Coming
in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
Recent Stories
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
August 20, 2003
Robert Fisk
Now No
One Is Safe in Iraq
Caoimhe Butterly
Life and Death on the Frontlines of Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
UN Bombing: Act of Terrorism or Guerrilla War?
Michael Egan
Revisiting the Paranoid Style in the Dark
Ramzi Kysia
Peace
is not an Abstract Idea
Steven Higgs
NPR and the NAFTA Highway
John L. Hess
A Downside Day
Edward Said
The Imperial Bluster of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Gridlock at Path 15: the California Blackouts were the "Wake
Up Call"
Website of the Day
Ashcroft's Patriotic Hype
August 19, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Blackouts Happen
Gary Leupp
"Our Patch": Australia v. the Evil Doers of the South
Pacific
Sean Donahue
Uribe's Cruel Model: Colombia Moves Toward Totalitarianism
Matt Martin
Bush's Credibility Problem on Missile Defense
Juliana Fredman
Recipe for the Destruction of a Hudna
John Ross
Fox Government's Attack on Mexican Basques
Sasan Fayazmanesh
What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say
Website of the Day
Tom Delay's Dual Loyalities
August 18, 2003
Uri Avnery
Hero in War and Peace
Stan Goff
The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure
Cathy Breen
Baghdad on the Hudson
Michael Kimaid
Fight the Power (Companies)!
Jason Leopold
The California Rip-Off Revisited: Arnold, Milken and Ken Lay
Matt Siegfried
The Bush Administration in Context
Elaine Cassel
At Last, A Judge Who Acts Like a Judge
Alexander Cockburn
Judy Miller's War
Harvey Wasserman
The Legacy of Blackout Pete Wilson
Website of the Day
Fire Griles!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
August 14, 2003
Peter Phillips
Inside
Bohemian Grove: Where US Power Elites Party
Brian Cloughley
Charlie Wilson and Pakistan: the Strange Congressman Behind the
CIA's Most Expensive War
Linville and Ruder
Tyson
Strike Draws the Line
Jim Lobe
Bush Administration Divided Over Iran
Ramzy Baroud
Sharon Freezes the Road Map
Tom Turnipseed
Blowback in Iraq
Gary Leupp
Condi's
Speech: From Birgmingham to Baghdad, Imperialism's Freedom Ride
Website of the Day
Tony Benn's Greatest Hits
August 13, 2003
Joanne Mariner
A Wall of Separation Through the
Heart
Donald Worster
The Heavy Cost of Empire
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Elaine Cassel
Murderous Errors: Executing the Innocent
Ralph Nader
Make the Recall Count
Alexander Cockburn
Ted Honderich Hit with "Anti-Semitism" Slur
Website of the Day
Defending Yourself Against DirectTV Lawsuits: 9000 and Counting
August 12, 2003
Ron Jacobs
Revisionist History: the Bush Administration, Civil Rights and
Iraq
Josh Frank
Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up
Wayne Madsen
What's a Fifth Columnist? Well, Someone Like Hitchens
Ray McGovern
Relax,
It Was All a Pack of Lies
Wendy Brinker
Hubris in the White House
Website of the Day
Black
Mustache
Hot Stories
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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August
25, 2003
A Drug for the Addict
The
End of the Hudna
By URI AVNERY
It was a putsch. Like any classic putsch, it was
carried out by a group of officers: Sharon, Mofaz, Ya'alon and
the army top brass.
It is no secret that the military party
(the only really functioning party in Israel) objected to the
hudna (truce) from the first moment, much as it opposed
the Road Map. Its powerful propaganda apparatus, which includes
all the Israeli media, spread the message: "The hudna
is a disaster! Every day of the hudna is a bad day! The
reduction of violence to almost zero is a great misfortune: under
cover of the truce, the terrorist organizations are recovering
and rearming! Every terrorist strike avoided today will hit us
much harder tomorrow!"
The army command was like an addict deprived
of his drug. It was forbidden to carry out the action it wanted.
It was just about to crush the intifada, victory was just
around the corner, all that was needed was just one final decisive
blow, and that would have been that.
The military was upset when it saw the
new hope that took hold of the Israeli public, the bullish mood
of the stock exchange, the rise in value of the shekel, the return
of the masses to the entertainment centers, the signs of optimism
on both sides. In effect, It was a spontaneous popular vote against
the military policy.
Ariel Sharon realized that if this went
on, reality would overturn his long-term plans. Therefore, right
at the beginning of the hudna, he adopted three immediate
goals:
First,
to topple Abu-Mazen as soon as possible. Mahmud Abbas had become
the darling of George Bush, a welcome guest at the White House.
The unique standing of Sharon in Washington was in danger. The
pair Bush-Sharon, which was mutating into a single Busharon unit,
was in danger of becoming a triangle: Bush-Sharon-Abbas. There
is no greater danger to Sharon's plans.
Second,
to wipe out the Road Map in its infancy. The Map obliged Sharon
to remove immediately about 80 settlement outposts, freeze all
settlements, stop the building of the wall and withdraw the army
from all West Bank towns. Sharon never dreamt of fulfilling even
one of these obligations.
Third,
to put an end to the hudna and give the army back its
freedom of action in all the Palestinian territories.
The question was how this could be achieved
without a trace of suspicion attaching itself to Sharon. The
great majority of Israelis, who had greeted the hudna,
could not possibly be allowed to suspect that their own leaders
were responsible for extinguishing this glimmer of hope. Even
more important, it was imperative that no such pernicious idea
should enter the innocent head of the good George W. All the
blame must fall on the Palestinians, so that the affection for
Abu-Mazen would turn into contempt and hatred.
The means for attaining this goal were
selected with great care, taking into account the simplistic
world of Bush with its Good Guys and Bad Guys. The Bad Guys are
the terrorists. Therefore, it was advisable to kill Hamas and
Jihad militants. That would not upset Bush. In the eyes of the
President, to kill terrorists is a Good Thing. And as a result,
the Palestinians would be compelled to break the hudna.
This is how it happened:
On August 8, Israeli soldiers killed
two Hamas militants in Nablus. But the retaliation was restrained:
on August 12, a Hamas suicide bomber killed one Israeli in Rosh-Ha'ayin
and another bomber killed one person in the Ariel settlement.
Both suicide bombers came from Nablus. Hamas announced that the
hudna would continue. On August 14, the Israeli army killed
Muhammad Seeder, head of the military wing of Hamas in Hebron.
Five days later, on August 19, a suicide bomber from Hebron blew
himself up in a Jerusalem bus, killing 20 men, women and children.
Two days later, on August 21, the army assassinated Isma'il Abu-Shanab,
the fourth ranking leader of Hamas.
This time it was not even possible even
to pin on the victim the appellation "ticking bomb",
as is usual in such cases. The man was a well-known political
leader. Why was he of all people chosen for assassination? A
military correspondent on Israeli TV made a slip of the tongue:
Abu-Shanab was killed, he said, because he was "available".
Meaning, he was an easy target because he did not go underground
after the bus bombing, as did the leaders of the military wing.
This time, at long last, the aim was
achieved. The Palestinian organizations announced that they were
calling off the hudna. Sharon and Co. rejoiced. Within
hours the Israeli army had again penetrated into the centers
of the Palestinian towns, starting an orgy of arrests and house
demolitions (more than 40 in a single day).
The addict leapt for the drug. His crisis
was over, the officers could do all the things they had been
prevented from doing for nine long weeks.
But the situation will not revert to
the status quo ante intifada, so to speak. The attacks
and killings will be more numerous and more cruel. The construction
of the Wall deep in the Palestinian territories will be accelerated,
along with the building activity in the settlements.
The army propaganda machine is already
preparing the public for the "expulsion of Arafat".
"Expulsion" is a euphemism produced by the "verbal
laundry" section of the army, one of its most creative departments.
The intention is not to expel the leader from his Ramallah compound,
nor from Palestine, but from this world. The reaction of the
Palestinians and the whole Arab world can be predicted. It would
be a historic point of no return, perhaps eliminating the chances
of peace for generations.
And the Americans? Never has the Bush
administration looked so pathetic as here and now. The unfortunate
Colin Powell arouses compassion with his stuttering and his emissary,
John Wolf, a wolf without teeth, will go the way of all his predecessors.
After the implosion of the new order
in Afghanistan and the classic guerilla war now engulfing the
universally hated occupation regime in Iraq, the collapse of
the Road Map will put an end to any presidential pretensions.
It is much easier to have one's picture taken in the uniform
of a glorious victor with a background of army extras than to
steer the ship of state.
The renewal of the cycle of violence
will, of course, exacerbate the economic depression in Israel.
The crisis will deepen. Together with the hudna and the
Road Map, tourism, foreign investment and the recovery will also
die.
The economy, too, is an addict who needs
his drug: nine billion dollars in US government loan guarantees
are waiting for Sharon in Washington. That should be enough for
the political and military elite. Only the poor will become poorer.
But who cares?
All this is being done without consulting
the Israeli public. There is no open discussion, no debate in
the tame media, the silent Knesset and the cabinet of marionettes.
That's what makes it a putsch.
To sum up: The road Map is dead, because
Sharon was against it from the beginning, Bush saw it only as
a photo opportunity on a nice background and Abu-Mazen did not
get from Israel and the US anything that he could present as
a Palestinian achievement.
What will happen now? After the shedding
of yet more blood and many tears, the two peoples will arrive
once more at the conviction that it is better to come to an agreement
and make peace. Then they will be compelled to learn the lesson
of the last chapter: It must all start from the end. Only after
the picture of the final settlement clearly emerges can one deal
with the immediate problems. Anything else would be a road map
to the abyss.
Uri Avnery
is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He
is one of the writers featured in The
Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. One of his
essays is also included in Cockburn and St. Clair's forthcoming
book: The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. He can be reached at: avnery@counterpunch.org.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 23 / 24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
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