In the prairies of Isra-bluff
By Gideon Samet
Haaretz, January 2, 2004
As the dogs bark, the covered wagons of Israeli officialdom wind their way confidently through the prairies of Isra-bluff. No one knows exactly where they are heading, but they assure us that they know. If the dogs would only have patience, and most importantly, quit barking, peace and security would appear on the horizon.
That's the way practically every important issue is handled in this country. But now the convoy is returning to one of the bogus back-roads it knows best - the one that pretends to lead to negotiations with Syria. Things are going to be lively. They already are. After all, pulling back from the Golan Heights isn't even an option.
What a waste of time to rehash the whole business of whether it's worth our while to pull back, and up to where. What does it matter what the Mossad operative and the Syrian agent said at that secret meeting on board a yacht on the Black Sea? Don't we already know enough about the workings of the Bluff and Bluster Office and Fib Headquarters when it comes to an accord on the Golan? If Rabin and Barak didn't do it, why waste the gorgeous weather to sit and sweat when we are bound to crash into another wall of deception erected by Sharon?
Even so, maybe the Israeli public, Sharon's voluntary victims, should have a look at the latest round of tricks performed by Israel's master of painful concessions. He is sending MK Magali Wahaba to talks in Damascus. Sending him? Well, not really. The Prime Minister's Office denies it. But the plot is thickening: Wahaba hasn't jumped on the denial bandwagon. These are "sensitive matters," as he puts it.
Sharon loves this kind of foreplay leading nowhere. He loves the tense, expectant atmosphere, the headlines, the commentary that surrounds a secret move toward peace. And the truth is, under other circumstances, with a leader who means what he says, this could be interesting. Even the Likud, which knows Sharon pretty well, is in a slight panic. This week, a number of MKs in distress reacted by leaking a plan to expand settlement in the Golan. Sharon's office outdid itself, accusing the leakers of making "political use" of this plan.
On that tempest-in-a-teacup day, Brigadier General Eival Giladi, hailed as one of the sharpest minds in the Israel Defense Forces and until recently no less than the General Staff's chief of strategic planning, declared that the IDF could reach Damascus in about the same time it took the Americans to reach Baghdad. The army has clearly become a cog in the Israeli bluff machine.
In an enlightened administration, a general who came out with such a statement at a time when his government was planning a diplomatic maneuver would be sobbing. Here, in a political system that feeds on contradiction and confusion, an aggressive remark of this kind actually works well. It has all the fuzzy clarity that plunges pundits from Jerusalem to Washington into the dense tangle of opposites of which the prime minister is so fond.
The truth, of course, is that Sharon has done nothing until now to keep the promise he made, under American and internal pressure, to dismantle outposts. Instead of having a couple of them torn down - even a ridiculously small number that doesn't come close to what a government interested in an accord should be setting its sights on - he is launching the illusion of talks with Assad.
Not that there's anything new in that. Again, the man is leading the whole world by the nose. But there is still something surprising about how much undeserving respect these tricks manage to get. The Israeli public, with all its experience, doesn't shrug off this fake Syrian initiative. The newspapers swallow it whole. Sharon makes headlines, gaining a little more of the vital resource one might think had already been depleted long ago: wasted time, exploiting the never-ending stupidity of the Israeli public and the invaluable political profit that comes from making life difficult for the U.S. administration.
And that is precisely why it is worth examining this ploy, even if it is completely transparent. The prime minister has successfully turned life in this country into a casino. Without knocking the talent and skill he puts into it, there is a price to pay.
The Golan Heights settlers can sleep well at night. The current nightmare is only another little trick that a dangerous leader is playing on the back of the nation.
