Thursday, May 26, 2011

Implications of Nakba Day

The infiltration of Palestinians thru the Syrian border into Israel on Nakba Day last week was a severe blow to the integrity of the State. As someone observed, this is not like Mexicans crossing the US border, since their motivation is purely economic. For Palestinians to invade Israel without being killed, captured or stopped is highly symbolic. If a few hundred can do it, what about 1,000 or 10,000. If the IDF failed with such a small crowd, what will they do in the future to protect the integrity of the Israeli border from Palestinian mob invasion.

There have been many excuses for this fashla (foul-up) and many suggestions how to prevent it. The IDF was expecting infiltrations to be attempted and crowd control problems in the West Bank, Gaza and the Lebanese border. They did not anticipate trouble on the Syrian border because there usually isn't any. The Syrian dictator Bashar Assad usually prefers to steer the trouble away from his own border to that of Lebanon. But, on this occasion, as could have been predicted due to the unprecedented uprisings in Syria itself, such a crowd directed to the border by Syrian government forces, and taken there in a large number of buses, could have been expected. Where was the much vaunted Israeli intelligence, where was the ordinary intelligence of the IDF Commanders, to leave the border insufficiently guarded so as to allow infiltrations of hundreds of Palestinian civilians. Actually, the lack of casualties explains the problem, the IDF troops were given orders not to fire on unarmed civilians, despite the provocation of throwing of rocks and even Molotov cocktails. So the civilians were able to break thru the border in an unprecedented way because the IDF troops didn't fire on them. This is very different from the orders of the Syrian Army and secret police, who fire on unarmed Syrian demonstrators all the time and have killed over 1,000 and arrested at least 20,000 in the past month. Also, the US Border Guards shoot civilian infiltrators all the time. There is a principle involved here, that a country's borders must be protected.

In fact, I believe only one civilian was killed on the Syrian border, while several IDF soldiers were wounded. Even on the Lebanese border with Israel, where 10 civilians were killed without being able to infiltrate the border, the shooting was done by Lebanese Army troops who were guarding the border, and who were warned that if they allowed the civilians to approach the fence then the IDF would be forced to fire at them. So it was probably a bad order to tell the troops at the Syrian border not to fire on the infiltrators, because it will invite further worse actions in future and also at places where the IDF is not expecting them. But, rather than shooting them, other less fatal means of crowd control could have beeen used. Yes, tear gas was used, to little effect. Others have suggested spraying the crowd from the air with various substances, ranging from neurotoxins to smelly trash. Whatever means of crowd control the IDF uses (water cannons, stun grenades, rubber bullets, etc.) it must be prepared in future to protect the borders of the State, otherwise the aim of the Palestinians to attain "the right of return" will go from being a hopeless dream to an unfortunate reality.

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