Mr. Netanyahu goes to Washington

New York Times White House correspondent Helene Cooper reporting ahead of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to the US emphasised their mutual lack of trust. She said they were “facing a turning point in a relationship that has never been warm.

By all accounts, they do not trust each other. President Obama has told aides and allies that he does not believe that Mr. Netanyahu will ever be willing to make the kind of big concessions that will lead to a peace deal.

For his part, Mr. Netanyahu has complained that Mr. Obama has pushed Israel too far."

Columnist Roger Cohen concurs. "The best Obama and Netanyahu will ever be able to do is position a fig-leaf of decorum over their differences. The worst poison is distrust. These two men have it aplenty for each other."

The personal friction was exacerbated by a phrase in President Obama’s policy speech, the remarks made before Prime Minister Netanyahu arrived in Washington. Analyst Mark A. Heller mentioned this in an article he wrote for “Insight” published by The Institute for National Strategic Studies.

“There is no reason to suspect that, Obama, by invoking 1967, intended to provoke a firestorm of controversy and a clash with Netanyahu. This was a carefully crafted speech that accommodated most Israeli sensitivities: the reference to borders was located in a brief paragraph that stipulated “negotiations” or “negotiated” three times, the point of reference used was “1967 lines” rather than the tendentious and inaccurate term “1967 borders” to which most Israelis are allergic, and the coupling of this point of reference with mutually agreed swaps clearly implied that it was meant to be the starting point of negotiations rather than their outcome.” Well it appears that it wasn’t enough. Perhaps if the president should have fleshed out the phrase, “The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.”

Heller elaborates, “1967 has such a highly charged symbolic value in the discourse about the conflict that Obama and his political advisers should have expected headline writers, pundits, and Israeli politicians to simplify and sensationalize his speech and focus on that one phrase to the exclusion of almost everything else – which they did. Moreover, the growth of settlement blocs in the intervening years has created a demographic reality that other US presidents, especially Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, acknowledged explicitly – which Obama did not do. Consequently, Netanyahu, perhaps caught off guard and concerned about a political backlash at home, did not reaffirm his own previous endorsement of a two-state solution or focus his attention on settlement blocs, but instead felt compelled to stress his refusal to do what he had not actually been asked to do: return to the 1967 lines. And Obama then felt compelled, three days later, to remove ambiguity and lower the flames of this controversy by telling the AIPAC Policy Conference that his term of reference had been misreported or misinterpreted and that what he meant was that the parties themselves will negotiate a border that is, by definition, "different than the one existing on June 4, 1967."

Robert Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,( he is described by the New York Review of Books as “a neoconservative with very hawkish views on the Middle East”) provided his own interpretation of the awkward reference to the 1967 lines.

“Obama became the first sitting president to say that the final borders should be "based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps." (The Clinton Parameters -- which former President Bill Clinton presented to the two sides in December 2000 and then officially withdrew a month later, when they were not accepted -- did not mention the 1967 borders but did mention ‘swaps and other territorial arrangements.’)

The Obama formulation concretizes a move away from four decades of U.S. policy based on U.N. Security Council resolution 242 of November 1967, which has always interpreted calls for an Israeli withdrawal to a ‘secure and recognized’ border as not synonymous with the pre-1967 boundaries. The idea of land swaps, which may very well be a solution that the parties themselves choose to pursue, sounds very different when endorsed by the president of the United States. In effect, it means the official U.S. view is that resolution of the territorial aspect of the conflict can only be achieved if Israel cedes territory it held even before the 1967 war.

The president also said that the new Palestinian state should have borders with Egypt, Jordan and Israel, and referred to the ‘full and phased’ withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces. This statement implies categorical American opposition to any open-ended Israeli presence inside the future ‘Palestine.’ This is also the first such statement by a U.S. president, and it differs significantly from the Clinton Parameters, which envisioned three Israeli ‘facilities’ inside the West Bank, with no time limit on their presence.”

The very sympathetic reception he got at the AIPAC conference and at his address to both houses on Capitol Hill, more than compensated Netanyahu for the initial bad start at the time of the Oval Room meeting with the president.

Describing the meeting in the Capitol New York Times reporters Helene Cooper and Ethan Bronner said, "Mr. Netanyahu was granted a grand platform before a joint meeting of Congress, and his speech had many of the trappings of a presidential State of the Union address."

Watching the many standing ovations Prime Minister Netanyahu received I found his skillful use of intonation, emphasis and pause to cue applause somewhat disconcerting.

Now that the dust has settled and we are able to assess what really was achieved during Netanyahu's visit, it seems that apart from an enormous boost to his ego, nothing has changed.

His firm declarations at the contentious White House meeting with President Obama and in the address to Congress have thrown differences with the Palestinians into sharp relief. Admittedly, they won support for the prime minister in his right wing coalition government, but not without some criticism.

Yossi Alpher, co-editor of "Bitter Lemons," an Internet forum on Middle East issues, and former head of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, said. “Netanyahu outlined his opening position for a peace process, but it’s a nonstarter. He made peace with Congress and even called a truce with Obama, but I don’t think he’ll convince anyone in Europe, the Arab world or the White House to take his side.”

Commenting on the present impasse Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen said, “The current situation in the Middle East does not allow for procrastination"…. "It's time for Netanyahu to ditch his do-nothing policy."

Momentarily Cohen played the devil's advocate arguing, "I can understand Netanyahu’s reluctance to move off the dime. The Arab world is in flux. Zealots, radicals and anti-Semites are vying for influence. The region’s so-called revolutions are actually counterrevolutions — reversing the policies of the military men who secularized their governments and tempered their hot hate of Israel with cold pragmatism. The region may not be getting ahead of history but returning to it. It could be a swell time to do nothing."

Predictably Thomas L. Friedman summed up the situation with more than a pinch of pessimism. "It may be that Israeli and Palestinian leaders are incapable of surprising anyone anymore, in which case the logic on the ground will prevail: Israel will gradually absorb the whole West Bank, so, together with Israel proper, a Jewish minority will be ruling over an Arab majority. Israel’s enemies will refer to it as 'the Jewish apartheid state.' America, Israel’s only true friend, will find itself having to defend an Israel whose policies it does not believe in and whose leaders it does not respect — and the tensions between the U.S. and Israel displayed in Washington last week will seem quaint by comparison."

Ever since he took office the prime minister has been fettered by his coalition partners and some members of his own Likud party. He has very little political leeway.

The Palestinian leadership is also hamstrung by Islamic extremist elements. It fears being accused of betraying the Palestinian cause.

Our experience with Palestinian leaders calls to mind the adage “You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”

President Obama moved on to drink a pint of Guinness in Ireland and propose a toast to Queen Elizabeth in Buckingham Palace while Bibi returned home still basking in the warmth of the standing ovations on Capitol Hill.

Have a good weekend

Beni 25^th of May, 2011.

The nightmare scenario

At times the Wadi Ara road becomes an annoying bottleneck.

Some days especially during peak hours the flow of traffic on this section of the road, marked on the map as route 65, slows to a halt.

It’s an old problem and although the causes have changed the phenomenon remains the same.

More than three thousand four hundred years ago Pharaoh Thutmose III's scribe recorded how the Wadi Ara ravine was only wide enough for the Egyptian army to pass through in single file "horse after horse and man after man."

On that occasion the young Pharaoh led his army from Egypt across Sinai into Canaan by the coastal route in order to do battle with a Canaanite army. The Canaanite force was camped at Megiddo and Thutmose sought a pass from the coast through the hills so that he could attack his enemy on level ground.

Thutmose's council of war pointed to three possible ways to cross the hills from the coast to the Jezreel Valley. His advisors recommended he take either the southern or northern pass. The third pass situated between the other two was narrow and easy to ambush. Thutmose rejected the council's advice and chose the narrow pass, the route we call Wadi Ara.

Taking the perilous least expected route afforded him the element of surprise.

The gamble paid off and his army entered the valley behind the Canaanite battle array.

The Egyptians easily defeated their enemy and went on to conquer Megiddo.

Last Friday, the beginning of the “Nakba weekend” we drove south on the Wadi Ara road to attend a family gathering in the south. Earlier that day my sister-in-law called us and suggested we make sure the road was clear before we set out.

The much improved route is a lot wider and straighter than it was when Thutmose passed this way. Just the same traffic density wasn't our only worry. On a number of occasions, mainly on Land Day and Nabka Day Arab demonstrators have blocked the road. Like Thutmose I considered alternative ways of crossing the hills. Admittedly he was travelling in the opposite direction but the dilemma was similar. I ruled out the southern route which passes through the West Bank and left the northern route as an inconvenient last option. . Our fears were unfounded and we managed to travel unhindered in both directions.

Friday and Saturday were quiet uneventful days, however Sunday the 15^th of May, Nakba Day was a a daytime nightmare.

Like many Israelis I expected the usual gatherings, marches and demonstrations led by a row of Arab political leaders and notables linked arm in arm. In view of the “Arab Spring” it was reasonable to suppose that the turnouts would be larger and more vociferous. By and large that is what happened in Israel.

The local commemorations were augmented by four major confrontations that occurred on our borders. Clashes took place between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli security forces at the Erez crossing in the Gaza Strip and the Qalandia checkpoint near Jerusalem. However the clashes in the north on our borders with Lebanon and Syria were the most violent of all the Nakba Day demonstrations. About a dozen Palestinians were killed and an unknown number were injured in the confrontations. The clashes took place when Palestinians breached the border fence near Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights and near the border fence with Israel in Lebanon. Whereas the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and to a lesser extent Hamas in the Gaza Strip weren't interested in major confrontations with Israeli security forces the Syrians and Hezbollah had a vested interest in facilitating the clashes. The Palestinians in Syria couldn't have reached the border in the Golan Heights without official government collusion. Likewise Hezbollah in Lebanon also aided and abetted the Palestinian demonstration there.

New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid pointed this out too. "The Syrian government, which controls access to the border, allowed crowds to venture to a place it had all but declared off limits until now."

An editorial in the Washington Post said White House spokesman Jay Carney directly accused the Syrian government of “inciting” the protests, adding, “it seems apparent to us that this is an effort to distract attention from the legitimate expressions of protest by the Syrian people.”

Maybe Ha’aretz columnist Aluf Benn exaggerated when he claimed that, "The Arab Revolution is knocking at Israel's door," intimating the possibility of a spillover into Israel. Nevertheless, he hit a bare collective nerve when he wrote, "the nightmare scenario Israel has feared since its inception became real - that Palestinian refugees would simply start walking from their camps toward the border and would try to exercise their 'right of return.' Israel prepared for Nakba Day demonstrations in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, in Galilee and the Triangle, but instead it was the Palestinian Diaspora that tried to climb its fences. More than an intelligence lapse, the situation highlighted the limits of power." The intelligence lapse he refers to occurred at the border. Military intelligence knew that busloads of Palestinians were en route to a mass demonstration somewhere along the demarcation fence between Syria and the Golan Heights.

I read an unsympathetic (to Israel) tone in The Economist’s report of the Nakba Day events. ”Israel got an unexpected and unpalatable taste of its nightmare scenario: masses of Palestinians marching, unarmed, towards the borders of the Jewish state, demanding the redress of their decades-old national grievance.” The paper added a bleak forecast: “Many in Israel are seriously worried that the powerful phenomenon of masses marching in defiance of armed force may at last be spreading to Palestine after challenging so many regimes in the region.

Analyst Ron Ben Yishai went further in claiming Syrian complicity, “Another thing suggesting the infiltration incident was premeditated is the presence of dozens of buses, shuttling Palestinians from what is known as the "refugee camps" near Damascus.

While this does not mean that Syria green-lighted the Palestinian rush across the border and into Majdal Shams, there are several indicators suggesting the Syrian authorities encouraged this unusual action.”

Last week I wrote “The security forces are preparing for every possible contingency.” It seems the border incursion wasn’t one of them.

We have; “Iron Dome Systems” already operating and more are in production. The David’s Sling Defence System is in an advanced stage of development and the Arrow 3 System has been successfully tested. Our defence industries have produced the “Trophy” Active Defence System for our tanks and armoured vehicles making them impregnable. Recently I read that an Israeli company has developed and tested a new sophisticated “stealth armour plating” that masks our military vehicles from enemy thermal sights displays. I’m sure we can develop a non-lethal low or hi-tech system to counter mass Palestinian incursions

Op-ed contributor to the Washington Post Jennifer Rubin noticed other aspects of Sunday’s border incidents. She said that if it were any other country the incursions would have been regarded as an “act of war” or an “invasion.” “Instead, they are called ‘clashes’ or ‘border protests.’

She also quoted Jonathan Schanzer of the “Foundation for Defense of Democracies” mentioning his interesting observation that with the expected unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations in September, Palestinian propagandists need a narrative to show that they “earned their independence.” How noble does it sound to have gained statehood via an international guilt-trip? The border incursions and the Gaza missile attacks will no doubt be rewoven into “Palestinian show of strength forces recognition,”

“This protest saw the Syrian regime, fighting for survival, hijacking the occasion to cause bloodshed,” said Elliott Abrams in an article he posted in The Weekly Standard - “The cynicism driving Nakba Day."

Abrams explains, “This Nakba Day was different because it fell amidst the many recent developments in what we call the Arab Spring. It is probably correct that Palestinians have been feeling left out, as the attention of the world and of their Arab brothers turns to reform, politics, revolts, elections, constitutions, criminal trials--everything but the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So, this Nakba Day had to be used to recover the stage and demand attention. With President Obama speaking later this week on the Arab Spring and receiving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next week, the timing must have seemed right for putting themselves back on the world's front pages. We are still here, Palestinians were saying.”

“The worst aspect of Nakba Day 2011,” said Abrams echoing remarks made by a number of Israeli observers, “was not the differences from past years; it was the continuity. The catastrophe being commemorated was not the Arab defeat in the 1967 war, and a Camp David-type agreement about the West Bank would not reverse it. The catastrophe was not settlement expansion--and Palestinian demands could not be met by freezing construction. Nor were they focused on the coming September vote on admitting a Palestinian state to membership in the U.N., and their demands could not be satisfied by announcing the United States would agree not to use its veto. The demand of Nakba Day is that the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 be reversed. When Hamas's prime minister Ismail Haniyah spoke on Sunday in a Gaza speech, he told the crowd they were demonstrating "with great hope of bringing to an end the Zionist project in Palestine." And last week Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said, "We will never give up the right of return."

This is what Palestinians' leaders continue to feed their people and teach in their schools. For Israelis and all those who seek peace in the Middle East, this is the real catastrophe. “

Have a good weekend.

Beni 19^th of May, 2011.

Looking for a flag

When we arrived in Nazareth on Tuesday the town was almost deserted. It was Independence Day, not an occasion that attracts many visitors to Israel's largest Arab metropolis. Here too all state and municipal institutions banks and chain stores were closed. The sole purpose of our visit was to find a place to eat. We had gone with guests to Mount Precipice, a vantage point near Nazareth reputed to be the place where Jesus leapt to Mount Tabor.

The Synagogue Church

Now we were hungry and disappointed. The restaurant recommended to us was closed, so our default choice was a small place on Paul VI Street run by a Christian Arab called Abu Rifaq.

The same thoroughfare leads to the Franciscan Basilica of the Annunciation.

Further up the hill beyond St Joseph’s church, in the heart of the market lies the Synagogue Church. A strange title given to a small Crusader house of prayer built over an earlier structure, supposedly the synagogue mentioned in Luke's gospel. Adjacent to it is a functioning Greek Catholic church. My daughter Daphna and her husband Mark surely remember the time we visited the Synagogue Church. In Luke 4:16 the author mentions Jesus’ visit to a synagogue in Nazareth: “And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up and as his custom was he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day…” Following his reading from the Book of Isaiah an argument developed with members of the congregation which led to a violent eviction, “And they rose up and thrust him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill…” Supposedly the same hill we had visited earlier, Mt. Precipice. Well the hill would have been too far away for the observant Jews of the congregation because of the injunction limiting the distance a Jew may walk on the Sabbath day. Therefore to suit the narrative we must move the hill closer to the synagogue or move the synagogue closer to the hill. It’s possible that another hill is the site of the miraculous jump. However Luke didn’t mention a jump. Just the “brow of the hill wheron their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong. But he passing through them went his way.” Well the legendary leap as far as Mount Tabor is a later embellishment to the narrative.

A common enough addition used a lot by our rabbis as well.

Likewise the story of Mary’s fright has no basis in the gospel texts. A later tradition tells that Mary saw Jesus being dragged to the precipice by the angry crowd and fainted. To the north of Mount Precipice close to Upper Nazareth’s industrial zone is a small nineteenth century chapel recently refurbished- the Church of Mary’s Fright. Two thousand years ago Nazareth was an insignificant village. Earlier still it was too insignificant to earn any mention in the Old Testament.

The Minister of Tourism wisely prefers to leave the Synagogue Church where it is and has clearly signposted the road to Mount Precipice. New paths have been paved by the vantage point enabling wonderful views of the Jezreel and the Ksilot Valleys as well as a broad Nazareth panorama.

Perhaps the particular event is more important than pinpointing with geographic accuracy where it happened. What’s more even if the event lacks cross references and hard proof it’s more prudent to let the believers believe.

It certainly doesn’t hurt the government coffers.

We left the hill and drove on past Upper Nazareth through Raina a large Arab town close to Nazareth before we found Abu Rafiq’s restaurant.

When we left Ein Harod along the road to Afula and north as far as Tel Adashim every kibbutz and moshav was decorated with Israeli flags. We are big on flags, after all we had to wait two thousand years to fly our own flag so on Independence day we hang flags everywhere.

From the Iksal junction the road to Nazareth was bare not a flag to be seen anywhere. Above us we saw the Israeli air force fly-past but on the road and in the Arab towns not a flag, pennant or hint of blue and white.

All over Israel millions of Israelis were busy barbecuing .Every patch of grass became a picnic site. Some went on to visit the national parks or to attend the holiday celebrations held everywhere.

While we ate Abu Rifaq’s kebabs it occurred to me that Nakba Day is a flexible event.Usually it is commemorated on the 15^th of May. Palestinian Arabs and their supporters around the world coordinate some Nakba Day events to coincide with the Israel’s Independence Day celebrations. However, because our Independence Day is celebrated according to the Jewish calendar it occurs on the 15^th of May only once in a cycle of 19 years. In Israel our Arab citizens, sometimes nudge Nakba day so that it falls on Independence day

Dr. Azmi Bishara an Israeli Arab and former member of the Knesset, currently a fugitive from the law, once wrote in Maariv: "Independence Day is your holiday, not ours. We mark this as the day of our Nakba, the tragedy that befell the Palestinian nation in 1948"

Strangely it took the Palestinians fifty years to inaugurate Nakba Day. This year we celebrated Independence Day on the 10^th of May. As far as I know our Arabs are commemorating the Nakba event as a weekend happening. This coming Friday will be a warm-up with suitable anti-Israeli sermons in the mosques while the main events will take place on Saturday and Sunday. The security forces are preparing for every possible contingency.

As we left the restaurant Abu Rifaq wished us a happy holiday – "Chag Sameach" .Across the street a small group of Arab youths, some of them wearing Che Guevara tee shirts sauntered away from the town centre. Two of them carried Palestinian flags. I'm hard put to describe what we saw as either a parade or a procession. They were two few and too apathetic to fit that description. Well I had found the flags, admittedly the wrong ones.

A few months ago Sol Stern a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute wrote about the "Nakba Obsession" in the City Journal, "Every year, on the anniversary of Israel’s independence, more and more Palestinians (including Arab citizens of Israel) commemorate the Nakba with pageants that express longing for a lost paradise. Every year, the legend grows of the crimes committed against the Palestinians in 1948, crimes now routinely equated with the Holocaust. Echoing the Nakba narrative is an international coalition of leftists that celebrates the Palestinians as the 'quintessential other', the last victims of Western racism and colonialism."

Stern mentions an interesting personal view of the Palestinian refugee problem. “Several years ago, I briefly visited the largest refugee camp in the West Bank: Balata, inside the city of Nablus. Many of the camp’s approximately 20,000 residents are the children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren of the Arab citizens of Jaffa who fled their homes in early 1948.

For half a century, the United Nations has administered Balata as a quasi-apartheid welfare ghetto. The Palestinian Authority does not consider the residents of Balata citizens of Palestine; they do not vote on municipal issues, and they receive no PA funding for roads or sanitation. The refugee children—though after 60 years, calling young children ‘refugees’ is absurd—go to separate schools run by UNRWA, the UN’s refugee-relief agency. The ‘refugees’ are crammed into an area of approximately one square kilometer, and municipal officials prohibit them from building outside the camp’s official boundaries, making living conditions ever more cramped as the camp’s population grows. In a building called the Jaffa Cultural Center—financed by the UN, which means our tax dollars—Balata’s young people are undoubtedly nurtured on the myth that someday soon they will return in triumph to their ancestors’ homes by the Mediterranean Sea.

In Balata, history has come full circle. During the 1948 war, Palestinian leaders like Haj Amin al-Husseini insisted that the Arab citizens of Haifa and Jaffa had to leave, lest they help legitimize the Jewish state. Now, the descendants of those citizens are locked up in places like Balata and prohibited from resettling in the Palestinian-administered West Bank—again, lest they help legitimize the Jewish state, this time by removing the Palestinians’ chief complaint. Yet there is a certain perverse logic at work here. For if Israel and the Palestinians ever managed to hammer out the draft of a peace treaty, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, would have to go to Balata and explain to its residents that their leaders have been lying to them for 60 years and that they are not going back to Jaffa. Which, to state the obvious again, is one of the main reasons that there has been no peace treaty.”

Our Independence Day trip was meant simply to view our landscape from another angle and eat lunch somewhere along our route. The quest for the flag was a subconscious afterthought. Obviously we can’t force our Arab minorities to fly the national flag and sing our anthem.

However as long as they continue to commemorate Nakba Day and expect Israel to accept the Palestinian refugees back we will continue to suspect their loyalty.

Have a good weekend

Beni 12^th of May, 2011.

The Fifth Column?

The tall man with the carrot-red hair and stern expression hadn't spoken a word. The embarrassing silence was disconcerting to say the least. It wasn't stage fright or a mental block that caused the awkward delay. On the contrary, it was an intentional pause, a standard gimmick he used, meant for effect before making his opening remarks

He had made an immediate and lasting impression and he knew it.

We, his audience, were a group of Israelis attending a seminar for youth movement emissaries. After the seminar we were sent to work with Jewish communities in the Diaspora. Dan Schueftan

That was in August 1973 and the lecture was the first in a series of lectures on the Arab-Israeli Conflict given by Dan Schueftan an unorthodox Arab affairs analyst.

Perhaps the best way to describe him is in his own words, "Even by Israeli standards, I’m arrogant, but I have good reason to be. Any kind of modesty on my part would simply be false modesty." Explaining his rough-cut style he says, "My views are extremely unpleasant and politically incorrect. But I am right." Maybe you prefer another description -

“ Dan Schueftan: Israel's John Bolton, but cruder.”

Ten years later I met him again when I was working at the kibbutz movement seminar centre at Efal near Tel Aviv. He was just as arrogant and had a larger repertoire of disparaging remarks regarding Arabs.

Why do I bother mentioning him, after all I could have drawn on any number of Arab affairs experts instead of Professor Schueftan to help me explain what is happening in the Middle East. Many people find his uncouth style obnoxious; yet putting personal aversions aside, Dan Schueftan's experience, knowledge and qualifications more than compensate for his brusque, offensive manner.

I chose to mention him because the publication of his latest book, "Palestinians in Israel," coincided with the tumultuous events occurring in the Arab world and the recent Fatah-Hamas rapprochement.

In 1999, when Professor Schueftan's book "Disengagement: Israel and the Palestinian Entity" was published, his proposals appeared extreme; almost delusional. As there was no chance for securing an agreement with the Palestinians, Schueftan asserted at the time that Israel must undertake unilateral moves; that is, disengage from the Palestinians, even without getting anything in return.

Six years later, when the Israeli government withdrew from the Gaza Strip his proposal became a reality, albeit on a small scale.

However, following the publication of his book, Schueftan realised that even after fully disengaging from the Palestinians, the problem of Israel's Arab citizens will remain painfully unresolved. Recalling the dilemma he said, "There was a need to clarify what is required of us in order to maintain our Jewish, democratic character in Israel following disengagement,".

This clarification process lasted a decade and involved a thorough painstaking study of the subject. Relating to Schueftan's meticulous methodology Middle East analyst Asaf Romirowsky described his work environment as follows, "His study is crammed with crates filled with relevant documents. He has collected every word published in newspapers, both in Israel and abroad. He has documented every Knesset speech and has watched every television documentary on the topic produced over the past twenty years.

Schueftan's analysis led to the publication of his latest book, "Palestinians in Israel." The subtitle is unequivocal: "The Arab minority's struggle against the Jewish state."

Supported by masses of data he asserts, "They are unwilling to accept a solution that is less than what is perceived as the Jewish nation-state's suicide. We are dealing with an especially difficult branch of the complete rejection of the Jewish state in the Arab world."

Professor Schueftan serves as the head of the national security centre at the University of Haifa and also lectures at courses run by the IDF and at security colleges in London. Almost every Israeli prime minister and minister of defence has consulted him

In an article published recently in Yediot Ahronot columnist Roni Shaked quoted from Schueftan’s conclusions, "The preferred process for maintaining Israel as a Jewish, democratic state is to secure a historic compromise with the Arab world.

This requires difficult compromises on the security front and in respect to our attachment to the cradle of Jewish civilisation. This process raises the need to contend with a large minority of more than a million Arab citizens, who are fighting from the inside against Israel's Jewish, democratic character and identity."

He says Schueftan believes Israel’s Arabs want, "recognition as a national minority granted a recognised status, while eroding the state of Israel's national Jewish aims to the point of annulling them. The Jewish nation-state is illegitimate in the eyes of the main camp within Israel's Arab minority, even if an Arab-Palestinian state is established alongside Israel in the same land, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.

Their strategy is to attack the Jewish establishment from within, using the democratic means of the State and of society, in the name of democracy, pluralism and human rights.

The use of universal messages such as 'a state of all its citizens' hides a wholly different notion: An attempt to establish a bi-national state on the ruins of the Jewish state that will gradually change its demographic balance by rejecting the Law of Return and adopting the right of return. The new demographic balance will dictate the formation of an Arab state.

Despite the growing integration into Israel's society and economy, Israel's Arabs are committed to undermining the Jewish state's current format."Says Schueftan

Attempts to mitigate the negative aspects of our minority's behaviour by comparing them with minorities in other countries are misleading.

"Israel's Arabs are a special case," claims Schueftan. "We are not dealing with just a majority and a minority, but rather, a minority with the mentality of a majority vis-à-vis a Jewish majority with the mentality of a minority."

Even a casual observer checking statements made by the two Islamic movements in Israel, by Arab Knesset members, local authority mayors and other public figures in the Arab sector is likely to endorse Dan Schueftan’s conclusions.

Furthermore it's possible to deduce from statistics regarding Arab voting patterns, political affiliations and other parameters how many Israeli Arabs subscribe to this subversive strategy. No doubt it's widespread, perhaps even mainstream.

There’s a tendency to equate the Arab minority with the Islamic Movement.

Although the Islamic Movement enjoys considerable popularity among Israel’s Arabs it certainly is not synonymous with the whole Arab Sector.

There are in fact two Islamic movements. The southern movement is more moderate and it participates in the Israeli democratic system, both in municipal and parliamentary elections. The more radical northern Islamic movement chose not to be a part of the Israeli political system.

The goals of the Islamic Movement are similar, in essence, to those of all other modern Islamic movements, and its ideology is closely related to that of its mother organisation - the Muslim Brotherhood. The differences that exist in ideology between the Islamic Movement and the Muslim Brotherhood are largely the result of the circumstances in which the former operates - namely, the fact that the movement exists within a country whose population is mostly Jewish.

The differences between the branches are mostly in relation to the State of Israel, while differences on other issues are negligible.

The positions regarding Israel vary depending on the branch:

• The northern branch – doesn’t recognise the State of Israel's right to exist and its ultimate goal is to strive to have an Islamic state replace it. It is prepared to use state institutions and facilities.
• The southern branch – doesn’t recognise the State of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. It takes part in the political process and influences decision-making from within the framework of the state's institutions.

I have a very superficial knowledge of the Arab Sector. I live in a region (the Gilboa District) where Arabs make up a third of the population. They are well integrated and there is high degree of interaction between Arabs and Jews mostly in the business-commercial sectors. I have many Arab acquaintances but all my friends are Jews. My gut feeling (a very unreliable yardstick) is that Israeli Arabs know they are better off in the Jewish state. Their sentiments probably lie with the mainstream that Schueftan refers to, but for the time being they defer the ultimate goal indefinitely.

That being so I still have to ask are our Arabs a fifth column?

Award-winning Israeli Arab journalist and documentary film-maker .Khaled Abu Toameh proffers his opinion

“Many in Israel are worried about the ‘radicalization’ of the country’s 1.3 million Arab citizens, concerned that they will be a “fifth column.” They do not want to be, and they do not need to be.

Because of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, there is almost no dialogue today in Israel between Jews and Arabs.

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas are responsible for the fact that many Jews today see the Arab citizens of Israel as a “fifth column,” a “cancer,” and an ‘enemy from within.’ “

Next week we celebrate Independence Day while Arabs either ignore the event or mark the anniversary of the Nakba, the tragedy of their exile from Palestine.

Provided Nakba Day is observed without disrupting the normal routine there should be no objection to its commemoration.

Unfortunately some of our politicians, notably in the right wing Yisrael Beiteinu party have managed to pass the Nakba Law which bars public funding of entities that “undermine the foundations of the state”. The law empowers the minister of finance to fine anyone who marks Israeli Independence Day as a day of mourning.

It would be more productive if they would direct their efforts to addressing Arab grievances.

Chag Sameach

Beni 5^th of May, 2011.