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Since the beginning of the current confrontation with the Palestinians, Israelis have been debating whether a military or a political program should be pursued to end the violence.

• Advocates of the military option claim that the only way to crush the «cycle of violence» (in diplomatic parlance) is through might. In other words, destroy the Palestinian Authority or make it realize that, should it continue along the path of rejectionism, the price to be paid significantly will overshadow any potential political benefit.
• Subscribers to the political option argue that the only realistic way to achieve a durable peace is by way of political negotiations among the leaders. A military victory, they say, may buy calm for a while but could never bring peace.

Those who claim that there is no military solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict are right. Israel won all its wars – in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982 – and yet, peace has not arrived. Not only have the Arabs never reconciled themselves to the presence of an independent Jewish state in the Middle East, but they have even rejected the outcome of the many wars they have launched. Harvard University Professor Ruth Wisse has observed that war is generally the final arbiter of international disputes; in the absence of a political agreement, war settles the score in otherwise intractable conflicts. However, Israel’s victories over several Arab armies were never accepted by the aggressors. What’s more, the Arabs are still waiting for the next round.

This derives from a fundamental asymmetry: Whereas the Arab states can impose a military solution on the conflict (e.g., the destruction of Israel), the Jewish state cannot correspond; that is, unless Israel is ready to annihilate the entire Middle East. Unfortunately, this does not mean that a political solution therefore exists by default.

Consider this: The Palestinians rejected the most generous Israeli offer imaginable during the Camp David talks. Are they going to settle for something less now, after so much pain? And will the Israelis offer even more than what they did at Camp David, knowing that they effectively would be rewarding Palestinian intransigence by doing so?

In the current circumstances, peace will remain elusive for Palestinians and Israelis alike. A feasible plan will aim at reaching a state of «no war» at best, a cease-fire at worst. If this can be achieved politically, fine. If not, a military option should be applied. Some continue to talk of peace, but sadly, it is not a realistic option in this arena.

Those who advocate a political solution should stop calling for it and start presenting it. And they’d better lay out a political program that is not premised on the same ill-fated assumptions of the Oslo accords, for Oslo has brought nothing but wanton disaster.

There is no magical solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The reason is rooted in a harsh fact of life aptly captured by Albert Einstein: «Peace cannot be kept by force; it can be achieved only through understanding.» In the absence of such understanding, peace will remain unreachable. Israelis will never be able to impose peace on terminal enemies.

The Arab-Israeli conflict was never a normal territorial dispute. Arab opposition to Israel was never — as Palestinians claim – predicated on a normal rejection to «occupation» but rather, to quote Wisse, «an ideological assault on the legitimacy of an independent Jewish polity» in the region. Which brings us to the core flaw of the now-defunct peace process: By reducing the conflict to a land dispute, Oslo’s framers ignored the existential nature of that dispute. Israeli academic Arieh Stav once explained Oslo’s initiative as a «paradox where a minuscule democracy is being forced to provide to its totalitarian enemies — scores of times its size — the only thing that it lacks: territory. In exchange, these dictatorial regimes promise to provide the one and only thing that they lack: peace.»

The Oslo process failed not only because it was a poorly designed and badly implemented program but essentially because there has never been a real peace partner on the Arab side. Any realistic approach to this question should be premised on this cold fact.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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An Egyptian professor is sentenced to seven years in prison.

Three recent instances of human-rights abuses in countries neighboring Israel have shed new light on how adrift the long-held Western policy of appeasement to dictatorships has been.

The first case involved an American-Egyptian scholar sentenced by a State Security Court in Egypt. Saad el-Din Ibrahim – a human-rights activist, professor at the American University in Cairo and head of the Cairo-based Khaldoun Center for Social Research — produced a documentary film exposing fraud in past Egyptian elections.

Considering that Hosni Mubarak regularly gets 99 percent of the vote, one can assume that the film was not needed at all to prove what common sense already can see. But this scholar’s crusade for truth should nonetheless be applauded — especially for taking place in a country were such initiatives are virtually nonexistent.

And to make sure that such initiatives won’t recur, Mubarak’s regime intervened with full force. The professor and 27 of his students and assistants were charged with disseminating false information harmful to Egypt. They also were charged with accepting foreign donations without official permission (the money came from the European Union).

The professor was sentenced to seven years in prison — with forced labor — whereas his assistants received jail terms ranging from one to three years.

The second case involved a Lebanese-American journalist sentenced in absentia by a Military Court in Lebanon. Raghida Dergham, a reporter for Al-Hayat and a frequent political commentator on Mideast issues, was accused of «dealing with the enemy» for daring to take part in a debate last May at a Washington-based think tank along with an Israeli — as well as with two other analysts, one American, the other British.

The fact that she was regarded a traitor, in spite of being an ardent critic of Israel who minces no words of public condemnation when it comes to Israeli policies, only highlights the level that political temperature and official radicalism have reached in Lebanon.

In the third case, an Arab-Israeli journalist and poet was kidnapped and tortured — no trial on this occasion — by the Palestinian Authority. Youssef Samir, a veteran staffer of Israel’s Radio Arabic Service and noted advocate of Palestinian nationalism, made a routine visit to Bethlehem with his wife in April, only to be ordered by the Palestinian police to leave the city at once.

He left, insulted, but decided to come back to show his many works to the Palestinian officials to prove his loyalty to the Palestinian people. He was arrested on the spot and went missing. After two months at the mercy of his captors, Samir escaped, running away barefoot with his hands tied behind his back. He reached a friend’s house, and was soon taken to an Israeli checkpoint.

«When I saw the Israeli soldiers, I nearly fainted from happiness. I fell on the floor and kissed the earth before their feet,» he recounted. «I saw a country that cared about its citizens, something that would not happen to such an extent even in Western cultures like the United States. . . .

«A lot has changed in my outlook.»

Whether his statement was exaggerated due to the stress and trauma of the moment is beyond the point. What is significant is how just a taste of life under the PA made a zealous Palestinian nationalist more appreciative of the freedom, individual rights and civil liberties he can enjoy at his own country.

This episode should also invite honest reflection on the part of those tireless apologists of Arab totalitarianism who wouldn’t survive a week under any Arab regime, and yet enthusiastically defend the many despots of the Middle East.

The Western nations, with the European Union and the United States at the vanguard of the initiative, have been investing considerable amounts of political and financial capital in the Arab world in order to promote a more-benign foreign policy there.

But the promotion of democratic government, freedom of the press, respect for individual liberties and advocacy for human rights has been, unfortunately, conspicuously absent in the West’s attitude toward the Middle East.

Philosopher Immanuel Kant was right when he wrote in his 1795 essay Perpetual Peace that democracy is a necessary requirement for peace to prevail among the nations. The three instances of official harassment cited aptly — and all too dramatically — show just how much work must be done in the Middle East.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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Jewish delegates were forbidden to attend a U.N. meeting.

Jerusalem – When the United Nations was established in 1945, it had 51 member states; today it has 189. This dramatic membership increase is the result of a process of decolonization that began in the 1950s and led to the emergence of new nations. This development created a quantitative and qualitative change within the United Nations, in that it allowed many essentially nondemocratic regimes to become full-fledged members.

An organization that was founded basically by Western nations thereby evolved into a Third World forum, leading to the peculiar situation in which underdeveloped and autarchic nations relegated the founding, mostly democratic countries to minority status.

These nations of the Third World then gathered themselves within the framework of different regional blocs (such as the Non-Aligned Movement and the Arab-Muslim bloc, among others), which produced the phenomenon commonly known as the «tyranny of the automatic majority.» Achieving influence through these regional blocs, the Third World countries gained more representation in the U.N. departments, committees, divisions and agencies, which in turn allowed them to set both the agenda and the tone of U.N. deliberations.

This may explain a few things:

• Why the Palestine Liberation Organization, which committed more than 11,500 terror attacks over a span of more than 30 years, was never condemned by any U.N. body.
• Why anti-Semitism was recognized as a form of racism by this international institution just eight years ago.
• Why Israel, and only Israel, was defined by the United Nations as a «non-peace loving state.»
• Why the national liberation movement of the Jewish people was the only such movement in the world ever to be equated with racism.

This situation at times has been so ludicrous that some Israelis have taken it with a grain of humor. Commentator David Bar-lllan once remarked that «a visitor from another planet should be pardoned for assuming that the organization was established with the sole purpose of bashing Israel.»

When Zionism was called «hegemonism» in 1979 (it seems that the 1975 comparison with «racism» had not sufficed), Israeli Ambassador Yehuda Blum, aware of the exploits of the «automatic majority,» pointed out that the United Nations could have compared Zionism with vegetarianism, rheumatism or any other «ism» for that matter.

Former Foreign Minister Abba Ebban once famously observed that, upon command of the Arab nations, the United Nations would adopt a resolution claiming that the Earth is flat.

This background should serve as an introductory remark to the upcoming World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (to be held in Durban, South Africa, from Aug. 31 to Sept. 7), whose final preparatory conference will take place on Monday in Geneva. If the latest draft of its Declaration and Programme of Action remains unaltered, we will witness yet another Arab-Muslim hijacking of a U.N. forum, the politicization of an important conference and the abuse of that conference’s agenda.

To begin with, the most recent preparatory conference took place in Teheran, where Jewish, Israeli and Bahai delegates were forbidden to attend – this, at a conference dealing with «related intolerance.»

Israel also is the only country condemned by name in the 70 pages of the above-mentioned draft text pertaining to a conference addressing «discrimination.» And almost fittingly, Arab and Muslim states have inserted unabashedly racist language in a conference dealing with «racism.»

As U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based nongovernmental organization monitoring the U.N. performance by the yardstick of its charter, has observed, the most disquieting developments taking place are:

• An attempt to resurrect the «Zionism = Racism» resolution.
• An attempt to redefine anti-Semitism as bigotry against the Arabs by making references to «Zionist practices against Semitism.»
• An attempt to minimize the Holocaust, by writing the term in lowercase; to universalize it, by speaking of plural «holocausts»; and to trivialize it, by pairing it with «the ethnic cleansing of the Arab population in historic Palestine.»

In 1998, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan denounced the infamous 1975 Zionism is Racism resolution, calling it «unfortunate» and «the lowest point in the [U.N.-Israel] relationship.» If that resolution alone marked the nadir of U.N.-Israel relations, one wonders how Annan would define the diplomatic atrocities persisting, even today, under U.N. auspices.

Although some future statement 23 years from now condemning the final declaration of this upcoming circus conference might be welcome, the time for action is now.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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Today, Israelis are being almost literally sacrificed for public-relations points.

Twenty-five years ago this week, Israel stunned the world with a daring and impressive operation. On July 4, 1976, an elite Israeli commando unit flew 3,500 kilometers over four enemy countries and freed more than 100 hostages held at the Entebbe airport in Uganda.

The story began on June 27, 1976, when an Air France plane flying from Tel Aviv to Paris via Athens was hijacked by Palestinian and German terrorists. There were 246 passengers on board – 105 of whom were Jewish and most of them Israelis – and 12 crew members. The hijackers landed the plane in Uganda and demanded the release of 53 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel and elsewhere.

Loyal to their principle of never negotiating with terrorists, the Israelis rejected this demand and began planning a high-level rescue operation.

Time was not on Israel’s side. Four Hercules aircraft and a Boeing 707 carrying Israeli commandos took off for Uganda even as the Israeli cabinet was debating the mission. It finally voted unanimously in favor.

As they approached the Entebbe airport, the commando planes identified themselves, respectively, as an Air France flight delivering the Palestinian prisoners and an East African Airways flight scheduled to arrive in Entebbe a few minutes later. After landing, a black Mercedes-Benz, similar to the one owned by Uganda’s dictator Idi Amin, who collaborated with the terrorists, followed by several Land Rovers, sped toward the airport terminal where the passengers were held captive. After a five-minute exchange of fire, the elite Israeli squad managed to kill the terrorists and free the hostages. The operation left casualties: three hostages were killed in the shooting spree; an elderly woman hostage who had been taken to a Ugandan hospital later was murdered by a furious Idi Amin; and the leader of the rescue operation, Yonatan Netanyahu, was shot dead in the fighting.

In a sense, not much has changed for Israel in the last quarter century. These words, written in 1968 by Yonatan Netanyahu to his family, could easily have been written today: «The real cause is a sense of helplessness in the face of a war that has not ended…. it seems to me that it will go on and on…. it continues with every mine and killing and murder.
«This is the quiet before the next storm. I have no doubt that war will come. Nor do I doubt that we will win. But for how long? Until when?»

At the same time, significant changes have occurred in Israel, and the world, since then. Today, it is almost impossible to fathom a similar operation taking place – not because Israel lacks the means to carry it out, but because it now lacks political will and courage at the governmental level. Take, for instance, the infamous concept of «victims of peace» originated by the Rabin-Peres administration during the Oslo days. Or take the current policy of restraint initiated by Ehud Barak and later taken to absurd levels by Ariel Sharon.

This concept was predicated on the cold assumption that if a few Israelis had to pay with their lives on the altar of peace at the hands of Palestinian rejectionists who opposed the peace process, then so be it. Today, Israelis are being almost literally sacrificed for public-relations points. We could call them «victims of ratings.» This concept is dictated by the need to please a Western world increasingly – and shockingly – insensitive to Israel’s predicament. It is as if the decisions concerning the lives of the Israeli population are being made in the studios of CNN and the BBC rather than at the Israeli cabinet table.

Natan Sharansky, a former prisoner of conscience in Communist Russia and a current Israeli minister, warned the Sharon government that «as important as it is to want to gain understanding abroad, at some point the government will have to say that fateful decisions affecting the Jewish people are in its hands and not in the hands of the rest of the world.»

It is imperative for Israel to restore its lost self-confidence. Not for the sake of honor, national pride or glory – but for the sakeof its very survival.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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Jerusalem – Some weeks ago, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported an interesting story on a long and winding street that crosses Arab, Bahai and Jewish neighborhoods in Haifa. Until 1948, the road was called El Jabel. But after the War of Independence, the street’s name was changed to U.N. Boulevard, in appreciation to the international body that voted the establishment of the state of Israel.

When in 1975 the United Nations passed a resolution comparing Zionism with racism, the Haifa municipality decided to rename the street Zionism Boulevard. But a longing for the name El Jabel seems to have been there all over those years. Last month, an Arab council member resurrected a 7-year-old demand to return the street to its previous Arab name.

In any other country, this would be considered a minor municipal issue, but not in Israel. In fact, this incident reflects on the delicate fabric of inter-ethnic relations in the Jewish state. The Jewish character of the state has triggered, unavoidably, a set of inequalities and also has led to instances of discrimination.

Nonetheless, the Arabs of Israel have been granted civil rights and individual liberties, unprecedented perhaps for an ethnic minority so closely connected to, and identified with, enemy countries.

Just one example

In the 1999 elections, an Arab ran for (prime minister Azmi Bishara, of «I do not object to all of Israel becoming Palestine fame). Besides, Arabs are exempted from national duties such as army service; they fall on the Jewish majority.

Between 1948 and 1967, the Arabs of Israel went through a process of Israelization by which they basically became loyal citizens of the state. Ever since, however, they rapidly have gone through a process of Palestinization, evidenced by an ever greater and stronger sense of national and emotional identification with their Palestinian brothers.

The commemoration of their Naqba (catastrophe) — held since 1997 annually on May 15, the anniversary of Israel’s founding -and the boycott of the past elections are signs of increasing national alienation. But the Al-Aqsa intifada probably altered for a long time Jewish-Arab relations in Israel. Then, Israeli Jews were shocked to see rioting Arab mobs chanting «Itbah el yehud!» (slaughter the Jews) as they attacked Jewish drivers and burned Israeli flags. That they behaved this way at a time when the Palestinians had launched a violent revolt did not contribute much to substantiate their later claims that theirs had been a peaceful protest against alleged state abuse and discrimination.

This minority’s anti-Jewish animosity has been reflected especially through the representatives it voted into Parliament, who have been giving alarming expression to their national stand. These MPs may refuse to celebrate their own country’s Independence Day but have no qualms whatsoever about celebrating anniversaries of Israel’s enemies, as it became clear when some of them – Ahmed Tibi, a former advisor to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, and Hahem Mahmeed – participated in a Syrian Independence Day ceremony marked by Druse from the Golan Heights.

Sallah Tarif, a minister in the Sharon government, said: «I am in love with Assad,» during a 1997 visit to Damascus. In a January 2001 interview granted to Palestinian TV, Tarif wished the best of health to Hamas spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin. He also criticized the Israeli police for shooting at «people who were just throwing stones.»

Another MP, Abdel Malik Dahamashe, last April sent a letter of condolence to President Bashar Assad over the deaths of Syrian soldiers after an Israeli raid into South Lebanon – showing the address as being «Nazareth, Palestine.» In March, he interrupted a Parliament session about the Temple Mount, heckling the speakers and claiming the site was completely Islamic.

For his part, MP Taleb a-Saana sent a message of support to iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in his struggle «against criminal Israeli aggression.» Not to be left out, MP Mohammed Barakei compared Ariel Sharon to Slobodan Milosevic, called for the Israeli elected leader to stand trial for war crimes and sent a letter to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee requesting they strip Foreign Minister Shimon Peres of his award. Why? For cooperating with Sharon.

«Is a Galilee Liberation Organization yet to be heard from?» Haifa University Professor Steven Plaut has asked. The pace at which the Arab community is radicalizing itself leaves no doubt as to the answer.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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Jerusalem – The modern Czechoslovakian state arose in 1918 on the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Its population of almost 15 million was made up primarily of two Slavic nationalities, the Czechs and the Slovaks, plus other minorities such as Jews, Hungarians, Ukrainians, Poles and Germans. The Germans formed 23 percent of the population and were concentrated on the Sudeteland area. Most Sudenten Germans identified with neighboring countries and were against being incorporated into the new state.

Although it was considered an irredentist minority, the Sudetens were granted all civil rights of a democracy. They weren’t on par with the Czechs in terms of job opportunities in the civil service or armed forces, but overall they were a free and tolerated minority despite their strong identification with adversarial states.

Xenophobic leaderships in the neighboring countries had an impact on the Sudenten minority. The Nazi Party was banned in Czechoslovakia, but its surrogate, the Sudeten German Party, commanded significant popular support. Resorting to violence and intimidation, the SDP soon became the sole spokesman for the Sudeten Germans. It established a paramilitary organization called The Heimatbund, which later developed into the Sudenten German Freikorps, a terrorist movement made up of 34,000 Germany-based Sudeten refugees.

After Hitler came to power, Germany channeled funds to the SDP and gave it political support. The Reich quickly understood that by manipulating the Sudetens’ plight, turning it into a self-determination issue, he would enhance his chances to annex Czechoslovakia. Never mind that the Germanic people already had realized self-determination in Austria and Germany; the tactic worked. At the time, Czechoslovakia’s President Eduard Benes warned the world: «Do not believe it is a question of self-determination. From the beginning, it has been a battle for the existence of the state.» He was vastly ignored.

As the SDP leader, Konrad Henlein, toured Europe demanding his people be granted independence, Berlin contributed to the diplomatic offensive with strong complaints about Czechoslovakian discrimination and intolerance and the need to protect the Sudenten minority from alleged state abuse.

European states exerted pressure on Prague to agree to the Sudentens’ nationalistic demands. This gave birth to a proposal of limited autonomy, called the Carlsbad program. The Reich instructed Henlein to raise his demands if and when Prague accepted this program – Hitler needed the negotiations to collapse to have an excuse to launch a military attack and seize the small neighbor. As Germany got ready for war, it accused the Czechs of being an impediment to peace in Europe.

When, under international pressure, Czechoslovakia accepted the Carlsbad program in mid-1938, a revolt «erupted» in the Sudeteland. SDP members rioted, attacked and shot at the Czech police and civilians. The ensuing chaos elicited international attention and, in September, an agreement was reached in Munich: The Sudeteland would be transferred to Germany.

«From now on, I have no more territorial demands in Europe,» Hitler said.

And then-Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain prophesized: «This will be peace for our time.»

As soon as those lands became German territory, Hitler suppressed the Czech and Slovak languages, confiscated property and expelled the 750,000 Czechs living there. Later, Germany started to agitate for the «rights» of the remaining Germans in Czechoslovakia proper, and by March 1939, the Führer had gained control of the rest of the country. The international community didn’t come to Czechoslovakia’s help. On March 16, Prague fell, and the Czech state ceased to exist.

Any similarity with Israel’s security predicaments, its increasingly radicalized Arab minority, PLO terrorism, Palestinian self-determination, Arab diplomacy, the Oslo accords, the Al-Aqsa intifada and Western appeasement, is purely coincidental.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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Jerusalem – At the insistence of internationally acclaimed conductor Daniel Barenboim, the Israel Festival decided in April to finance a concert of music that will perform Richard Wagner’s Die Walkure in July at a prestigious venue in Jerusalem. Unsurprisingly, this created a domestic stir.

Performing Hitler’s favorite composer in Israel has long been an issue. In 1981 the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra chose to play as an encore Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. After conductor Zubin Metha announced the selection, some left the auditorium, including two violinists. An usher who apparently had not understood Metha, jumped onto stage as soon as he recognized Wagner’s notes and dramatically removed his shirt exposing scars from World War II. The concert was interrupted. It took 10 years for the Israel Philharmonic to make a new attempt at playing Wagner in the Jewish state, to no avail.

Then last October, the Rishon Letzion Orchestra won a legal battle over the issue and was able to perform Wagner’s Siegfred Idyll. Again, the concert was not immune to incidents. Some people left the audience in protest, whereas a Holocaust survivor sounded a noisemaker he deliberately had brought to disrupt the performance.

Now, after pondering «seriously and with great sensitivity» this controversial subject, the Israel Festival decided to delight Israelis one more time with the works of the genius from Bayreuth.

Supporters of the public playing of Wagner’s music in Israel base their case on well-known grounds:

– That many great artists whose works are accepted here are well-known anti-Semites. True, but Wagner was not just another anti-Semite; he advocated a final solution for the Jewish people. In his 1850 treatise Judaism in Music, he claimed that the racial inferiority of the Jews rendered them incapable of any musical contribution. In 1881, when 400 Jews were burned alive in a fire at a Vienna theater, thus reacted the composer: «All the Jews should be burned up at a performance of Nathan.» When czarist soldiers massacred Jews that same year, Wagner said: ‘Their laudable action genuinely express the power of the people.» Although he died before the advent of Nazism, his ideology shaped Nazi thought. Should the Jewish state honor this man’s art?

– That «the man should be separated from his work.» Wagnerites point out that by appreciating his music they are not celebrating Wagner’s anti-Semitic ideology but rather paying tribute to a creative genius whose art became associated with the Nazi Party. However, it is impossible to separate the two in this case. As Efraim Zuroff, head of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, has pointed out, Wagner expressed his anti-Semitism through his creations; that’s why the Nazis made him their cultural icon.

– That based on the intellectual fetish of modern liberalism – absolute freedom of expression – Israeli orchestras have the right to express themselves at their own discretion. If this expression offends a third party, so be it. Freedom of expression trumps absolutely everything.

At issue, though, there are two sets of rights: (1) the legitimate right of an individual to play or listen to the music he or she enjoys, and (2) the right of another individual not to be offended by that music. So maestro Barenboim wants to play Wagner’s music? Let him do it, but not in Israel.

The question whether or not Wagner’s work should be performed in Israel goes far beyond «freedom of expression.» Indeed, to force this kind of extraordinarily sensitive issue on grounds of some absolute personal right to artistic enjoyment is the worst kind of abject insensitivity and collective selfishness.

So, dear members of the Israel Festival, when you all will be gladly listening in Jerusalem to the music of Hitler’s favorite composer, remember that many Holocaust survivors will feel betrayed and abandoned in their own homeland. Enjoy it.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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Collaborators with Israel are no longer thrown into snake pits but ‘sentenced to death in court.’

Jerusalem – The killing of «collaborators» by fellow Palestinians once again has gained notoriety. In the context of the current al-Aqsa intifada, at least seven Palestinians have been murdered already – either with their backs against a wall facing the rifles of Palestinian Authority «policemen,» or under the burning wrath of irregulars armed with pistols, axes and knives.

On Jan. 13, PA Minister of Justice Freih Abu Meiden gave crude expression to this reality when he declared that «anyone we lay our hands on will not merit the mercy of the Palestinian people or the mercy of the Palestinian law.» Later that day, Palestinian human-rights organizations reported to Israeli television that Arafat’s regime had assembled a list of more than 20,000 Palestinians slated for execution for collaborating with Israel.

Of course there is nothing new under the sun. This type of killing is as old as Palestinian nationalism itself. During the 1930s, then-Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, the most prominent Palestinian leader in British-ruled Palestine, imposed a reign of terror of such proportions that by the end of the decade, moderate Arab opinion in Palestine had all but disappeared.

In this period, thousands of Palestinian Arabs were exiled or murdered in a most brutal manner. Moreover, according to historian David Pryce-Jones, not all of those suspected of treason were immediately assassinated. Some were kidnapped, taken to the mountain areas under rebel control and there thrown into pits infested with snakes and scorpions. The bodies of the victims then were left on the city streets for days, after a shoe had been ceremoniously shoved into their mouths as a symbol of disgrace and an example to others.

During the first Palestinian intifada (from 1987 to 1993), masked activists from all PLO factions and Islamic groups killed scores of their brothers suspected of collaboration, often acting on mere rumor.

The mildest estimate puts the number of those killed during this period at almost 1,000. Such was their zealous devotion to the cause that Fatah activists persisted in murdering alleged collaborators to the point of disregarding orders from the Tunis-based PLO leadership at the time, which itself wanted to coordinate all political assassinations.

Collaborator killing did not vanish with the creation of the PA. During the first year after Israeli troops withdrew from Gaza and Jericho (May 1994) alone, 31 Palestinians suspected of being collaborators were murdered. In 1995, the PA established the so-called State Security Court, which has special jurisdiction over security offenses. As such, it functions outside the Palestinian Civil Court system. Collaboration is considered national treason by the PA, so it consequently falls within this court’s jurisdiction. The court provides no right of appeal «and thus operates in contravention of international fair trial standards» in the words of the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment.

The New York-based organization Human Rights Watch stated in a letter sent in 1999 to then-President Clinton that «trials in these courts are typically closed to the public, last a few hours and severely limit the defendant’s chances to prepare a defense. Sentences sometimes are issued just hours after the arrest of the accused.»

Sentences issued by the State Security Court, including life imprisonment and the death penalty, are subject to ratification or veto only by Yasser Arafat himself. Since its establishment in 1995, 33 death penalties have been issued, five of which have been carried out.

Of course, among the various categories of collaborators, by far the most despised group is made up of those Palestinians who sell land to Jews. Some are murdered extra-judicially, others are brought to trial under the terms of the 1997 Property Law for Foreigners. This anti-Semitic legislation effectively has made the PA one of the few entities in the world — since the fall of the Nazi empire — that mandates the death penalty for the sale of lands to Jews.

To say that the conduct of the PA with regard to collaborators is at odds with the Oslo accords and with international law – which burdens the PA with elementary norms of civilized behavior – would be trivial. True, the fact that instead of throwing collaborators to pits full of snakes, the Palestinian leadership now condemns them to death in trials «as short as traffic courts,» as journalist Helen Schary Motro observed, undoubtedly must be considered civic progress for the chaotic Palestinian society. Judged by less relative standards, however, this ongoing human-rights atrocity may be seen as revealing commentary on the true character of the future 23rd Arab nation in the Middle East.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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New Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has a unique opportunity – or challenge – to put Israel back on track.

Jerusalem – I am looking at the picture of Shalhevet Tehiya Pass, the baby girl gunned gown by Palestinian terrorists this week, and I can’t make sense of this atrocious crime. She is sitting on her father’s lap, her parents are smiling; she is looking into the camera with a typically innocent baby face. Shalhevet was killed in her mother’s arms at a kindergarten in Israel.

Her senseless death epitomizes the ugliness, hatred and bestiality of Palestinian terror: Shalhevet didn’t die as a result of a lost, ricochet bullet; this 10-month-old baby was deliberately murdered. How can anyone, even a combatant, raise his rifle, see the face of an infant through his telescopic lens and shoot to kill? I wonder what thoughts must cross the mind of such a man the second before he pulls the trigger that will cut off a baby’s life. Did he sleep later that night? Does he feel anything when his eyes rest on other infant-born of Palestinian mothers? Is he tempted to repent? Obviously not.

Throughout its relentless march toward independence, the PLO repeatedly has targeted children. «There are no innocents; if you are alive, you are involved. Innocence is meaningless,» said Ghassan Kanafani of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine decades ago. He then added rhetorically: “What does the life of an Arab child or a Jewish child matter if their death will help bring about the revolution?»

Three decades later, the «Palestinian revolution» has taken yet another life. The current mini-war (referred to worldwide as an uprising, or intifada) already has resulted in almost 70 Israeli and hundreds of Palestinian deaths. This time, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had no choice but to respond harshly. Otherwise, I fear we would be witnessing the beginning of the end of the Jewish state. Indeed, a nation that tolerates such an atrocity is doomed to extinction. This is a radical statement, in total harmony with the radical situation we are facing.

There must be limits to the current Israeli policy of accommodating to «political correctness.» During the Oslo process, every Hamas suicide bombing was explained away as an act committed by «the enemies of peace»; halting the peace talks would have been tantamount to surrendering to terror, so went the mantra.

In the context of the current hostilities, Israel’s need to exercise restraint is justified on similar pragmatic grounds: Yasser Arafat orders these horrible killings to precipitate a brutal Israeli response that will at least invite international intervention and at best lead to a regional war («at least» and «at best» as measured in Arafat’s terms). In light of this equation, and especially considering that an Arab Summit was taking place in neighboring Amman at the time of Shalhevet’s murder, logic would dictate that restraint continue as the name of the game. Not quite.

No longer feared

For too long already, Israel has been regionally perceived as a weak state. The day that Jordan expelled Israeli journalists who were covering this past Arab Summit from Amman, Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa announced: «This shows no one is afraid of Israel anymore.» Indeed, Israeli weakness invites aggression.

Before the advent of the Oslo era, the Jewish state was hated in the Arab world – but it was feared, too. Now, after eight years of the peace process, Israel is still no less hated, but is no longer feared as well. In the face of a lax and hesitant Israel, the mood in the Arab street (particularly after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon) is one of pride, victory and self-confidence. In light of this reality, the name of the game should be deterrence, not restraint.

The current manifestation of Palestinian hostility is compounded by troublesome scenarios:

• Internationally, Israel does not enjoy the support of the Western world. The Jewish state is consistently vilified by human-rights organizations, the media, left-wing intellectuals and the United Nations when it adopts any measure in response to Palestinian aggression.
• Domestically, Israel’s people are divided. Half of the population is disoriented, confused and shocked after Arafat, the man they trusted and upon whom they projected their own peaceful aspirations, betrayed them – violently. The other half watches in pain as their predictions, sadly, materialize.

Sharon, the man who emerged victorious from the so-called national camp, has a unique opportunity – or challenge – to put Israel back on track. Ehud Barak failed; Benjamin Netanyahu wouldn’t have had the gall to do it.

«Only Sharon,» as the Likud election slogan promised, «will bring peace.» I will be more than happy if he brings security alone. For the sake of Shalhevet’s parents, and all the other grieving mothers in Israel, I hope he will.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.