Southfield, Mich. (Jewish Renaissance Media) — On June 11, 1948, the Israeli government of David Ben-Gurion agreed to a United Nations-organized cease-fire with its Arab enemies. The agreement included a provision against importing any more weapons into the region.
But the Irgun, under the control of Menachem Begin, had managed to load a ship, the Altalena, in France with nearly 1,000 Irgun volunteers and masses of weapons — enough to make a substantial impact in Israel’s not-yet-won war.
By June 20, the ship was unloading men and weapons at Kfar Vitkin, with the Irgun leaders insistent that they would remain a fighting force independent of the Israel Defense Force.
Ben-Gurion, infuriated, ordered IDF troops to seize the landed weapons, which they did, and the Altalena, with Begin aboard, sailed south to Tel Aviv where additional Irgun forces were poised to take the city, if necessary, from the government to assure the delivery of the remaining weapons. After a series of false starts on both sides, the government troops, at Ben-Gurion’s order, shelled and sank the Altalena.
The armaments might have given Israel a substantial advantage in its confrontation with Arab forces. But it was far more important to Israel’s future that the government show that it, and not the terrorist forces of Irgun, was in charge.
“Blessed be the gun which set the ship on fire — that gun will have its place in Israel’s war museum,” Ben-Gurion told the national council.
Now consider the freighter Karine A, which Israeli naval commandos seized in a daring raid in the Red Sea last week.
It was loaded with 50 tons of weapons, including Sagger guided anti-tank missiles of the type that Hezbollah used against Israel in Lebanon, long-range mortars and mines. Also on the vessel were short- and long-range Katyusha rockets, including some that could easily reach most Israeli cities.
The ship was owned by the Palestinian Authority, was under the command of a P.A. naval officer and had several other Palestinian sailors aboard.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of P.A. involvement, P.A. President Yasser Arafat’s spokesman vigorously denied that the weapons were headed for fighters in the West Bank or Gaza and asserted that the P.A. had no advance knowledge of the shipment. Presumably, P.A. leaders take the world for fools.
Under the terms of the Oslo agreement, the Palestinians are forbidden to import weapons like these. Arranging the shipment while professing interest in implementing the Mitchell-Tenet process for ending armed conflict and resuming negotiations with Israel is sheer hypocrisy.
The ship apparently was loaded in Iran, and U.S. officials initially suggested that the weapons were intended for Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon. That seems unlikely; Iran has made little secret of the arms it ships Hezbollah via Damascus, a much shorter route that is less subject to Israeli interception than a Red Sea route.
But the presence of at least one Hezbollah-trained guerrilla on the Karine A suggests that Hezbollah may be preparing to escalate its involvement in the West Bank and Gaza-based terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.
The coming days may provide clearer evidence of how this arms shipment was paid for and who in the P.A. knew it was coming. But not much more needs to be known to point up the vast difference between the statesmanship of Ben-Gurion more than 50 years ago and the abysmal lack of responsible Palestinian leadership.
If Arafat were serious about controlling the terrorist forces, he would have ordered the ship blown up when he learned of its existence or publicly ordered it to return to its port of origin.
If he wanted to be the Palestinian Ben-Gurion, the father of the state, he would have long since cracked down on the Hamas and Islamic Jihad and his own Fatah radicals, instead of leaving it to Israel to arrest them.
But by pretending that the P.A. had nothing to do with this arms shipment that so flagrantly violates the Oslo agreement, Arafat shows the rest of the world why Israel is correct in considering him “irrelevant” to the long-term process of bringing a sustainable peace to the Middle East.
Jonathan Friendly is national editor of Jewish Renaissance Media.
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