Who's in charge in the territories?

In the past three years, Israel has played a double game: on the one hand, it has removed the PA from any position of power and decision making, destroyed its infrastructure of security and civilian control, reoccupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and blocked any attempt to advance a political process. On the other hand, Israel has continued to insist that the PA is exclusively responsible for everything that happens, has depicted it as a terrorist organization and has ruled out every official Palestinian representation. The concept that underlay this policy, and continues to underlie it, is the illusion that delegitimizing the PA, and, at the personal level, Yasser Arafat, will in the best case bring about the emergence of a different Palestinian leadership, with which Israel will be able to conduct negotiations, and in the worst case will allow Israel to go on occupying the territories without interference. Neither scenario was fulfilled. Arafat continues to lead the PA and no alternative leadership has sprung up. At the same time, the Israeli occupation of the territories is confined to the security aspect alone and is incapable of providing solutions for the population's civil needs The result is that the terrorist organizations are in control and are competing among themselves over the quality of the attacks against Israel, relying on a sympathetic Palestinian population that has accumulated enough reasons to abhor Israeli rule. This is a public that does not ask itself whether it is against one political plan or another, but which organization it supports. Israel is rapidly approaching the stage in which it will no longer have even the option of offering the Palestinians a political plan, as it will have to offer them to the heads of organizations and not to a central governing institution. Yet Israel will also be unable to implement Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan, because even if he does actually intend to go ahead with it, it is too thin, doesn't address the Palestinians' national aspirations and creates a prison of poverty and violence, without getting the IDF out of the territories.

[more]

Sharon is not the Problem
It's the Nature of Zionist Ideology

The Zionist idea has lost none of its force today; it is deeply implanted in the hearts of most Jews, whether Israelis or not. No one should be under any illusion that it is a spent force, no matter what the currently fashionable discourse about 'post-Zionism' or 'cultural Zionism' may be. No region on earth should have been required to give this ideology houseroom, let alone the backward and ill-equipped Arab world. Nevertheless, we owe a debt of gratitude to Benny Morris for disabusing us of such notions. But a project that is morally one-sided and can only survive through force and xenophobia has no long-term future. The fact that it has got this far is remarkable but that holds out no guarantee of survival. As he himself says, "Destruction could be the end of this process."

[more]

When soldiers become bullies
By Gideon Levy

In the last three years, an atmosphere of anything goes has taken root in the IDF in the territories. Any soldier can do whatever he feels like to any Palestinian - the incident won't be investigated, the soldier won't be punished. The disintegration of the rule of law does not stop with the soldiers. Brothers Naim and Ayad Murar, who organized nonviolent demonstrations against the separation fence in Budrus, were arrested a month ago with the intention of throwing them into long months of administrative detention without trial. At the last minute, Ayad was freed by a judge who ruled that nonviolent demonstrations are no cause for administrative detention. But his brother Naim was sent to four months of administrative detention for his "terror-supporting activity." Only due to the intervention of attorneys Tamar Peleg and Yal Barda, and the courageous position taken by Lieutenant Colonel Shlomi Kochav, was Naim freed on the weekend after a month in detention, thus preventing a further disgrace. Serious questions are raised by the arrogance of security officials who wanted to lock people up for attempting to organize nonviolent demonstrations against a fence being built on their property.

[more]