The western MSM has been fixated on Thursday’s tragic, unjustifiable killings of eight students at a West Jerusalem yeshiva (Jewish religious school), and to a lesser extent on the effect that those killings might have on the Annapolis-launched “peace process.”
But they’re missing the main story. The really serious and interesting peace (or rather ceasefire) negotiations are not the Annapolis-launched ones. Those have led nowhere. So far they’ve resulted only in: the proliferation, rather than removal, of IOF checkpoints and Israeli settlements in the West Bank; and the continuation of acts of violence against Israeli civilians. The serious and potentially much more fruitful negotiations are the ones that have apparently been gathering pace in recent weeks between the Olmert government and the leaders of Hamas, through the mediation of Egypt.
Fathia el-Dakhakhni of the independent Egyptian daily Al-Masry al-Youm has the story in today’s paper.
It seems like this negotiation is not yet poised on the brink of a breakthrough. But it does seem serious. What I found fascinating and significant in Dakhakhni’s story were two main things:
1. She had yet another reference to the fact that this negotiation is “US-backed.” She writes that Condi Rice, who was in Egypt as well as Israel and Ramallah this past week, “said she had talked to the Egyptian leaders and expressed confidence that their efforts could promote the US-backed peace talks.”
I checked the record, and here is AFP’s account of what Rice told reporters in Brussels, Thursday. That account is a little fuller than the State Department’s own version. Specifically, the AFP account spells out that Rice’s remarks were in response to a question “about reported talks between Cairo and Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.”
2. Dakhakhni also gives details of the way that Hamas’s Gaza spokesman Taher al-Nono describes the movement’s negotiating position at this point. Dakhakhni wrote that a delegation representing both Hamas and Islamic Jihad met on Thursday in Egypt with Egyptian government officials, and presented their terms for a ceasefire to them. She quoted Nono as saying that the Egyptian side had given no immediate response, but had told the Palestinians to “expect a response to our suggestions soon.”
As to the content of those “suggestions”, Nono told Dakhakhni that the Haniyeh-led Palestinian “caretaker government”, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad all have a single, “clear” position regarding the ceasefire, and they established three three conditions for the ceasefire with Israel:
- it should be mutual and simultaneous; Israel has to stop its aggression on the Palestinian people; it should also end the blockade imposed on Gaza and open the crossings.
The meeting [Hamas negotiators had just been holding with Egyptian negotiators] touched on the issue of the Rafah Crossing and the role of the [PA] presidency and the EU monitors. Hamas movement said it does not object to the presence of former staff members who were present at the Crossing and who represent the Palestinian presidency, al-Nono said. Regarding security, Hamas set a condition that the matter be assumed by persons “whose hands are clean and who had not been charged in corruption cases or violence,” he said.
The Movement has no objection to the return of the EU monitors to the Crossing provided they should not control the opening and closing of the Crossing and that they reside in Arish or Gaza so that Israel has no control over their presence at the Crossing, he stated.
He also pointed out that it had been agreed during the talks to provide the urgent humanitarian assistance to the Strip and to continue treating the sick and wounded from the Israeli aggression, stressing that the Islamic Jihad had backed the positions of Hamas.
An agreement was reached with the Egyptian officials on the possibility of Cairo hosting a large Hamas delegation to discuss the matter if necessary, he added.
For his part, a member of the Islamic Jihad delegation to the talks with Egypt said that the Islamic Jihad would hold internal discussions and respond to the truce proposal within days, asserting that Jihad would continue self-defense operations as long as Israel continues its attacks.
We should note that Rice’s comments, as reported above, were made before the news broke about the killings in the Jerusalem yeshiva. It is entirely possible that Olmert’s position regarding the talks with Hamas– and therefore also that of Rice, who acts primarily, though perhaps not always solely, as his emissary– has changed since then.
The Hamas leadership certainly dented its bona-fides as a negotiator with the confused response it displayed to the yeshiva killings. The Hamas-linked Palestinian Information Center website still describes the killings as a “heroic operation”, though the Hamas leaders have also been at pains not to claim the movement’s responsibility for it. The perpetrator of the killings, who may well have acted alone, was 24-year-old Ala Abu Dehaim, a resident of Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. He was shot dead during the melee that accompanied his lethal rampage.
The yeshiva killings have probably made it harder, at least in the immediate future, for Olmert to justify to his people a policy of concluding a ceasefire with Hamas concerning Gaza. But if Olmert is indeed serious about going for a ceasefire with Hamas over Gaza, perhaps he should also have thought that many of his own government’s escalatory decisions of recent weeks made retaliation from enraged Palestinians, whether in East Jerusalem, in other portions of the occupied West Bank, or elsewhere, considerably more rather than less likely? If both sides are serious about pursuing this ceasefire option, then surely they both need to think rather carefully about all the many implications this approach has on other aspects of policy.
A final, very important note about Egypt’s role in all this. As I wrote here not long ago, President Mubarak seems to really hate the idea of Gaza becoming closely integrated with Egypt in any political way. This is primarily because of the long and close political ties between Hamas, which now runs Gaza, and the Muslim Brotherhood, who are his own main– and currently very threatening– opposition group.
But it is the very closeness of these ties and the current strength of the MB within Egyptian society that are also, right now, forcing Mubarak to do something to alleviate the suffering of Gaza’s 1.45 million people. However much he wants to, he cannot simply turn his back on their plight.
These twin factors are what seem to be motivating his recent decision to build a sturdy, presumably unbreachable, wall between Gaza and Egypt. In the context of the existence of such a wall it will be far more possible for him and Hamas between them to control and regulate the passage between Egypt and Gaza. I think both leaderships were quite dismayed about some of the things that happened during the 11-day period in Jan-Feb when there was no barrier and no regulation at all. Hundreds of Egypt’s own homegrown and very violent and unpredictable jihadi militants crossed from Egypt into Gaza, considerably complicating Hamas’s ability to exert its control over Gaza’s relatively lengthy border with Israel. And other unwelcome passages of people and goods– in both directions– no doubt also occurred. As I wrote here February 3,
- For Gaza’s economic opening to and through Egypt to work, as [leading Hamas member Mahmoud] Zahhar and his colleagues want it to, both the Palestinians and the Egyptians need to be able to control– and keep calm– their respective borders with Israel.
Finally, regarding Egypt, everyone should stay closely attuned to the popular pressures that are continuing to mount against Mubarak’s regime. This is, certainly, a matter of great importance to the prospects of a successful Israeli-Hamas ceasefire. But it is also of far, far wider importance to the strategic balance within the whole region!
Two other reports in today’s English language AMAY give a small glimpse into the depth of this crisis. This one is about the long-continuing, economic-related unrest in the industrial region of Mahalla el-Kubra. And this one is about highly politicized sermons and associated disturbances inside the Al-Azhar mosque during yesterday’s prayer.
It is notable that in Egypt– as in Lebanon and most likely numerous other Arab countries– popular unrest is currently being mobilized around the two issues of:
- (1) Gaza, and Palestine in general, and
(2) rapidly deteriorating local economic conditions, “fueled” by spiraling prices for both food and fuel.
The ageing Egyptian president probably feels that today he is sitting atop an increasingly explosive mix; and no doubt he tried to convey some of that sense of discomfort/threat to Condi Rice during their recent meeting.
Cairo. Watch that space.
Helena refers to “a West Jerusalem yeshiva”. At first, I thought that that West Jerusalem yeshiva was an exception, but perhaps Mercav Harav was just another yeshiva.
Mercav Harav is the birthplace of the Gush Enumin movement, for now the most racist and genocidal ideology in the Israeli state. Among its thousands of graduates are senior rabbis who have themselves either personally killed Arab civilians or called on the Israeli army to show them no mercy. Many Israeli army officers were trained at Mercaz Harav, some estimate 40%.
According to Mercaz Harav’s own internal newsletter, their students were attacking Palestinians in Gaza (“Students from the Yeshiva as well, have been called up for reserve duty at the front.”)
The yeshiva’s most notorious graduates include Rabbi Haim Druckmann, who recently issued a call for the Israeli army to exterminate the Palestinians and show no mercy to Arab civilians, and Rabbi Moshe Levinger, who shot to death an unarmed Arab shopkeeper, a murder for which he received a sentence of only a few months.
Then there is Avraham Shapira, the Chief Rabbi of Israel who has declared that handing over parts of the Eretz Israel, even with a peace agreement, is forbidden. He has called for soldiers not to obey orders to hand over territory. There is the infamous Dor Lior, the Chief Rabbi of Hebron and considered by many to be the leading “scholar” of the Religious Zionists and a prime student of the scool’s founder, Rabbi Kook. He is known for his statements suggesting that captured Palestinians could be used to conduct medical experiments. All graduates of Mercav Harav. Another graduate is David Raziel, the first commander of the terrorist group, Irgun.
I would posit that a yeshiva that espouses such an ideology is on par with those madrassas in Pakistan that the US delights in claiming as being the centers of “terrorism” and “Islamofascism”. Ziofascism sounds about right.
Of course I understand about the ideological and organizational role that the Mercaz Harav has played since 1967. However, for me the fundamental distinction is still that between combatants and noncombatants; and these victims were all noncombatants at the time of their slaying– though the one older guy amongst them, Doron Maharata, had also served in the IDF as Haaretz and others have noted.
But quite simply I don’t think anyone should be slain simply for their views, however heinous. The only even possibly “justifiable” human target of lethal violence would be one who is armed and in a military or quasi-military formation. I do think the distinction that international humanitarian law draws between combatants and noncombatants is a meaningful one.
That was why, in the post, I didn’t go into the whole issue of the role the Mercaz has played in the settlement-promotion movement, even though I think that movement is continuously engaged in a massive conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity and in any kind of a just world its leaders and instigators would be tries on those charges. Still, that doesn’t make them “fair game” for any kind of lethal violence.
There is additionally the question of the young age of some of the victims– 15 and 16 years old. That youthfulness would seem to make it quite possible to think of these young people as mere brainwashed pawns in the whole ideological endeavor in which the Mercaz has been involved. But as I said, the youthfulness issue is additional. It’s the noncombatant issue that to me is most important.
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