Akiva Eldar

by Akiva Eldar

In the mid-1980s, when the government considered allowing elections in the

territories, Henry Kissinger warned an Israeli friend that the territory in

which the Palestinian people will elect its leaders will not remain in

Israel's hands. Sooner or later, said the professor-statesman, the

combination of a people, elections and territory will push Israel back to

the 1967 borders. Twenty years and thousands of Israeli and Palestinian

victims later, Kissinger's prophecy seems more realistic than ever: The

people that dwells in Palestine (and not in the diaspora) elected its

leader yesterday. And not only that: Israel is completing the preparations

for a departure from all of the Gaza Strip and a small part of the West Bank.

These lines were written a few hours before the results of the elections in

the territories became known. However, one can hazard a guess that the

Palestinians (including those in East Jerusalem) elected Mahmoud Abbas (Abu

Mazen) as chairman of the Palestinian Authority. Television networks from

dozens of countries have broadcast to the world pictures of the lines at

the polling stations in Nablus and Hebron, and have reported on the

attempts by Hamas to disrupt the democratic process. In between, the

correspondents reported on the letters of refusal to serve by reserve

officers and on the threats by the Jewish settlers in the territories to

revolt when the government of Israel orders - legally - their evacuation

from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank.

The elections in the territories and the disengagement plan have created a

certain symmetry between the mainstream on the Israeli side and the

mainstream on the Palestinian side. Both here and there, pragmatism is

challenging fanaticism and democracy is defending itself from theocracy.

Abu Mazen, like Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, will be judged by his ability

to realize the will of the majority - the life breath of democracy - giving

maximum consideration to a majority that will express its opposition in

peaceful ways. The Palestinians' challenge is many times greater: to

institute law and order under occupation, in conditions of poverty and despair.

by Akiva Eldar

Israeli politicians periodically cite Palestinian textbooks as damning

proof that the Palestinians are continuing to educate to hatred and not to

peace. The last one to do so was Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who called

for making the curriculum the acid test of the new Palestinian leadership.

The Fatah movement's candidate, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), picked up the

gauntlet, but immediately threw one of his own at the Ministry of

Education: You want to examine our education for peace? Help yourself, but

based on the principle of reciprocity, we should also see what's happening

on the Israeli side.

It isn't at all certain that on this test the Israeli education system

would get a higher grade than its Palestinian neighbor. Although it is hard

to find in Israeli textbooks incidences of blatant incitement, as is often

found in Jordanian and Egyptian textbooks, Dr. Ruth Firer of Hebrew

University, one of the pioneers of textbook research, argues that the

indoctrination in the Israeli books is simply more sophisticated.

For this reason, she says, the messages penetrate all the more effectively.

It is harder to detect a stereotype that is concealed by a seemingly

innocent icon, she says, than one that is worded such that it "vulgarly

pulls you by the nose."

Findings of a study she conducted together with Dr. Sami Adwan of Bethlehem

University, who specializes in peace education and human rights, recently

appeared in a book published by the Georg Eckert Institute for

International Textbook Research in Germany, entitled "The

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in History and Civics Textbooks of Both

Nations." The study encompassed 13 Israeli textbooks (2,682 pages) and nine

Palestinian textbooks (1,207 pages), and revealed a sort of mirror image in

which each side pins responsibility for the violence on the other.

by Akiva Eldar

On the Friday when the late Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat

was buried in the courtyard of the Muqata, the media reported that because

of the fear of riots, the Israeli government had decided to close the

Temple Mount mosques to residents of the territories. From this prohibition

it could have been understood that on an ordinary holiday, masses of Arabs

from Ramallah and from Hebron are allowed to come to Jerusalem to pray at

the holy site. And the listener will wonder: If the gates of Jerusalem

(which is an Israeli and united city, as we know) are regularly open to the

residents of the territories, what are those ugly separation fences that

surround East Jerusalem? And, on the contrary: If the capital is wide open,

why do the city's Arabs need the permission of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel

Sharon to vote at the polls in Abu Dis?

by Akiva Eldar

It is said that when Metternich, Austrian chancellor in the 1830s, was

informed of the death (in 1838) of the person he hated most, French foreign

minister Talleyrand, he commented: "I wonder what he intends." Apparently

the debate over whether Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat is a

real partner for a two-state solution or a charlatan who has never ceased

to aim at the destruction of the State of Israel will not end even after

his death.

Even in the Israeli peace camp, those who will shed a tear can be counted

on the fingers of one hand. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak will not be one of them. As

head of Military Intelligence, as chief of staff, as a government minister

who participated in the second Camp David summit and as one of the leaders

of the Geneva Initiative, he has accumulated scores of hours of observation

of the Palestinian leader. Lipkin-Shahak, who was involved up to his neck

in the negotiations for the second Oslo agreement, is convinced, on the one

hand, that at the end of the 1980s, when the Palestine Liberation

Organization adopted the two-state solution, and in the early 1990s, when

he signed the Oslo agreements, Arafat was the right person at the right

time. Only an authoritative leader like him could have made what looked to

many Palestinians like very painful concessions on issues such as

territory, Jerusalem and the refugees. On the other hand, Arafat kept in

his own hands most of the power and during the past four years made use of

it in a way that led to the breakup of Fatah, the increase in terror and a

bankrupt leadership.