by Yoel Bin-Nun
Translated from Hebrew by Sally Zahav
Abu-Mazen went to war in order to circumvent the Israeli voter’s decision, and force the elected leader to capitulate to him. Anyone who supports his demands is acting in contravention to democracy
Operation Protective Edge, which began with the abduction
and murder of the three youths, has never ended. The shooting and stabbing war
in the roads continues all the time, as well as the occasional missiles from Gaza, even though the Shabak (General Security
Service) and the IDF eliminated 55 gangs of gunmen during one year, until the Nablus
cell, operating under the radar, murdered Rav Eitam and Na’ama Henkin. Prevention of a planned terror attack is
a victory in battle, and not just an interception.
The main change that has occurred now is Abu-Mazen’s
decision to conduct the war against Israel himself, and not leave it in the
hands of the Islamic movements. He announced that he would set off a “bomb” at
the UN, and he did, indeed – he instructed his people to continue the security
cooperation in order to put Israel off guard and to please the Americans, but
he removed his checkpoints set up to stop attacks and sent a green light to the
Palestinians to go to war. He also continues to wage the terror war and
describe it as a “defensive war” in his speeches.
What does he want? No Arab leader in the world has ever entered
into diplomatic discussions with Israel without getting Israeli and
international commitment ahead of time, about what he would receive at the end
of the negotiations. Negotiations have always been conducted only on the
details. The only Israeli leader who has refused to play according to these
rules for years is Netanyahu, who has demanded “negotiations without
preconditions” again and again, like the governments of Israel did from the Six
Day War until the Yom Kippur War. Head of the opposition Isaac (Bugi) Herzog stated
this explicitly in his recent statement when he said that Netanyahu reminds him
of Golda Meir before that war.
Heads of government and heads of the opposition in Israel
have continued and still continue to play the game according to Arab logic, presenting
Abu-Mazen ahead of time what he can get and what he can expect from them. Most
have done this and still do this without the authority to do so, either when a
government was at the end of its term or in the case when they had not been
elected because the public had rejected them democratically; therefore they do
this without any Knesset or governmental (cabinet) decision. They continued to
meet with Abu-Mazen for the entire time in order to strengthen an
anti-democratic commitment ostensibly in the name of the State of Israel, but without
the authority to do so.
Who puts a stop to this? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He
has also told his emissaries what he was prepared to agree to, but there is a
big difference between the willingness on his part, with sanction and authority,
and the promises that Abu-Mazen continues to get from Herzog and Tzipi Livni –
without sanction and without authority.
Since they did not manage to overthrow Netanyahu in the
elections, in the Knesset or in the eyes of the public, and he succeeded to survive, Abu-Mazen decided to set off a “bomb”
and start a conflagration, which he hopes will result in Israeli-American commitments
consistent with his minimum lines, that he will bring with him to the negotiating
table.
Thus, for example, Netanyahu froze, in practice, most of the
building both in the settlements and in Jerusalem after he tried to resist the
Americans for several years, but he refuses to take an official decision to
freeze the building – and this makes him “guilty” of the conflagration from the
point of view of American Secretary of State John Kerry, architect of the Iran
agreement. Moreover, Netanyahu insists on Israeli forces in the Jordan Valley
in order to stop and prevent what happened in Gaza – the supply of weapons and
parts for missiles into Samaria. Abu-Mazen is only willing to have
international forces, knowing that such forces will stop nothing, as happened
in Lebanon. The American government agrees with Abu-Mazen and so do Herzog and
Livni. At issue are missiles that would be launched toward Ben Gurion
International Airport and Tel Aviv every time Israel insists on what she
believes is necessary. Despite this, many Israelis in Tel Aviv still abhor
Netanyahu, the last barrier against missiles from the Samarian mountains.
Likewise, Netanyahu is not willing to commit himself to a
specific percentage of withdrawal in Judea and Samaria – greater than 90
percent – which his rivals did agree to, and he rejects their exaggerated
concessions in Jerusalem, including in the area called the “holy basin”. This
is what Abu-Mazen is waging the war over.
Since a Palestinian threat is again being created in our
everyday lives, international emissaries are already being mobilized to “rescue”
the negotiations – meaning, to force the capitulation of Benjamin Netanyahu,
the democratically elected Prime Minister of Israel. Those who preach to us day
and night about taking democratic resolutions on the uprooting of communities,
continue to act in a clearly anti-democratic manner. Instead of declaring to
Abu-Mazen and the international community that they need to align themselves
with the minimal requirements of the elected prime minister of Israel, without
whom there can be no lasting agreement, they nevertheless nurture the hope of
changing the structure of Israel’s government so that Netanyahu will be forced
to accept Abu-Mazen’s dictates as a starting point for negotiations.
This is not a war with the Islamic movements, which would require
a separate analysis, but it is a war with the Palestinian leadership. A
majority of the Israeli public understands this attempt, but is not aware of
the details because no one explains what is really happening behind the scenes.
If the war and the process that goes along with it continue, it may very well
be that the day is not far off when the Israeli public will have to make a
clear democratic statement as part of the resolution of the war.
This war that is being waged is an integral part of a world
war between cultures. This is the world war that broke out with the collapse of
the Twin Towers in New York. The war is being waged in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in
Iran, in Syria, in Libya, in Egypt and Sinai, in Gaza, in Lebanon and in the
Ukraine, and at any moment another front may be ignited in North Korea and
other locations.
Anyone who does not understand that under these conditions
there is no chance for a stable agreement in our land, and that Abu-Mazen rules
in Ramallah only in order to wrest control of Samaria and the Jordan Valley from
Israel’s hands, and that afterward Hamas would overthrow the PA exactly as it
did in Gaza – whoever does not understand these things is not suitable to lead
any Israeli political party.
Yoel Bin-Nun
Source: Makor Rishon Newspaper, 16.10.2015, Issue 949, pg. 3
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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