Worthless Killing

Issue #126

An Israeli journalist, commenting on the terror attack in Haifa, wrote that everybody is focusing on the "day after" the Iraq war.  But meanwhile, innocent people are dying the day before, and the day before that.  This was a reaction to the devastating attack that took 15 lives (and seriously wounded another fifty), as well as to the recent killings in Gaza in which innocent Palestinians have been killed as Israeli forces attacked civilian areas to root out suspected terrorists.

There is a special pain in seeing Haifa hit.  Of all the major cities in Israel, Haifa is the one known for its multi-ethnic character.  Jews and Arabs have always lived together in Haifa, and it has always been something of an oasis of peaceful coexistence.

But terrorists don't care about things like that.  In fact, if the Islamic extremist who detonated the bomb understood Haifa's special character, he would have been even more determined that it was the right place to embark on his murder spree.  Religious extremists - Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu and whatever else - despise fraternization between people of different faiths almost as much as they despise people of different faiths.  It comes with the territory.

It would be easier if acts like these did not have a political context.  Then it would be possible to mourn these innocent victims as if they died in accidents.  But these acts of terror do have a political context.  That means that mourning is not sufficient; one has to come up with a way to stop the killing.  Thus far, Israel has not been able to prevent the terror - nor have Palestinians who oppose it been able to thwart their kinsmen who perpetrate these acts.

In its editorial the day after the Haifa attack, Ha'aretz said, "Terror attacks are foiled or go wrong depending on the ability of the Shin Bet, Military Intelligence, the army and the police, rather than the intention of their planners.  But the government and security establishment must consider the effect [of Israel's policies].  Only when sober and daring leaders come forth, leaders who are willing to compromise and reach a settlement of coexistence in peace between two states, within agreed borders and with no further demands, will bereavement and pain pass out of the land."

In other words, Israel is not entirely helpless in preventing these attacks.  And, in fact, the army, police, and other security agencies do manage to prevent most of them.  But even if one in a hundred attempts succeeds, the pain is just as intense as if the success ratio was higher.  No attacks on civilians are acceptable, not the day after - and not the day before.

Roni Shaked, the highly respected Yediot Achronot reporter, wrote that is impossible to separate the terror from the horrendous conditions the Palestinians have been living under in recent months, and particularly since Israel essentially re-occupied the entire West Bank following last year's Passover terror attack.  "This  boundless  hatred, along with the Palestinian sense that there is no longer any light at the end of the tunnel, with so many funerals, destruction and ruin, give the Palestinian street a sense that they no longer have anything to lose - and all this becomes fuel that accelerates terror's cycle of revenge.  Patterns of behavior created in the two and a half years of war worked [in Haifa] yesterday too.  This is a circular regular pattern, of action and reaction, revenge for a reaction and revenge for revenge.  Today or tomorrow there will be an IDF reaction and afterwards Palestinian revenge, and so on and so forth."

It is impossible to argue with Shaked's point although some will always try.  They will argue that there is no political context, and that the only way to prevent future acts is for Israel to hit back harder, and then even harder, forsaking negotiations and diplomacy.  Although this approach has not worked, and will not work, advocates of the hit-'em-hard school will keep pressing for massive retaliation.

It reminds me of the old definition of insanity: Insanity is to repeat an action over and over again, but to expect a different result.  The father of 13 year old Yuval Mendelevich, killed on Wednesday, told a reporter on the way to his boy's funeral, "I'm not looking for revenge.  I'm not fulfilled when eleven innocent people are killed in Gaza.  If it was eleven terrorists, I would be happy.  But this worthless killing will not solve anything."

The conditions in the occupied territories do not excuse the terror but, as Shaked points out, it is always going to be easier to recruit suicide bombers out of the ranks of the hopeless. Even a militant without a conscience is going to be less inclined to perpetrate a suicide attack if he has something to live for.

Israeli general Freddy Zak, who spent two decades in the West Bank, says this.  "In my 20 years as governor of Jenin, Hebron and the Nablus districts in the West Bank, and as head of the Israeli civil administration in the West Bank and Gaza...it became clear to me that no man or woman with a decent job and hope for the future ever agreed to be a suicide bomber."

If that pattern still holds, we can expect the situation to continue deteriorating.  On Wednesday, the World Bank reported that Palestinian living conditions have never been worse.

"Twenty-seven months after the outbreak of the intifada, 60 percent of the population of the West Bank and Gaza live under a poverty line of US$2 per day. The numbers of the poor have tripled from 637,000 in September 2000 to nearly 2 million today," concludes its report called Two Years of Intifada, Closures and Palestinian Economic Crisis.  "With unemployment rising and incomes collapsing, over half a million Palestinians in this formerly middle-income economy are now fully dependent on food aid.  Per capita food consumption has declined by 30 percent in the past two years, and the incidence of severe malnutrition recently reported in Gaza by Johns Hopkins University is equivalent to levels found in some of the poorer sub-Saharan countries."  (emphasis mine)

There will, of course, be those who say "it's their own fault; they started the intifada."  But playing the blame game is pointless, not to mention repulsive, when millions of innocent children (and their parents) are suffering so terribly.   It is out of the ranks of those millions that the next generation of terrorists is coming.

That suffering, the suffering in Israel, the terror and the hunger, is all occurring not on "the day after" but today.  Unless, there are some dramatic changes -- in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, and in the level of involvement of the Bush administration - the day after could well be the worst day yet.  Time alone will not heal these wounds.

MJ Rosenberg (email: mj847@aol.com), Director of Policy Analysis for Israel Policy Forum, is a long time Capitol Hill staffer and former editor of AIPAC's Near East Report.  If you have colleagues or friends who would appreciate receiving this weekly letter, send an e-mail to ipfdc@ipforumdc.org.