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 15th 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 19th of May, 2011.
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