Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising, Israel's Third Front. - book reviews

National Review, May 28, 1990 by George Shadroui

AFTER TWO years of trying in vain to put down the Palestinian uprising, Israel finds itself at a dangerous crossroads.

Diplomatically, the Israeli government has been on the defensive ever since the Palestine Liberation Organization recognized Israel and entered a dialogue with the United States in 1988. Militarily, it has responded tentatively, uncertain how to deal with the stone-throwers who have become a symbol of the intifada.

In the process, it has compiled a dismal human-rights record even in the eyes of its most reliable ally-the United States. The killings of Palestinians-close to seven hundred people, many of them children-have triggered sharp protests inside and outside Israel.

In Intifada, Israeli journalists Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari do an admirable job of explaining how Israeli negligence and Palestinian frustration triggered the explosion in the occupied territories. They provide a nuts-and-bolts analysis of the grassroots forces that shaped the uprising and show how not only Israel but a lethargic PLO leadership had to scurry if they were to have a hope of regaining control of events.

They also suggest that the intifada can be more than simply another tragic chapter in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The mobilization of Palestinian society has reshaped the dynamics of the conflict and created opportunities for peace if only those in positions of leadership would lead. The intifada, they contend, has:

1. Forced Israel to face once and for all the dilemma of occupation. Before the uprising, the Israelis seemed frozen in a state of unconsciousness, as if they expected the Palestinians to live perpetually under military rule.

2. Forced Palestinian leaders-notably the PLO-to recognize Israel's right to exist and to approach negotiations more honestly. The local population in the West Bank and Gaza, having sacrificed life and economic well-being, wants more than diplomatic gestures and unfulfilled promises.

3. Put international pressure on both sides to enter into negotiations before the Palestinian death toll climbs and Israel is further demonized in the court of world opinion.

To the authors' credit, their concern for Israel's well-being does not preclude a fair accounting of the hardships endured by the Palestinian population since the occupation began in 1967. They describe some of the harsh conditions that brought about the initial riots in Gaza (ignited by a traffic accident in which several Palestinians were killed by an Israeli driver) and the newly found pride evident in a Palestinian population no longer content to be controlled.

The intifada," the authors write, "was an assertion of defiance that bubbled up from below, a statement of the legions of Palestinian youth who felt bereft of a future; the high-school and university students doomed to choose between indignity and exile; the tens of thousands of laborers who made their living in Israel but were expected to remain invisible; the veterans of Israeli prisons who were more convinced than ever of the justice of their cause but saw their people sinking deeper and deeper into hopelessness."

Almost instinctively, the Palestinians understood that their thrown rocks-and their deaths-were reconstructing the prism through which the world viewed the conflict. The Palestinian community's refusal to use guns when confronting the Israeli army accomplished more for Palestinians in two years than the PLO'S twenty years of armed conflict.

Schiff and Ya'ari argue that Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and others of like mind have not grasped that Israel's security is endangered not by negotiating with the PLO, but by perpetuating the status quo.

The authors make a powerful case: "Can Israel remain a democracy if it is caught in the vise of a civil war with the Palestinians in the territories and a struggle with its own Arab minority, which increasingly displays identification with the Palestinian people? In this condition, can it attract immigration from the Diaspora, even from communities in distress? Can it remain a Jewish state? And can the dreams of the Jewish national movement-of security, freedom, and creativity-come true under these circumstances, or will they necessarily collapse under the weight of an endlessly ugly reality?"

The authors propose a compromise that could leave Israel secure and most Palestinians independent. First, Israel would turn over the administration of the territories to the Palestinians. Gaza would be run by the PLO and local Palestinians, and this would provide a test of their ability to control acts of violence. A promise would have to be made, too, that there would be no declarations of statehood. In the West Bank, Jordanian troops would provide a military buffer, though Israel would have the right to station troops in defensive positions as a security measure. The length of this deployment would depend on the length of Arab intransigence on the matter of recognizing Israel.

Israel, Jordan, and a Palestinian entity would form a confederation in which mutually recognized borders would be established. The Palestinian area would be demilitarized-i.e., permitted only those weapons required to maintain internal order. No doubt some Israeli settlements would be transferred to Israel; others would remain in the Palestinian area. Remaining settlers would have to choose between evacuating and living under Palestinian rule. The Palestinians would, of course, be expected to abandon any plans to dismantle Israel, just as the Israelis would be expected to abandon any notion of a Greater Israel. Palestinians would be allowed to continue working in Israel.