Nadav Shragai - Haaretz 16 settembre 2002
More than 30 families have lost at least two members in intifada attacks. Fifteen Israelis have been lynched. Seventeen foreign workers have been killed in terror attacks. During the past 23 months, 14,267 terror attacks have been recorded, in which 619 people were killed and 4,497 people were injured. Seventy percent of the casualties have been civilians
Every person has a name and so does every war - at least those that have occurred here in the State of Israel - apart, that is, from the current one. It has been almost two years, and there is still no agreed-upon name for the bloody events that broke out in this country at the end of September, 2000, perhaps because it took us nearly a year and a half to define it as a war. Maybe this is because one of the major characteristics the Israeli collective had used in defining previous wars was not present this time. The Israel Defense Forces found it very difficult to move the fighting to "enemy territory," both because the government of Israel dithered a lot about defining the other side as the enemy and because "enemy territory" is almost our own backyard. The war was conducted at home, for the home, and there is nothing that shows this more clearly than the comparison between the number of soldiers who have been killed and the number of civilians.
Between September, 2000, and the end of August, 2002 (two years minus one month), 619 people were killed in terror attacks. Of these, 183 were soldiers or members of the security forces and the rest - 436, about 70 percent - were civilians. Not all of the soldiers were killed during the course of fighting. About one-fifth of them (41 soldiers and members of the security forces) were in uniform, but were killed like any civilian as they rode a bus, were shopping in a mall or simply present in crowded places.
The picture is similar with respect to the wounded: 4,497 people were injured during the course of the two years of terror. Of them, 3,201 were civilians and less than one-third - 1,296 people - were soldiers and security personnel. It is estimated that about one-fourth of them were wounded on the "home front," or in any case not during the course of fighting.
Degrees of terror
The reality that descended on us during the past two years was first defined as a relatively low degree of threat and later (by many) as a war. This derived from a sharp sense of distress in the Israeli street, to the extent that the routine of daily life was disrupted for many months. Bereavement and terror were among us all the time, sometimes at night and sometimes during the day, sometimes on Saturday and sometimes on Saturday night, sometimes in the morning and sometimes in the evening. There were no rules. Everything was wide open and possible. People were hurt in the pizzeria, or at home, at the cafe, the restaurant, the supermarket and the pedestrian mall, at the train station, on the bus or at the market. There are those who evaded the bereavement, and those who were affected by it.
The sense that this has been a trauma of national dimensions is derived not only from feelings. There was a sharp increase in the dimensions and the level of terror. During the seven years that elapsed between the signing of the Oslo agreements and the beginning of these two years of terror, 793 shooting incidents in the territories (beyond the June 1967 borders) of Judea, Samaria and the West Bank were recorded. During the past year in the same territories alone, some 11,000 shooting incidents (about 14 times as many) were recorded.
In each of the years between 1997 and 2000, there were, on average, 390 hostile terror incidents recorded within the State of Israel. During the first year of terror alone (2001) 1,794 such incidents were recorded, almost five times more than in any of the previous years, and altogether more than in all the previous four years together. During the first half of 2002 alone, the number of such incidents reached 3,069, almost double the number in all of 2001.
But the most obvious difference is in the number of those killed. During the 15 years that preceded the Oslo agreements, only 254 people were murdered. From the time the Oslo agreements were signed, and during the course of the seven years that preceded the past two years of terror, 300 people were murdered in terror attacks, more than twice as many than during the previous seven years. The significance of this is clear: From an average of 17 people killed each year before the signing of the Oslo agreements, we went up to an average of 43 killed each year until September, 2000. During each of the two years that have gone by since the outbreak of the last war we have had an annual average of 309 killed. However, this last average is deceptive. During the second year of the war far more people were killed than during the first. Up until September, 2001, 138 people were killed and between then and the end of August, 2002, another 463 people were killed. These figures apparently explain the fact that 67 percent of the public feel (according to the latest Dahaf survey) that the Oslo agreements have hurt Israel.
Of the 619 killed, 133 were residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza (21.5 percent).
Nevertheless, the number of Jewish settlers in the territories killed during the intifada is far higher than their proportion in the general population, which comes to only about 3 percent.
Eighty-five of those killed were residents of Jerusalem (13.7 percent), 30 were residents of Netanya (4.8 percent), 26 were residents of Haifa (4.2 percent), 25 were residents of Tel Aviv (4 percent), 19 were residents of Rishon Letzion (3 percent) and 13 were from Hadera (2.1 percent). Seventeen foreign workers were murdered in these terror attacks.
Women and children
During the past two years Palestinian terror attacks were characterized by their targets more than any other index: Entire families and parts of families have been wiped out one by one. A grandfather and a grandmother, a mother and a father, a son and a daughter, toddlers and infants. Many remember the eight members of the Nehmad family who were murdered in the terror attack on the Beit Yisrael neighborhood of Jerusalem, the five members of the Schivjeschuurder family who were killed in the attack on the Sbarro restaurant, as well as the four members of the Shabo family who were killed at Itamar, but there were also many other families - altogether 30 - in which at least two people were killed. Many of those killed were babies and children. In many of the families that have lost at least two of their loved ones, there were also family members who were injured, among whom there was also a large number of children. In the last terror attack as well, at the Jewish settlement of Bracha, a couple were injured, Yaakov and Dalit Rand of Jerusalem.
Run over, stabbed and stoned
Of the 300 people killed during the seven years after the Oslo agreements, 130 died in suicide attacks (43 percent). A similar number were killed in shooting attacks. During the last two years of terror as well, the majority of deaths and injuries were the result of an attack by a suicide terrorist or a shooting attack, though their number is far higher. During the past two years, 40.5 percent met their deaths as a result of an attack by a suicide terrorist carrying an explosive charge (250 people, of them 227 civilians and 23 soldiers). If we credit the figures of the outgoing head of Central Command, Yitzhak Eitan, whereby the IDF together with the help of the Shin Bet security service thwarts 95 percent of suicide attacks, the picture might have been much worse. Another 40.5 percent (251 people) met their deaths in shooting incidents of various sorts, especially shooting from ambushes or shooting from a passing car - particularly on the roads of Judea and Samaria.
Another 24 people died in car bomb explosions. Fifty one Israelis were killed by explosive charges either on the roads or in public places. Another eight were murdered by being run over by vehicles, five were stabbed to death, two died from being hit by stones and 15 were lynched by Palestinians - the most famous incident being the lynching of the two reserve soldiers Yossi Avrahami and Vadim Novesche, parts of which were filmed, broadcast to the Israeli public and significantly influenced its positions. A no less severe case of lynching was that of two young boys from Tekoa, Yosef Ishran and Yaakov Mandel, but in this case the military authorities spared us the grim pictures.
Only one person was recorded as having been killed by a mortar shell, even though the Palestinians fired more than 1,000 of them, mainly on the Jewish settlements in Hevel Katif (in the Gaza Strip). Thirty-five people (mostly Jewish settlers in the territories) met their deaths in the course of 12 incidents of infiltrations into settlements that took place during the past two years.
Quantity versus deadliness
During the past 23 months, 14,267 attacks were reported and recorded. The vast majority of them, 13,656 (96 percent) occurred in the territories, 6,624 in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and 7,032 in the Gaza Strip. Only 611 attacks were recorded in what the official statistics of the IDF define as "the home front," but in these attacks (only 4 percent of the total) 342 people (55 percent of the total) were killed; 277 were killed beyond the Green Line.
The relatively large number of those killed within the Green Line, and the relatively large number of attacks beyond the Green Line, led to an oppressive sense of personal insecurity on both sides of the line. Attacks that exacted many casualties became a ritual, and beyond the Green Line traveling became a real danger - to the point that many families developed the routine of not traveling together in one vehicle, with the aim of minimizing the danger. Many people started to work at home. Others changed their workplaces.
On the roads of Judea and Samaria, 903 explosive charges were laid. Of them, 563 went off. Shots were fired on vehicles 1,319 times; shots were fired on settlements 683 times and at military positions 3,613 times. In Gaza the picture was similar; however, the type of attack showed special characteristics: On Jewish settlements in Hevel Katif, as noted, over 1,000 mortars were fired; 1,313 grenades were thrown and 409 anti-tank missiles were fired on IDF soldiers. In Judea and Samaria, 217 people were killed; in Gaza, 60.
Attacks have decreased, casualties have not
After the Defensive Shield campaign there was a sharp drop in the number of attacks that took victims on the home front. There were about 10 attacks a month in each of the five months after Defensive Shield (April, May, June, July, August) as compared to an average of 31 such attacks during each of the previous 18 months. There was a similar decline during those months in the number of attacks in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, compared to the 18 months that preceded the Defensive Shield campaign.
In the area of Judea and Samaria, for example, during each of the past five months there was an average of 145 attacks, whereas in each of the 18 previous months there were 323 attacks per month on average. In the area of Gaza the picture is somewhat different, and the decline in terror there is more moderate: During each of the past five months there was an average of 230 as compared to an average of 322 attacks before the campaign.
The Defensive Shield campaign significantly decreased the number of attacks, but not the number of casualties. In the 15 suicide attacks with a large number of victims during the five months that have elapsed since the Defensive Shield campaign, 117 people have been murdered. Another 64 were killed by Palestinians, half of them soldiers during the course of the Defensive Shield campaign.
November 2000, was the worst month in Judea and Samaria - 597 attacks. August and October 2001 and especially March 2002 (before the Defensive Shield campaign) were also hard: There were more than 500 attacks in Judea and Samaria in each of those months. In the Gaza area the picture was more or less parallel.
Within the Green Line the worst months were May 2002 (before the Defensive Shield campaign) with 64 attacks; August 2001 with 54 attacks; October 2001 with 72 attacks and the months of February and March 2002, which preceded the Defensive Shield campaign, during both of which taken together 162 people were killed in 84 attacks.
During the months that followed the Defensive Shield campaign, April and May of this year, there was relative quiet, with "only" 54 dead during those months, but during the first three weeks of June terror swelled again with 57 dead in a series of bad attacks (Patt junction, French Hill junction, the Megiddo junction and more) after which the IDF embarked on the Determined Pathcampaign.
Since Determined Path began there has been a decline in the number of attacks and the number of dead. There were 47 people killed between the last third of June and the end of August, as compared to 166 people killed during the terrible months of February and March, but this is still very far from the relatively low monthly averages of the 15 years that preceded Oslo (between one and two dead a month), and also far from the worse annual averages during the seven years after Oslo.
To understand the extent to which the "achievement" of 47 dead in the two months after Determined Path is relative, it must be recalled that in each of the seven years that preceded the two year of terror (the seven years after Oslo) a similar number of people were killed in terror actions - 43 on average.
Estimated economic damage: NIS 24 billion a year
In November 2001, Iraq transferred to Israel NIS 291 million ($42 million) in compensation for damage during the Gulf War, through the compensation committee at the United Nations that coordinates claims against Iraq. Through this committee, Israel is slated to receive from Iraq about NIS 150 million more. Similar claims have been prepared against the Palestinian Authority, both by bereaved families and economic organizations, and some of them have already been submitted to the courts.
The Hotel Association, for example, is demanding of the PA compensation of NIS 1.5 billion in a suit that will be filed in the near future at the Tel Aviv District Court. Fifty-five hotels have already joined in the claim, but the economic damage, as various calculations indicate, are many times greater than the damage caused to Israel during the Gulf War.
Finance Minister Silvan Shalom estimated, during a recent government discussion, that during the first year of the war Palestinian terror caused the economy financial damage of NIS 24 billion and the loss of 80,000 jobs. Economists at the Prime Minister's Office, the Finance Ministry and the research department at the Bank of Israel estimate that at the macro-economic level, between the beginning of the intifada and December, 2001 alone, Israel lost 4 percent of its business production, which is about NIS 12.3 billion. Their report, written by representatives of the two ministries and the central bank, says that budgetary expenditures by government ministries because of the terror war are estimated at NIS 5.5 billion and that the state's income has declined by about NIS 5 billion as a result of the intifada. According to the report, most of the additional budgetary expenditure by government ministries was concentrated in areas having to do with security.
The Transport Ministry has reported damage of NIS 2.2 billion during the first 15 months of the war. Hardest hit has been the airline industry, which lost about NIS 1.165 billion. The damage was done mostly by the sharp drop in tourism coming into the country. As a result, the Israeli airlines El Al, Arkia and Israir have recorded heavy losses. In the area of ground transportation, the hardest hit are taxis and tourist buses. Losses in this area have been estimated at about NIS 250 million.
It is reasonable to assume that the picture for 2002, which is not yet over, will be similar; the sum of the damage in 2001 should therefore be doubled to get a picture of the economic damage during the past two years. (N.S.)
More than 20,000 Palestinian casualties
22 Palestinians were killed by Israeli civilians
According to Red Crescent figures, there were 21,375 Palestinian casualties during the past two years. Of them, 1,726 were killed and 19,649 injured. Of the injured, 4,647 were hit by live ammunition, 5,641 were hit by plastic bullets, 5,125 were hurt by inhaling tear gas and 4,416 were hurt "in other ways."
According to figures provided by B'Tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, between September 29, 2000 and the middle of August, 2002 - 1,363 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces weapons fire (not including the more than 130 Palestinian dead in the Defensive Shield campaign). This figure is lower by about 250 dead than the Red Crescent figure. According to the B'Tselem data, 247 of the dead were minors under the age of 18.
In October, 2000, according to B'Tselem, 100 Palestinians were killed. In November, 109; in March 2002, 233; and in April, 133. In each of the other months during the course of those two years several dozen Palestinians were killed each month.
The vast majority of the Palestinian dead were, according to the IDF Spokesperson, armed and activists in terror organizations. At least 79 of the Palestinians who were killed were liquidated by Israel in the framework of "pinpoint deterrence" and during the course of these actions 32 more Palestinians were killed. Twenty-two of the Palestinians were killed by Israeli civilians. In addition to the Palestinians who were killed by Israel, 41 were killed by other Palestinians after they were suspected of collaboration.(N.S.)