<nettime> victory or peace?

["Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>]

Since Israeli-Palestinian conflict lasts longer than my life, I am kind of 
bored with yet another suicide bombing or yet another Israeli military 
crackdown on Palestinian refugee camp. What I am looking at is what is 
new in this particular conflict, which makes it different from the previous 
ones. It became an unwritten rule that Palestinians live in refugee camps, 
displaced within their own homeland. That seems to please both their 
enemies and their friends. And the vaunted international community, that 
found such practice horrendous in Bosnia, seems to feel quite fine with it 
in Israel/Palestine. The squalor of refugee camps, however, is the 
proverbial swamp that created the most horrifying weapon of mass 
destruction: the human bomb, i.e. the suicide bomber. It is more precise 
than a cruise missile and more stealthy than a stealth bomber. It is, also, 
more intelligent than any other weapon, because its circuitry is a human 
brain. The September 11 tragedy kind of started to wake up the West, 
which for so long was complacent with the six decades long blood-
letting between Arabs and Jews in Israel/Palestine, and take the notice 
that something there indeed went awfully wrong.

It doesn’t get any better, either. Hamas leader promises not to stop 
suicide missions until Israel ceases its military offensive. Israeli leaders 
promise not to stop their military offensive until Hamas stops its terrorist 
activity, or, rather, until Hamas is wiped of the face of the Earth, which, 
indeed, would stop its activity for good. Both parties to the conflict seem 
to be committed to war and dedicated not to stop fighting until one of 
them dies. They are so entrenched in their no-win thinking, that it does 
not seem that any mediation would do any good, since they 
recalcitrantly repeat that they have no interest whatsoever in peace - 
they are only interested in victory. It is sad to see that sixty years of 
conflict did not yet teach them that their victory cannot be achieved. So, 
what’s new?

New is that Arafat is not only playing the usual victim: he is playing a 
weak old man, powerless to change anything, unwanted even by his own 
people, yet despite all of this, or, maybe, precisely because of it, an 
unsurmountable obstacle to Israeli victory. He doesn’t go to Jenin. There 
he could re-assert his strength. He could play a strongman again. He 
could say that he won by making Israelis let him go, and he could ask for 
more attacks against Israel, just as Hamas leader did. He could rally the 
hate that Jenin residents must have against Israel, particularly after that 
recent event which was not a massacre (but nobody yet came up with a 
better term for it), but he did not. Instead, he opted to play a Palestinian 
version of Alija Izetbegovic: he called for elections.

Just as everybody on the planet concluded that he is irrelevant, he 
decided to make himself relevant by highlighting his irrelevancy. You 
don’t want me? Ok. Then, I will let you elect another leader. Oh, I forgot 
you cannot reach the ballots, because there are Israeli check-points 
everywhere, and you cannot leave your neighborhood. This is a similar 
situation to what had happened in Bosnia - where displaced Bosnians 
also could not participate in elections, because they could not pass the 
checkpoints set by Serbs of Republika Srpska, that boycotted the 
elections. Well, Bosnia, unlike Israel, came under control of international 
forces, and Bosnians were bused to ballots under UN protection. What 
is Israel going to do? Remove the checkpoints and allow Palestinian 
elections to proceed under international community supervision and 
maybe get rid off Arafat?! No. That would also open doors to Hamas 
suicide bombers, wouldn’t it? Therefore, the elections will fail, and the 
fault is going to be with Israel, and Arafat will make his point and become 
relevant again.
What is new, too, are the sick revelations that the US president might 
have been aware of the scope and extent of the terrorist plot that ended 
up in the September 11 tragedy. The suspicions were always there. But 
now there are FBI and CIA agents and documents surfacing to confirm 
the Watergate-like conspiracy. And there is Dick Cheney addressing 
Congressional Democrats, in a manner and style of some Soviet 
communist party commissar, telling them “not to provoke.” What I 
remember is that last summer I observed more police activity in New York 
city. They were particularly after the out-of-state licensed vehicles. After 
receiving the third moving violation ticket last summer - in my out-of-
state registered vehicle - I even wrote to the FOIA board, requesting 
explanation for this heightened police presence - I haven’t got a ticket in 
previous 11 years of living in the city. I never got a written answer to that 
complaint. Instead, I got the CNN view of Twin Towers collapsing. This 
was my answer. I believe they new something would happen, and I 
believe they were furiously after everything that moves, but they simply 
did not envision use of passenger aircraft as a weapon of mass 
destruction. I guess G-men desperately need some out-of-the-box 
thinking. But, unfortunately, I doubt Democrats would have the case 
against Bush and be able to send him down the Nixon way.

It is also interesting that there are many New York immigrants entitled to 
unemployment benefits that for one reason or another are not receiving 
them (I am hearing a lot of complaints amongst my compatriots). The 
New York State Department of Labor seems to be in such a disarray as if 
their building had been hit by a plane. My research cannot confirm so far 
whether there is an intentional discrimination against the immigrant 
population (revenge?) in place, or whether this is just a consequence of 
bureaucratic inefficiency and affects equally immigrant and non-
immigrant unemployed. Claims are getting lost, letters are not answered, 
telephone conversations conveniently forgotten, cases misplaced, 
human operators unreachable - yet the paperwork load placed on the 
claimant dramatically increased: it seems that individual is ineligible for 
benefits if he/she does not have two year old pay stubs ready.

New, interesting and alarming definitely is the change in public opinion 
in the U.S. regarding Israel. Of course, this change is not reported in the 
mainstream media, but that’s not news: mainstream media perceives and 
wishes the change to be marginal, and therefore leaves it under-reported. 
For the first time, however, there is an appearance of strong opinions 
against Israel in the U.S. Sometimes those opinions venture eerily close 
to the Anti-Semitic outbursts usually associated with Europe. Like the 
demonstrations at SFSU (San Francisco State University), where 
demonstrants handed cans of red paint, labeled kosher meat of 
Palestinian children, or the small protest at the Union Square in New York 
city where a banner with the Star of David, a swastika and an equal sign 
between them was observed. Given that New York is the largest Jewish 
city on the planet, it is probable that at least some of those protesters 
were Jews. Those two events mean that there are non-Muslim Americans 
un-supportive of Israeli policies, and there are more of them by the day. 
The old landmark wooden synagogue building at Far Rockaway island in 
New York city bursted in flames one recent night, the police suspects 
arson. What is next? Some Le Pen like candidate becoming a governor in 
one of the States?

Ivo  

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