[This is the second part of Ben Kaspit's somber report on the alarming
unaccountability of the Israeli army (the first part was posted on JPN on
9/15/02). The emphasis is still on the initial period of the Al Aqsa
Intifada, but the article also details how, contrary to the explicit wishes
of the Israeli Prime Minister, the army delayed the withdrawal from southern
Lebanon and sabotaged all government attempts to manage the peace process on
its own, independently of the military.

The second part was published in the right wing Ma'ariv on 9/13/02. While
Kaspit's explicit focus is the threat to Israeli democracy, it should also
be noted that for the first time, a mainstream Israeli newspaper confirms
that in October 2000, an undeclared all out war against the Palestinians was
initiated. A clear departure from the official line that "the Palestinians
responded with violence to a genuine Israeli peace offer" (I owe this point
to Irit Katriel, an Israeli peace activist).

"Everything happened very quickly. The political echelon lost control of the
situation on the ground and was swept into the melee. When Ariel Sharon took
over the reins it was obvious that there was no turning back. The
Palestinians, who learnt this too late, started to use suicide bombers only
in the Sharon era. The first suicide bombing took place during his time in
office. Arafat, who did not initiate the bombings but maneuvered them, swore
that Sharon could not bring security. First to take the initiative were the
Hamas and Islamic Jihad, then (mainly after the liquidation of Ra'ed Karmi)
also Fateh and the Tanzim. The country became full of potential suicide
bombers: men, women, maybe in the future there will also be children."

JPN would like to thank Sol Salbe, editor of the Australian Jewish
Democratic Society Newsletter (http://www.ajds.org.au/) for his translation
of this article. AK]



Two years of the Intifada / Part II
Ben Kaspit, Ma’ariv, September 13, 2002


The Army will Decide and Consent

Once he sacked Yitzhak Mordechai as Defense Minister, Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu was free to carry out two major tasks: a gradual
withdrawal of the IDF from Lebanon and the setting up of the National
Security Council. Mordechai, a dominant and popular minister, had loyally
represented the defense establishment which sharply opposed both of these
steps. Now that he was gone, Netanyahu could implement his plans. At least
that’s what he thought.

In his early conversation with Mordechai’s replacement, new Defense Minister
Moshe Arens, Bibi said: “Misha, the situation in south Lebanon is
intolerable. Let’s think about the beginning of a withdrawal." Netanyahu
requested Arens to prepare a detailed withdrawal plan as soon as possible.
Such a plan needed to be accompanied by a timetable. Arens pointed out the
need to consult with the Chief of Staff and the IDF’s top echelons.
Netanyahu concurred: ”Consult with whoever you need to. The main thing is to
prepare and present to me a plan swiftly.”

Apparently, a plain request of an elected Prime Minister. Reality, Netanyahu
discovered, turned out to be a lot more complicated. Naively, Netanyahu
thought that the defense establishment would deliver the goods quickly and
efficiently. He was wrong: the chief of staff and the IDF’s upper echelons
thought otherwise.

In one of his head to head meetings with Chief of Staff Mofaz, Netanyahu
told him: “Shaul, I am requesting that you start organizing our exit from
Lebanon.” Mofaz: “Listen, we need to organize it under a deal with the
Syrians. Without such a deal we shouldn’t withdraw.” Netanyahu: “If we wait
for a deal with the Syrians, we’ll never get out. The current situation is
intolerable. I want a plan for a withdrawal from Lebanon without a deal with
the Syrians. At least we should move back the obtrusive forward bases.”
Mofaz: “That’s dangerous. We’ll be giving a message of weakness. It will be
sign of us folding up.”

The Chief of Staff continued and detailed a whole gamut of reasons against
withdrawal (there was no shortage of these). Netanyahu wasn’t convinced. He
sensed that Lebanon was on top of public opinion’s priority list. He was
convinced that the time had come to halt the unnecessary bloodletting. He
returned to his Defense Minister Arens and re-emphasized: ”Misha, I
understand that there is serious resistance in the army, nevertheless I want
you to present me with a detailed plan.”

Arens heard, understood and tried to implement the request. This requested
plan was never presented to Netanyahu. From that moment and until he was
defeated at the polls, Netanyahu kept on raising the matter of the plan
again and again in every conversation with Arens. After every bombing or
other incident in Lebanon he kept on asking: “What about the plan, where’s
the plan, I have requested a plan.”

If the matter were dependent on the IDF, Netanyahu would have still been
waiting. The defense establishment, the Chief of Staff, the GOC Northern
Command (Gabi Ashkenazi) and other senior officers simply refused to present
such a program. They dallied around, wasted time and avoided the issue –
hoping that something would happen on the way – perhaps luck would be on
their side.
In the meantime the soldiers kept on dying and the elections arrived. Ehud
Barak followed. He didn’t bring a plan with him and neither did he need one.
He brought with him a political commitment on television for a withdrawal
from Lebanon. He even included a target date. This was something that not
even the IDF could stop.

Criticism of Barak from the IDF was virulent. The head of Aman (Military
Intelligence), Major General Amos Malka, sent him a barbed harsh letter.
Malka complained that the decision to withdraw from Lebanon took place
without conferring and consulting with the defense establishment. Malka
himself was abroad when Cabinet deliberated the issue, and was furious.
Afterwards, when the decision was actually taken, he sent Barak another
letter. He detailed his personal intelligence assessment on what was
expected on the northern front after the withdrawal. His predictions turned
out to be quite accurate. Most of the scenarios described in his letter have
already happened there. He wrote about an explosive conjunction between “the
Lebanese spark and the Palestinian petrol vapors.”

Ehud Barak compelled the IDF to withdraw, almost by force. He had learnt
Netanyahu’s lessons. (The two discussed the issue during the handover period
and Bibi had forewarned him about the matter.) He did not involve the top
army echelon in the deliberations that preceded the withdrawal. Thus, after
many strenuous attempts, the elected authority in Israel was able to force
its will upon the IDF, which is meant to serve and obey its political
masters. Is it better late than never? Who knows? It is possible that had
Netanyahu carried out the withdrawal before Barak, things would have looked
totally different in our part of the world. Possibly it could have been the
other way around. What is certain is that the IDF behaved in this case (as
in many other cases) as a sovereign authority. It is not only in charge of
executing the policy, but also in setting and determining it.

** Foreign Minister Ben-Ami's request

Again, it must be emphasized: there is no connection between the quality of
decisions themselves and the process of deliberation. It is possible that
the withdrawal from Lebanon was a disastrous historical mistake. That’s
something for history to judge. What we are dealing with here is the nature
of democracy. It cannot tolerate a situation where a decision to exit (or
enter) Lebanon is not taken by a sovereign government, but a dominant
general staff. The people elect the Prime Minister and the defense minister.
They select the Chief of Staff. It’s not the other way around.

Israel’s defense establishment has enormous powers at its fingertips, powers
that have no parallels anywhere else in the West. Quite apart from its
military, intelligence and technological apparatus it has considerable
resources in the area of forward planning and thinking. Western countries
usually possess civilian bodies like national security councils or similar
bodies which are in charge of collecting the data and developing long-term
strategic thinking. We have nothing like it. Everything is planned and
molded through the rifle’s sights, the crosshairs over the target and the
gunner's firing position. The IDF’s planning branch is the final arbiter.

When they tried to form a strategic planning division in the Defense
Ministry, it was unceremoniously returned to the army. When Netanyahu tried
to form a National Security Council based on the American-European model, it
was shoved aside by the army. When the council’s first head, David Ivri,
left to serve as Ambassador in Washington, the IDF took advantage of the
situation. It tormented his successor, Major-General Gideon Shefer. The
defense establishment did not send any representatives to attend the council
’s deliberations. When it did, they were junior officials, uninformed and
uninfluential.

The IDF does not suffer competitive bodies lightly. If does everything to
isolate, diminish and make them irrelevant. The “alternative opinion” gets
buried away at best and is totally dropped and eliminated at worst. The IDF
has sole control of everything: the heart, brain, arms, legs and eyes of the
state of Israel. Try to take away even partially any of its sensory organs
and it will respond sharply and brutally. Just like a kid when his toy is
taken away – a strong, edgy and dangerous kid.

Here is another example: during Ehud Barak’s time he set up the Peace
Administration.
This body was to coordinate the preparations for the negotiations, to
integrate the activities of various bodies (including the IDF), to weigh the
various interests and factors, to plan and offer its own suggestions. Its
head was Colonel Shaul Arieli, a straight-laced, honest and one of the most
experienced and talented officers in the system. He was regarded as an
expert without peer in the peace process.

It did not take long for Arieli to find himself in an endless exhausting
struggle with the defense establishment. What did they not do to undermine
him? They reached their zenith when it became apparent that the planning
branch was refusing to allow the Peace Administration personnel to draw
maps. Every time Ehud Barak or Shlomo Ben-Ami requested a particular map,
the IDF rose up to put a spoke in the wheel.

The map supplier for the political echelon is the IDF, through its planning
branch. They have the facilities, the knowledge and the programs. When the
IDF discovered that Shaul Ariel could produce his own maps and was on top of
the task, the whole establishment panicked. When Foreign Minister Ben Ami,
for example, requested maps illustrating the varying land areas [that would
be given to the Palestinians] the army refused to co-operate with Arieli.
They issued a directive not to involve the Peace Administration in the
drawing of maps, not to allow them access to the programs.

Any data and maps that Prime Minister Barak requested were given to him by a
route circumventing the Peace Administration. He received the goods in
personal meetings with the Chief of Staff. Everything was done to bypass the
intermediate level of the administration and the possibility that the data
processing might be approached differently to the IDF custom. The ultimate
was reached when the IDF was forced, finally, to provide certain maps
demanded by Barak and Ben-Ami. Under instructions from the Chief of Staff,
these maps were presented by the IDF mapping center. But the IDF’s logo,
normally prominent, had been clipped out. The maps are still there in
various safes in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, maps with a square hole in their
top part. There’s a black hole where the logo of the Israeli Defense Force
is meant to be -- but it is not there.

The army obeyed the order only partially and only after a considerable
delay, dissociating itself from it in the process. The Chief of Staff didn’t
want to sign off these maps. No wonder then that once the Intifada broke
out, generals (especially GOC Central Command Yitzhak Eitan) refused to
participate in discussions or meetings with the Palestinians so long as
there was fighting on the ground. Senior officers simply refused to appear
and take part in the negotiations, in an amazing declaration of their
independence.

** Management head Arieli has enough

The Peace Management staff did not back down. They prepared maps, and how.
In order to circumvent the IDF prohibition the maps were prepared on the
basis of road and route maps, without the use of the sophisticated programs
of the planning branch. The main thing was that Barak and Ben-Ami had their
wishes fulfilled despite the army’s objections. Shaul Mofaz himself asked
Barak, before he left for Camp David, which maps was he taking with him.
Barak replied that he planned to present Arafat with maps showing a
withdrawal from 92 per cent. Mofaz protested. In the end and in retrospect,
Mofaz says now, Ben-Ami forced Barak to present maps showing a 97 per cent
withdrawal (in Taba). The army objected. Again: it’s possible that the army
was right. It is not allowed to oppose.

The IDF only occasionally sent its representative to the deliberations and
situation-analysis sessions that took place in the Peace Management. For
example it boycotted the comprehensive review aimed at easing the situation
for the Palestinians that took place in the Cabinet room. The Coordinator of
Activities in the Territories, management staff, and Deputy [Defense]
Minister Ephraim Sneh, they all sat and waited for the IDF’s delegate. But
he didn’t show up. The army refused to participate. Eventually, under
pressure, the IDF gave permission for Colonel Danny Tirzeh, who was in the
building having participated in a previous discussion, to stay for this
discussion.

Later on, when broad clarification was sought over this difficult issue,
Deputy Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon admitted that this was a mishap. “If it’s
true, then it’s very wrong,” he said, "but on the other hand it’s
unacceptable that decisions like this would be made without our
representatives.”

At one stage Colonel Shaul Arieli had enough of this situation, and decided
to quit. The IDF tried to tempt him by offering him various positions.
Arieli, a walking encyclopedia on negotiations with the Palestinians and the
peace process, was a thorn in the side of the IDF so long as he headed the
Peace Management and the negotiation process. But he persisted. When he was
beaten he went to the Chief of Staff and gave him a piece of his mind. “I
don’t respect you, as far as I am concerned you are the obstacle, a national
disaster, and I want to be discharged.”

Prime Minister Barak tried to talk him into remaining in his position.
Arieli, in a conversation with Barak at his Jerusalem residence, demanded
full backing from Chief of Staff Mofaz as a condition. He went to Mofaz, who
promised full backing, authority and cooperation. Arieli returned to
Jerusalem and reported to Barak. Barak phoned the Chief of Staff to verify
the report. The Chief of Staff confirmed the report. Barak turned to his
military secretary, Brigadier-General Gadi Eisenkot, and asked him to sign
off the deal in writing. Eisenkot called the Chief of Staff’s bureau,
received his confirmation and gave the green light.

All this time Shaul Arieli had been waiting for what was promised him. All
of a sudden a legal opinion by planning division head Major General Shlomo
Yanai popped up. In his opinion it was inappropriate for a serving officer
to head the Management. This was reinforced by a similar appraisal by the
military advocate general. According to Arieli, Barak and others involved in
this affair, all the appraisals were planted from above. The main thing is
that Arieli remained on the outer.

Nothing could remedy the problem. Barak was furious, Eisenkot went wild and
threatened the Chief of Staff’s bureau that there would be no more meetings
with Barak until the matter was settled. Nothing. Arieli went home and
lingered there. Every week or so he would call the Chief of Staff’s bureau,
checking if he would be invited to an interview. The answer was inevitably
in the negative and he slammed the phone down. He sent a letter of
resignation to Barak and Mofaz. Each time the matter came up again, Mofaz
swore that he would fix it, but he never did.

That’s what happened at the end of December 2000 and continuing into
January. The Israeli negotiating team sat opposite their Palestinian
counterparts in Taba. At the last moment, Arieli was talked into joining
them. He arrived reluctantly and returned home immediately after the
negotiations collapsed. From that moment till the end of the year – a whole
12 months -- he sat at home on full pay and waited. Every month he called
the Chief of Staff’s bureau. Every month he received the same answer.

The personnel administration head refused to release him from the IDF. Only
at the end of 2001, when a new head took over, one of the junior officers
agreed over the phone to discharge him quickly. This was how Colonel Shaul
Arieli completed his military career. A talented, honest officer who made a
serious mistake: he consistently said what he really thought. These kinds of
officers get struck down in their path.

Arieli was meant to be appointed a brigadier-general before he got bogged
down. Broken hearted, at home, he was meant to be promoted but he never was.
After the election he was approached by Meir Dagan [recently appointed head
of the Mossad- Sol S] and Moshe Kaplinski [GOC Central Command]. They tried
to recruit him into Ariel Sharon’s peace negotiating team. Arieli told them
his story. Dagan went away, checked his story and returned. He told Arieli
that he was embarrassed. "What happened to you was a disgrace.," he said.

** Prime Minister Barak was appalled

One of the projects prepared by Peace Management was the “Rishut” map. This
was a detailed plan prepared after a thorough investigation to be put in
place in the event of a violent clash between Israel and the Palestinians in
the territories. The Rishut, from the Hebrew reshet [net or network], was
meant to allow Israel to isolate the fighting and violence in the
Territories, not to let it flow into Israel, to contain the conflict without
letting the situation deteriorate. It was a policy of containment.

The plan included detailed maps, itemizing which routes would be closed and
which crossings would be blocked, contrasting these with routes and
crossings that would remain open. The aim was to disconnect Israel from the
Territories with the ‘day after’ in mind, without major disruption. The
big-picture outlook meant that violent areas only were to be isolated,
minimizing the hurt for the Palestinian population while protecting the
Israeli settlers and ensuring maximum security. The plan was developed to
combine a farsighted political outlook with a security aspect. The IDF
Planning Division participated in setting it up, it was presented to Ephraim
Sneh and brought to Ehud Barak. It was approved and filed away.

When the conflict broke out, Barak issued the directive for the
implementation of the plan. Reducing the friction between Israel and the
Palestinians as much as possible, isolating the trouble spots and preventing
escalation was the aim. For the first four weeks he was never able to get a
true picture of what was happening on the ground on this issue. No one knew
which routes were blocked, which villages the army cut off, and which it did
not. No one knew what was actually happening. Afterwards, when the dust had
settled, it became clear that the army had “netted” wildly. Hundreds of
roads which were not meant to be, were blocked. Dozens of villages were cut
off. Entire areas became enclaves. Every officer on the ground took it upon
himself to open up escape routes to the settlements and block, using
bulldozers, all the routes to and from the Palestinian villages.

The original plan, which Moshe Yaalon as Deputy Chief of Staff helped
formulate, was never implemented. The Low Intensity Conflict principle was
neglected. Instead of operating point-by-point gradually, exerting a high
price from the Palestinians by letting them know that they would pay for
every escalation in violence, the army went for broke, operating right
through the sector. Almost every Palestinian village found itself totally
isolated from its vicinity. Almost all Palestinian villagers became
prisoners in their own homes. The IDF’s bulldozers dug up roads and paths
indiscriminately, uprooted orchards and olive trees. Behind them they left
scorched earth, a feeling of despair and a strong desire for revenge.

The Israeli code which stated that only the terrorist element in the
Palestinian population was the enemy, was shattered to smithereens. When
Barak’s people discovered this, they were seriously shaken. But what was
done, was done and could not be reversed.

In October 2000, the Peace Management presented Cabinet with a “road map”, a
detailed plan how to get out of the warring situation safely and as quickly
as possible. The first phase was stabilization, and the second was
re-setting the scene. The stabilization phase included the easing of the
security situation, reducing the shooting, maintaining the conflict within
reasonable boundaries without going overboard, carrying out the Rishut plan,
the judicious use of economic benefits, the preservation of the
Palestinians' essential infrastructure and the gaining of international
support. Stabilization was meant to operate on the ground until, and lead
to, the “main event”.

The “main event” was intended to calm down both sides, to prepare them for
the future in a re-molded reality. Three possible eventualities were
considered: An Israeli initiated unilateral separation (detailed maps were
prepared for this possibility), an imposed international intervention, or a
total war between Israel and the Palestinians with the possible broadening
of such a war.

This plan was never put into being on the ground. Instead of slowly and
wisely maneuvering the situation towards a “main event”, which most likely
would have been a unilateral separation by Israel until negotiations
resumed, something totally different happened. The situation worsened,
escalated rapidly and in a brief period was transformed into a war between
the two sides. The bar of violence was raised higher and higher with mutual
brutality: the Palestinians switched from light weapons and Molotov
Cocktails to explosive charges, mortars, Kassem rockets, gigantic explosive
charges and lots of suicide bombers. Israel used light weapons and then
heavier ones: it switched to armored personnel carriers, helicopters, tanks
and finally F16s.

** The silence of Justice Minister Beilin

Everything happened very quickly. The political echelon lost control of the
situation on the ground and was swept into the melee. When Ariel Sharon took
over the reins it was obvious that there was no turning back. The
Palestinians, who learnt this too late, started to use suicide bombers only
in the Sharon era. The first suicide bombing took place during his time in
office. Arafat, who did not initiate the bombings but maneuvered them, swore
that Sharon could not bring security. First to take the initiative were the
Hamas and Islamic Jihad, then (mainly after the liquidation of Ra'ed Karmi)
also Fateh and the Tanzim. The country became full of potential suicide
bombers: men, women, maybe in the future there will also be children.

In the night between 14 and 15 April 2000, on the eve of Nakba Day and
before Camp David, Yossi Beilin sat at Larom Hotel in Jerusalem. Opposite
him were Marwan Barghouti, Faras Kadoura and Madouach Noufal, the three most
prominent leaders of Fateh and the Tanzim in the West Bank. “If we don’t
reach an agreement by September,” said Barghouti and his colleagues to
Beilin, “horrible violence will break out. The situation is like a pressure
cooker. You are making a laughing stock out of us. We represent the people
in the street, the Tanzim, the released prisoners. We promised our people
results, and we brought them nothing. The Hamas is rearing its head. Arafat
has become the mayor of Gaza. Israel got everything: international
recognition, a growing economy, an financial boom, an opening to the Arab
world. We got a visa to Washington for Arafat and that’s it. You keep on
expropriating and settling. Only an agreement, even a partial one, can save
the situation.”

In the middle of the conversation, Beilin then Minister for Justice and
Cabinet member, was called to the phone. Ehud Barak was on the line. He
informed Beilin that it was his intention to bring for approval to the
Knesset a plan to transfer to the Palestinians three Palestinian
neighborhoods in East Jerusalem on the following day. This was to be a sign
of goodwill and a means of cooling down the heated situation on the ground.
Beilin requested permission to report this to his conversation partners.
Barak refused. “It’s too sensitive, Yossi.”

Beilin returned somewhat more encouraged. “You are heading down a dangerous
path,” he told Barghouti. “You can lose control of what‘s going to happen.
Your children will meet my children in the streets, a lot of blood might be
spilled.” Barghouti replied: “There’s nothing that can be done, the
instructions have already been issued.“ Beilin: "I’ve just returned from an
important phone conversation; you may be risking some crucial developments.”
Barghouti: What’s done is done.”

After that Barak traveled to Camp David, risking the odds which were stacked
against him. Before he left he met the head of military intelligence, Amos
Malka, who told him explicitly. “You have no chance. Why are you leaving for
Camp David without intelligence, without an IDF intelligence
representative?"

Barak replied: “What do I need military intelligence for? I will sit
opposite him I will hear him directly. I have no need to find out what he
said in the past.“

Malka: “You’ve no need to know what he used to say. But why shouldn’t you
know what he means by whatever he is saying? What’s he thinking? He’s got no
intention to sign anything with you.”

Barak: “I don’t accept your approach. I don’t accept your opinion.”

Malka: “Arafat has no intention of reaching an agreement. There are no signs
of such a development. He’s nonchalant about it. He has not sought advice.
He has not taken any time to contemplate. He has not picked up the phone to
Arab rulers. He has not visited Mubarak or Abdullah. He has not tried to
squeeze any benefits from the Americans. He’s coming to Camp David because
you are dragging Clinton by the ear and Clinton is dragging him by the
nose.”

Barak: “I will sit with him there till we can blow the white smoke out.”

En route, on the plane’s steps, Barak managed to get a similar opinion
prepared by the foreign ministry. He read that one too, folded it and placed
it in his briefcase. White smoke did not rise from anywhere in Camp David.
Black smoke is still rising upwards to this very day.

Barak returned to Israel defeated. Clinton lay the blame directly on Arafat.
The sand in the hourglass slowly ran out. Marwan Barghouti’s warning kept on
echoing: ”The instructions have already been issued.” Now everybody was
looking for an excuse. Arafat knew that it was about to happen and did
nothing. The Intifada broke out, not a popular uprising, more like a
well-organized and orchestrated gang war that rose out of the ground and
reflected the struggle of the Tanzim against the Hamas, a struggle for the
hearts and minds of the Palestinian street. Arafat recognized the big black
wave and decided to ride it. As is his habit, he wanted to exploit the wave’
s energy…but he was riding a tiger.

** Chief of Staff Mofaz agrees

Muhamad Dahlan [Chief of Preventative Security in Gaza] maintained good
relations with the Israelis' top echelons. He used to meet Chief of Staff
Shaul Mofaz once or twice a month. Dahlan tells the story that he warned
Mofaz in advance about the coming explosion. He says that after the
withdrawal from Lebanon he told Mofaz: “Because you were humiliated in
Lebanon, you’ll take revenge on us.”

On the eve of Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount, Dahlan was a member
of the Palestinian team sitting opposite the Israeli team headed by Shlomo
Ben-Ami at the Carlton Hotel in Washington. “Don’t let him go there,” Dhalan
pleaded with Ben-Ami. “There will be demonstrations in Jerusalem; do me a
favor and don’t shoot at people. Everything is simmering here." According to
Dahlan, Ben-Ami tried to convince him that Sharon’s visit was important and
it was impossible to prevent it. ”You’ll only gain out of it,” he said. “You
’ll only making a laughing stock out of yourself and us. Listen to me, try
to stop it.” Desperately Dahlan turned to Dennis Ross. “I’m out of it,” said
Ross, who recognized the political problem.

The conflagration broke out. Dahlan is convinced to this very day that
Palestinian deaths at the Temple Mount on the day following Sharon’s visit
are the real reasons for the disturbances. “What happened to you all of a
sudden, have you forgotten how to use batons, tear gas, even rubber bullets?
For 33 years you have been breaking up demonstrations. What happened all of
a sudden? Why eight dead and 80 injured at the Haram al Sharif?”

The following day, Dahlan says, he spoke with Mofaz on the phone. “Listen to
me,” he told him, ”Don’t transfer it to Gaza. Palestinians were killed in
Jerusalem. Let’s leave it there. Today there will be demonstrations in Gaza.
Leave us alone to demonstrate. Don’t shoot.”

Mofaz, according to Dahlan, agreed. On Saturday, 12 Palestinians were killed
by noon. Dahlan called Mofaz, “OK, now can you stop,” he said. “I swear to
you that we will do everything to ensure that there will be no shooting from
our side.” Mofaz explained to him that there was no prospect of stopping it
till 4pm. “I wonder how many will be killed by 4?” Dahlan said to him. This
was their last conversation.

By the way, Shaul Mofaz has a different version. He confirms the
conversation but in a totally different context. “This looks really
terrible,” Mofaz told Dahlan. "This looks far worse than the tunnel events.
We’ve got to stop it.” Dahlan, according to Mofaz, asked: “How come there
were so many Palestinians killed while Israel had no casualties?” Mofaz
retorted: “Stop it. Let’s meet and go for a cease-fire.” Dahlan: ”I’m on my
way to Arafat now.” And that’s the way it ended.

** Colonel Ephraim circumvents

One day, not long before Barak and Arafat left for Camp David, a
multi-participant deliberation session was held at the Peace Administration.
The subject was: “What does Arafat want?” This is the difficult eternal
question that the mighty intelligence system of the IDF has been trying to
figure out for over a generation. Every single one of the participants gave
the gathering the benefit of his knowledge, all proven and annotated, on the
subject of Arafat’s intentions. Suddenly, the quiet voice of Israeli
Security Agency operative Yisrael Hason was heard from the corner: “I humbly
think that I have got more Arafat hours than every else here put together.
Strangely enough I never dare raise the suggestion that I know what that man
wants.”

As an aside: has anybody ever known what Ariel Sharon wants? What did Ehud
Barak want? What does Shimon Peres plan? What did Rabin want? If we ask
[former Shin Bet heavy] Yossi Ginosar, for example, who worked with many of
Israel’s Prime Ministers, what they really want, it will soon become obvious
that he has no idea. A political leader does not divulge his wishes, and
sometimes he does not know them in advance either. It’s doubtful if Rabin
planned the Oslo path, but he was maneuvered there. Maybe it was possible to
maneuver Arafat as well, instead of speculating about “what he wants.”

Just imagine that the Palestinians, Heaven forbid, had their own
Intelligence Division. And they too had accumulated “material” and they too
would have anxiously rushed it every so often to Washington. For example
they could have rushed the conversation between Zambish [settler leader
Ze'ev Hever –Sol S] and Sharon, or [Internal Security Minister] Uzi Landau
with [right-wing extremist Knesset member] Michael Kleiner, or a
conversation between settlers, or the minutes of the meeting between Avigdor
Leiberman and GOC central command. What kind of delights they could have
prepared out of these ingredients!

There is no certainty that Arafat himself knows what he wants. What is
certain is that the Israeli defense establishment, especially Aman (Military
Intelligence) is convinced that they know what he wants. Dozens of years of
digging up “the material” have set in concrete a fortified, impermeable and
reasoned world outlook. “It says so in the material,” is their routine
expression.

True, not everyone thinks like that. Here and there you’ll find exceptions.
As a rule they are silenced and shoved aside. Thus for example Colonel
Ephraim [customarily Israeli newspapers do not provide the full name of
security staff –Sol S], a bright monitoring officer. He was seconded to the
Peace Management and appointed its intelligence officer. Soon his name was
mud in Aman. His assessments and contacts with the management were a thorn
in his chiefs' side. He started to discover new nuances in “the material”,
identify new trends, and to detect hitherto unidentified changes in courses.

In Aman, they hated every minute of it. They forbade him from setting up an
active intelligence unit in the Management. Effectively, they prevented
fresh intelligence information from reaching the Prime Minister’s peace
team. A serious confrontation ensued between the colonel and his superiors
in Aman. At one stage, he stopped providing his opinion and only gave it to
closed Peace Management forums, in order to circumvent the establishment
system.

Senior members of the peace team were stunned to discover accidentally (one
of them met a junior Aman information-gathering officer at a party) that
their requests had fallen on deaf ears. When they wanted to know about
alignments and divisions within the Palestinian leadership, their requests
simply did not reach the right level. The Aman floor was littered with raw
data that did not fit into the conventional wisdom.

Let us assume for example that Muhamad Dahlan has been observed wandering
around the refugee camps, preaching to the residents against the right of
return, asking whether they seriously wanted to be called up to the Israeli
Border Guard, and convincing them to give their aspirations. This kind of
story will not be passed on but be spiked instead.

Inside the intelligence and planning establishment of the IDF, there is no
such thing as a serious “alternative opinion". Ami Ayalon [Former Shin Bet
head] was the last one who spoke out against the stream. He was followed by
the flood. Taking advantage of a temporary weakness in the system, Netanyahu
managed to create the National Security Council. But afterwards the army did
everything to undermine it. The council became a group of pleasant people
engaging in group dynamics. Forward thinking and planning remained in the
realm of the military. The same goes for implementation. In Israel, neither
the Prime Minister nor the Defense Minister has under his command the
control and verification structure to check on the implementation of his
decisions “on the ground.” Everything is dependent on people’s goodwill.
By internalizing policy and intentions, the government is equivalent to a
loosely hanging slack muscle that is meant to operate a huge powerful body.
In other words, the tail wags the dog.

It must be emphasized that here is no explicit rebellion. There is no
explicit military putsch. There are no bad intentions. We’ve got a gang of
good, maybe even excellent, people. Shaul Mofaz was a diligent and efficient
Chief of Staff and a brave fighter. One of his generals characterized him at
the beginning of the Intifada as “the first fighter in the trench, a knife
between his teeth, a submachine gun on his back and murder in his eyes.”

The true mentor behind the current general IDF concept is Mofaz’s former
deputy, the current Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Moshe Yaalon. He grew
up in the lap of the IDF’s “material”. He created the current IDF world
view. It is quite possible that he is right. There is no dispute about
Arafat’s problematic and murderous nature. No dispute exists on the inanity
of the Palestinians who have made all possible mistakes and missed all the
opportunities to reach a cease-fire since the beginning of the current
confrontation.

There is a debate about the functioning of our system. We debate whether
things can be handled this way or that way. We argue about what victory
means, about what we should be aiming for. Is the military echelon
implementing the decisions of the political echelon? Who decides the
policies of the state of Israel? Do we have a true separation of powers
between the legislative authority, the judicial authority and the executive
authority? Do they really run the state? Does Israel also have a thinking
authority?

* * *

The Intifada found the IDF alert, ready and in need of a quick victory at
any price. The IDF was striving to regain its lost powers of deterrence to
compensate for the Lebanon Syndrome, the Oslo accords, the various interim
accords, the contacts and the humiliation. Officers such as Yom Tov Samia
[GOC Southern command at the beginning of the second Intifada], who sat at
the table next to Palestinians, went on joint patrols with them and provided
them with assistance; he felt betrayed and blazed with anger. Under those
circumstance the response was dramatic and instantaneous.

Ehud Barak also thought initially that the confrontation could be resolved
by military means. He wanted to draw the lessons of the first Intifada.
(There are those in the IDF who believe that if the army would have
responded with all its might, the Intifada would not have developed.) For a
whole two months he prevented the Americans from putting the Clinton plan on
the table. It was placed on the table belatedly in December. When he
realized his mistake, it was too late.

Now comes the turn of experienced veteran Ariel Sharon, who is very shrewd
and knows his stuff. Sharon drew the lessons of his predecessors. He is the
first Prime Minister for a long time who is in control. He maneuvers the
army and forces his will upon the defense establishment. Sharon does it in
an uncomplicated manner. He goes down to the middle echelons. He meets
directly with brigade commanders. He goes over the head of the Defense
Minister. In a sophisticated maneuver, he planted his military secretary in
Central command. The two have a secret working channel. Now the head of the
Mossad is also identified with him. He has got close relationship with the
Chief of Staff. Sharon holds them on a short leash. He knows why.