The New York Times · 29 October 1989

CP-1989-038

Costs of the Intifada

Even a Stalemate Forces Israel to Pay A Corrosive Price

Jack Rosenthal

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Transcribed from the clipping

On the brown velvet sofa in the living room, the father gestures at the street, silent except for the occasional rush of an Israeli jeep. Suddenly, his three boys tumble downstairs, their dark eyes big with alarm: “Come quick, come quick! There’s a big machine!”

The man leads his visitors upstairs to a bedroom that looks familiar to Americans with its Formica bunks, TV and board games. From the window, one can see Israeli soldiers clustered in front of a carpenter’s house a block away as a crane lifts the lathe from his shop. The boys are frozen to the window, fear and fury in their eyes. Why the crane? Why the deserted streets?

Why the heavy military presence? Because here in the Christian town of Beit Sahour a few minutes from Jerusalem, Palestinians have been fighting the newest battle against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Despite daytime curfews and harsh Israeli efforts to make examples of people, the residents of Beit Sahour have refused to pay their taxes — even when that meant seizures of property to be sold at auction. Last week, the tax boycott ended in a stalemate, an outcome that says much about the whole 23-month uprising, the intifada.

For it too seems to have settled into a stalemate. Israel seems to have decided that it can live with the intifada, live with the status quo. But truly, there is no status quo. Israelis pay a painful price for containing the uprising — a price that abrades the army, hobbles the economy and corrodes democracy. The Army: Israeli troops are not monsters.

They struggle to be stern without being brutal. Their bullets, mostly, are rubber. But policing civilians involves constant pressure, especially for Israel’s citizen army. Many of the reservist soldiers hate this duty, so alien to the intrepid image of the hostage rescue in Entebbe. The steady erosion of morale worries Israeli commanders.

The Economy: In financial terms, the costliest price is the loss of “exports” to the West Bank. Before the intifada, Palestinians bought a billion dollars a year in Israeli products; with boycotts, the figure is down 30 percent. As one Palestinian says, in front of a graffiti-spattered wall, “The only Israeli product we buy now is spray paint.”

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