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3 “Make No Mistake, Yasser” Even the most pessimistic and militant opponents of the peace process could not have invented the present nightmare. Unlike the 1973 war, when two military fronts—both far from the center —collapsed for a short while, this time our most apocalyptic and suppressed fears assail us simultaneously: diplomatic conflict is derailed into a seemingly eternal religious war; Palestinian weapons are turned against us; clashes with the Hizballah occur right on our northern border; the new hostility of Israeli Arabs, acting on the home front like a fifth column. And to top all this, Hamas, and even Saddam Hussein, have reared their heads, as if to suggest that terror—and perhaps even missile—attacks on the hearts of our cities might complete this nightmare. —Doron Rosenblum, Ha’aretz, October 8 The two factual statements that came to dominate newspaper headlines during the first two days of the Intifada—the “fact” that Arafat had initiated and planned the riots, and the “fact” that he used Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount as an “excuse”—remained at the core of the news coverage of the Intifada throughout the entire month. During the next five days, from October 4 to Yom Kippur eve on October 8, the newspapers presented their readers with a new, catastrophic explanatory frame for these freshly minted contentions: They took their readers on a dramatic, pathosridden , almost frantic tour along the roads of Israel’s traumatic history (these were, after all, the Terrible Days1 ), and brought back to life all the old national clichés, which had lost some of their attraction in the Oslo years. As the holy day of Yom Kippur was approaching, the interpretive metaphor of the War of Independence—a metaphor of fear, frustration, and helplessness—was gradually substituted by the equally traumatic metaphor of the 1973 war. Back then, on Yom Kippur itself, Israel was surprised by a joint Egyptian and Syrian attack, because of the fixation of its military intelligence on what came to be called “the conception”: the idea that the Arab countries’ awareness of their comparative weakness would prevent them from initiating an attack on Israel. Now, the papers explained, Israel was forced yet again to realize that its “conception”—the Oslo conception—had collapsed. Unlike the dramatic War of Independence metaphor, this metaphor was presented as a piece of sober reasoning: Israelis had no choice, the newspapers claimed, but to look reality in the face and understand that nothing had changed since that Yom Kippur, almost thirty years ago. “Yom Kippur 2000 and Yom Kippur 1973 are all of one piece,” wrote senior reporter and commentator Nachum Barnea on Yediot Ahronot’s front page. “The circle of Arab hostility surrounding Israel seems as tight as ever. This siege-feeling comes along with the realization that our partner is no partner, that understandings are not really understandings, and that any retreat only whets the other side’s appetite, in the territories as well as in Lebanon.” On the same day, on Ma’ariv’s front page, chief editor Ya’akov Erez published a text that is probably the best representation of the sense of catastrophe projected by the papers , perfectly defining the role the Israeli press took upon itself in the new situation: Twenty-seven years ago—counting back from tomorrow—on Yom Kippur noon, the Egyptian and Syrian armies simultaneously attacked the IDF formations in the Suez Canal and the Golan Heights. The enemy had surprised our forces, thus putting them in a difficult position and gaining the upper hand. Nevertheless, fighting ended with a victorious IDF defeating the aggressors and reconquering the land they had occupied. The sense of necessity, the understanding that we had no choice, was then a central factor of the national mood felt by the people back home as well as by soldiers on the front. We knew we had no alternative but to fight and win. In the days preceding the present Yom Kippur, the reasons that led great parts of the Israeli public to believe that there would be no more war, and that eternal peace would reign between us and our neighbors, have disappeared. Thus, the public must regain this sense of necessity, this sense of togetherness. Within this new perspective, the week’s news was framed in catastrophic , almost mythical terms, far beyond its concrete significance. On Wednesday, when Barak and Arafat met in Paris in an attempt to reach a cease-fire agreement, the...

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