Israel
Israel, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice
President Ronald Reagan had just left Honduras, the last stop on his recent tour of Latin and Central America. Only two days later, on December 6, the red carpet was out again in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital. This time the guest of honor was Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. The official explanation for Sharon’s three-day visit was “exchanges of views.” The main topic was Honduran armed forces chief Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martinez’s quest for new sophisticated warplanes. Washington and Paris, it seems, have felt politically constrained from selling Honduras new F-5 or Mirage jets to replace 12 French-made Super-Mystere fighters originally purchased from Israel some years back. [1]
Israeli-Palestinian Dialogue
One of the lesser known aspects of Palestinian politics over the last eight years has been the steadily growing contacts between a number of Palestinian and Israeli progressive groups and individuals in the occupied territories. Though unreported, those contacts have not always been clandestine. They have involved a much wider circle than more publicized meetings between the small leftist parties on both sides of the “green line,” such as Matzpen and the Communist Party.
From the Editors (November/December 1982)
The massacre at Sabra and Shatila camps was an episode that immediately transcended the brutal war it was part of. The Israeli commission of inquiry seems almost a distraction from the obvious responsibility of the Begin government in this affair. Many of Begin’s critics regard the massacre as an inexcusable error of criminal proportions, but its implications are more ominous than this. It was a piece of a larger campaign, beginning in the south of Lebanon in early June, that killed more than 17,000 people. The carpet bombing of the camps in the south, the artillery pounding Beirut — all this the Palestinians survived and the world tolerated.
The Prisoners of Israel
The Israeli Defense Forces have taken some 9,000 to 10,000 Palestinians and Lebanese prisoner in south Lebanon. Because the Israelis have not released lists of names or figures, the exact number of prisoners currently held cannot be determined. The IDF itself has released its estimate of 7,000 to 9,000 detainees. [1] Correspondents in the area thought that the al-Ansar prison camp constructed by the Israelis near Nabatiyya in south Lebanon housed anywhere from 6,000 to 9,000 prisoners in mid-July. Although 600 detainees were released in the first week of July, and 212 children were released to the International Committee of the Red Cross on July 18, new detainees continue to arrive at the camp — some 400 on July 18, for instance.
Israel’s Invasion and the Disarmament Movement
On June 12, 1982, over half a million people demonstrated in New York, calling for a halt to the nuclear arms race. The demonstration was unusual in its size, and even more so in the favorable media coverage it received. About the same time, a few thousand people in scattered cities throughout the country actively protested the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the barely disguised US government support for it. A strong case can be made that the latter actions constituted the more direct and appropriate response to the very real danger of nuclear war.
Israel’s Future in Lebanon
Elias Khoury is a Lebanese novelist and literary critic. Nubar Hovsepian is a fellow of the Institute of Arab Research in Beirut. They spoke with MERIP editors Jim Paul, Joe Stork and Sheila Ryan in New York in July 1982.
What are Israel’s war aims?
The Israeli Opposition
As the Israeli invasion of Lebanon enters its third month, the polarization of the Israeli public continues. People there have become increasingly aware of the terrible destruction being wrought on the Lebanese and Palestinian peoples by their military machine. More important for most citizens, concern has spread over the heavy casualties that are certain if the Israeli army seeks to conquer West Beirut.
Dayr Yasin and Qibya
What is the meaning of the Israeli parliamentarian's comment that “in Lebanon we have entered with a policy that is a direct continuation of Dayr Yasin and Qibya”?
A Dayr Yasin Policy for the 1980s
Thick clouds of disinformation covered the Israeli public at the outset of the invasion of Lebanon, the counterpart to the dark clouds and debris that cover the death, the gutted cities, the utter destruction along the Lebanese coast and its hinterland. The Israeli media itself indulged in the disinformation. Pictures would show an Israeli soldier giving some food to a young survivor of the intensive Israeli bombing of civilian population centers. The press carried very long accounts of a few Lebanese being treated in Israeli hospitals.
Israel in Lebanon, 1975-1982
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon on June 6, 1982 brings to an end the phase of Lebanese political history which opened with the 1975-1976 civil war. It is a logical outgrowth of Israel’s policies in Lebanon since 1975. The 1975-1976 war, in turn, marked a culmination of trends which had been developing at least since 1958. [1]
From the Editors (July/August 1982)
Events since early June, and specifically the Reagan administration’s complete support for and identification with Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, accentuates the long-standing need to mobilize popular opposition to US policy in the Middle East. The possibilities for such efforts now exist to a greater degree than ever before. Polls show a majority of Americans oppose the invasion. Public attitudes at this moment are far ahead of the politicians and the media.
“All This Time We Were Alone”
Saleh Baransi was born in 1929, finished elementary school in his village of Tayba, and went to Jerusalem in 1944 to continue his secondary studies. In 1952, he was appointed a teacher in a secondary school in Tayba. In 1957 he was one of the founders of the Popular Front, which was established in Israel to defend the human and civil rights of Arabs in Israel. In 1958 this Popular Front split, and some participants established a new national movement called al-Ard. In 1960 Saleh was dismissed from his job as a teacher, and from 1960 to 1969 was put under house arrest. During this period he was also put under administrative detention several times and exiled from his home to other places inside Israel.
Davis, Israel: Utopia Incorporated
Uri Davis, Israel: Utopia Incorporated (London: Zed Books, 1977).
“Sometimes I Have a Feeling of Foreignness”
Erez Bitton’s second collection of Hebrew poems, The Book of Mint, appeared in Israel last summer, three years after Moroccan Afternoon. Bitton is an unusual man by any standard. He was born in Oran, Algeria, in 1942 and immigrated to Israel shortly after the establishment of the state in 1948. His parents had come to Oran from an oasis village in the Draa valley of southern Morocco, and their youth and his was imbued with the culture and nostalgia of Moroccan Jewish life, its tastes and smells, and the bite of their Judeo-Arabic dialect.
Oriental Jews in Israeli Society
The revolt of the Black Panthers in 1971 underlined the depth of the ethnic conflicts in Israel’s Jewish population and dramatized the danger that the crystallization of ‘two nations’ could represent for Israeli national unity. Sociologists and study commissions went to work, just as they had after the riots of Wadi Salib in 1959 (Etzioni Commission in 1959; Katz Commission in 1971).
Ideology and Strategy of the Settlements Movement
The issue of settlement has been at the center of the political Zionist movement since its inception. The settlers have played a major role in shaping the political fabric of Israel. Since “the conquest of the land” has been intrinsic to political Zionism, the settlers engaged in that process enjoy a particular leverage in relation to their fellow Zionists. The Zionist “minimalists’ have historically stressed the consolidation of a Jewish state on the territory under their control while the “maximalists” have called for a Greater Israel based on the maximum extent of the ancient Hebrew kingdoms.
Challenge from Israel’s Military
The Israeli army — or the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) — has assumed since the 1967 war an increasingly prominent role in Israeli society. Today the IDF is the single largest factor in Israel’s economy. Its officer corps, once a highly motivated and ideologically cohesive elite trained in the ideology of Labor Zionism, has lost much of its original character, becoming more privileged and professionalized. Elements in the IDF higher echelons now more openly challenge Israel’s civilian political leaders on a broad range of critical issues, further evidence that a major change has occurred in the status and function of the military in Israeli society.
Israel at a Turning Point
Israel in mid-1980 was caught in the throes of a crisis whose final consequences cannot yet be foreseen. Manifestations of this crisis include a sharp decline in public support for the government, confusion about the meaning and significance of recent events, and growing uncertainty about the future. The public mood is characterized generally by depression. Quite possibly we are witnessing an important turning-point in the consciousness of many Israelis.
“No to the Egyptian-Israeli Treaty”
The Progressive Assembly of National Unionists was established in 1977 as the official “left” party of Egypt. One of three legal national parties, its leadership was drawn from the ranks of leftist intellectuals, some former communists, who had chosen during the Nasser era to work within the Arab Socialist Union in uneasy alliance with the dominant Nasserist forces. As an official party, its relationship to the Nasserists has remained tenuous, while its relations with the Sadat regime have grown increasingly acrimonious.
