By Manny Frishberg , JTNews Correspondent
Three years after the start of the second intifada and the end of direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Herb Keinon sees the security wall and “unilateral disengagement” as the most popular approaches to restoring a sense of security among the Israeli people.
The Jerusalem Post’s diplomatic correspondent took time out between lunch at the Jewish Federation office and a talk at Conservative Congregation Herzl-Ner Tamid on Mercer Island on Jan. 29 to tell the Jewish Transcript what he has seen from his vantage point.
“In order to understand the roadblocks and targeted killings and the house demolitions and whatnot, you have to understand Israeli mentality — you have to understand the mindset the people are working under,” Keinon said. “The last 40 months has fundamentally changed the country in its sense of security, or now, its sense of insecurity.
“It’s not something that’s happening out there to other people. It’s real terror that’s happening to people that you know,” he added. “It’s always been said that Israel is a very small country. It used to be said that everybody knows somebody who fell in war. It’s never been as true as it now. We’re talking about 920 people who’ve been killed since the beginning of this thing, which in American terms, is something like 50,000 people.
“The guy I bought my apartment from was killed in a terror attack. Our first cleaning woman was killed in a terror attack. My next door neighbor’s first cousin — a soldier — was killed in a terror attack,” Keinon said. “What it does is it brings everything very close to you. It makes it personal and it’s on everybody’s mind.”
This, he said, is what has been driving the Sharon administration’s policies.
“This perception of insecurity filters upward to the government. Its policies are formed by this stream of insecurities. People are clamoring for a sense of security — that’s his challenge right now — to give them the sense of security.”
Asked whether the policies are working, he responded that the numbers of deaths and other casualties from successful suicide bombings has been “drastically reduced” from a height of 130 Israelis killed in terror-related incidents in March 2002, the worst single month since the beginning of the current round of violence, to six last December.
“It’s not because the Palestinians have been doing what they’re supposed to be doing under the Road Map. It’s not because they are dismantling the terrorist infrastructure. It’s because Israel has become much more adept in the last 40 months in learning how to deal with it,” Keinon said. “The actions that the government has taken have had a cumulative effect. You can’t wipe out terror. You can’t eliminate terror, but you can reduce it. You can make it more difficult for them to kill you.”
The impact has been to relieve some of the tension that Israelis feel in going about their daily business over what they felt at the height of the violence. But he also said that the improvement has been relative, and a person will still experience “a gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach when you get on a bus.”
On the diplomatic front, he described the European Union’s ambivalence toward current policies and the Israeli right’s reaction. The E.U. is one of the four proponents of the Road Map plan to reach a peaceful settlement.
“The Irish ambassador came to Israel [in mid-January] and he gave a speech at Tel Aviv University, in which he said the E.U. recognizes Israel’s right to self defense,” said Keinon. “But if you look at what the E.U. says in statement after statement,” he went on, “it says ‘no targeted killings, no roadblocks, no house demolitions and no security fence.’ So the question is, ‘What’s left?’ How do you defend yourself?”
As for any hopes of a final diplomatic resolution, the diplomatic correspondent was particularly pessimistic.
“What the last 40 months has convinced most people of is that we have to lower our expectations. It’s no longer realistic to talk of any kind of peace in the traditional sense of the word — of peace in terms of the new Middle East and the Oslo Agreements and Shimon Perez’s vision of Israel integrating into the Middle East,” said Keinon. “The expectations have been lowered to where, instead of peace, you want to get to some kind of security. Build a barrier and let’s get behind it; let them drei their kupf over the Palestinian State over on their side” he said, using a Yiddish phrase meaning “worry their heads.”
“In the short term,” Keinon continued, “it’s going to a situation where the Israelis are fed up with the whole notion of some kind of overarching peace agreement. They just want to get their kids home safe — if that means building a barrier, so be it.”
He said the hope is that in five, 10 or 20 years from now, “the Palestinians will realize they can get more from negotiating in good faith” than they have through violence.
Keinon was generally dismissive of the recent offer of a 10-year truce by Hamas, although he noted that he had not heard any comments from the Prime Minister’s office since he had been traveling on his speaking tour. Based on past experience, he said he doubted the effectiveness of a Hamas truce because, he said, they have not followed through on these promises in the past.
In addition, he said that, even if Hamas itself refrained from attacks, they could not stop other groups like Islamic Jihad or the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade from staging bombings.
Keinon said he did not believe the scandals over Sharon’s campaign funds and other suggested cases of corruption by Sharon and his sons would bring down the government or cause the prime minister to resign. He said that both Sharon’s immediate predecessors, Benyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, had weathered similar scandals without losing political support over them. He pointed out that should Sharon be forced out of office or from the leadership position in the governing Likud Party, Netanyahu is his most likely replacement.
The evening event, which was sponsored by Herzl-Ner Tamid, the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, and Jewish National Fund, attracted approximately 175 people, while another 25 came to a Federation lunch where Keinon spoke earlier in the day.