I received this transcript of a lecture given by
Ehud Ya'ari in
Melbourne, Australia on June 29th, 2004. It's an eye opener. I encourage you to read this:
The Intifada, this current round of confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians, is basically over. It is over and it is still on. It is over (because) it doesn't have any oomph anymore, no momentum, very limited public support on the Palestinian side. Very few people believe it is going anywhere. It is still going on, because there is no exit mechanism at hand. The Intifada has long surpassed its peak but nobody knows how to navigate out of it, and therefore there is a certain degree of violence, which still constitutes a serious threat.
Now certainly the volume of violence which is retained has dramatically and significantly reduced over the past four or five months. Very briefly I will tell you that the volume of incidents, as well as warnings (warnings meaning those pieces of information that get into our intelligence community as warnings of something that is being planned)� (both) warnings and actual incidents are down between 50 and 60 percent all over the place. This is very significant. Out of what remains, the great majority of incidents involved attacks sniping, shooting, road mines etc in certain sectors of the Gaza Strip, but not in the West Bank. Still, in May Israel's security services were successful in foiling no less than 19 suicide bombing attacks within Israel, and until I left Israel last Monday night (21 June), the number for June was 11. Which is very respectable because each one of them can change the political lay of the land in no time.
What is very important is that the big effort by the Hamas leadership to mount a long expected revenge operation for the killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin and the good Dr (Abdel Aziz) Rantissi was foiled. The attempt was to send 8 suicide bombers simultaneously, to the same location, one after the other in order to create some sort of a mega-operation. This was foiled along the border of the Gaza Strip. Hamas admits today, at the top level of Hamas--whether it is in their own internal memos or leaflets or whether it is on the telephone with a guy like me-- they admit that they are unable to mount the operation that they have promised since the killing of Sheik Yassin. It had to be-- and I am quoting them-it had to be an earthquake.
I believe they are unable to do it, (but) it doesn't matter what I believe. What is important is that are admitting publicly now to their own constituents that they are incapable of mounting that operation. This is because 1) the offensive mode of the IDF and the GSS, General Security Service is extremely effective. We may like it, we may not. Nobody wants to go into cities at night in order to arrest people. Nobody wants to go into Rafah in a very densely populated area. But the bottom line is, this is working. Nothing else is. In the West Bank the terrorist network is destroyed. I told you just a minute ago, still 19 suicide bombing attempts in May, 11 by June 22. But these attempts are orchestrated by amateurs, by third and forth echelon operators who don't even know how to do it. They are not sophisticated (so far) and have the wrong type of explosives - a very important point, by the way.
In Gaza: Gaza is contained, in the sense that no one can break out of the fence in Gaza. No one, except the two Pakistanis holding British passports, hiding themselves in a container, going through the border crossing at Ashdod, which was a mistake by an Israeli security guard, a human mistake, not the system. We do not have people coming out of Gaza into Israel.
The sense that I get from the Palestinians is a sense of defeat. Arafat is seeking a way out now. He is willing to do something about violence. He is willing. He wants to know his price. He wants to see a guy like me that he has known for many years, who is not too friendly on television, because he seeks contact, he understands that the old channels don't work. The old lefty-European combination, you know the combination� (He wants to know)What can you bring me from Sharon? It is the same sense that I pointed out to you about Hamas towards their own constituency. People at the top end of the Palestinian establishment, the closest entourage to Arafat who is now destined to become the new Palestinian Interior Minister, Head of the Security Operations are saying "we have lost it".
Second point: lurking in the dark is a shipment of eighty 107mm Katushya rockets, like we used to see from Lebanon. They can reach quite far, cannot be pinpointed to a target but can really reach Israeli towns. 80 of these, and a good number of anti aircraft missiles are waiting now in the Sinai to be smuggled into the Gaza Strip. And whatever you see happening in Gaza are almost desperate attempts by the IDF to prevent the introduction of these new weapon systems. The reason is that a Katushya in Gaza is like a Scud missile in Syria or Iraq. It immediately threatens your cities. The refinery in Ashkelon and Ashkelon itself, Sderot, Netivot, Ofakim, and further, deeper into Israel.
As I was saying, what we are missing is an exit mechanism from this round of violence. The exit mechanism is now supposed to be unilateral disengagement. Finally, adopted by Prime Minister Sharon against his, lets' call them his older instincts. He is seriously--and I have been a critic of his for many years--I believe he is sincerely trying to pursue it. What I can tell you about this is A) there is nothing unilateral about this plan, and B) there is no disengagement there. Not because Sharon does not want it, he would like it to be a unilateral disengagement. It can't happen and it won't.
It cannot be unilateral because you already saw Sharon was seeking a bilateral arrangement with the United States of America - the exchange of letters with Bush. It cannot be unilateral because already Sharon was pleading with the Egyptians to strike a second deal with them over the evacuation of Gaza. It is not going to be unilateral because the Quartet is going to issue its own mini-roadmap for the disengagement from Gaza. And most importantly, and I am quoting Sharon now, because Israel cannot pull out of the (17) Gaza Strip settlements and evacuate the military installations under fire. Which means if the Palestinians decide to keep on shooting, to keep sniping, to keep on planting roadside bombs, and the lot- no evacuation.
When we are talking about the dismantlement of Gush Katif We are speaking about convoys of hundreds of trucks moving within range of the pistol, not just machine guns. Hundreds of trucks to evacuate everything, from baby cribs to big agricultural equipment. Sharon is saying, and I believe him, we are not going to do it under fire. It cannot be done under fire because the alternative to do it under fire means that first the Israeli army has to occupy the city of Khan Younis, 300,000 people, bordering Gush Katif. The smaller city of Deir Ba'alah and everything around. So unilateral it is not going to be.
It will have to be what my friend Dennis Ross calls pre-coordinated unilateralism. Call it whatever you want, he is the diplomat. We are talking about this or that type of agreement.
Number 2, disengagement. There is not going to be disengagement. Disengagement means you disengage. But we are not going to disengage because we are going to be all around Gaza. The navy is going to be on the sea to prevent smuggling etc, the army, the IDF, will be along this pink strip which is called Philadelphi Route, which is a narrow strip separating the Gaza Strip from the Egyptian Sinai, and we will be all around the fence. Pale>stinians seeking employment in Israel will have to pass through the gates into Israel and all sorts of goods, medical equipment, will have to come from Israel.
Sharon's instinct is to throw Gaza into the lap of the Egyptians. Remember old Rabin? Rabin said he wished Gaza would drown in the Mediterranean. Well Sharon realises, and Sharon is in many ways a disciple of Rabin, there was a very close personal relationship, people forget it, between the two. Rabin made Sharon's career in the army. He kept him there all those years. In many ways Sharon is more of a Rabinist than Mr Peres.So Sharon's instinct is to throw Gaza at the Egyptians, in their face. I will come to the Egyptians later, but the Egyptians are not in a hurry to take it. So nothing is going to be unilateral or it doesn't happen. Disengagement is not going to be because Israel will envelope the Gaza Strip. For security reasons we will have to be around.
Which leaves us with a very good and reasonable agenda. Let's first evacuate Gaza and then deal with evacuating settlements in the northern part of the West Bank. It leaves us with a concept which still has to be developed, but it doesn't leave us with a plan. My argument now is, there is no plan for disengagement. (There is) a concept, an idea, a policy approach-- many good things. A plan - nobody has at this moment.
You may ask yourself, why did Sharon, therefore, offer to evacuate the whole of the Gaza Strip in a unilateral move, insisting there is no Palestinian partner and under no circumstances would he negotiate this withdrawal with any (Palestinian) partner who is inside (the PA) now. And you may ask yourself why did Sharon not offer it 8 to 10 months before, when we had the "reform" government of Abu Mazen. With our good friend Mohammad Dahlan as Interior Minister, who was supposedly in charge of internal security. Had Sharon offered (the deal) to Abu Mazen-- who is no saint by the way, no saint and no supporter of St Kilda-- But he said publicly and in Arabic that the activities of the Palestinian resistance is terrorism.
Now had Sharon said to Abu Mazen, "look, I'm willing to give up the whole of the Gaza Strip, I am willing to throw in four settlements in the Northern part of the West Bank to allow for continuity of the Palestinian territory." What would have happened? We don't know. But my guess is Abu Mazen would have driven back from Aqaba to Ramallah saying to his constituents, "I can deliver something that Arafat can never deliver. I can deliver Gaza. I can get Sharon, the father of the settlements, to evacuate settlements." Unfortunately he didn't. And when you ask Sharon personally, just to be fair to him, why this delay-I told him politics is about timing too-- he says "it took me longer to reach a conclusion." I don't know how to argue with that.
The third point I wanted to make to you, and bear with me as I want to offer a few comments about the broader picture, because I think in Israel it is very difficult to think of the broader picture. And I think it is very important, especially if indeed (and I am not sure) we are coming slowly into what may turn to be the last lap of the intifada. Please remember last year we marked--we did not celebrate-- two major events, the 30th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, and the other was 10 years of the Oslo Accord. Again, we did not celebrate them, and they were mixed together, because Yom Kippur is in October, Oslo was in September. And they are very significant because what you have is a reminder that the Yom Kippur War in 1973 was the watershed in which-- and I put it very bluntly-- in which the Arab states took the decision to pull out of direct military confrontation with the state of Israel.
This is the single most important feature of the landscape. For 30 years, the Arab world has opted out of direct involvement fighting us. Oh yes, they have a position, they support the Palestinians. Hooray, hooray. They have many criticisms of us, they will mount diplomatic offensives against us, as many as you can count>. They will distribute anti-Semitic material through their media and schools, etc, but they will not get into a direct fight with Israel. That was the decision of the Arab world in 1973 and they have stuck to it. With no deviation for 30 years. Not a small thing. When we had military engagements with the Arabs since '73 it was either because we initiated, such as the Lebanon War in 1982, after the only ceasefire that Arafat has ever kept. Or, military confrontation with Israel was a sideshow to a different war, as during the first Gulf War and Saddam lobbed 40 Scuds into Israel. But it was basically not a war against Israel; it was in order to help him in a different war.
Otherwise the Arab world has opted either for cold peace with Israel, see Egypt, see (in a different format) the peace treaty with Jordan, and maintained it. Or they opted for a cold war, see Syria. And maintained it.
Recently, there was the 30th anniversary of UNDOF (United Nations Disengagement Observer Force), the UN force on the Golan Heights separating (Israel from Syria) along a long and narrow strip, sometimes 400 meters, sometimes up to 10 kilometers, separating IDF positions from Syrian position. They are usually very "hush hush" but in view of their success-nobody's shooting over the Golan Heights. It's the quietest place in the country. And for the 30th anniversary, they got special permission from Kofi Annan to get an Israeli to do a story. Fine. So I go there, and the first thing I see in the dining room is a map of Israel with all the places they are forbidden to go to because it is too dangerous-- Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Afula, Haifa, any town you can think of. What I am trying to tell you is that it is so quiet on the Golan Heights that it is "dangerous" for those Canadians and Austrians etc. to go and visit Nazareth, Haifa, Afula and Jerusalem.
Syria is a bankrupt state; I call it Africa of the Middle East.
Syria has not bought a new combat aircraft since 1988; they never modernised or renovated their fleet of 4,000 tanks. Nobody knows, not even the Syrian Chief of Staff, how many of the Syrian tanks are capable of really moving.
But it is not neglect. It is a decision taken by Syria: no more war with Israel. Without saying it like Sadat did. So what did they do, they invested in scud missiles, chemical weapons, those weapons that you invest in, in order not to use. This is the main picture of the situation.
What is important in our context is the following. By taking the decision-- and I repeat, all Arab states, all Arab governments (have) opted out (of the Arab-Israeli conflict). What it means is that, in many way they have practically abandoned the Palestinians. They did. Today in the Arab world they watch the Intifada. Israel is whining, the Palestinians are whining, Israelis are getting killed, Palestinians are getting killed. It is a sort of infotainment. When was the last big demonstration in the Arab world in support of the Intifada. Who is demonstrating? Nobody. Who is doing it? Nobody. Who really cares? Nobody. Do the Palestinians know it? Oh yes, they do.
So the Arab world has allowed the Palestinians to go anywhere they want! Do you want a peace deal with the Jews? You did Oslo behind our backs? Fine we will support it. Do you want to have an Intifada now? Sure, go ahead, we will applaud you. But you are not going to pull us in. We are staying well behind the sidelines.
Which means that Israel, which has prepared itself since 1948 to fight the big war against an Arab military coalition of our
neighbours-- and the whole doctrine of the state of Israel, not just the army but the whole thinking was how to cope with the existential threat of an armed military coalition-- we have built the army, we have built the tactics, the strategy and everything else. And then these enemies, the big enemies, the big guns have evaporated, have faded. Not into thin air, they are still there, Egypt, with its tank divisions and it's got more F-16s than the Israeli air force, etc. etc.
But they are not in play. They are not going to be in play in the near future or the foreseeable future. And we are left with the two players that we say in Hebrew, the kids say, "Ani lo sofer otcha" or "we don't count you", which means you are not important. In Israel we are left with the two weak ones that we never counted: the Palestinians who never figured prominently in any equation between us and the Arab world in any war, not even in 1948. Certainly not in '67, '73, or '56, not in the War of Attrition. Never. They have become the big enemy.
And Lebanon we used to joke that if Lebanon joined an Arab military coalition, we will send the military orchestra. That is what everyone my age will tell you. This was the saying in the Israeli army.
But Lebanon produced Hezbollah. And now we have a combination of Hezbollah-PLO. An Arafat-Nasrallah axis, if you want. But we have reached a point where we have basically reached a situation where the big guys are taken care of. Saddam is no longer there, thank you to Australia too. Mubarak does not want to hear about war, he wants Israeli tourists in the Sinai. The Jordanian army is every night setting ambushes to protect the (Israeli) city of Eilat and the tourists there. Syria, I discussed the situation along the border.
So we have taken care, in a way, of the big guys but we don't know what to do with the small guys. Weaklings, who all of a sudden challenge the state of Israel, its doctrine and strategy, in a much more effective manner.
Now what are they saying? Nobody is talking to them about an all-out war against Israel. Nobody in the Arab world. It is the first time in my long career in covering whatever the Arabs are doing that nobody is even raising the issue. Not even Hamas or Hezbollah. Nobody.
(The most) they are willing to say, in the case of Hamas (former leader Sheik Ahmed) Yassin, before he departed to be with the virgins. You know they have this huge debate now what happened-sorry, but I have to tell a quick story: Hamas, which was always opposed to suicide bombing girls, have now allowed it, and it is now officially religiously sanctioned, under certain circumstances, for a girl to go and carry out a suicide bombing. But there is a question, a religious question: if a suicide bombing guy gets 72 brown eyed virgins (by the way they never lose their virginity), then what happens to the suicide bombing girl when she gets there. What does she get? The 72 virgins or what? You couldn't believe it, I have volumes at home. How do you solve this religious question?
So finally, they say a suicide girl for a suicide boy. This is her reward. And they even started issuing literature, brochures around the universities of the West Bank, in which the suicide bombing is described and depicted as a romantic or sexual act.
But this is about Yassin and Hamas. Before Yassin departed, he was saying destroying Israel will take 25 or 30 years. Which is an admission we are not going to defeat Israel now. We cannot do it and should not strive for it now.
Nasrallah, a much more vicious fellow, says in his Beirut speeches-by the way, Nasrallah is a phenomena of Islamic fascism-Nasrallah is saying, Israel is a spider's web. We have to pull the strings one by one. Slowly, it takes time. Not tomorrow morning. So basically nobody is talking about the war now. It is not the threat of an attack.
The challenge now is the following: Mr Arafat is basically saying to us, either allow me runaway statehood, for which I (Arafat) do not pay in peace and is not a product of a peace agreement with Israel, and I am not bound by peace arrangements with Israel. Runaway statehood or I, Yasser Arafat, will run away from statehood. Palestinian state? Gaza Strip? West Bank? Jerusalem? I am not interested, thank you. His threat is that the Palestinian nation, already impoverished from the intifada, fragmented, in despair will collapse into our arms. This is the real challenge. Runaway statehood, or they will run away from statehood. Do we allow within Eretz Israel, the emergence of a state whether it is called a state or not, it's not interesting. The emergence of an entity which is an armed entity-- do you want a terrorist entity through a power sharing coalition between Arafat and his people, Hamas, Islamic Jihad etc backed by Hezbollah.
In other words, the Palestinians are threatening-- and it is beginning to be in so many words-- are threatening: "if all you are offering is this, a state behind the wall you are building, then thank you we are not interested. So far I believe the State of Israel, none of the parties, none of the leaders, no one has come up with a formula, a doctrine (to meet this challenge).
Now I come to the Egyptian role towards the conclusion of my remarks because, as I have said, Egypt has taken a decision to withdraw from active confrontation with Israel. Egypt has barricaded itself, since Sadat came to Jerusalem in November 1977, behind a very high invisible wall of disengagement from the Palestinians. Please believe me I have been there since day one, I was the first Israeli passport holder to go to Egypt. What we have here is Egypt, a country that has performed a complete disengagement from the Palestinians, is being asked-and is partially willing-- to come back.
When I speak of complete disengagement with Egypt, you have to remember that Egypt over two decades now refuses to allow Gaza to export its oranges via the Port of Said. The answer is absolutely not. It does not want Gazan Palestinian students in its universities spreading the "gospel" of Hamas, it doesn't want it, it doesn't allow it. It doesn't want Palestinian pilgrims going to Egypt to the holy places in Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia. Egypt killed (politically) the pro-Egyptian political lobby that for years existed in Gaza, Gaza came under Egyptian domination until 1967, but Egypt shut itself off from the Palestinians.
Now Egyptians are willing and they are being encouraged by Sharon to seek a role of babysitters of the Palestinian security services, babysitters in the toughest sense of the word. Not just to teach the Palestinians how to fight terrorism but also to inspect and oversee what they are doing. And more or less, the Jordanians can do the same in the West Bank.
This goes back many years, to an era in which you still discussed the possibility of asking neighbouring states to play a lead role vis-a-vis the Palestinian issue. After an interruption of so many years.
In some ways it is not a bad idea to have Egyptians in Gaza, some Jordanians in the West Bank, although it is much more sensitive from a Palestinian point of view helping baby sit, helping re establish a process of de-Arafatisation of the Palestinian Authority. That's not a bad idea.
What I wanted to tell you in conclusion is that since this is the only game in town, it is a very risky proposition. Because this peace between Israel and Egypt with all its deficiencies and faults, and there are many, (are currently) sheltered from the volatility and many crises of the Israeli- Palestinian scene. Because of the Egyptian disengagement from the Palestinians, they (Egypt) could withstand under whatever circumstances--war in Lebanon, two Intifadas-- they could maintain a fragile but very stable peace with Israel. Nobody is shooting. Oh yes they are allowing some smuggling though the tunnels. But there is no shooting. The Egyptian army is on the other side of the Suez Canal.
Now we are seeking to pull the Egyptians into the midst of the turmoil between us and the Palestinians. The peace treaty between Israel and Egypt is THE cornerstone of our strategy (for peace with the Arab world). To make it a hostage to the strategies of Hamas or Arafat� if they want they will ignite some major military crisis in Gaza but this time instead of observing it from a distance Egypt will be there with its officers, its intelligence officials will be affected. It will have immediate implication with our relations with Egypt.
Finally I would say that between now and disengagement will be a year or more. Before that we have US elections, Australian elections and I would suggest to you also Israeli elections. And I believe a lot will change. So we have to use this agenda as something which is not yet right, as a preliminary approach and direction, which gives everybody a sense of where we may be going in the next stage under the circumstances. But not to consider it as you know as a big move because it is not.
And the reason I think we may have elections in Israel is the
following: Sharon has lost his majority in parliament. This is bad, but it's not the worst thing. The worst is that he has lost his majority in his own party. And I am afraid that some politicians-- and this is HIS assessment-- they will not allow him to bring Labor into the coalition. Why would Bibi (Netanyahu) do that? Why would our illustrious foreign minister (Silvan Shalom) allow that? They will not.
And Shimon Peres knows and Peres is a statesman and Peres will be the candidate if we have early elections. Why not? Who (else) will be the candidate? Peres will be the (Labor) candidate, he is the statesman. And with Sharon-the two of them are quite close, they talk a lot to each other-- the two of them believe that it would be better (probably) to form this national unity government after an election. After each one of them try and clean up their respective houses. So we have some mountains to climb before we come to disengagement. Thank you.
