Interview:
YIGAL CARMON
Dr. Aaron Lerner of IMRA interviewed Yigal Carmon, former adviser on terrorism to both former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, in Hebrew, on April 16, 1997:
IMRA: David Bar-Illan, senior advisor to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, told IMRA yesterday that Israel will only resume the political talks when the PA acts on security issues. He says that the government will rely on reports from the security agencies that the PA has taken serious security measures. Is the kind of information available to Israeli intelligence such that it allows
for clear cut conclusion or does it rely on interpretation?
Carmon: First of all, the fact is that the negotiations have renewed without the Palestinian Authority (PA) doing anything. Arafat hasn't canceled the green light and the warnings about attacks have renewed. Yet despite this, Foreign Minister Levy has already met with Arafat in Malta thus granting him renewed Israeli legitimacy.
Despite the fact that the security demands the Israeli government made to the PA, which were adopted at the special cabinet meeting after the Tel Aviv bombing, were not met, and the heads of the PA continue to declare that they won't meet these demands until their political demands are met, the prime minister authorized
Why have they buried the report of the murder of 16 soldiers by the PA police?
the foreign minister to meet Arafat.
By doing this, the government has essentially accepted the equation that Har Homa is the same as terror and thus Israel and the PA are on equal footing and the negotiations can be renewed. That's why Dennis Ross is coming.
It is important to note that the PLO has not agreed to unilaterally end terror. Instead they make this subject to their getting political concessions from Israel.
Regarding measuring Palestinian compliance, there are absolute criteria. But one can't rely on the Israeli government to accurately report on Palestinian compliance.
For example, when the Minister of Defense visited Hebron he told the reporters that the PA was honoring the agreement. Yet when the Prime Minister wrote a letter to Clinton complaining about serious PA violations of the agreement, he noted that instead of 400 the PA has 1,200 security men in the Hebron area in violation of the agreement.
It is possible to objectively measure how many weapons are seized, wanted terrorists handed over to
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Israel, if the incitement has stopped and if actions have been taken against the Hamas infrastructure.
IMRA: Can these things take place secretly so that someone from the outside would not be aware of them?
Carmon: It is all known. If the PA hands over terrorists then they are put on trial here. It is enough to turn on Palestinian TV and radio to know if the incitement has ended. If Arafat truly acts against the Hamas infrastructure then Hamas will react and we will all hear about it, etc. All this hasn't yet happened.
IMRA: Is there the possibility that the intelligence services will engage in wishful thinking? See the cup one-quarter full and say its full?
Carmon: There is a problem in the realm of intelligence cooperation. First of all, it must be secret and secondly, Israeli intelligence relies on PLO intelligence so much that at least in the area of Judea and Samaria there has been the unhealthy development that Israeli intelligence covers up for Jibril Rajoub. But security cooperation is just one element of security. The rest can be measured.
IMRA: Bar-Illan said that unlike the previous administration, when there are violations the Netanyahu government makes them public.
Carmon: It is public knowledge that it took the prime minister five months to approve the public release of the list of Palestinian violations.
Why have they buried the report of the murder of 16 soldiers by the PA police when even the press knows that they were murders in cold blood by snipers and ambushes? Why don't they publish the full report? After all, a complete report was prepared about each murder.
ISLE OF PEACE DIARY
(Continued from p.6)
Israel's government should have responded with overwhelming force to the murders at Naharayim and Tel Aviv, and to the riots in Hebron and Bethlehem. A lesson would be taught that killing Jews triggers the rod of iron, and the inhabiting at long last by Jews of all their covenanted patrimony. The banks of the Yarmuk would again be a center of Jewish life instead of a base for killing Jews.
Offering the Arabs emoluments--building them an airport in Gaza, and homes in Jerusalem-- incite their blood lust and sense of entitlement. Like Haman, they never are satisfied so long as a single Jew is alive (Esther 5:9-14). The savagery at Naharayim showed that when Israel surrenders its patrimony, "peace" means death.
Eugene Narrett is professor of English at Framingham State College, in Massachusetts.
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