The most sensible – I almost wrote “the only sensible” –
sentence uttered this week sprang from the lips of a five-year-old boy.
After the prisoner swap, one of those smart alec TV
reporters asked him: “Why did we release 1,027 Arabs for one Israeli
soldier?” He expected, of course, the usual answer: because one Israeli
is worth a thousand Arabs. The little boy replied: “Because we caught
many of them and they caught only one.”
For more than a week the whole of Israel was in a state
of intoxication. Gilad Shalit indeed ruled the country (Shalit means
“ruler”). His pictures were plastered all over the place like those of
Comrade Kim in North Korea. It was one of those rare moments when
Israelis could be proud of themselves. Few countries, if any, would have
been prepared to exchange 1,027 prisoners for one. In most places,
including the USA, it would have been politically impossible for a
leader to make such a decision.
In a way, it is a continuation of the Jewish ghetto
tradition. The “Redemption of Prisoners” is a sacred religious duty born
of the circumstances of a persecuted and scattered community. If a Jew
from Marseille was captured by Muslim corsairs to be sold in the market
of Alexandria, it was the duty of Jews in Cairo to pay the ransom and
“redeem” him. As the ancient saying goes, “All of Israel are guarantors
for each other”.
Israelis could (and did) look in the mirror and say:
“aren’t we wonderful?”
Immediately after the Oslo agreement, Gush Shalom, the
peace movement to which I belong, proposed releasing all Palestinian
prisoners at once. They are prisoners of war, we said, and when the
fighting ends, POWs are sent home. This would transmit a powerful human
message of peace to every Palestinian town and village. We organised a
joint demonstration with the late Jerusalemite Arab leader, Faisal
Husseini, in front of Junaid prison near Nablus. More than 10,000
Palestinians and Israelis took part.
But Israel has never recognised these Palestinians as
prisoners of war. They are considered common criminals, only worse.
This week the released prisoners were never referred to
as “Palestinian fighters” or “militants”’ or just “Palestinians”. Every
single newspaper and TV programme, from the elitist Haaretz to
the most primitive tabloid, referred to them exclusively as “murderers”
or, for good measure, “vile murderers”.
One of the worst tyrannies on earth is the tyranny of
words. Once a word becomes entrenched, it directs thought and action. As
the Bible has it: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue”
(Proverbs 18:21). Releasing a thousand enemy fighters is one thing,
releasing a thousand vile murderers is something else.
Some of these prisoners have assisted suicide bombers in
killing a lot of people. Some have committed really atrocious acts –
like the pretty young Palestinian woman who used the Internet to lure a
lovesick Israeli boy of 15 into a trap, where he was riddled with
bullets. But others were sentenced to life for belonging to an “illegal
organisation” and possessing arms or for throwing an ineffectual
home-made bomb at a bus, hurting nobody.
Almost all of them were convicted by military courts. As
has been said, military courts have the same relation to real courts as
military music does to real music.
All of these prisoners, in Israeli parlance, have “blood
on their hands”. But which of us Israelis has no blood on his hands?
Sure, a young woman soldier remote-controlling a drone that kills a
Palestinian suspect and his entire family has no sticky blood on her
hands. Neither has a pilot who drops a bomb on a residential
neighbourhood and feels only “a slight bump on the wing”, as a former
chief of staff put it. (A Palestinian once told me: “Give me a tank or a
fighter plane and I shall give up terrorism immediately.”)
The main argument against the swap was that, according
to security service statistics, 15 per cent of prisoners thus released
become active “terrorists” again. Perhaps. But the majority of them
become active supporters of peace. Practically all of my Palestinian
friends are former prisoners, some of whom were behind bars for 12 years
and more. They learnt Hebrew in prison, became acquainted with Israeli
life by watching television and even began to admire some aspects of
Israel, such as our parliamentary democracy. Most prisoners just want to
go home, settle down and found a family.
But during the endless hours of waiting for Gilad’s
return all our TV stations showed scenes of the killings in which the
prisoners-to-be-released had been involved, such as the young woman who
drove a bomber to his destination. It was a continuous tirade of hatred.
Our warm admiration for our own virtue was mingled with the chilling
feeling that we are again the victims, compelled to release vile
murderers who are going to try and kill us again.
Yet all these prisoners fervently believed that they had
served their people in the struggle for liberation. Like the famous
song: “Shoot me as an Irish soldier/ Do not hang me like a dog/ For I
fought for Ireland’s freedom…” Nelson Mandela, it should be remembered,
was an active terrorist who languished in prison for 28 years because he
refused to sign a statement condemning terrorism.
Israelis (probably like most peoples) are quite unable
to put themselves into the shoes of their adversaries. This makes it
practically impossible to pursue an intelligent policy, particularly on
this issue.
How was Binyamin Netanyahu brought to bend?
The hero of the campaign is Noam Shalit, the father. An
introverted person, withdrawn and shy of publicity, he came out and
fought for his son every single day during these five years and four
months. So did the mother. They literally saved his life. They succeeded
in raising a mass movement without precedent in the annals of the state.
It helped that Gilad looks like everybody’s son. He is a shy young man
with an engaging smile that could be seen on each of the stills and
videos from before the capture. He was youngish looking, thin and
unassuming. Five years later, this week, he still looked the same, only
very pale.
If our intelligence services had been able to locate
him, they would have undoubtedly tried to liberate him by force. This
could well have been his death sentence, as has happened so often in the
past. The fact that they could not find him despite their hundreds of
agents in the Gaza Strip is a remarkable achievement for Hamas. It
explains why he was kept in strict isolation and was not allowed to meet
anyone.
Israelis were relieved to discover, on his release, that
he seemed to be in good condition, healthy and alert. From the few
sentences he voiced on his way in Egypt, he had been provided with radio
and TV and knew about his parents’ efforts. From the moment he set foot
on Israeli soil, almost nothing about the way he was treated was allowed
to come out. Where was he kept? How was the food? Did his captors talk
with him? What did he think about them? Did he learn Arabic? Up to now
not a word about that, probably because it might throw some positive
light on Hamas. He will certainly be thoroughly briefed before being
allowed to speak.
Foreign correspondents repeatedly asked me this week
whether the deal had opened the way to a new peace process. As far as
the public mood is concerned, the very opposite is true. The same
journalists asked me if Binyamin Netanyahu had not been disturbed by the
fact that the swap was bound to strengthen Hamas and deal a grievous
blow to Mahmoud Abbas. They were flabbergasted by my answer: that this
was one of its main purposes if not the main one.
The master stroke was a stroke against Abbas. Abbas’s
moves in the UN have profoundly disturbed our right-wing government.
Even if the only practical outcome is a resolution of the General
Assembly to recognise the state of Palestine as an observer state, it
will be a major step towards a real Palestinian state.
This government, like all our governments since the
foundation of Israel – only more so – is dead set against Palestinian
statehood. It would put an end to the dream of a Greater Israel up to
the Jordan river, compel us to give back a great chunk of the
Land-God-Promised-Us and evacuate scores of settlements. For Netanyahu
and Co, this is the real danger. Hamas poses no danger at all. What can
they do? Launch a few rockets, kill a few people – so what? In no year
has “terrorism” killed as many as half the people dying on our roads.
Israel can deal with that. The Hamas regime would probably not be
running the Gaza Strip in the first place if Israel had not cut the
Strip off from the West Bank, contrary to its solemn undertaking in Oslo
to create four safe passages. None was ever opened.
That, by the way, also explains the timing. Why did
Netanyahu agree now to something he has violently opposed all his life?
Because Abbas, the featherless chicken, has suddenly turned into an
eagle.
On the day of the swap Abbas made a speech. It sounded
rather flat. For the average Palestinian, the case was quite simple:
Abbas, with all his Israeli and American friends, has got no one
released for years. Hamas, using force, has released more than a
thousand, including Fatah members. Ergo: “Israel only understands the
language of force”.
The vast majority of Israelis supported the deal though
convinced that the “vile murderers” will try again to kill us. Never
were the lines of division as clear as this time. Some 25 per cent
opposed it: This included all the extreme right-wing groups, all the
settlers and almost all the national-religious groups. All the others –
the huge camp of the centre and left, the secular, liberal and moderate
religious – supported it. This is the Israeli mainstream on which the
hopes for the future are resting. If Netanyahu had proposed a peace
agreement with the Palestinians this week, and if he had been supported
by the chiefs of the army, Mossad and the security service (as he was
this week), the same majority would have supported him.
As for the prisoners, another 4,000 are still held in
Israeli prisons – and this number is liable to grow again. The opponents
of the deal are quite right in saying that it will provide Palestinian
organisations with a strong incentive to renew their efforts to capture
Israeli soldiers in order to get more prisoners released.
If all of Israel is drunk with emotion because one boy
has been returned to his family – what about 4,000 families on the other
side? Unfortunately, ordinary Israelis don’t put the question this way.
They have got used to seeing the Palestinian prisoners only as
bargaining chips.
How does one thwart the efforts to capture more
soldiers? There is only one alternative: to open a credible way to have
them released by agreement. Such as by peace, if you can excuse the
expression.