The Deafening Noise in the Occupied Territories

[Karmadillo]

http://www.counterpunch.org/hass06282004.html

Israeli journalist Amira Hass, author of Drinking the Sea at Gaza, has reported regularly from Gaza and Ramallah, where she lived among local people. Amira has recieved the fist Anna Lind Award, in honour of the murdered Swedish foreign minister. What follows is her acceptance speech given in Stockholm on June 18, 2004.

<edit>

A third reason is a related sense of frustration that I experience especially in the last few weeks. Again, it's personal frustration and a collective one, at the same time. A debate within the Israeli community of Intelligence has reached the media, esp. thanks to my Haaretz colleage , Akiva Eldar. It's the debate around the truthfulness or falsehood of the Israeli explanations on the causes of the present round of bloody conflict, since September 2000.
The official Israeli version, propagated by the political echelons around the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak of Labor, and adopted by a great part of the Israeli Jews, ran as follows: Arafat planned, initiated and orchastrated the armed conflict from the start; Arafat did not accept the generous offers of Barak at Camp David, Camp David talks reached a deadlock because of Palestinian insistence to demand the Right of Return of all Palestinian refugees; Arafat is anyway aiming at the gradual destruction of the state of Israel ; from the start of the present Intifada Palestinians resorted to using arms against the Israeli soldiers; Palestinians who were killed were killed in armed clashes between the two parties.

Each such statement, which was actually accepted, if not presented, as a purely objective fact, has been contradicted and challenged by articles and reports published by Israeli papers. I well remember an article which the Israeli political sceintist, Menahem Klein, published in Haaretz. By the way he is a religious jew who teaches at Bar Ilan university, and he participated in negotiations over Jerusalem. It was a few weeks after the outbreak of the Intifada. He offered the solidly logical argument, that had Arafat really secretly plotted to eventually destroy the State of Israel, he would have accepted Barak's offers at Camp David, and proceeded from there, gradually, to his final goal. Arafat, wrote Klein, could not accept Barak's offer as a final deal, because he genuinly clinged to the two states solution, along the borders of June the 4th, 1967.

An exceptionally poignant writer, is Bet Michael - another observant Jew, who has a weekly column at Yediot Aharonot, which enjoys the largest circulation in Israel. What he derives from Judaism and Jewish thought is a deeply moral logic. Sometime during the first year of the current bloodshed he commented about the military and the intelligence boasting that their assessments about Arafat and Arafat's plan to escalate the bloodshed had proven correct. If I am not mistaken, he referred directly to the present Chief of Staff, Moshe Yaalon. He wrote the unforgettable sentence: "He )yaalon( did not foresee the future. He created this future".A third reason is a related sense of frustration that I experience especially in the last few weeks. Again, it's personal frustration and a collective one, at the same time. A debate within the Israeli community of Intelligence has reached the media, esp. thanks to my Haaretz colleage , Akiva Eldar. It's the debate around the truthfulness or falsehood of the Israeli explanations on the causes of the present round of bloody conflict, since September 2000.

The official Israeli version, propagated by the political echelons around the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak of Labor, and adopted by a great part of the Israeli Jews, ran as follows: Arafat planned, initiated and orchastrated the armed conflict from the start; Arafat did not accept the generous offers of Barak at Camp David, Camp David talks reached a deadlock because of Palestinian insistence to demand the Right of Return of all Palestinian refugees; Arafat is anyway aiming at the gradual destruction of the state of Israel ; from the start of the present Intifada Palestinians resorted to using arms against the Israeli soldiers; Palestinians who were killed were killed in armed clashes between the two parties.

more...