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4/14/2002 (9:22) |
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nday, April 14 2002 @ 01:54 AM GMT
By Uri Avnery for PalestineChronicle.com
105 years ago, the day after the First Zionist Congress
in Basel, Theodor Herzl, wrote in his diary: ' In Basel I
founded the State of the Jews.' This week, Ariel Sharon
should note in his diary: 'In Jenin I founded the State of
the Palestinians.'
Of course, he did not mean to. Quite the contrary, his
intention was to destroy the Palestinian nation, its
institutions and leadership, once and for all, leaving only
bits and pieces, human wreckage that could be disposed
of anywhere.
In practice, something quite different happened. Faced
with the onslaught of the biggest military machine in the
region and the most modern arms in the world,
submerged in a sea of suffering, surrounded by bodies,
the Palestinian nation straightened its back as never
before.
In the small refugee camp near Jenin a group of
Palestinian fighters from all the organizations gathered
for a battle of defense that will be enshrined forever in
the hearts of all Arabs. This is the Palestinian Massada –
as an Israeli officer called it, alluding to the legendary
stand of the remnants of the great Jewish rebellion
against Rome in the year 71 AD.
When the international media cannot be kept out
anymore and the pictures of horror will be published,
two possible versions may emerge: Jenin as a story of
massacre, a second Sabra and Shatila, and Jenin, the
Palestinian Stalingrad, a story of immortal heroism. The
second will surely prevail.
Nations are built on myths. I was raised on the myths of
Massada and Tel-Chai, they formed the consciousness of
the new Hebrew nation. (In Tel-Chai, 1920, a group of
Jewish defenders, led by the one-armed hero Josef
Trumpeldor, were killed in an incident with anti-French
Syrian fighters.) The myths of Jenin and Arafat’s
compound in Ramallah will form the consciousness of the
new Palestinian nation.
A primitive military robot, who sees everything in terms
of fire-power and body-counts, will not understand this.
But Napoleon, a military genius, said that in war, moral
considerations account for three quarters, and the
actual balance of force only for the other quarter.
How does Sharon’s war look in this perspective?
As for the actual forces, the balance is clear. A few
dozen Israelis killed, many hundreds of Palestinians
dead. No destruction in Israel, horrible destruction in the
Palestinian towns.
The aim was, so it was claimed, to 'destroy the terror
infrastructure'. This definition is by itself nonsensical:
the 'terror infrastructure' exists in the souls of millions
of Palestinians and tens of millions of Arabs, whose
heart is bursting with rage. The more fighters and
suicide-bombers are killed, the more fighters and
suicide-bombers are ready to take their place. We saw
the 'laboratories of explosives' – some sacs of material
obtainable in Israeli shops. The IDF is proud of
discovering tens of them. There will soon be hundreds
more.
When dozens of wounded people lie around in the
streets and slowly bleed to death, because the army
shoots at every moving ambulance – it creates terrible
hatred. When the army secretly buries hundreds of
bodies of men, women and children – it creates terrible
hatred. When tanks overrun cars, destroy houses,
topple electricity poles, open water pipes, leave behind
them thousands of homeless people and cause children
to drink from puddles in the street – it causes terrible
hatred.
A Palestinian child, who sees all this with his eyes,
becomes the suicide-bomber of tomorrow. Thus Sharon
and Mofaz create the terrorist infrastructure.
In the meantime, they have created the foundations of
the Palestinian nation and the Palestinian state. The
people saw their fighters in Jenin and believe that they
are far greater heroes than the Israeli soldiers,
protected as they are inside their heavy tanks. They saw
their leader in the historic TV sequence, his face lighted
by a single candle in his dark, surrounded office, ready
for death at any moment, and compares him with the
hedonic Israeli ministers, sitting in their offices far from
the battle-front, surrounded by hordes of bodyguards.
Thus national pride is engendered.
No good for Israel will come out of this adventure, as no
good came out of any of the previous adventures of
Sharon. The concept of the operation was stupid, the
implementation cruel, the results will be disastrous. It
will not bring peace and security, solve no problem, but
it will isolate Israel and endanger the Jews throughout
the world.
In the end, only one thing will be remembered: our giant
military machine assaulted the small Palestinian people,
and the small Palestinian people and its leader held on.
In the eyes of the Palestinians, and not only theirs, it will
look like a tremendous victory, the victory of a modern
David against Goliath.
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