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4 “The Limits of Restraint” A difficult period awaits us in the coming days and weeks. Confrontation will escalate. The Palestinians will attempt to inflict injuries on Jews and provoke Israeli atrocities and massacres . Israel, on the other hand, will have to muster IDF sophistication and restraint to prevent them from achieving their goals. —Ron Ben-Ishai, Yediot Ahronot, October 10 On Saturday evening, October 7, Prime Minister Ehud Barak held a news conference and presented Arafat with a forty-eight-hour ultimatum: I call on the Palestinians to stop violence immediately, and to consider accepting Clinton’s invitation for continued talks. Israel will not conduct negotiations as long as the violence continues. Until now I have called for restraint—the IDF does not act, but only responds. But if we do not see a change in the coming two days, we shall consider Arafat responsible for the end of negotiations, and will instruct the IDF and the security forces to use all the means at their disposal to stop violence. As we have seen in the preceding chapter, Barak’s ultimatum captured the Sunday papers’ main headlines. The main front page headline in Ha’aretz is: BARAK’S ULTIMATUM TO ARAFAT: CEASE FIRE BY TOMORROW OR NEGOTIATIONS ARE OFF. Under another front page headline—ISRAEL PLANNING A SERIES OF SANCTIONS—the newspaper writes: The defense establishment has prepared a “package” of punitive measures against the PA, in case it does not accept the ultimatum set by Israel to stop violence within forty-eight hours. These are the sanctions that have been prepared for the eventuality of a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state, but it now appears that some of the steps will be taken sooner. According to the article, the plans included, among other steps, a freeze on the transfer of payments to the PA, complete and prolonged clo- sure of the territories, stopping the entrance of Palestinian workers to Israel , capturing key positions close to Palestinian villages, and a wider deployment of heavy military equipment. The main front page headline in Ma’ariv reads: BARAK IN ULTIMATUM TO ARAFAT: YOU HAVE 48 HOURS. On page 5, a huge headline reads: ULTIMATUM . Above the headline is a picture of one of the tanks stationed the previous night in Gilo, the neighborhood/settlement at the south of Jerusalem, which had been disturbed by continuous shooting from the nearby Palestinian town of Beit Jallah. Next to the picture is a smaller headline: JERUSALEM: TANKS IN HA’ANAFA STREET IN GILO. The opening paragraph of the article, under the huge headline, reads: Yesterday, Prime Minister Ehud Barak issued an unequivocal ultimatum to Yasser Arafat: If you do not stop the violence in forty-eight hours, I will instruct the IDF to use all the means at its disposal to do your job for you. A diplomatic source said yesterday that the prime minister’s statement constitutes a declaration of war, because Barak has come to terms with the fact that there is no real partner for peace on the Palestinian side. Finally, Yediot Ahronot publishes the following overline above the main front page headline: WARNING TO PALESTINIANS: STOP FIGHTING WITHIN TWO DAYS AND RETURN TO NEGOTIATIONS. The huge headline on page five reads: DECISIVE 48 HOURS. Under the headline is a picture of a thoughtful and concerned Barak at the news conference. The caption says: BARAK YESTERDAY AT NEWS CONFERENCE: “WE ARE FEW, BUT WE HAVE STRENGTH AND COURAGE.” Barak’s dramatic ultimatum to Arafat—based, of course, on the assumption that the chairman of the PA was in complete control of events in the field—raises a series of questions concerning the newspapers’ coverage of the prime minister’s general political and diplomatic strategy, and of the deployment of the IDF in the territories throughout the Intifada. The coverage of the diplomatic angle is discussed in chapter 7. The current chapter focuses on the military and operational aspects of Barak’s ultimatum, and on the key terms he used to describe the deployment of the IDF in the first week of violence, namely, “restraint” and “response.” As we shall see, these two terms dominated the coverage of events by the two so-called “popular” newspapers, and to a very significant degree by Ha’aretz as well. During the entire period under investigation, the newspapers systematically suppressed factual data showing that the restraint slogan did not correspond to the IDF actual operations; and they provided partial and censored information on the...

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