[(Continued from p.6)]
"The Israeli government takes no actions undermining trust, including deportations, attacks on civilians, confiscation and/or demolition of Palestinian homes and property as a punitive measure or to facilitate Israeli construction; destruction of Palestinian institutions and infrastructure; and other measures specified in the Tenet work plan." Also, "All official Israeli institutions end incitement against Palestinians."
Note that Israeli security measures in response to Arab terror are defined as "undermining trust," which means, conceivably, that they are undertaken with malicious intent. Also, to achieve balance, Israel, too, is accused of incitement. Moreover, Israeli construction is considered to undermine confidence.
The latter is no mere theoretical matter, as indicated in the Bedein Report (published in the Hebrew weekly Besheva): "When I asked a U.S. Embassy spokesperson whether renovation of the Hurva Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City would be considered illegal construction, the response I received in the name of United States Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer was that indeed, any construction in the Old City of Jerusalem would be deemed illegal according to U.S. foreign policy."
In brief, we may state without exaggeration that we are facing a Road Map to Hell, a document whose consequences are no less severe than those of the British White Paper of 1939. The Oslo Agreements were child's play compared to this Road Map.
Methodological criticism of the Oslo Accords pointed to a basic flaw: Israel's haste to establish the Palestinian Authority and accord the Palestinians authority, territory, weapons and funds, while leaving the chief points of disagreement -- borders, refugees, Jerusalem, settlements and sovereignty -- to be resolved later. This enabled the Palestinians to exploit their achievements in an attempt to force their own preferred solution to the deferred issues to be resolved.
Sharon apparently failed to learn a lesson from the Oslo Accords, having repeated the tactical error under far more serious circumstances: This time, he is paying the Palestinians an advance in the form of a sovereign state. From that point on, they can fight to achieve their perceived objectives as a bona fide state, a member of the United Nations, equipped with all tools, authority and individual support entailed thereby.
After two and a half years of the present Intifada, Yasser Arafat can credit himself with having achieved all his war objectives: A Palestinian state within immediate reach, international involvement and supervision, introduction of the United Nations and Europe into the area, military involvement by Jordan and Egypt, elimination of Jewish settlements and release of Israel's effective hold on most parts of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. It is chilling indeed to realize that we have paid for his achievements with over a thousand Jews murdered and many thousands more wounded in terror attacks since the Oslo Accords were drafted.
Elyakim Ha'etzni is an Israeli attorney and essayist.
I overheard a water cooler-type conversation the other day that really made me laugh. Person A was saying to person B that he couldn't understand what all the fuss is about in the Middle East. "After all," the former said, "both the Jews and Arabs are members of the Semantic race."
I stopped in mid-stride, did my best slapstick double take, and thought to myself, "That's the problem, they're not both Semantic. The Arabs alone are members of the Semantic race."
Nevertheless, I found it amusingly ironic how this verbal faux pas underscores many of the basic misunderstandings that the world has about the Middle East conflict. These misunderstanding then give rise to the wrong impression that "Palestinian Arabs" are the underdogs and that they have a valid position.
For example, there are the endless charges of Israeli brutality and massacres that supposedly took place over the past 60 years. The most recent, of course, was the "Jenin Massacre." In the great mistory [mis-history] of the conflict, Jenin is a relatively minor tale (so far). Most episodes that are used by Palestinian Arabs and anti-Israel supporters to incite their followers surround the events of the three major wars fought in 1948, 1967, and 1973. Typical are the claims that Israeli soldiers attacked and killed helpless, unarmed civilians. To heighten the horrors of the imaginary atrocities, the reports of civilians "massacred" always include a large number of Arab women and children.
To illustrate how insidious this semantic
problem is the last two sentences in the preceding paragraph
contain seven misused words. They are:
1. Attacked
2. Helpless
3. Unarmed
4. Civilians
5. Massacred
6. Women
7. Children
[(Continued on p.8)]
June 2003 - 7 - Outpost