The wisdom of Shin Bet chiefs
By Meron Benvenisti
Haaretz, December 18, 2003
Shin Bet security service chief Avi Dichter's appearance at the Herzliya Conference was a rare event, but not simply because he was there. Still more unusual was the content of his remarks, his points of emphasis, the internal contradictions that surfaced, and the deviation into areas unconnected to his own professional expertise.
Dichter won praise from all corners for his brave confession over the responsibility borne by the Shin Bet and the rest of the security establishment "for not having supplied the people of Israel with the `protective suit' it deserves." But laden within this remark is the assumption that there is such a "protective suit" - in other words, that there is a military solution of force to Palestinian violence, and that the security establishment has failed till now to find it. It is not the lack of a political-diplomatic option that sustains the violence; instead, the problem is a delay in the implementation of practical steps, a lack of will, and the non-allocation of financial resources.
Dichter made the "fence" the pivot around which all of these failures revolve. This intimidating physical obstacle was defined as a "critical factor that will limit the spilling of blood;" all necessary steps should be taken to hasten its construction, the Shin Bet chief said. The hell with its humanitarian implications for the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians; the hell with international, and domestic, criticism: "a fence now, enclaves later," Dichter says. The Shin Bet director realizes that the fence is, first and foremost, an anxiety drug fed to a frightened public that seeks psychological comfort. For this reason, Dichter proposes that the fence should be privatized. If the public wants Prozac, it should pay for it: "As far as I'm concerned, there should be a little blue charity box distributed to each house, with the words `Jewish National Fence' written on it," instead of the Jewish National Fund.
So soon they'll issue donation certificates to Bar Mitzvah kids and sell stretches of the fence to philanthropists, including memorial signs to commemorate a father-in-law from Brooklyn. After all, it's crucial to finish the fence, because if it's not completed, the suicide strikers will choose to penetrate through the non-barricaded areas. Thus, Dichter attributes special import to the "Jerusalem envelope" part of the fence - and here, precisely, is where the internal contradiction of all claims about the fence and its putative advantages are to be found.
The fence's route leaves about a quarter of a million Palestinians in the "protected" areas - and these are people described by Dichter (in the same speech) as a dangerous fifth column. "Out of 220,000 East Jerusalem residents, there have been 120 terrorists, and 70 percent of these were linked to actual, murderous attacks," he said. So who is really protected by the "Jerusalem envelope," if the terrorists remain inside the fence? Up to now, the public in Israel has been led to believe that East Jerusalem residents are "good Arabs" who simply want to preserve rights conferred to them by Israeli identity documents. Now, the head of the Shin Bet is branding them a "fifth column," while simultaneously leaving them within the "Jerusalem envelope."
Ariel Sharon and his right-wing government have, of course, a political interest in staking out the "Jerusalem envelope" boundaries in a way that thwarts any plan to divide the city along ethnic lines, and also in a way that allows for the annexation of Jewish satellite towns in the West Bank, such as Ma'aleh Adumim and Givat Ze'ev. Yet such political motives are not within the Shin Bet director's professional purview; and he owes the public an explanation regarding the contradiction between the fence and the location of "potential murderers" in areas located within the fence.
It behooves an official who supports the fence as a "critical factor" to address the political-urban-demographic price to be paid as a result of including a quarter million Palestinians inside the fence, and also of excluding tens of thousands of people who have Jerusalem identification cards but who migrated beyond the city limits due to housing shortages, land expropriation and construction bans. Already at this stage, the construction of the barrier is bringing a large flow of people with blue, Israeli identity cards to areas within the fence, where all aspects of their lives (employment as well as educational, medical, religious and cultural services) have been conducted. This population flow has an immediate impact on the housing market and on illegal construction initiatives; it aggravates intra-communal tensions, and causes hatred and thirst for revenge stemming from humiliation suffered at roadblocks, the separation of family members, and general obstructions on movement. If, based on Dichter's interpretation, there have been so many murderous terrorists in East Jerusalem, will there be less, or more, after the fence is completed?
A day before Dichter's address, Jerusalem's mayor delivered the same hellfire prophecy that was issued by all his predecessors: "In another few years, Jerusalem is liable, heaven forbid, to cease playing its role as the capital of the Jewish state and of the Jewish people; it could have an Arab majority." If the Shin Bet head wanted to uphold the world view inherent in this statement as a goal to be followed in the name of "national strength," he would have to stand next to his own predecessors at the security service and admit openly that the fence is a false panacea that merely facilitates the fulfillment of the Jerusalem mayor's doomsday prophecy. But it would appear that wisdom in hindsight comes to Shin Bet heads only after they retire.
The "fence," and its Jerusalem plan in particular, are such unjustifiable measures in political and security terms - they are are such wasteful, arbitrary, inhumane and demagogic measures that will harm "national strength" in the long term - that the Herzliya Conference sponsors would be wise to devote a special session to this march of folly called the "Jerusalem envelope." Otherwise, they're sure to be asked "where were you" at some point in the future.
