A shocking interview of Netanyahu's national security adviser, Uzi Arad, by the excellent Ari Shavit in Haaretz. The most shocking thing to me is the tone. Arad speaks in a smugly eloquent manner reminiscent of colonialists of 100 years ago, as if Israelis are the true representatives of civilization and there are all these wogs underfoot. Notice the self-enamored flourishes in the following discussion of a very serious subject, Palestinian self-determination, and his patronization in the words "stamps, parades, carnival."
Will a Palestinian state be established on the watch manned by you and Netanyahu?
That is a different story. I don't see among the Palestinians a
process of truly drawing closer to acceptance of Israel and peace with
Israel. I also do not see a Palestinian leadership or a Palestinian
regime but a disorderly constellation of forces and factions. But
possibly someone might come along and say I am an engineer of events;
the depth doesn't interest me – I am going to produce an event. And
within three years – presto – four Annapolises, two disengagements,
global pyrotechnics. And then suddenly, in 2015, there is a Palestinian
state. Stamps, parades, carnival. That could happen. A fragile
structure, yes; an arrangement resting wholly on wobbly foundations.
But it could happen. There could be a Palestinian state.
What you are saying is that there will not be true peace, but there might be an American peace event with Hollywood trappings.
Everyone with eyes to see, sees that there is a failure of
Palestinian leadership. There is no Palestinian Sadat. There is no
Palestinian Mandela. Abu Mazen is not vulgar like Arafat and not
militant and extreme like Hamas
I would just note: there are more than 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails. Israel has decapitated the leadership in Palestinian politics, purposely. Now Arad becomes more direct and sincere. And notice the feeling of abandonment creep in.
Do you feel that as a result of Israeli mistakes, the international attitude toward Israel today is extremely unfair?
Completely unfair. I say this in English openly: "extremely
unfair." If you want to enforce the clauses of the Road Map, you have
to enforce all of them. And security violations are more serious than
building violations: Qassam rockets kill people, settlements do not.
But I am a formalist. I am in favor of formalism. The thing is, that if
they come to us and count every settlement, they have to apply the same
indices and the same principles to the Palestinians. Anyone who does
not do this is behaving unfairly, but he is also behaving unwisely. He
is not advancing the Israeli-Palestinian peace that he would like to
see.
Maybe the real problem is the settlements have made Washington fed
up with us. Maybe the problem is that Obama and Clinton have lingering
issues concerning Netanyahu, hence their chilly behavior toward him.
Now Shavit asks a good question. Smart. And better than the answer:
Isn't the alliance between Rome and Jerusalem wobbly? Don't you
have the feeling that just as de Gaulle terminated a 15-year French
alliance with Israel after the war in Algeria, Obama will terminate a
40-year American alliance with Israel after the war in Iraq?
And another, which elicits a reference to old old Bernard Lewis:
Is the Holocaust relevant to our strategic thought in an era of
a nuclear Middle East?Look at the way memory guides people like Netanyahu, who refers
time and again to the 1930s. Bernard Lewis also said a few years ago that he
feels like he is in the late 1930s. What did he mean? On the one hand, an
imminent threat, rapidly approaching, and on the other, complacency and
conciliation and a cowering coveting of peace. When I visited Yad Vashem [the
Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem] not long ago, I could not bear the
psychological overload and left halfway through. I don't think there is an
Israeli or a Jew who can be insensitive to the Holocaust. It is a painful black
hole in our consciousness.When you look around today, what is your feeling? Are we alone?
We are always alone. Sometimes we have partners and lovers and
donors of money, but no one is in our shoes.I still remember Roosevelt and all the wise and enlightened
types of the American security hierarchy in the period of Auschwitz, and I have
retained the lesson. In Jewish history and fate there is a dimension of
unfairness toward us. We have already been alone once, and even the good and
the enlightened did not protect us. Accordingly, we must not be militant, but
we must entrench our defense and security prowess and act with wisdom and
restraint and caution and sangfroid. Never again.
And what was the Israel lobby period of the 70s to 2009, chopped liver?
