Israel Palestine Infos
Uri Avnery
August 20, 2011
The Return of the Generals
SINCE THE beginning of the conflict, the extremists of both sides have always
played into each other’s hands. The cooperation between them was always much
more effective than the ties between the corresponding peace activists.
“Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” asked the prophet Amos (3:3).
Well, seems they can.
This was proved again this week.
AT THE beginning of the week, Binyamin Netanyahu was desperately looking for a
way out of an escalating internal crisis. The social protest movement was
gathering momentum and posing a growing danger to his government.
The struggle was going on, but the protest had already made a huge difference.
The whole content of the public discourse had changed beyond recognition.
Social ideas were taking over, pushing aside the hackneyed talk about
“security”. TV talk show panels, previously full of used generals, were now
packed with social workers and professors of economics. One of the consequences
was that women were also much more prominent.
And then it happened. A small extremist Islamist group in the
In a jiffy, the economics professors vanished from the TV screens, and their
place was taken by the old gang of exes – ex-generals, ex-secret-service chiefs,
ex-policemen, all male, of course, accompanied by their entourage of obsequious
military correspondents and far-right politicians.
With a sigh of relief, Netanyahu returned to his usual stance. Here he was,
surrounded by generals, the he-man, the resolute fighter, the Defender of
IT WAS, for him and his government, an incredible stroke of luck.
It can be compared to what happened in 1982. Ariel Sharon, then Minister of
Defense, had decided to attack the Palestinians and Syrians in Lebanon, He flew
to
A few days later, the most extreme Palestinian group, led by Abu Nidal, Yasser
Arafat’s mortal enemy, made an attempt on the life of the Israeli ambassador in
This week’s attack was also an answer to a prayer. Seems that God loves
Netanyahu and the military establishment. The incident not only wiped the
protest off the screen, it also put an end to any serious chance of taking
billions off the huge military budget in order to strengthen the social
services. On the contrary, the event proved that we need a sophisticated
electronic fence along the
BEFORE THIS miracle occurred, it looked as if the protest movement was
unstoppable.
Whatever Netanyahu did was too little, too late, and just wrong.
In the first days, Netanyahu treated the whole thing as a childish prank,
unworthy of the attention of responsible adults. When he realized that this
movement was serious, he mumbled some vague proposals for lowering the price of
apartments, but by then the protest had already moved far beyond the original
demand for “affordable housing”. The slogan was now “The People Want Social
Justice”
After the huge 250,000-strong demonstration in Tel Aviv, the protest leaders
were facing a dilemma: how to proceed? Yet another mass protest in Tel Aviv
might mean falling attendance. The solution was sheer genius: not another big
demonstration in Tel Aviv, but smaller demonstrations all over the country. This
disarmed the reproach that the protesters are spoiled Tel Aviv brats, “sushi
eaters and water-pipe smokers” as one minister put it. It also brought the
protest to the masses of disadvantaged Oriental Jewish inhabitants of the
“periphery”, from Afula in the North to Beer Sheva in the South, most of them
the traditional voters of Likud. It became a love-fest of fraternization.
So what does a run-of-the-mill politician do in such a situation? Well, of
course, he appoints a committee. So Netanyahu told a respectable professor with
a good reputation to set up a committee which would, in cooperation with nine
ministers, no less, come up with a set of solutions. He even told him that he
was ready to completely change his own convictions.
(He did already change one of his convictions when he announced in 2009 that he
now advocates the Two-State Solution. But after that momentous about-face,
absolutely nothing changed on the ground.)
The youngsters in the tents joked that “Bibi” could not change his opinions,
because he has none. But that is a mistake – he does indeed have very definite
opinions on both the national and the social levels: “the whole of Eretz
The young tent leaders countered the appointment of the establishment committee
with an unexpected move: they appointed a 60-strong advisory council of their
own, composed of some of the most prominent university professors, including an
Arab female professor and a moderate rabbi, and headed by a former deputy
governor of the Bank of
The government committee has already made it clear that it will not deal with
middle class problems but concentrate on those of the lowest socio-economic
groups. Netanyahu has added that he will not automatically adopt their (future)
recommendations, but weight them against the economic possibilities. In other
words, he does not trust his own nominees to understand the economic facts of
life.
AT THAT point, Netanyahu and his aides pinned their hopes on two dates:
September and November 2011.
In November, the rainy season usually sets in. No drop of rain before that. But
when it starts to rain cats and dogs, it was hoped in Netanyahu’s office, the
spoiled Tel Aviv kids will run for shelter. End of the Rothschild tent city.
Well, I remember spending some miserable weeks in the winter of the 1948 war in
worse tents, in the midst of a sea of mud and water. I don’t think that the rain
will make the tent-dwellers give up their struggle, even if Netanyahu’s
religious partners send the most fervent Jewish prayers for rain to the high
heavens.
But before that, in September, just a few weeks away, the Palestinians – it was
hoped - would start a crisis that will divert attention. This week they already
submitted to the UN General Assembly a request to recognize the State of
It’s a nice dream (for the Liebermans), but Palestinians had so far showed no
inclination to violence.
All that changed this week.
FROM NOW on, Netanyahu and his
colleagues can direct events as they wish.
They have already “liquidated” the chiefs of the group which carried out the
attack, called “the Popular Resistance Committees”. This happened while the
fire-fight along the border was still going on. The army had been forewarned and
was ready. The fact that the attackers succeeded nevertheless in crossing the
border and shooting at vehicles was ascribed to an operational failure.
What now? The group in
In other words, Netanyahu has his hand on the tap of violence, and he can raise
or lower the flames at will.
His desire to put an end to the social protest movement may well play a role in
his decisions.
THIS BRINGS us back to the big question of the protest movement: can one bring
about real change, as distinct from forcing some grudging concessions from the
government, without becoming a political force?
Can this movement succeed as long as there is a government which has the power
to start - or deepen - a “security crisis” at any time?
And the related question: can one talk about social justice without talking
about peace?
A few days ago, while strolling among the tents on
When I said that, I could not have imagined how clearly this would be
demonstrated only two days later.
REAL CHANGE means replacing this government with a new and very different
political set up.
Here and there people in the tents are already talking about a new party. But
elections are two years away, and for the time being there is no sign of a real
crack in the right-wing coalition that might bring the elections closer. Will
the protest be able to keep up its momentum for two whole years?
Israeli governments have yielded in the past to mass demonstrations and public
uprisings. The formidable Golda Meir resigned in the face of mass demonstrations
blaming her for the omissions that led to the fiasco at the start of the Yom
Kippur War. The government coalitions of both Netanyahu and Ehud Barak in the
1990s broke under the pressure of an indignant public opinion.
Can this happen now? In view of the military flare-up this week, it does not
look likely. But stranger things have happened between heaven and earth,
especially in