So two years have passed. Who has won and who has lost, as of now?
On the surface — and this is true only for this given moment — Israel has undoubtedly won. Arafat is losing his international legitimacy. Until just a few days ago, he was losing his hold over his own people as well, as they became ever more aware of his corruption and his failure as a leader. He is now trapped and isolated in the three or four rooms that remain in his headquarters in Ramallah. The senior command level of most of the Palestinian organizations has been killed or captured by Israeli security forces. The people on the second and third command levels are inexperienced in combat, in organizational skills, and in field security. The result is that Israel has been hugely successful in preventing most of the terrorist attacks that the Palestinians have tried to commit.
At the beginning of the Intifada, and especially when suicide attacks increased in frequency, it seemed to the Palestinians that Israeli society was weak. They believed, as one Palestinian leader put it, that Israel was no stronger than a spiderweb. Today it is clear that the severity of the attacks and the large number of victims they have claimed have reinforced Israel’s sense of national unity and common identity. Israelis today are willing to suffer heavy losses to achieve Sharon’s goals.
Yet Israel is paying a high price. Two years into the Intifada, Israel is more militant, nationalist, and racist than it has ever been before. The very broad national consensus has placed all criticism and minority opinions outside the bounds of legitimacy. There is almost no significant opposition. The Labor Party, the shaper of Israel’s national ethos in the country’s first decades, has been digested entirely in the bowels of the right-wing government. Anyone who opposes the brutality of the Sharon government’s actions is suspected of disloyalty bordering on treason. The media has, for the most part, aligned itself with the right, with the government, and with the army, and serves as a clarion for the most hawkish and anti-Palestinian line. Sanctimonious self-righteousness, disdain for the “spineless values” of democracy, calls for the expulsion of Israel’s Arab citizens (in addition to the Palestinians in the territories) have become an accepted and legitimate part of the public discourse that no one gets exercised about.
The power of the extremist religious parties is increasing. A wave of crude and sentimental patriotism is sweeping the country. It wells up out of the authentic, historic, and almost primal sensibilities of “Jewish destiny” in its most tragic form. The Israelis, citizens of the strongest military power in the region, are once again, with strange enthusiasm, walling themselves up behind their sense of persecution and victimization. The Palestinian threat — ridiculous in terms of the balance of power but effective in its results — has forced Israel to return, with depressing speed, to the experience of living in fear of total annihilation. This fear, naturally, justifies a brutal response to any threat.
Israel has won, for now, but what is the meaning of victory when it brings no hope for a better future, not even a sense of security and relief? The Palestinians have lost for the moment, but they are now fighting with their backs to the wall, and it is hard to believe that they will surrender and accept Sharon’s diktats. It may turn out that, as with the first Intifada, the Palestinians have no stamina for a struggle of more than two years and that, as they did then, they face a period of social disintegration and bitter internal struggle. It would behoove Israel not to rejoice should that happen, because in the end Israel has, or at least should have, an interest in a strong and resilient Palestinian society led by a leadership with a broad base of support. Only such a Palestinian society can sign a stable peace agreement with Israel that will include historic concessions. But such a sophisticated argument cannot today penetrate the dullness of the Israeli spirit and mind. And since Israel is stronger than the Palestinians, the conflict is, seemingly, doomed to continue as is for an unpredictable length of time.
Two years have gone by and there is no hope. The situation can be summed up in several ways. I choose to do so by citing two facts that stood out in the reports of the last month. The first: According to data provided by UN agencies, more than a quarter of Palestinian children now suffer from malnutrition as a result of the situation. The second: Israeli schoolchildren will soon be given special classes in early identification and detection of suicide bombers. Israelis and Palestinians who refuse to see the connection between these two facts ensure that for many years to come we will all be each other’s hostages, agents of gratuitous and pointless death.
A Note on the Author
David Grossman was born in Jerusalem. He is the author of numerous works of fiction, non-fiction, and children’s literature. His work has appeared in the New Yorker and has been translated into thirty languages around the world. He is the recipient of many prizes.