Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Some assassination plot - Haaretz, October 23, 2007

The Israeli opinion of the PA security services is fueled by images rather than reality. The details of this reality are precisely what caused the Palestinians to dismiss the dramatic Israeli report: After all, any two people can declare themselves a cell in one of the many groups of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, and the Shin Bet can declare any three Fatah members “a terrorist cell” and enhance the imaginary danger they represent. Young Palestinians, most of them Fatah supporters, joined the security services mainly for the salaries they offer in a period of chronic unemployment. Their military training and their skills are accordingly inferior.

The true motives behind the adoption of the title “Al-Aqsa Martyrs” are related to jobs, honor and power more than to an ability to act against the occupation. The arrogance comes at the expense of seriousness. And none of the Palestinian echelons, from the two governments to the “cells,” excels in its planning ability, a necessary condition for any “assassination plot” as for any struggle against foreign rule.

The Palestinian spokesmen were confused not because Israel “caught them in the act.” They were confused because again Israel provided an overly strident reminder of its true expectations of the PA: that it serve as an assistant prison guard, a subcontractor of the Israeli occupation. Since its establishment, the PA has oscillated between the two extremes: placating Israel and the United States, on the one hand, and convincing its people that it is leading them to the end of the occupation, on the other. At one point it arrests and conceals, at another it releases and conceals. Abu Mazen sometimes condemns Israel, sometimes calls Israelis “our neighbors.” On the basis of these imaginary neighborly relations, he invited Olmert for a return visit in “his state” (Jericho, for this purpose).