Immortal heroes of Jenin

Sharon's war is not only failing to bring Israelis
security, it is laying the foundations of a new
Palestinian nation and state

Uri Avnery
Tuesday April 16, 2002
The Guardian (UK)

In 1897, the day after the First Zionist Congress in
Basel, Theodor Herzl, wrote in his diary: "In Basel I
founded the State of the Jews." This week, Ariel Sharon
should note in his diary: "In Jenin I founded the State
of the Palestinians."

Of course, he did not mean to. His intention was to
destroy the Palestinian nation, its institutions and
leadership, once and for all, leaving only bits and
pieces, human wreckage that could be disposed of
anywhere.

In practice, something quite different happened. Faced
with the onslaught of the biggest military machine in
the region and the most modern arms in the world,
submerged in a sea of suffering, surrounded by bodies,
the Palestinian nation straightened its back as never
before.

In the small refugee camp near Jenin, a group of
Palestinian fighters from all the organisations
gathered for a battle of defence that will be enshrined
forever in the hearts of all Arabs. This is the
Palestinian Massada, as an Israeli officer called it,
alluding to the legendary stand of the remnants of the
great Jewish rebellion against Rome in 71 AD.

When the international media cannot be kept out any
more and the pictures of horror are published, two
possible versions may emerge: Jenin as a story of
massacre, a second Sabra and Shatila; and Jenin, the
Palestinian Stalingrad, a story of immortal heroism.
The second will surely prevail.

Nations are built on myths. I was raised on the myths
of Massada and Tel-Chai. They formed the consciousness
of the new Hebrew nation. (At Tel-Chai, in 1920, a
group of Jewish defenders, led by the one-armed hero
Josef Trumpeldor, were killed in an incident with anti-
French Syrian fighters.) The myths of Jenin and
Arafat's compound in Ramallah will form the
consciousness of the new Palestinian nation.

A primitive military robot, who sees everything in
terms of fire power and body counts, will not
understand this. But Napoleon, a military genius, said
that in war, moral considerations account for three
quarters, and the balance of force for the other
quarter.

How does Sharon's war look in this perspective? As for
the actual forces, the balance is clear. A few dozen
Israelis killed, many hundreds of Palestinians dead. No
destruction in Israel, horrible destruction in the
Palestinian towns.

The aim was, so it was claimed, to "destroy the terror
infrastructure". This definition is by itself
nonsensical: the "terror infrastructure" exists in the
souls of millions of Palestinians and tens of millions
of Arabs, whose hearts are bursting with rage. The more
fighters and suicide bombers are killed, the more
fighters and suicide bombers are ready to take their
place. We saw the "laboratories of explosives" - sacks
of material obtainable in Israeli shops. The Israeli
army is proud of discovering tens of them. There will
soon be hundreds.

When dozens of wounded people lie in the streets and
slowly bleed to death because the army shoots at every
moving ambulance, it creates terrible hatred. When the
army secretly buries hundreds of bodies of men, women
and children, it creates terrible hatred. When tanks
destroy houses, topple electricity poles, open water
pipes, leave behind thousands of homeless people and
cause children to drink from puddles, it causes
terrible hatred.

A Palestinian child, who sees all this with his eyes,
becomes the suicide bomber of tomorrow. Thus Sharon and
his chief of staff, Shaul Mofaz, create the terrorist
infrastructure.

In the meantime, they have created the foundations of
the Palestinian nation and the Palestinian state. The
people saw their fighters in Jenin and believe that
they are far greater heroes than the Israeli soldiers,
protected inside their tanks. They saw their leader in
the historic TV sequence, his face lit by a single
candle in his dark, surrounded office, ready for death
at any moment, and compare him with the hedonistic
Israeli ministers, sitting in their offices far from
the battlefront, surrounded by hordes of bodyguards.
Thus national pride is engendered.

No good for Israel will come out of this adventure, as
no good came out of any of Sharon's previous
adventures. The concept was stupid, the implementation
cruel, the results will be disastrous. It will not
bring peace and security, solve no problem, but it will
isolate Israel and endanger the Jews throughout the
world.

In the end, only one thing will be remembered: our
giant military machine assaulted the small Palestinian
people, and the small Palestinian people and its leader
held on. In the eyes of the Palestinians, and not only
theirs, it will look like a tremendous victory, the
victory of a modern David against Goliath.

· Uri Avnery is co-founder of Israel's Gush Shalom
(Peace Coalition). Born in Germany, he emigrated to
Palestine in 1933 and joined the Irgun underground
movement. In 1948, he was a member of an Israeli
commando unit and was wounded on the Egyptian front. As
a journalist and political activist, he has long been a
campaigner for Palestinian rights and in 1982 crossed
the frontline to meet Arafat at the height of the siege
of Beirut. A supporter of the Oslo peace agreement, he
is now a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv,
where this article first appeared.

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