to sell 'ethical warfare'Claim moral superiority, intimidate enemies and crush dissent � Israel's media management is not just impressive, it's terrifying

Neve Gordon guardian.co.uk, Friday 16 January 2009 20.30 GMT Article history

One of my students was arrested yesterday and spent the night in a prison cell. R's offence was protesting the Israeli assault on Gaza. He joins over 700 other Israelis who have been detained since the beginning of Israel's ruthless war on Gaza: an estimated 230 of whom are still behind bars. Within the Israeli context, this strategy of quelling protest and stifling resistance is unprecedented, and it is quite disturbing that the international media has failed to comment on it.

Simultaneously, the Israeli media has been toeing the government line to such a degree that no criticism of the war has been voiced on any of the three local television stations. Indeed, the situation has become so absurd that reporters and anchors are currently less critical of the war than the military spokespeople. In the absence of any critical analysis, it is not so surprising that 78% of Israelis, or about 98% of all Jewish Israelis, support the war.

But eliding critical voices is not the only way that public support has been secured. Support has also been manufactured through ostensibly logical argumentation. One of the ways the media, military and government have been convincing Israelis to rally behind the assault is by claiming that Israel is carrying out a moral military campaign against Hamas. The logic, as Eyal Weizman has cogently observed in his groundbreaking book Hollow Land, is one of restraint.

The Israeli media continuously emphasises Israel's restraint by underscoring the gap between what the military forces could do to the Palestinians and what they actually do. Here are a few examples of the refrains Israelis hear daily while listening to the news:

� Israel could bomb houses from the air without warning, but it has military personnel contact � by phone no less � the residents 10 minutes in advance of an attack to alert them that their house is about to be destroyed. The military, so the subtext goes, could demolish houses without such forewarnings, but it does not do so because it values human life.

� Israel deploys teaser bombs � ones that do not actually ruin houses � a few minutes before it fires lethal missiles; again, to show that it could kill more Palestinians but chooses not to do so.

� Israel knows that Hamas leaders are hiding in al-Shifa hospital. The intimation is that it does not raze the medical centre to the ground even though it has the capacity to do so.

� Due to the humanitarian crisis the Israeli military stops its attacks for a few hours each day and allows humanitarian convoys to enter the Gaza Strip. Again, the unspoken claim is that it could have barred these convoys from entering.

The message Israel conveys through these refrains has two different meanings depending on the target audience.

To the Palestinians, the message is one that carries a clear threat: Israel's restraint could end and there is always the possibility of further escalation. Regardless of how lethal Israel's military attacks are now, the idea is to intimidate the Palestinian population by underscoring that the violence can always become more deadly and brutal. This guarantees that violence, both when it is and when it is not deployed, remains an ever-looming threat.

The message to the Israelis is a moral one. The subtext is that the Israeli military could indiscriminately unleash its vast arsenal of violence, but chooses not to, because its forces, unlike Hamas, respect human life.

This latter claim appears to have considerable resonance among Israelis, and, yet, it is based on a moral fallacy. The fact that one could be more brutal but chooses to use restraint does not in any way entail that one is moral. The fact that the Israeli military could have razed the entire Gaza Strip, but instead destroyed only 15% of the buildings does not make its actions moral. The fact that the Israeli military could have killed thousands of Palestinian children during this campaign, and, due to restraint, killed "only" 300, does not make Operation Cast Lead ethical.

Ultimately, the moral claims the Israeli government uses to support its actions during this war are empty. They actually reveal Israel's unwillingness to confront the original source of the current violence, which is not Hamas, but rather the occupation of the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem. My student, R, and the other Israeli protesters seem to have understood this truism; in order to stop them from voicing it, Israel has stomped on their civil liberties by arresting them


[url=ww.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/16/gaza-middleeast1]MISKALIM[/url]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

Article would have been good if it was mentioned that there isn't a single case of Israel's enemies not trying to kill as many as possible in their war against Israel.


Were they to outright defeat Israel in war they would show no mercy.

At the end the article also fails to mention that Arafat would not accept Bill Clinton's peace plan. Which would have given the Palestinians all of Gaza , 95% of the West Bank , much of East Jeruselem and 30 Billion in compensation.

[Jandar]

Misadventure,


So your point is that you can get no good publicity from a war action so why try?

[kotakji]

From a military perspective it seems like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

[Kuros]

[Adventurer]

[Jandar]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

[Adventurer]

The administration by and large shared Arafat's views. The Palestinians' most legitimate concern, in American eyes, was that without additional preparatory work the risk of failure was too great. In June, speaking of a possible summit, Clinton told Barak, "I want to do this, but not under circumstances that will kill Oslo." Clinton also agreed with Arafat on the need for action on the interim issues. He extracted a commitment from Barak that the third Israeli withdrawal would take place with or without a final deal, and, in June, he privately told the Chairman he would support a "substantial" withdrawal were Camp David to fail. Describing all the reasons for Arafat's misgivings, he urged Barak to put himself "in Arafat's shoes" and to open the summit with a series of goodwill gestures toward the Palestinians. Finally, Clinton assured Arafat on the eve of the summit that he would not be blamed if the summit did not succeed. "There will be," he pledged, "no finger-pointing."

Yet, having concurred with the Palestinians' contentions on the merits, the US immediately proceeded to disregard them. Ultimately, there was neither additional preparation before the summit, nor a third redeployment of Israeli troops, nor any action on interim issues. And Arafat got blamed in no uncertain terms.

Why this discrepancy between promise and performance? Most importantly, because Barak's reasoning�and his timetable�had an irresistible logic to them. If nothing was going to happen at pre-summit negotiations�and nothing was�if his government was on the brink of collapse, and if he would put on Camp David's table concessions he had not made before, how could the President say no? What would be gained by waiting? Certainly not the prospect offered by Arafat�another interminable negotiation over a modest territorial withdrawal. And most probably, as many analysts predicted, an imminent confrontation, if Arafat proceeded with his plan to unilaterally announce a state on September 13, 2000, or if the frustration among the Palestinians�of which the world had had a glimpse during the May 2000 upheaval�were to reach boiling point once again.

As for the interim issues, US officials believed that whatever Palestinian anger resulted from Israeli lapses would evaporate in the face of an appealing final deal. As a corollary, from the President on down, US officials chose to use their leverage with the Israelis to obtain movement on the issues that had to be dealt with in a permanent agreement rather than expend it on interim ones.

The President's decision to ignore his commitment to Arafat and blame the Palestinians after the summit points to another factor, which is how the two sides were perceived during the negotiations. As seen from Washington, Camp David exemplified Barak's political courage and Arafat's political passivity, risk-taking on the one hand, risk-aversion on the other. The first thing on the President's mind after Camp David was thus to help the Prime Minister, whose concessions had jeopardized his political standing at home. Hence the finger-pointing. And the last thing on Clinton's mind was to insist on a further Israeli withdrawal. Hence the absence of a safety net. This brings us to the heart of the matter�the substance of the negotiations themselves, and the reality behind the prevailing perception that a generous Israeli offer met an unyielding Palestinian response.

4.
Was there a generous Israeli offer and, if so, was it peremptorily rejected by Arafat?

If there is one issue that Israelis agree on, it is that Barak broke every conceivable taboo and went as far as any Israeli prime minister had gone or could go. Coming into office on a pledge to retain Jerusalem as Israel's "eternal and undivided capital," he ended up appearing to agree to Palestinian sovereignty�first over some, then over all, of the Arab sectors of East Jerusalem. Originally adamant in rejecting the argument that Israel should swap some of the occupied West Bank territory for land within its 1967 borders, he finally came around to that view. After initially speaking of a Palestinian state covering roughly 80 percent of the West Bank, he gradually moved up to the low 90s before acquiescing to the mid-90s range.

Even so, it is hard to state with confidence how far Barak was actually prepared to go. His strategy was predicated on the belief that Israel ought not to reveal its final positions�not even to the United States�unless and until the endgame was in sight. Had any member of the US peace team been asked to describe Barak's true positions before or even during Camp David�indeed, were any asked that question today�they would be hard-pressed to answer. Barak's worst fear was that he would put forward Israeli concessions and pay the price domestically, only to see the Palestinians using the concessions as a new point of departure. And his trust in the Americans went only so far, fearing that they might reveal to the Palestinians what he was determined to conceal.

As a consequence, each Israeli position was presented as unmovable, a red line that approached "the bone" of Israeli interests; this served as a means of both forcing the Palestinians to make concessions and preserving Israel's bargaining positions in the event they did not. On the eve of Camp David, Israeli negotiators described their purported red lines to their American counterparts: the annexation of more than 10 percent of the West Bank, sovereignty over parts of the strip along the Jordan River, and rejection of any territorial swaps. At the opening of Camp David, Barak warned the Americans that he could not accept Palestinian sovereignty over any part of East Jerusalem other than a purely symbolic "foothold." Earlier, he had claimed that if Arafat asked for 95 percent of the West Bank, there would be no deal. Yet, at the same time, he gave clear hints that Israel was willing to show more flexibility if Arafat was prepared to "contemplate" the endgame. Bottom lines and false bottoms: the tension, and the ambiguity, were always there.

Gradual shifts in Barak's positions also can be explained by the fact that each proposal seemed to be based less on a firm estimate of what Israel had to hold on to and more on a changing appraisal of what it could obtain. Barak apparently took the view that, faced with a sufficiently attractive proposal and an appropriately unattractive alternative, the Palestinians would have no choice but to say yes. In effect, each successive Palestinian "no" led to the next best Israeli assessment of what, in their right minds, the Palestinians couldn't turn down.


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The final and largely unnoticed consequence of Barak's approach is that, strictly speaking, there never was an Israeli offer. Determined to preserve Israel's position in the event of failure, and resolved not to let the Palestinians take advantage of one-sided compromises, the Israelis always stopped one, if not several, steps short of a proposal. The ideas put forward at Camp David were never stated in writing, but orally conveyed. They generally were presented as US concepts, not Israeli ones; indeed, despite having demanded the opportunity to negotiate face to face with Arafat, Barak refused to hold any substantive meeting with him at Camp David out of fear that the Palestinian leader would seek to put Israeli concessions on the record. Nor were the proposals detailed. If written down, the American ideas at Camp David would have covered no more than a few pages. Barak and the Americans insisted that Arafat accept them as general "bases for negotiations" before launching into more rigorous negotiations.

According to those "bases," Palestine would have sovereignty over 91 percent of the West Bank; Israel would annex 9 percent of the West Bank and, in exchange, Palestine would have sovereignty over parts of pre-1967 Israel equivalent to 1 percent of the West Bank, but with no indication of where either would be. On the highly sensitive issue of refugees, the proposal spoke only of a "satisfactory solution." Even on Jerusalem, where the most detail was provided, many blanks remained to be filled in. Arafat was told that Palestine would have sovereignty over the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City, but only a loosely defined "permanent custodianship" over the Haram al-Sharif, the third holiest site in Islam. The status of the rest of the city would fluctuate between Palestinian sovereignty and functional autonomy. Finally, Barak was careful not to accept anything. His statements about positions he could support were conditional, couched as a willingness to negotiate on the basis of the US proposals so long as Arafat did the same.

5.
Much as they tried, the Palestinian leaders have proved utterly unable to make their case. In Israel and the US, they are consistently depicted as uncompromising and incapable of responding to Barak's supreme effort. Yet, in their own eyes, they were the ones who made the principal concessions.

For all the talk about peace and reconciliation, most Palestinians were more resigned to the two-state solution than they were willing to embrace it; they were prepared to accept Israel's existence, but not its moral legitimacy. The war for the whole of Palestine was over because it had been lost. Oslo, as they saw it, was not about negotiating peace terms but terms of surrender. Bearing this perspective in mind explains the Palestinians' view that Oslo itself is the historic compromise�an agreement to concede 78 percent of mandatory Palestine to Israel. And it explains why they were so sensitive to the Israelis' use of language. The notion that Israel was "offering" land, being "generous," or "making concessions" seemed to them doubly wrong�in a single stroke both affirming Israel's right and denying the Palestinians'. For the Palestinians, land was not given but given back.

Even during the period following the Oslo agreement, the Palestinians considered that they were the ones who had come up with creative ideas to address Israeli concerns. While denouncing Israeli settlements as illegal, they accepted the principle that Israel would annex some of the West Bank settlements in exchange for an equivalent amount of Israeli land being transferred to the Palestinians. While insisting on the Palestinian refugees' right to return to homes lost in 1948, they were prepared to tie this right to a mechanism of implementation providing alternative choices for the refugees while limiting the numbers returning to Israel proper. Despite their insistence on Israel's withdrawal from all lands occupied in 1967, they were open to a division of East Jerusalem granting Israel sovereignty over its Jewish areas (the Jewish Quarter, the Wailing Wall, and the Jewish neighborhoods) in clear contravention of this principle.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/14380


My notes, I was alive around that time, and I remember Barak wasting time with the Syrians and making the Palestinians feel ignored, and then he tried to rush deal, and he hadn't kept to the agreement of moving out of Palestinian villages near Jerusalem. I recall that. That's all very important. Arafat was suspicious of Barak even if Barak had some good intentions. Barak way too long to try to come up with a deal. A deal would have been possible, but Barak also procrastinated, and that is not Arafat's fault. The two sides almost got to where they would be both agree on something by time ran out. Why should the Palestinians simply be responsible for Barak's procrastination. There has to be trust building between enemies, and Barak didn't withdraw from the villages because of domestic politics. How is that Arafat's fault?

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

Lets start with one question why give Arafat such a benefit of the doubt since it has come to be known that after he died that he stole a huge amount of from the Palestinian people?