Shinui MK and Cabinet Minister Eliezer Sandberg criticized the committee this morning, in advance of the publication of its report, calling it one of the most superfluous committees in Israel’s history. Likud Minister Uzi Landau said that the committee should never have been formed and that the only reason for its existence was the electoral considerations of then-prime minister Barak, who faced a resounding defeat at the polls.
In response, Justice Minister Tommy Lapid, also of Shinui, told Army Radio that the committee’s establishment was crucial because the deaths of Arab citizens is a serious matter that must be investigated.
When 13 Israeli Arabs were killed in riots they themselves initiated, Tommy Lapid sees fit to hold a national commission of inquiry into the events. This commission delved into the failure of Israel’s security establishment to handle the riots properly, and the failure of Israel’s political echelon to predict the riots or respond to them properly. It cost millions of shekels, took three years to complete, and helped to bring about the political downfall of at least a dozen national figures. During all that time, relations between Israel’s general population and its Arab sector have not dramatically improved.
This morning, in the same Army Radio program, an Arab resident of the north who was involved in those riots stated publicly and plainly that he believes a Palestinian state should be established not only in Judea and Samaria, but in the Galilee, and “from Haifa to Eilat”, that the Jews should go back to New York or Florida, and that Israel as a state has no legitimacy.
The riots that were the subject of the inquiry accompanied the beginning of the renewed Intifadah, a wave of violence that has to date claimed 855 lives and injured close to 6000 people. What has become clearer since then, and what is proven by statements like the one this morning, is that these riots were no spontaneous accident. The Arabs of Israel’s north are of one mind with those living in Judea and Samaria and Gaza. Neither community accepts Israel’s legitimacy or its right to exist as a Jewish State in the Jewish Homeland.
But what is even more bothersome is that Israel’s own Justice Minister considers 13 Arab deaths a good reason for a national commission of inquiry. But the 855 people who have been killed in terrorist attacks since then do not warrant a similar commission.
Israel sorely needs a really purposeful commission of inquiry. Israel’s remaining citizens want to know why over 1100 people have been killed in the “peaceful relations” that Oslo was supposed to have introduced. We want to know why the security and political leadership have failed to end the violence or remove its perpetrators from our midst. We want to know how any government can hope to keep its grasp on power when its citizens are being blown up on busses. And we want to know why every successive government since 1993 has insisted on maintaining the false façade that there is actually hope of reaching a peaceful settlement with those who do not even recognize our right to exist.
American or European pressure is not an answer for 855 dead Israelis or 6000 people who must live with their wounds and their memories. That pressure would not have been an excuse for the 13 Arabs killed in the riots, and no one even considered applying such pressure in that issue.
The fault for these deaths must lie at least partially with the government and security apparatus that has failed to prevent them. To properly apportion that blame, a full commission of national inquiry must be established and given broad latitude to investigate all people who have been in a position to do something about the current violence.
Copyright 2003. All rights reserved. Yehuda Poch is a journalist living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission of the author only.
