Democratic Palestine : 35 (ص 16)
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- Democratic Palestine : 35 (ص 16)
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Other Israeli leaders, including Moshe Dayan, Ezer Weiz-
mann, Chaim Bar Lev and Mattityahu Peled - all generals -
have made public statements which dispute the threat to
Israel’s existence claimed by Eban in both 1956 and 1967. The
other noteworthy aspect is that in describing all this period,
Eban never mentions the word Palestinian or the occupation
of 1967. The Palestinian issue is referred to only obliquely, as
an appendage to Arab hostility: «They (the Arab governments)
asserted the right of Arab refugees to ‘return’ to Israel ir-
respective of Israel’s will or security... In 1953-1956 a new
technique was devised for expressing Arab hostility toward
Israel. Terrorists (Fedayeen) were trained and organized for
infiltrating into Israel...» from Egypt and in 1967 from Syria
(pp. 500 - 509).
What is real in what Eban wrote in 1968 is the persistent
Israeli fear that the energies of the Arab world will be pooled
under a unified leadership and used to back up the Palestinian
cause; and that Egypt and Syria are the Arab states most con-
sistently identified as posing the greatest threat.
This perception of the enemy threat went unchallenged for
three decades. Hebrew University professor and expert on
security affairs, Dan Horowitz, writes: «From the time of the
War of Independence up to the electoral upheaval of 1977,
various governments in Israel attempted to accord relatively
greater weight to the regional conflict between states and to
play down the importance of the ideological national conflict
between communities» (Israeli Society and its Defense
Establishment, edited by Moshe Lissak, 1984, pp. 94 - 95). The
first is considered basic security, giving reason to go to war,
while the second is seen as current security, not requiring war.
This distinction was shuffled in 1982 when Israel fought its
longest war primarily against the PLO and the Palestinian and
Lebanese masses, rather than against the Lebanese state,
although this state was, of course, further undermined by the
invasion, and Syria’s army was also targeted. According to
Horowitz, this marks a shift in the thinking of the Israeli
political and military establishment, toward stressing inter-
communal conflict, elevating it to the sphere of war. Among
the implications of this shift, he names:
1. reduction of the probability of solution through inter-state
territorial compromise in the West Bank and Gaza Strip;
2. increased chance for belligerent conflict «in the wake of
widespread, extended terrorist activities;»
3. Israel would tend to initiate war when its military might is at
a peak and «strategic environmental conditions are optimal for
exploiting opportunities,» rather than when it was threatened.
«Paradoxically, this means that the signing of a peace treaty
with one Arab state or another does not reduce the probability
of embarking on initiated wars; rather, to the contrary, the
likelihood is increased.»
This shift was presaged by the rise of the Palestinian
resistance after 1967, which forced the Israeli army to focus on
«the war within.» Though it received less publicity at the time,
the strength of the fedayeen in the Gaza Strip in 1970 was met
by a virtual war, complete with the establishment of a concen-
tration camp in the Sinai, holding families of «suspected ter-
rorists» - the prototype for Ansar in South Lebanon and
today’s Ansar III in South Palestine. Ironically, Israel’s
development of a counterinsurgency strategy along the lines
16
HHI
used by the US in Vietnam, was the first sign of a grudging,
implicit acknowledgement of the Palestinian dimension of the
conflict. With time, this impacted on Israeli thinking about the
1967 occupation: «More than three-quarters of the Israelis who
participated in the 1979 Task Force discussions privately ques-
tioned the ability of Israel to keep a million and a half Palesti-
nians under occupation for much longer» (John Edwin Mroz,
Beyond Security - Private Perceptions among Arabs and
Israelis, 1980, p. 137. emphasis added)
Still, up into the eighties, most Israeli experts continued to
view the threat to Israel as coming from the Arab states. In
contrast to the flamboyant declarations of Begin and Sharon,
serious analysts dismiss guerrilla warfare, «terrorism» and the
pre-intifada civilian resistance in the occupied territories as real
security threats. The typical assessment of experts was that
«Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza also constitutes an
ideological-political prod to Arab action... It is in this sense
that the centrality of the Palestinian question to Israeli security
must be understood» (Mark Heller, A Palestinian State: The
Implications for Israel, p. 24).
After Camp David, Syria in particular was regarded as
Israel’s implacable foe, and there are indications that Israeli
perceptions of the Arab regimes’ intentions are resistant to
change. In 1978-79, a retired Israeli military official
stated that the Eastern Front (Syria, Iraq, Jordan anc
Saudi Arabia) «is a very real threat to Israel because its com-
bined military strength makes it a more formidable opponent
than Egypt... we can never discount the possibility that Egypt
would renounce the Treaty and open a second front against
us... most of all we understand that the ultimate intentions of
our Arab neighbors are by and far the same as they have
been... perhaps they are slightly more realistic now but that is
hard to prove» (Mroz, op. cit., pp. 32-34).
Under the title «Israeli Perceptions of Threat,» Mroz lists
the following:» An attack from the Eastern Front...
Establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and
Gaza... Arab population growth in Israel... An alteration of
Israel’s special relationship with the United States... Terrorism
as a current security threat.» The first two are categorized as
primary. Other security concerns mentioned include: Libya
and Iraq acquiring nuclear capacity, Syrian intentions in
Lebanon, increased dependence on foreign energy sources and
the fact that Israeli water sources are vulnerable to attack.
There is ample evidence that most Israelis view a Palestinian
state as a «mortal danger,» especially if headed by the PLO, as
claimed in a pamphlet issued by the Israel Information Centre
in 1978, and repeated by many an Israeli politician. This seems
to contradict the perception that «terrorism» which by Israeli
definition means Palestinian action against the occupation, is a
secondary concern. One can only understand this apparent
contradiction in the light that the Palestinian cause as such is
considered dangerous in that it challenges the legitimacy and
demographic integrity of the Zionist colonial project,
regardless of the PLO’s ability to mount a military threat to the
Israeli state. This danger prompted the 1982 invasion of
Lebanon; it explains the occupation forces’ seemingly over-
dimensioned response to the intifada, and the revival of the
age-old Zionist option of «transfer.» In 1984, Sharon ad-
vocated dealing with Palestinians under occupation as he had
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