Fear returns to Israel

EVERYONE has wasted the opportunities for peace that emerged in recent years.

SDEROT, ISRAEL - JULY 14: Israeli children seen in a special bomb shelter playground on July 14, 2014 at the city of Sderot. Israel's operation 'Protective Edge' has entered a seventh day as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continue to carry out massive airstrikes across the Gaza Strip with reports suggesting over 166 people have been killed, the majority of whom are civilians. (Photo by Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images)

FOR my 10-year-old, Michael, and my five-year-old, Daniel, it was a first. Last week on Monday morning, when I saw the way things were going, I went into their room and asked them to sit down. I told them that in the coming days they may hear something they have never heard before: the howl of sirens.

Do not panic, I said. Remember, Israel is strong and your home is sound and your parents are here to protect you. But when the sirens go off, you must walk down the stairs quietly to the basement and find shelter in the security room until danger has passed.

So they did. On Tuesday evening, when — for the first time — Tel Aviv and its northern suburbs were targeted by Hamas rockets, Michael and Daniel heard their first sirens and clung to me as we all went down to the security room.

Michael asked if Iron Dome, Israel’s anti-missile defence system, would intercept the incoming rockets. Daniel said he was afraid a missile would destroy our home.

The sheltered, semi-normal lives my boys have lived thus far were transformed. A new, radical and violent Middle East had shattered the serenity and security of their suburban childhood.

WHEN Michael was conceived — in late 2003 — war was raging in Iraq and suicide bombers were rattling Israel. But by the time he was born the violence had subsided. Ariel Sharon, the Israel Defence Forces, the Shin Bet (the internal security service) and the separation barrier were successful in curtailing the second intifada — the greatest prolonged terrorist offensive experienced by a democracy since World War II. So the past 10 years were relatively calm.

True, peace was never achieved. The second Lebanon war (2006) and operations Cast Lead (2008-09) and Pillar of Defence (2012) in the Gaza Strip marred the quiet intermittently. But all in all, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was dormant.

Fewer Israelis were victims of terrorist attacks than in previous decades. Fewer Palestinians lost their lives because of Israeli military activity than in the 1990s and the early 2000s. The anti-violence ethos of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, and the reluctance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to use force, Israeli-Palestinian conflict fatigue and Israeli-Palestinian security co-­ordination brought a strange calm to the Promised Land.

So my sons have not been exposed to any of the dangers and fears that older Israelis have struggled with. In recent years my compatriots could really believe they lived in some sort of California.

As there were no wars, no concrete enemies, no acts of terrorism and no visible threats, people turned inward, enjoyed their individual lives and were concerned by sane issues such as the cost of living and soaring house prices.

Many of us developed an iron-dome delusion: because we felt safe and prosperous we ignored the brutality of the Middle East and the futility of occupation. We tended to overlook the fact Tel Aviv’s hi-tech revelry was surrounded by a violent, hostile region and was only dozens of kilometres away from the fractious West Bank and desperate Gaza.

What emerged was an astounding bubble. For nearly a decade Israelis ignored the existential challenges and numbed themselves with the notion that their consumerist democracy was all about start-ups, nightclubs, restaurants and a Mediterranean dolce vita.

One did not have to pay the price of peace because there was no war in sight. One did not have to go through the pain of ending occupation because there was no tangible price paid for occupation. One could ignore the dramatic events in Egypt, Syria and Iraq because the Arab world seemed to be kept away by Israel’s technological superiority.

The years of calm were years of opportunity. The cessation of violence could and should have been used for the launch of a new, creative and realistic peace process.

Under American leadership, Israelis and Palestinians should have created a dynamic that would lead to a two-state steady state. As Salam Fayyad became the Palestinian prime minister last year, and as new constructive forces surfaced in the West Bank, the Americans should have initiated and co-ordinated an end to occupation (gradually) and a Palestinian process of establishing a democratic state (step by step).

The time was ripe for a courageous peace initiative different from the ones that had failed in Camp David (2000) and Annapolis (2007). But dogmas prevailed. New thinking was never introduced and fresh ideas were not ­implemented.

The Obama administration kept pushing for a final status deal that was not achievable. The EU kept criticising Israel while overlooking Palestinian extremism and regional malaise. So moderate Israelis lost their respect for an international community whose concepts and ideas were totally disconnected from reality in the Middle East, while moderate Palestinians manipulated that same community to isolate Israel and delegitimise it.

Rather than advancing cautiously on a path towards a two-state solution that would give hope to the two traumatised peoples, Americans, Europeans, Israelis and Palestinians were bogged down by obsolete ideology, intellectual rigidity and political impotence. They missed the golden opportunity of the relative calm and quiet of 2009-13.

A year ago John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, tried to break the impasse. In July last year he launched an ambitious and benevolent peace initiative that was to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the northern spring of this year.

But Kerry, too, was rigid, dogmatic and detached from reality. He did not grasp the depth of the cruel conflict and the implications of the Arab maelstrom. So when his idealistic yet naive endeavour collapsed three months ago, he did not have a plan B.

Angry, disillusioned and frustrated, Kerry returned to Washington, leaving the Middle East to its own devices and letting Israelis and Palestinians stew in their own juices. This was a fatal mistake. As futile as it was, the old peace process was an organising principle that stabilised the shaky terrain of ­Israel-Palestine and prevented the eruption of violence.

Once there was no hope, no political structure and no American leadership to speak of, there was hardly any doubt what was about to occur. It was only a question of when, where and how the genie would come out of the bottle and the demons of extremism would begin to claim the lives of both Jew and Arab in the Holy Land.

The horrific killing of three Israeli teenagers by barbaric Palestinians last month was the trigger that started the fire. Then came the ghastly murder of a Palestinian teenager by barbaric Israelis this month. Both acts of terrorism had strategic consequences because of the strategic vacuum Kerry had left behind.

Abbas was truly heroic in his condemnation of terrorism. Netanyahu acted with surprising restraint and responsibility. Both the Palestinian President and the Israeli Prime Minister did their utmost to curb violence and prevent deterioration. But the extremists on both sides had the upper hand.

In the absence of an American responsible adult and a viable peace process, the destructive dynamics of the old conflict were on their side. No player wanted escalation but escalation soon became inevitable.

Once again the Israeli-Palestinian patterns of behaviour resembled a Greek tragedy. The Israeli democracy and the Gaza Third World theocracy were heading for a fatal collision.

Sadness and rage

AS my two boys experienced their first sirens in our basement, I was deeply saddened. There was no real danger. Contrary to Michael’s concern, Israel is much mightier than any of its hostile neighbours. Contrary to Daniel’s fears, no Hamas missile would demolish our home.

In the first days of the new campaign, Iron Dome proved to be a spectacular Israeli success; Israeli society proved yet again that once threatened, it is resilient and cohesive. Civilians remained calm because they trusted their army, their air force and their state. Yet here were my sons joining the tragic rituals of Israel’s tragic condition. Here were my children of plenty who grew up in a peaceful decade, experiencing their first warlike moments.

Apart from being sad, I was full of rage. Why did Israel’s Likud governments waste the good years that may not return? Why did moderate Palestinians not rise to the opportunity and act with courage and generosity? Why did the US stick to the flawed all-or-nothing approach? Why did Europe not help the Jews and the Palestinians overcome their century-long dispute? Why did Israeli, Palestinian, American and European peaceniks not take advantage of these years of an undeclared ceasefire?

Now it may be too late. Now, as the demons of fundamentalism exalt, it will be so much more difficult to bring back sanity and dialogue and mutual understanding. For good reasons, Israelis would be more suspicious and cautious regarding any future withdrawals. For good reasons, Palestinians will be even more angry and hate-filled. Once fighting ends, both parties will be heading for the next round of violence.

I fear the future. The two-state solution has been thrown off the tracks. The horizon of coexistence is much further away.

What began last week is not only another round of Hamas-Israeli violence. It is the assault of an impoverished Middle East on the prosperous, Western-like Jewish democratic state.

America’s wars of the 21st century took it as far as Afghanistan but what they actually accomplished was to bring Afghanistan to Israel’s doorstep. The US crushed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, only to open the gates for the Islamic State and other such radical forces. This is the context in which the new Israel-Gaza war should be viewed.

It is not only impoverished, desperate Palestinians who are targeting Israel’s affluent cities and way of life. It is the impoverished, desperate residents of a hopeless Middle East who are doing so. At this point in time, we are far stronger than they are. We shall prevail. But this new round of violence is a signal of what we are bound for and what we may have to confront in coming years.

The unprecedented Hamas rocket offensive is also an attack of chaos on order. In the old Middle East, the Jewish state faced a constant threat of a possible invasion by the regular armies of the neighbouring Arab states. In the new Middle East, the danger is the ability of irregular forces of irregular entities to disrupt Israel’s order.

The Gulf wars and the Arab Spring have broken down most of the Arab nation-states and dispersed most of the mighty Arab armies. Iraq, Syria and Libya are pretty much gone. A new enemy has arisen: chaos.

Surrounded by failed states and ungoverned territorial expanses, Israel is threatened by the fact so many of the hundreds of millions of Arabs living in its vicinity have no lives and no future and no benign order to rely on.

Up until a month ago, we managed to prevent the chaos from crossing our borders and affecting our affluent, complacent civilisation. For 3½ years, Israel remained a rock of stability in an utterly unstable environment.

But now, the rockets that prompt the sirens to howl are bringing the disorder right into the epicentre of our orderly world.

Tel Aviv thought it had found a way to avoid the horrors of the Middle East. Tel Aviv was wrong. The economic and mental bubble it lived in has burst. So have dovish illusions that overall peace is around the corner and hawkish illusions that Israel can count on its military superiority forever. Gone, too, is the hedonistic illusion that we can go about our sushi-and-Nasdaq lives as if there were no Iran out there and no Hezbollah and no Hamas. We are reminded that our California cannot be totally isolated and perfectly protected from this ailing region.

Just as previous generations of Israelis had to deal with this challenge, so will my sons’ generation. Will they succeed where we have failed? I do not know. As we climb up from the security room and observe our fine house and our green grass and the glorious summer evening, I am deeply worried.

The Sunday Times

Ari Shavit, a former paratrooper in the Israel Defence Forces, is the author of My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, published by Scribe.