On The Road To Civil War

Everybody in Israel is talking about the Next War. The most popular TV channel is running a whole series about it. Not another war with the Arabs. Not the nuclear threat from Iran. Not the ongoing bloody confrontation with the Palestinians...

by URI AVNERY

Everybody in Israel is talking about the Next War. The most popular TV channel is running a whole series about it.

Not another war with the Arabs. Not the nuclear threat from Iran. Not the ongoing bloody confrontation with the Palestinians.

The talk is about the coming civil war.

Only a few months ago, that would have sounded preposterous. Now, suddenly, is has become a possibility, and a very real one. Not another blown-up media sensation. Not yet another of Sharon’s political manipulations. Not just a new blackmail attempt by the settlers. But the real thing on the ground.

They talk about it at cabinet meetings and in the Knesset, on TV talk-shows, in editorials and the news pages. The Chief-of-Staff has publicly warned that the army may fall apart. One of the ministers says that the very existence of the State of Israel is in danger. Another minister prophesies a bloodbath like the Spanish civil war.

Quietly and not so quietly, the Shin Bet is taking precautions. The prison service has been ordered to prepare facilities for mass detentions. The army leadership is planning the call-up of 10 thousand reserve soldiers and starting to think about the steps they must take in the case of...

No, it’s a very real threat.

On the face of it, it may seem to have appeared from nowhere. But whoever has eyes to see knew that it is going to happen, sooner or later.

The seeds of the civil war were sown when the first settlement was put up in the occupied territories. At the time, I told the Prime Minister in the Knesset: "You are laying a land mine. Some day you will have to dismantle it. As a former soldier, let me warn you that the dismantling of land mines is a very unpleasant job."

Since then, hundreds of mines have been laid. The minefields are being extended even now.

The process was led by religious cranks. Their declared aim, as they said then and never tire of repeating, is to drive all the Arabs out of the country that God promised us. And the land God promised us, as one of them reminded us on TV the other day, is not the "Palestine" of the British mandate, but the Promised Land - including Jordan, Lebanon and parts of Syria and Sinai. Quoting the Bible, another one declared that we have come to this country not only to inherit, but also to disinherit the others, to drive them out and take their place.

Since the then Minister of Defence, Shimon Peres, implanted the first settlement, Kedumim, in the middle of the Palestinian population on the West Bank, the settlements have spread like locusts. Every settlement has gradually stolen the lands and water of the neighboring Palestinian villages, uprooted their trees, blocked their roads and built new roads, barred to Palestinians. Almost all the settlements have spawned satellite outposts on the nearby hills.

This is continuing at this very moment. After Sharon solemnly promised President Bush to dismantle some of the "outposts", dozens of new one have sprung up. All the ministries are actively helping the outposts that were officially defined as "illegal". Not only is the army defending them, thereby putting its soldiers in harm’s way, but it is actually telling the "hill-boys" where to set up their outposts and secretly advising them how to go about it.

When we warned of the danger, we were told to relax. Only a small minority of the settlers, we were comforted, are fanatical freaks. These are indeed crazy and will forcibly resist any attempt to remove them. But that will not be a big problem, because the vast majority of Israeli citizens detest them and consider them a sect of crackpots.

Most of the settlers, we were told, are not fanatics. They went there because the government presented them with expensive villas, which they could not even dream about in Israel proper.

– http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname...