The current situation in the Middle East is at once heartbreaking and terrifying. Truly, this has been the case ever since Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat walked away from the negotiating table and launched his war of terror against civilians.
He is the architect of the present situation. It is his terror that so frightened the Israeli population that many succumbed to despair and elected Arafat’s old enemy Ariel Sharon as prime minister.
All of the areas in which the Israel Defense Force is currently stationed are under Arafat’s control. But clearly he does not have much control.
Instead of building an economy with the billions of dollars supplied by the U.S. and the European Union, Arafat’s administration has built bomb factories, buried weapons under apartments and transported weapons in ambulances.
Even in the long and checkered annals of Palestinian perfidy — and Western gullibility — some of the stories spun in the days of the current Israeli operation, and often swallowed whole by an eagerly complicit European and American press, stand out:
There’s Arafat calling for “millions of martyrs,” while in truth most Palestinians are kept out of the war. Jerusalem and the areas not under Arafat’s complete control (also known as B and C areas) are calm.
Contrary to media opinion, these last 20 months are not an “intifada,” if the latter means a “popular uprising.” It is neither an uprising nor universally popular.
During the “siege” of the master of these terrorists, Arafat ate Israeli Army meatloaf (poor soul), hummus, halvah and watermelons — secure in the knowledge that the Israeli cabinet guaranteed his safety and basking in the concern of the international community, which somehow seemed less solicitous when more than 120 Israelis were murdered by his agents or allies last month.
The truth of Bethlehem
The most breathtaking example of the perversion of truth and language came at Bethlehem, where the facts of the matter require close attention. What happened at the Church of Nativity?
The simple reality — which the local clerics, all or most of them Palestinian Christians, have done their best to obscure — is that a large group of thugs from the Tanzim, al-Aqsa “Brigades” and other terrorist organizations, as well as a number of P.A. regular troops, took over the church and turned the priests and nuns into hostages, to avoid arrest by IDF forces searching for them. In all, some 150 armed Palestinians and 38 hostages are reportedly in the church.
Carefully respecting the sanctity of the church, and mindful of the fate of the hostages, the IDF forces (commanded very carefully by a reservist lieutenant-colonel, a medical doctor in his civilian life, who expressed acute awareness of the complex and delicate considerations involved) avoided any direct action, while standing ready to apprehend the fugitives and negotiating for a non-violent outcome.
There is good news, even for Arab citizens of the area. With the Tanzim thugs in the church, they can no longer run around intimidating the people of Bethlehem.
Neither can they use residential areas in Beit Jala as fire platforms against Gilo. For 20 months, snipers have been invading the homes of Beit Jala in order to fire on the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo. Even at a glance, in a visit to Har Gilo south of Jerusalem, it was clear that the region is now calm.
Then there is bad news. The situation, a blatant Palestinian war crime, was spun to look like an Israeli “aggression” against a Christian place. This lie was shamelessly peddled not only by the Palestinians; an Egyptian Christian commentator on the official “Voice of the Arabs” station expressed the pious hope that this would finally lead to Muslim-Christian unity against the Jews.
To avoid further damage, the Israeli government is now negotiating with church representatives. The problem is that the latter feel obliged to maintain their “credibility” with their own local faithful — and the vindictive Muslim terrorists — by bad-mouthing Israel while they negotiate and use quite different, and often helpful, language indoors. The only one to say publicly that what the armed Palestinians have done is “unacceptable” was the Greek Orthodox Archbishop, Aristarchos.
Recently, the Palestinians fired on the IDF and threw hand grenades, which caused a fire in one of the compound’s building, not the church itself. This became another opportunity to spread lies about an Israeli “assault.”
The IDF would like to end this situation with no harm to the church or the hostages — and without a “victory” for the terrorists giving them the license to kill again. This needs time. It is to be expected that at least some honestly concerned Christians will come to see things this way.
I mourn every death in this terrible situation. And I believe with total faith that there will be an end to this conflict, and that both peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, will reside in just, peaceful and secure homelands.
Harriet Schachter McKinney is executive director of the American Jewish Committee-Milwaukee Chapter.
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