Destroying the Lives of 40,000 Bedouin Israeli Citizens

May 5, 2013

Allen Katzoff Bedouin 1 Comment

“I truly believe that history will judge all of us on how we act in the coming days. The enormity of the impending moral disaster is perhaps greater than any I have dealt with in the 18 years I have been working for Rabbis For Human Rights.”

Rabbi Arik Ascherman, Rabbis for Human Rights, May 5, 2013

The government of Israel wants to advance a bill in the Knesset that will forcibly expel 40,000 Bedouin, all citizens of Israel, from villages on their ancestral lands. In past centuries, the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate recognized the land as belonging to these Bedouin. Israel, with new laws passed since the founding of the state, has unilaterally taken away these ownership rights and the government, echoed by the media, now publicly calls the Bedouin “squatters” as if they have no historical and legal connection to their homes.

The plan is to demolish the Bedouin villages and force residents into artificially created towns where there are no jobs, no hope, and crime and drugs are rampant. Experience has shown that their social structures will collapse when separated from their land and traditional way of life. Besides the moral implications, this is a dangerous strategic move for Israel — destroying the lives of 40,000 loyal (until now) Muslim citizens.

As background, I posted two columns about this last year.  Click here and here (scroll down a bit).

A Ministerial Committee is meeting Monday, May 6, to decide if the plan will be forwarded to the Knesset for approval. If you want to help stop this action, please sign this petition – and forward this on to others who might be interested in stopping this legislation. We only have 24 hours. Click here for a history of how this particular plan was developed.

I have pasted in below selections from a column by Rabbi Arik Ascherman from Rabbis for Human Rights which describes how this plan is a violation of the ethical and moral foundations of the Jewish tradition – and mirrors the policies that were used to oppress Jews in the past.

From the moment that I first understood our government’s intentions, I have not been able to get out of my head the final scene of “Fiddler on the Roof,” as the Jews of Anatevka are expelled from their homes. Watch it for yourselves, starting at 2 hours and 36 minutes.

I imagine the residents of El-Araqib saying goodbye to the generations buried in their cemetery, and the residents of numerous villages giving one last longing look at their lands. I imagine the Bedouin soldier serving in the IDF returning his uniform after taking a furlough to help his family pack. At least as likely, I imagine 40,000 Bedouin battling the special police force to be created to enforce this plan, and eventually being forcibly herded into the “Pale of Settlement,” where they will be allowed to live. I see the hatred in young people’s eyes, rising incidents of skirmishes between Jews and Bedouin, and the headlines mourning declining investments and rising unemployment for Jew and Arab alike. As we are warned in this week’s Torah portion, “If you reject My Laws and spurn “My rules,….I will wreak misery upon you…” (Leviticus 26: 15-16)

The bottom line is that successive Israeli governments have desired for years to move the Negev Bedouin out of villages where they have lived before the creation of the state, or in some cases from villages into which Israel had forcibly moved them during the first years of the state. The goal has also been to take over their lands. Fear mongers have told the Israeli public that the Bedouin are criminals who will take over the Negev if they are not stopped. The truth is that, if the Bedouin were granted a fair opportunity to prove their land claims, and were they to win every claim, they would hold on to 5.4% of the Negev.

The Ministerial Committee on Legislation is scheduled to vote on Monday whether or not to send the latest plan to the Knesset to make it into law. Our ask is very simple. “Don’t approve this, or any other proposal that steals land and hope. Build a better future together with the Bedouin” Beyond the enormous moral implications almost impossible to grasp, there is self interest as well. The additional tension, strife and social problems will drive away investments, and discourage people from living in the Negev.

When Sheikh Sayekh al-Touri [from the demolished Bedouin village of Al-Arakib] watched that scene of the Jews of Anatevka being expelled from their homes. He exclaimed, “They did to the Jews just what the Jews are trying to do to us!” However, I was always taught that we are a people commanded to learn from our own oppression how NOT to treat others, and how NOT to repeat history, “For you were resident aliens in the land of Egypt.”

And so, I also have an alternative vision in my head. It is one of Jews and Bedouin working together for the good of theNegev. It is one in which we will merit the blessing of this week’s Torah portion,”You shall observe my laws and faithfully keep My rules, that you may live upon the land in security, the land shall yield is fruit and you shall eat your fill…”(Leviticus 23:18-19), because we will remember that even the Covenant between God and the Jewish people does not mean that the land belongs to Arab or Jew, “For the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with me.”(Leviticus 25:23) If we act fairly and justly to Jew and Bedouin alike, we will be truly living the Torah’s command:

“You shall proclaim freedom throughout the land for ALL its inhabitants.” (Leviticus 25:10)

Please act now. Your decision at this moment could influence whether Israel ignores the moral lessons of our own history and perpetuates strife, or whether Israel acts according to the precepts of justice and fairness at the heart of our Jewish tradition, and promotes a better future for both Jews and Bedouin in the Negev.

Love

March 8, 2013

Allen Katzoff Miscellaneous 6 Comments

This post is not about Israel but rather about a theme that transcends the day-to-day and is a reminder of what is most important and precious in life.

A few days ago I read a story in The New York Times that was simply beautiful. My wife, the author Joan Leegant, and I tried to figure out how the writer, Peter Mercurio, was able to construct such a moving story that was written in such a simple, straightforward style. We were unable to identify specific techniques other than it illustrated the gifts of a talented writer, one of those miracles of the creative consciousness where I think God is present. So read on….

The story of how Danny and I were married last July in a Manhattan courtroom, with our son, Kevin, beside us, began 12 years earlier, in a dark, damp subway station.

Danny called me that day, frantic. “I found a baby!” he shouted. “I called 911, but I don’t think they believed me. No one’s coming. I don’t want to leave the baby alone. Get down here and flag down a police car or something.” By nature Danny is a remarkably calm person, so when I felt his heart pounding through the phone line, I knew I had to run. 

I hope reading the rest of this tale will brighten your day. See: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/we-found-our-son-in-the-subway/

Blockbuster Scoop

February 27, 2013

Allen Katzoff African Refugees, Israel , , , , , 2 Comments

Among the issues recently dominating the front pages of Israeli newspapers are the tortured negotiations to form a coalition that will govern the country while the growing riots and demonstrations on the West Bank might be the opening salvos of a new intifada as hope for freedom among Palestinians dwindles to zero.  These daily stories appear against the backdrop of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strikes, a recently arrested Palestinian who died while undergoing interrogation by the Shin Bet (amidst allegations of torture), more threats about Iran, Israeli forces on the move in the Negev demolishing Bedouin homes, and the racially-motivated beatings of Arabs by violent mobs on the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the aftermath of Purim festivities, events that are no longer aberrations.

One item that caught my attention was a controversy around the pending deportation of 25 African refugees back to Eritrea. Eritrea is one of the most oppressive regimes in the world where there is a universal, lifelong conscription of young men into the army. Draft dodgers are severely punished with torture and often death. Their plight reminds me of the multitudes of Jewish men who fled Czarist Russia back in the 1800’s which is why many found their way to America and some even to Palestine at the time.

Needless to say, these Africans have not found a warm welcome in Israel as I have written about repeatedly. The new law passed last year criminalizes these asylum seekers with an automatic three-year prison sentence with unlimited extensions. There is no trial or appeal. Apparently these 25 refugees opted for “voluntary repatriation” when faced with the threat of indefinite imprisonment. Human rights groups were up in arms over the pressure brought to bear on these helpless people who would face a guaranteed brutal reception when they landed in Eritrea.  So this controversy was simmering in the background of all the other news.

But then the blockbuster story appeared yesterday. Splashed across the front pages of the Haaretz newspaper was the scoop that Israel has already “voluntarily deported” 1,000 asylum seekers back to Sudan. Many of these refugees fled genocide in Darfur and more recently from the Nuba Mountain region where the government has conducted a brutal campaign against the civilian population including aerial bombings, the destruction of entire villages, mass arrests of thousands, and a government initiated famine. (Click here and here for articles written last year by Nikolas Kristof in The New York Times about this genocidal war).

This deportation is a blatant violation of the UN Refugee Convention that Israel helped develop in the 1950’s in the aftermath of the Holocaust. As the UN Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR) representative stated, “…deporting Sudanese to Sudan would be the gravest violation possible of the convention that Israel has signed – a crime never before committed.” Although Israel claims the deportations were voluntary, the UNHCR stated there is no “freewill from inside a prison.”

Sudanese officials have consistently warned that it is a serious crime for any citizen to go to Israel and offenders would be punished. Let’s remember these people were already fleeing slaughter.

Trying to defend itself, Israel states that it is not deporting the refugees directly to Sudan but, by prior arrangement, they are being deported to a third country that, in turn, deports them to Sudan – as if this strategy will not quickly be discovered by the Sudanese authorities.

One Israeli human rights activist, Reut Michaeli, summed up this stunning news perfectly.

“The ease with which the State of Israel is willing to force people to return to a place where their lives are in danger…shows that we have become a society that sanctifies Jewish demography and gives it priority over humanistic Jewish values.

[Sudanese] who hear from [Israeli] government representatives that the law enables them to be held in prison forever without trial, and without their being able to apply for refugee status, despair. They are even willing to endanger their lives to gain a slim chance of freedom.”

Israeli officialdom has been mum about this development. Silence reigns from Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, Interior Minister Eli Yishai, and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. Except that we know Netanyahu’s attitude given his government’s long record of incitement against the refugees.  Just a few weeks ago, in a Jerusalem speech to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, he repeatedly labeled all African asylum seekers in Israel “illegal job immigrants.” This while his government was sending 1,000 people back to their probable imprisonment and death in Sudan.  And, of course, those paragons of virtue in the audience gave him adulatory ovations, having forgotten they owed their own freedom to their ancestors who fled to America to escape similar bloody persecution or genocide.

ASSAF, the Aid Organization for Refugees and Asylum Seekers, issued the following statement in Tel Aviv, “In deporting [people] to Sudan, Israel has crossed a red line and is not only violating its most basic obligation under international law, but demonstrating cruelty, hard-heartedness and indifference to the fate of human beings.”

Unchained at Last

February 13, 2013

Allen Katzoff Gender, Judaism, Miscellaneous, Uncategorized , , Leave a comment

Although this blog is usually about Israel, I am highlighting a moving article in this past weekend’s Jewish Forward newspaper about a new USA-based organization, Unchained at Last, that helps women escape from arranged marriages that are abusive. This is a subgroup of battered or threatened women who face additional cultural constraints on escape. Click here to read the column.

The article tells the story of the founder of the organization, Fraidy Reiss, who grew up in an ultra-Orthodox world and how, after many years, she finally left her volatile husband, overcoming intense communal pressure to stay. Unchained at Last now helps women from other cultural milieus in similar situations where arranged marriages are common and divorce is discouraged, even in cases of abuse.

As the article states, the Good People Fund has provided the early financial support to start the organization and help it grow. Please forward this on to others who might be interested in learning about this issue or go to the Good People Fund Facebook page where you can share the article with your Facebook friends.  Thanks.

Gatekeepers

February 1, 2013

Allen Katzoff Israel, Israeli history, West Bank , 1 Comment

Run, don’t walk, to see the academy-award nominated Israeli film “Gatekeepers,” slated for release in the USA today. Go with your friends to see it, especially those on the right or in the center – or those who may not be familiar with what has occurred in Israel these past decades.

The film consists of interviews with all six former directors of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, who are still alive. These men were responsible for intelligence gathering in the West Bank and Gaza, for fighting terrorism, for helping to put down the intifadas, and for enforcing the occupation. Their knowledge and insight are unequaled. They are not naïve about the threats that Israel faces but their comments are gripping.

The film addresses two main topics. The first deals with the moral quandaries of fighting terror and trying to save Israeli lives. They describe in excruciating detail the choices they had to make, understanding the line they were walking. Their statements are illustrated with archival footage of past events, including videos of rocket attacks on vehicles carrying terror suspects along with graphic images of the aftermath of terror attacks, which bring to life the dilemmas and challenges they faced.

But the emphasis of the latter part of the film is even more enlightening. Uniformly they castigate the political leadership of Israel for lacking strategic vision, for concentrating on short-term tactics without paying attention to the long-term ramifications. These men dealt with all the political leaders for decades, on both the right and the left, and they are unsparing in their criticism. They, who were charged with enforcing the occupation, oppose it and believe that Israel is headed for disaster.

There have been some excellent reviews of the film. I recommend this one from The American Prospect by Jerusalem-based Gershom Gorenberg, the leading historian of Israeli policies in the occupied territories and author of one of the best recent books about Israel “The Unmaking of Israel.” Gorenberg does a good job of putting the film into a larger political and historical context.

This weekend’s Daily Jewish Forward also reviewed the film but offered some fascinating additional background. (Click here to the read the full article.) The perspective of these former Shin Bet directors can best be summed up by these observations from J.J. Goldberg, the reviewer:

Yes, they say, we abused suspects and killed bystanders. Our job was to stop terrorists, and we did. But they insist Israel has another option. It can extricate itself from the endless cycle of terrorism and repression by negotiating peace with the Palestinians and ending its occupation of the West Bank.

It’s possible, they say. There is a partner on the other side that’s prepared for peaceful coexistence. Israel tells itself there’s no partner only because its leaders don’t want to give up the territories. They’re barreling toward disaster.

Again, these are not leftist Israel-haters talking. They’re the heads of Israel’s security service, the men tasked with penetrating the Palestinian mind, knowing what to expect and how to respond. That’s why it’s hard to watch. If you’ve spent a lifetime hearing that Israel desires only peace but its enemies are sworn to its destruction, this turns your world upside-down.

But the Forward reviewer goes beyond a typical review. He actually checked if the film accurately portrayed the opinions of these men or if the truth was left on the cutting room floor.

I phoned a couple of the security veterans who appear in the film. Did the film accurately reflect their views, I asked, or were they distorted by the filmmaker’s agenda?

“It completely reflects my views,” said Yaakov Peri, who headed the agency from 1988 to 1994. “We discuss these things among ourselves. We all agree.” Peri reminds me, as he’s told me before, that every ex-Mossad chief and most former army chiefs feel the same way.

But wouldn’t the film have been better if it concentrated on moral dilemmas and avoided politics? “If it had, there would have been no point to the film,” said Ami Ayalon, who headed the agency from 1995 to 2000.

“The six of us reached our opinions from different personal backgrounds and different political outlooks, but we’ve all reached the same conclusion,” Ayalon said. “Many Israelis and American Jews want to deny it, but this is our professional opinion. We’re at the edge of an abyss, and if Israeli-Palestinian peace doesn’t progress, it’s the end of Zionism.”

Like I said, run to see this film. Tell your friends to go. These men have credibility that few can equal. Maybe it will help lead to change.

This column was previously published on The Times of Israel.

A Man, a Woman, and a Baby

January 21, 2013

Allen Katzoff African Refugees, Israel , Leave a comment

From Maimonides:

Our sages commanded us to visit the non-Jewish sick and to bury the non-Jewish dead along with the Jewish dead, and support the non-Jewish poor along with the Jewish poor for the sake of peace. As it says, “God is good to all and God’s mercies extend over all God’s works” (Psalms 145:9), and “[The Torah’s] ways are pleasant and all its paths are peace” (Proverbs 3:17). —Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings 10:12

Our beat-up car weaved around potholes in the dusty road. We were in what’s known as “Shchunat Ha’argazim,” a neighborhood named after the wooden shipping crates used long ago by poor immigrants for housing in this neglected corner of Tel Aviv. The houses aren’t shipping crates anymore but most aren’t much better; crumbling stone structures and metal huts. It’s hard to believe that this dilapidated enclave is within sight of the sleek office towers and glass-enclosed condos that make up so much of the city’s skyline.

My companion, Gideon, turned onto a dirt drive and parked next to a corrugated metal wall broken up by a row of prison-like steel doors. As we got out of the car, a big white dog ran up to us, barking furiously, protecting his territory. With the angry dog close on our heels, we carefully made our way to one of the heavy doors and knocked. We waited. The door opened tentatively: a small, young black woman holding a baby. She broke into a huge smile when she saw Gideon.

I followed as Gideon briskly walked through a covered courtyard hung with laundry, a two-burner gas stove resting on a rickety table, and entered the apartment, a single room jammed with beds, a sink and tiny counter in the corner. A man who had been lying down got up to give Gideon a hug, then Gideon turned to the baby in the woman’s arms, cooing and tickling its chubby little belly. Though I’d been warned, I was still stunned by the man’s appearance. His body was covered in thick brown scar tissue. His legs were raw, with what looked like open wounds.

This mother and father are African refugees from Eritrea whose Jerusalem apartment was firebombed seven months ago as part of a wave of violence directed at refugees, one outcome of an incitement campaign spearheaded by leading politicians. Attacked with Molotov cocktails, the mother, Marvit, pregnant at the time, and the father, Tsagai, a soft-spoken man who worked in construction, became human torches, suffering third degree burns over much of their bodies. After the conflagration they were left with nothing—impoverished, their minimal belongings destroyed, homeless, critically injured and in grave pain, with few sources of help. When Gideon heard the news of the bombing on the radio, he drove from Tel Aviv to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem to offer help. He subsequently found them housing in Tel Aviv and continues to find ways to pay their rent, ferries them to doctor visits, and is their steady source of food and moral support.

Now, returning to Israel after a half-year absence, I had come with Gideon to meet them in their tiny one-room apartment. Tsagai, in chronic pain, is unable to work. Marvit, who gave birth to a healthy baby boy four months ago when she was recuperating, was not injured as badly as her husband but her arms and legs are a patchwork of scars.

The African refugee situation in Israel is complicated but there are more humane policies and strategies the government could have chosen to pursue. Nevertheless, as I wrote in a blog post last year, these people who have fled genocide, war, rape and torture, have been demonized in the same way that Jews were for centuries. Senior ministers in the government and Knesset members have engaged in a campaign, unprecedented in its ferocity, calling these asylum seekers a “cancer,” a “national plague,” “rapists,” and an “existential threat” to the nation. As one appalled commentator wrote, “A reviled, powerless minority discussed in the language of war and disease. Where have my Jewish ears heard this before?”

The perpetrators of the attack on Marvit and Tsagi have never been caught. Even if they were, it is doubtful that they would have been prosecuted. Recently, the person arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail at a Palestinian car last year, severely burning an entire family with children, was released without charges. The same goes for the perpetrators of “Price Tag” attacks throughout the West Bank, and the Jewish settlers who routinely attack Palestinians. Few are arrested or prosecuted.

But back to Gideon. He is an Israeli who believes the Jewish state should be different, that we have a moral mandate to help those in need. He spends much of each day collecting food and bringing it to shelters and the homeless, especially populations the rest of society shuns.

Gideon’s activities are supported by the Good People Fund which raises money to finance the work of people like him in Israel and the USA. The fund helps these “good people” in their work of Tikun Olam, repairing the world as they seek out those in need, feeding the poor, and relieving suffering. Typically, they run small non-profits that operate under-the-radar with just volunteers or very small staffs.

Gideon’s next objective is to raise the $625 monthly rent that will be needed over the next year for Marvit and Tzagai ($7,500 in total). Until now, the rent has been paid by the Good People Fund and by ASSAF, an organization that provides counseling and asylum assistance to African refugees. But existing funds are running out and Gideon does not know where he will find February’s rent – and the rent after that.

Although my blog is usually political in nature, sometimes I encounter situations that cry out for attention. This is one of those. I hope readers can help by making a donation on the Good People Fund website. You can designate your gift for a special purpose (Gideon’s work, African refugees, hunger, etc.) or you can make a general donation for the fund to distribute where the need is greatest. Marvit and Tsagai’s family is not the only dire situation that the fund hears about. Much of its work is directed at helping individuals or families who have their own uniquely distressing circumstances.

Please forward the link to this blog post to others who might be interested in helping.

This column was previously published on The Times of Israel.

The Palestinian Security Services and a Third Intifada?

January 14, 2013

Allen Katzoff West Bank , , , , Leave a comment

One of the only success stories of the relationship between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Israeli government has been the American-backed Palestinian National Security Services, a uniformed security force of the Palestinian Authority. Since 2005 at a base in Jordan, the US government has spent hundreds of million of dollars training thousands of officers who were then stationed throughout Area A, the parts of the West Bank under exclusive Palestinian control. (Click here and scroll down a bit for descriptions of Areas A, B, and C.)

In partnership with the Palestinian Civil Police, the Israeli army and the Shin Bet, the security service has thwarted terrorist attacks, uncovered weapons labs and arrested suspects, disbanded armed gangs, and contained demonstrations against both the Palestinian Authority and Israeli policies. Despite criticism of some of its tactics and goals, it has restored a sense of law and order to the major Palestinian cities, where not too long ago anarchy reigned, and close coordination with Israeli authorities have helped create a sense of safety and calm in Israel.

But recent policies by the Israeli government threaten this security cooperation.  In a post on the Daily Beast titled “The Future Of Palestinian-Israeli Security Cooperation,” columnist Dan Fleshler alleges that Palestinian-Israeli security cooperation is on the verge of falling apart.

Palestinian Authority security forces, trained in Jordan with American assistance, have been protecting Israeli lives and ignoring derisive claims that they are collaborators not because they want to collect salaries; instead, they want to build an institution necessary for statehood and to allay Israeli fears about relinquishing the West Bank. Ghaith al-Omari, a former Palestinian Authority advisor, told me that the work of the security services “was predicated on a path leading to liberation and a new state. Soon, very soon, if it is clear that is not happening, they will feel like suckers enforcing the occupation, and this security regime—like the Palestinian Authority itself—could dissolve.”

In the Oscar-nominated Israeli documentary, Gatekeepers, – a must-see film slated for a February 1st release in the USA – a former director of the Shin Bet states that he was  given the same warning by a senior level Palestinian official.

Ynetnews.com reported in December that “The IDF and the Palestinian security forces in the West Bank have been enjoying a relatively good operational relationship over the past few years, but military sources told Ynet Tuesday that cracks have been appearing in the security relations’ proverbial veneer.”

Although cooperation mostly continues for now, the article went on to report what is happening in the face of rising demonstrations in the West bank.

Sources on both sides agreed that the Palestinian security forces are stepping up their vigilance vis-à-vis rioters in the need to restore order to the Palestinian street – and not necessarily their desire to cooperate with Israel.

The Palestinian leadership is livid with Israel over the government’s decision to suspend the transfer of levies to Ramallah, as a significant part of the taxes Israel collects on behalf of the PA fund its security forces. The suspension, prompted by the UN’s status upgrade, has resulted in delayed wages.

“If the troops think that they’re not going to get paid, we’ll have a serious problem on our hand. It will affect everything, including the security collaboration,” a Palestinian source told Ynet.”

An Israeli official expressed the same concern, adding that the PA is in dire financial straits.

It is not only Israel that is withholding funds. The US Congress has prevented the transfer of $450 million in budgeted US aid. That would close the $400 million fiscal gap that the Palestinian Authority faces as it runs out of money to pay for salaries and basic services.  In a rational world withholding these funds would seem absurd given that only Hamas would gain from the demise of the Palestinian Authority. But it seems that Congress has its own political logic.

In my first blog column last week since returning to Israel, I posted comments by a senior level IDF commander on the West Bank and a former director of the Shin Bet who both stated that a third intifada was about to start, or already had. So far these are mostly demonstrations protesting arrests, theft of Palestinian lands, or settler attacks. The Israeli army often reacts violently – last week 53 Palestinians were injured in these clashes. How much worse will that be if the Palestinian security services are no longer willing or able to cooperate with Israel? What will happen if the situation on the West Bank continues to deteriorate to the point where the populace reaches the point of desperation, where it feels it has nothing to lose?

The Israel Policy Forum (IPF) held a conference call  in December with Colonel P.J. Dermer  and Steven White, former advisers to the American-backed training program of the  Palestinian National Security Services. They recently returned from a trip to the region where they met with senior level Palestinian and Israeli officials. I have pasted in below some of their comments but first I offer a few caveats. These are American officials so their perspective is American centric. Also, the situation is changing daily on the West Bank and recent developments – Palestinian statehood recognition by the UN, the massive Israeli response of constructing 9,000 additional housing units over the Green Line, the deteriorating economic situation, and the continuing settler and IDF violence against Palestinians and their property  – may have consequences that are hard to foresee. Let’s keep in mind that the first intifada in the 1980’s was a spontaneous uprising, catching leaders and observers on all sides by surprise.

Colonel P.J. Dermer: Good security cooperation cannot carry the day, cannot make peace, cannot be the deciding factor, and we’re starting to see the results of where you have great security cooperation over the last few years now run head-on into a moribund diplomatic and political peace process.

Steven White: But let me just say I think setting the stage, and I think P.J. [Colonel Dermer] would agree with me that the overarching theme, if you will, that we took away from our trip was the absolute hunger for American leadership on this issue. We heard from officials on the ground from both Israelis, including senior IDF, senior Ministry of Defense, Shin Bet, and senior political officers within the Palestinian security services, and then some old friends from the Quartet and the U.N., [that American leadership] is lacking.

There is no American influence on the ground as we speak. And that’s not myself or P.J. just talking. That’s directly what we heard from our interlocutors…. I came away with a distinct feeling that they enjoyed talking with us because they felt it was the first time that they were talking to Americans in a long time who actually understood the breadth of the problem and thus, you know, the realities of what they were having to deal with day in, day out, on the ground.

 You know, with respect to the third intifada question, I personally do not think that we are right now on the verge of the outbreak of a third intifada.

But I have a to caveat that. The caveat is that, quite literally, when you look at the economic situation in the West Bank, the lack of a political horizon, the lack of U.S. diplomatic engagement, you know, the state of affairs within the Israeli body politic, upcoming elections, the aftermath of Operation Pillar of Cloud– Pillar of Defense, whatever you would like to call it, you know, and the slight uptick now on the dignity factor vis-à-vis Hamas in Gaza — all of the embers for the eruption of a third intifada are there. Everything is in place for one to erupt.

But it hasn’t yet. So, the question, I think, before us, but even more so, before our administration, is, you know, do we act now while these embers are embering, you know, to try and stop it before it happens, do we try and stop it after it erupts, or are we just going to sit back and let it burn?

…. we need to stem the bleeding on the economic situation in the West Bank. It’s probably the most dire now that I’ve ever seen it.

…my personal opinion is that basically the Obama Administration decided to pull chocks on this problem set after the reaction it got from both Congress and the Senate, and also Bibi Netanyahu in the White House in May of 2011. Then we heard from a senior official in a closed forum that that was exactly the case, that the president had basically said, he gave it a good shot but people weren’t interested. So, he was basically walking away, punting the ball to the Quartet and that he would focus on his reelection.

Obviously, you’ve seen what’s happened with Congress. Up to now they’ve continued supporting security financially, but they shut off a good bit of money that was related to basically the Palestinian people on the West Bank.

So, I think we’ve all got to ask ourselves a question: Are we better off with a functioning Palestinian Authority in the West Bank that says it believes in the two-state solution or are we willing to let it die? And that’s a question that I’ve not seen Congress legitimately ask itself. And it’s not one that I’ve seen the administration vocally ask.

IPF Interviewer: Well, P.J., do you agree with this? Do you think the economic is front and center? 

Colonel P.J. Dermer: To a degree, yes. I mean, let me add it to your question and tie it in to the question about intifada. I mean, it’s worse, in a way, because the PA is, again, not functioning. Fayyad [Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad] intended with this great, grand gesture announcement about three years ago now, and for myriad reasons — you know most of them — it is affecting the status of play in the Palestinian security services, because they are feeling the pinch for salaries, budgets, logistics, operating capabilities, i.e., they can’t put all their vehicles on the road, they can’t refuel all their vehicles in a timely manner right now, according to some of the commanders we talked to.

So, in a sense of the Palestinian Authority not being able to operate economically, that is now delving down into the issue of how the Palestinian security services operate.

Well, in their eyes, it’s to keep law and order but not necessarily for the state of Israel. They have their own issues to worry about. If they can’t perform their functions as they’re supposed to, as a burgeoning nation state, then what is the exact role of the Palestinian security service?

They do have a good reputation in the West Bank. That’s a positive development in U.S. history, but at the end of the day, they’re not there to fight Palestinians. They’re there to keep basic law and order. And this is a burgeoning dilemma, with or without the economic situation, but with the economic situation pressing on them, it adds to the dilemma in the West Bank.

The general populace, though, I will argue, still remains pretty apathetic because they don’t see where it’s getting them. You know, two intifadas (inaudible) for them. There’s nowhere else to go. 

Steven White: I met with a former– well, still current IDF, but now he’s in the Ministry of Defense, who had always played his cards very close to the bone when it came to discussing the actions of his government vis-a-vis the actions of the IDF or the Defense Ministry or the Shin Bet.

This time, it was wholly different, and he began the conversation with, well, it appears my government’s doing everything it can to put a bullet through the head of [Palestinian President] Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority without any thought whatsoever as to what follows.

The security officials, along with past guys like myself and others, are arguing that, you know– I’m sorry, let me put it another way: We asked a senior IDF general, you know, just what was it that we accomplished, really, from 2007 to probably 2010? 

And his answer was, “My job was to tactically set the ground where my government, the government of Israel, could negotiate with the Palestinians without a knife against its neck. He continued that I consider that I successfully delivered that. With American help, with Palestinian help, we delivered that. But unfortunately, my government has not chosen to take the strategic, long-term view or to build upon that,” end of quote.

 …. if you look back to 2008, and the operation in Gaza then, the West Bank was relatively a yawn. The IDF pulled out two brigades from the West Bank to send to Gaza. 

 The economic situation on the ground was beginning to thrive. There was a political horizon. People were at the negotiations table, you know? And the response in the West Bank to what was happening in Gaza was virtually nothing.

 You look at what happened now– the economics are in the toilet. There is no political process. There is no political horizon. And is it any wonder that people would roll themselves back to the dignity thing with regard to the supposed great victories that Hamas won for the dignity of the Palestinian people, when everything else is missing to counteract that argument?

For the full interview transcript, go to http://www.israelpolicyforum.org/interview/pj-dermer-and-steven-white-west-bank-security-situation

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