JNS
It is time for these officers to get with the program. They should be reminded that they are instruments of elected politicians, not a secret society.
There's no Israeli constituency to speak of for the so-called "two-state solution," but there's a coalition of very powerful players working to resurrect it. One is the Biden administration. Another is the Israeli mainstream press. But there's another, less obvious group in this team, one barred from expressing its intentions explicitly but nevertheless key to the effort: high ranking officers in Israel's security establishment, including in the Israel Defense Forces and Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet).
Such officers have been involved in the controversy over the "plan for the day after" Hamas in the Gaza Strip. While the Cabinet wanted to preserve maximum flexibility, and so tended to avoid the discussion, the IDF high command brazenly demanded that the Cabinet articulate a plan, ostensibly so that they can orient their plans to it. But many believed they had ulterior motives, such as avoiding a full occupation of the Gaza Strip so as to leave the door open for a return to the two-state track.
Since the demand for such a plan originated with the Biden administration, there was reason to think that the chiefs had similar aspirations: returning the Palestinian Authority to the Gaza Strip, with the explicit intention of working toward an independent Palestinian state. Though highly probable, this interpretation of the chiefs' intentions is hard to prove.
But there is also other, more material evidence, for the attempts by the brass to meddle in politics, and it, too, clearly indicates what their politics are. Though they have not said they support the American plan to restore the P.A. in Gaza, they are working to rehabilitate the P.A. in the public mind. They do this by deliberately concealing information about the extensive involvement of P.A. affiliated persons in terrorism. When terrorists are Hamas operatives, the official IDF and ISA press releases mention their affiliation. When terrorists are affiliated with the Fatah- controlled P.A., the affiliation is omitted. The IDF and ISA didn't do this once or twice. They do it systematically.
Prominent Maariv columnist Kalman Liebskind surveyed, he said, thousands of IDF press releases. It was always the same: Hamas mentioned, Fatah omitted. In one example Liebskind cites, the IDF website ran a story that boasted about the destruction of a terrorist battalion before it was able to fully form. The founder of the battalion was Aalla Nezal, which the story described as "a terrorist without organizational affiliation."
But the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the military arm of Fatah, apparently disagreed. Immediately after his death they published a notice glorifying him as one of their own, saying, "He will remain with us as long as we live." If that's not enough, Liebskind notes, there are social media pictures of him with the Fatah logo and also with Yasser Arafat, master terrorist, head of Fatah and first chairman of the P.A.
This systematic deception was first exposed by the independent investigative journalists of The Jewish Voice website. The site does an amazing job reporting on many vital issues that most of our progressive press is determined to ignore. It documented how the Palestinian security forces, established originally for the purpose of law enforcement, are being systematically turned into an army in the heart of Israel (with American financial help). Long before the Oct. 7, the Jewish Voice began to investigate how rape was being systematically used as a weapon of terror; it also exposed the institutional ties between Hamas and the supposedly legitimate Raam Party (which was a member in the Lapid-Bennet coalition, not long ago). Most recently the Jewish Voice published a report on how agriculture is used by the P.A. to take over territory and hem in Jewish settlements. The ISA, as we shall see, is not happy with all this investigative journalism.
By now, we know a lot about the P.A.'s involvement in terrorism. They have a "pay-for-slay" compensation program which grants lifelong pensions to the families of "martyrs" who died killing or trying to kill Jews. They also furnish monthly salaries to terrorists in Israeli jails. The salary is calculated by the extent of damage the terrorist caused to Jews, as measured by the length of his or her sentence—the longer the sentence, the higher the monthly salary.
Two reports, "Officers by Day, Terrorists by Night" by the Regavim Movement and "Terrorists in Uniform" by Palestinian Media Watch, have recently documented the actual participation of P.A. security personnel in terrorism. P.A. officials don't just do it, they also boast about it. As does the P.A. itself. According to the PMW report, a spokesperson for the P.A. bragged that “roughly 63-65% of the number of martyrs in the West Bank ... are members of the Fatah Movement. And most of them are members of the [P.A.] Security Forces" or are sons of such members.
Using open sources only—since the IDF will not release the relevant data—the Regavim Movement report showed that scores of the "martyrs" and the incarcerated terrorists are P.A. security apparatus personnel, as evidenced by their own social media. This is not information the ISA or the IDF could not have discovered.
There is little or no echo of these journalistic investigations in the mainstream press either in Israel or abroad. Moreover, reporting that challenges the narrative often meets with more than just silence. The Jewish Voice, for one, has been subject to harassment by the authorities, including a police raid on their office. The repeated calling out of the IDF and ISA for concealing the affiliation of P.A.-connected terrorists seems to have caused particular irritation. The IDF tried denial and gaslighting in response; the ISA seems to have gone even further.
Last Wednesday (Aug. 28) an anonymous caller who identified himself only as "Orel from the ISA" rang the Jewish Voice office and "advised" the outlet to "rethink" its reporting policy because, the caller said, "your actions are jeopardizing security in the area" ("the area" being Judea and Samaria). The call was recorded and posted on X along with a response from Meir Etinger, the journalist who received it:
"I'll be as clear as possible: The ISA is a body controlled by leftist agendas, and practicing gagging methods reminiscent of the KGB. We will not be silenced and we'll continue to expose the truth about ISA agendas.
This assessment may be too harsh as it pertains to the ISA as a whole. But clearly the agency's leadership, or at least important parts of it, along with that of IDF, know why they are hellbent on exonerating the P.A. and are not above using deception to achieve it.
Like other sectors of Israel's progressive elites, they too are, it seems, desperately clinging to the illusion of a negotiated settlement with the corrupt, hostile P.A., which has never recognized the right of Jews to self-determination anywhere in the Land of Israel. Still, Israeli progressive are hoping against hope. They are trying to preserve the possibility of a two-state solution, even in opposition to the government to which they are accountable, with the aim of keeping some elusive glimmer of hope alive until a left-wing coalition is again in power.
That's all a pie in the sky. The two-state solution died with the collapse of the Oslo framework in the Second Intifada, which began in 2000, and preserving its corpse in a leftist mausoleum will not make its resurrection any more possible. Much less so after Oct. 7.
Nor is a government ready to return to the two-state track likely to come to power anytime soon. Dreams about it are no more than airy nostalgia and optimism verging on the delusional. The future, alas, belongs to the pessimists, who know that for years to come, we will not be able to let down our guard. Most Israelis feel this in their bones, and are ready for the struggles ahead. It is time for the leadership of the IDF and the ISA to get with the program. They should be reminded that in a democracy they are instruments in the hands of elected politicians, tasked with realizing the government's policy, not a secret society entitled to make its own policy, much less to promote it behind the Cabinet's backs.
If the brass don't like the government's policies, they are welcome to resign. Waiting right behind them is a younger cadre of officers who already call themselves the Victory Generation. They are determined to win this war. As are most of us.
