Dialogue: Israelis appear to have lost the plot

By GORDON McLAUCHLAN

I can just remember as a boy the newsreel clips showing the homeless European Jews, traumatised by generations of pogroms and the ultimate horror of the Holocaust, running the gauntlet of the British sailors and troops trying to keep them out of Palestine.

Just to have survived meant these illegal immigrants were shrewd and tough and all the passivity had been stung from them; so, even as the Stern Gang and other terrorist groups used extreme, lethal tactics against ordinary British servicemen, there was some understanding of their desperation.

At the end of the 1950s, American novelist Leon Uris romanticised the birth of the new Israel in his book Exodus, followed by the block-busting film; and, when the young nation's Army not only held at bay but resoundingly defeated the iron ring of Arab armies intent on destroying it, I think most Western people were amazed and admiring.

The stories of the kibbutzim, the hard-working co-operatives turning the desert into a garden, were also romantic and inspiring. Many young New Zealanders, Australians and Americans travelled there for the kibbutz experience. The Israelis were famously resourceful and resolute and these qualities seemed to obscure the dispossessed Palestinians and make them, for many years, almost invisible.

But that sympathy for Israel has been withering now for a number of years until I think we can say that if there is a public relations war, they've lost it.

Israel seems to have become a victim of its own success as a warrior nation. Its survival day by day has depended on how ruthless are its armed services, and now it seems its culture might have been poisoned by that pervasive ethic.

Where once they could say that for their very survival they would wreak retribution, kill two of the enemy for every Israeli killed, and do no deals with terrorists, their behaviour now seems increasingly callous.

And, in a time of acute national stress, the nation has chosen an aggressive, arrogant leader in Ariel Sharon.

A committee led by United States Senator George Mitchell, the man who worked for peace in Northern Ireland, has recommended a complete freeze on new Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank as a basis for further peace talks. But the Israelis have refused to accept the main recommendation and Sharon and other right-wing members of his so-called Government of unity have announced they will seek a $US375 million increase in subsidies for settlement expansion. The Palestinians say they accept the Mitchell report without reservations.

The report also criticises what it calls excessive Israeli military force against unarmed Palestinian demonstrators. A New York Times report says: "The Israelis unapologetically defend their military tactics, though they have not directly challenged the Mitchell committee findings that most Palestinian deaths in the initial months of confrontations were not prompted by shooting or bombing attacks on Israeli forces."

Like almost every long-standing case of civil war and terrorism in the world, the Middle East problem exists because of unhealed historical wounds, kept raw and bleeding by religion. Recently, an American Jew wrote a newspaper article insisting that, like all of his creed, his soul's ease depended on the preservation of revered Jewish shrines in Jerusalem, and then went on to give historical reasons why the Palestinians could not be relied upon to preserve them even in a partnership.

A legacy of violence that has lasted for generations is that negotiations become meetings between two irrationally hating groups but it has long seemed provocative that Israel can simply decide on its own borders and impose those on its much less powerful neighbours. It has time and again defied United Nations votes and rulings.

Its argument in favour of expansion is, I'm sure, buried in historical rights, and the two parties have been facing off for so long that concessions even by the stronger Israelis will be read as weakness. But without risk there is no chance of agreement and many more Israelis and Palestinians will add to the 500 lives lost in less than eight months.

The US, because of its huge Jewish vote, has long propped up the Israeli economy and made the country strong enough to be able to stay the dominant Army in the region. It seems to me that the US will become a victim of the public opprobrium of its friends if it doesn't get heavier with the Israelis, insist that its borders be contained and come to some international arrangement over Jerusalem.

In fact, it may be that the continued refusal of the US to get tougher with Israel is one of the factors that led to it losing its position on the UN human rights committee.

The tide, I believe, is turning massively against Israel. In fact, many liberal American Jews have taken up the Palestinian cause and believe Israel is becoming a rogue state. The problem sometimes seems intractable but it is so huge a disruption that we will all be dispirited about any prospects for world peace until it's over.

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