Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 1998, Pages 17, 86

Special Report

"The Terrible Enemy": A Column Written by Yigal Sarnain in the Dec. 9, 1997 Yediot Ahronot

Translated by Dr. Edna Homa Hunt

What do the Mossad man Yehuda Gil, Ya'acov Schwartz, who kidnapped himself, and ex-Shabak man Yossi Ginossar have in common? They all drew a demonized picture of the enemy and they systematically distorted and misled, exactly as "the system" expected them to.

Many years ago I worked in a place where I always received less pay than what had been agreed to with my employer. When I complained to the accountant, a small and very frugal woman, she would raise her arms as if to say: "What can one do? Sometimes one makes mistakes." To which I responded: "A mistake is sometimes in my favor and sometimes to my detriment. When it always turns out to be to my detriment, it is deceit!"

I remembered this period when the Yehuda Gil affair came to light. He was the person who kept relaying reports from an agent in Damascus that the Syrians always wanted war! Gil's spy, real or invented, was always consistent. Even during the "peace contacts," when military intelligence reported that Syria was embarking on a strategic about-face, the Damascene stuck to his view, according to his emissary from Gedera [i.e., Gil], that the agenda is war.

"The Arabs want only to throw us into the sea," Gil once told Gad Shomron [a Mossad colleague, and later a newspaperman], and went off to become secretary of the "transferist" Moledet Party.

Several months earlier there was the revelation of the Ya'acov Schwartz "caper." I followed him until he disappeared with mysterious keffiyeh-wearing goons, and, like the police, I discovered that Schwartz belonged to the same elements of Israeli politics as Gil. A fervent hater of Oslo, an ardent anti-Rabin demonstrator, he "kidnapped" himself in order to demonstrate to visiting Secretary of State [Madeleine] Albright that all of the Arabs are nothing but murderers and kidnappers, and no one should believe them.

Before these two fellows were exposed, Yossi Ginossar, a retired senior Shabak man, once excitedly confessed that he and a few of his colleagues misleadingly but deliberately portrayed Palestinians as terrifying demonic murderers.

In other words, Gil, Schwartz and Ginossar—much like my small lady accountant—did not really make a mistake. They systematically misled in a particular and consistent direction: the demonizing direction.

Part of the battle between ourselves and the Arabs is an invention, a self-deception, a deliberate, intentional demonization of the adversary. Simultaneous with the ancient feud which involves victims on both sides, demonization has long since become our profound emotional need. It is a long-time distortion which grew with the conflict, and it must be nursed like any other emotional wound. The need for a satanic, pitiless enemy is nowadays greater, more intense than the enemy himself.

Years of enmity created an addiction to hatred among Israelis, who now experience great difficulty living in a state of relative quiet and security. The handler of agents, Yehuda Gil, satisfied the emotional need of himself and those he served. In the days of Yitzhak Rabin he supplied the evidence for that gnawing, blinding, obsessive suspicion that Rabin, in the course of the Oslo negotiations, sometimes referred to as "butterflies in the stomach."

Gil, Schwartz and Ginossar were emissaries of "the system" as they carried out their deviant actions. They were emissaries, not deviants. They only went one step too far and were exposed. That is their entire distinction.

Maps of the National Interest

By Baruch Kimmerling in Ha'aretz, Dec. 5, 1997

Nothing characterizes the fixation in thinking and the absence of another voice in our public debate more than the competing maps about "national interests" produced by Ministers Sharon and Mordechai; and the reaction of both the opposition and the media to these maps of "Alon-plus."

Take for instance the basic "consensual" assumption, fully acceptable to "the Right" as well as the institutionalized "Left," which includes the Labor Party and Meretz (especially following the domination of the party by Yossi Sarid, deemed a "security fanatic"), that control of the Jordan Valley and Israeli presence along its entire length are a vital security interest. According to Rafael Eitan, this proceeds from the fact that conquest of territory is accomplished, even today, not by means of air power and missiles but by means of armor and infantry. While this argument sounds logical on the surface, it requires examination on several levels.

On the tactical level, the assumption is that the Jordan Valley and the Jordan "River" itself constitute impassable territorial obstacles, or at least, are difficult to cross. It is worth recalling here that the Suez Canal was deemed a less traversable topographic obstacle than the Jordan Valley, and the end of that "consideration" is, of course, well-known.

In view of the satellite observations available to us, demilitarized zones already constitute security areas far preferable to any physical obstacle (except seas and oceans). Any army that might cross the Jordan will find itself in a deadly trap within hours, even if it were to enjoy the support of the local Palestinian population, as befell the Jordanian armored columns which did not have time to escape in 1967.

Even more problematic is the strategy of this fundamental assumption. Who is the enemy against whom it is so vital actually to occupy the Jordan Valley? Is it Jordan, with whom we share such important interests? Syria? Iraq? Iran? Syria would find it much more convenient to attack from the Golan Heights and Lebanon, should it become their strategic decision to embark on war. In any case, transporting Syrian armor through Jordan—with or without consent—would constitute sufficient warning.

A change of regime in Jordan is not an inevitable scenario but certainly is worrisome. But even should such an about-face occur, it would surely be a most fundamental shake-up of the strategic-political map of the region, of which the Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley would be only a marginal and negligible factor.

By contrast, transforming Jordan into a part of a Palestinian state, or some cooperative arrangement between the two, would improve the economic, social and geo-political existence of such a state, and reduce its irredentist tendencies—something that can only improve Israel's political and strategic situation.

Israel and the Palestinians must understand that they have no better allies than each other in the entire region. The existence of a Palestinian state and its welfare are dependent on cooperation with Israel. The existence of Israel in the long run is conditional on normalizing its relationships with the entire Arab environment, which in turn depends on establishing an independent Palestinian state. Even Israel's strategic security within a region that will soon enough become saturated with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons depends on the political and moral support it can gain from a strong Palestinian-Arab state within the Arab world. Such a state will surely view a non-conventional attack on Israel as an existential threat to itself.

To continue holding on to the Jordan Valley, were we even to attribute to it some marginal security value, means a most serious blow to our Palestinian allies and the addition of a burden upon the possibilities of coming to a reasonable mutual arrangement, fraught with many difficulties as it is. Continued Israeli control of the Valley will mean an even greater shrinkage in the already-minimal land reserves available to the Palestinians, and especially their feelings of being surrounded in "Bantustans," isolated and controlled everywhere by the Jews.

The Jewish habitations distributed along the Valley are far from comprising "security." These were always political settlements, irrespective of which governments "sent" them. Their existence was imbedded in an essential conception of Israeli interest—that did not withstand any test—to choke off any possibility whatsoever of establishing an independent Palestinian political entity.