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Six
Palestinian churches in the West Bank and Gaza Strip suffered damage and
arson attempts in reaction to the words of Pope Benedict XVI.
Palestinian spokesmen of all stripes condemned these attacks and said
that the Palestinian nation - Christians and Muslims alike - is one, and
is united in its struggle against the occupation. Reports on the attacks
in the Palestinian media described the perpetrators as `unknown.` In the
Palestinian subtext, `unknown` implies `of suspicious identity,` a
phrase that borders on a half-concealed accusation that Israel`s Shin
Bet security services sent agents provocateurs.
In Tubas, where an attempt to set fire to a church failed thanks to the
residents` alertness, people said openly that the thrower of the Molotov
cocktail might be connected to the Israeli occupation. But the mayor of
Tubas, Oqab Darghmeh, who raised this possibility, also proposed another
option: Perhaps the perpetrator acted out of ignorance.
Most of the critics, however, did not point an accusatory finger at the
Shin Bet. They cannot deny the ills that have become so widespread in
Palestinian society: criminal behavior and hooliganism masked by the
images and jargon of a national struggle, and the growing use of weapons
in personal and public conflicts, with the encouragement of Palestinian
political actors, who are in need of the atmosphere of chaos in order to
be seen as `strong.`
But is it possible to separate these ills completely from the Israeli
occupation?
The latest book by historian Hillel Cohen, Aravim Tovim (`Good Arabs`),
offers several historical proofs of the validity of Palestinian
`paranoia` about the political motives behind security control. Although
the subject of the book is the activity of Israeli security and
intelligence agencies among Israeli Arabs immediately after 1948, a
consistent policy of action and thought that stretches from the Mandate
years until the present allows us to draw conclusions that also apply to
Israeli control over the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Cohen`s research relies mainly on police documents from the period,
which have recently been opened for public perusal (the Shin Bet
documents are still classified). They relate, for example, that the
provision of weapons to collaborators by the local authorities was a way
of rewarding them. However, the security forces` liaison committee
mentioned in 1949 that `the distribution of weapons to an element or
members of one group is likely to be useful to us; it will create the
desired tension among the various parts of the population and enable us
to control the situation.` The security agencies, Cohen reveals on the
basis of written documents, occasionally even initiated internal
conflicts.
Moreover, the regional committee for Arab affairs in the Triangle (the
body that coordinated among the various security agencies in this
region) `does not approve of providing the residents of the region with
higher education,` according to the minutes of a 1954 meeting, and the
committee worked to prevent Arabs from being accepted to institutes of
higher education. Cohen allows himself to speculate that the motive was
its desire to prevent the creation of an educated class that would
succeed in organizing and making demands of the state.
In other words, the security services - even if they acted on their own
initiative in various places - operated in the context of an official
paradigm: continued theft of lands, continued fragmentation and
weakening of Arab society, and undermining the possibility of the Arabs
developing an independent leadership. Critics of the Military
Administration`s policies - Israeli Arabs and the main opposition party,
Maki (the Israel Communist Party) - were described as `paranoid.` But
Cohen, in the many examples he brings in his book, retroactively proves
that they were right.
Indirectly, this book by a former journalist says that one does not have
to rely on written documents - which will be made public in another 50
years - in order to believe a political analysis that differs from that
of the rulers. Hence, it was not simply shortsightedness and neglect
that caused the Palestinian territories to be flooded with weapons
during the 1990s. It was not `security` that led to the creation of a
class of new mukhtars from Fatah, who received special privileges that
were denied to other Palestinians and that deepened internal tensions.
It was not `shortsightedness` that led to the weakening and political
trivialization of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) as chairman of the
Palestinian Authority, just as it was not simple naivete that omitted
the main point from the Oslo Accords: the goal of a Palestinian state
within the 1967 borders.
It is not local decisions by regional military commanders that are
fragmenting the West Bank into isolated `territorial cells.` It is not
security considerations alone that prevent Gazan students from studying
in the West Bank and American academicians from teaching in Palestinian
educational institutions. In the name of security - but not for its sake
- Israel is exacerbating ignorance and economic deterioration in the
occupied territories.
According to this analysis, for which there is no shortage of evidence,
the Israeli security services are careful to act within the framework of
a clear political paradigm: maximum weakening, in every possible way, of
the Palestinian national collective, so that it will not be able to
realize its goal and establish a state worthy of the name, in accordance
with international resolutions.
ID
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