In War of Images, a Taxing ‘Victory’ : Israel: Its treatment of the Beit Sahur protestors not only raises indignation. It suggests a losing strategy in the occupied territories.

The tax revolt in Beit Sahur is now officially over.

For many months, merchants in the small town just east of Bethlehem have refused to pay income or value-added tax to the Civil Administration, the official name of Israel’s military government in the West Bank. Since Sept. 21, Israel has responded by imposing daytime restrictions and a night curfew on the town, arresting tax resisters and confiscating property. Since some taxes have now been paid and enough property has been attached at least to cover outstanding arrears, the Israeli authorities have declared victory and gone home.

In the larger scheme of things, Beit Sahur should not be a particularly newsworthy story. Tax resistance on the West Bank is not a new phenomenon. Nor does the action mean much to the character of the Palestinian uprising.

Other nonviolent aspects, such as strikes and boycotts of Israeli products, are far more widespread and prolonged. Nevertheless, the Beit Sahur tax revolt has been subjected to some of the most intense media exposure since the outbreak of the intifada in December, 1987.

Part of the explanation is that this mostly middle-class Christian town is only a few minutes away from Jerusalem, where many foreign journalists, consuls and church officials are permanently stationed. The main reason is that the tax resisters of Beit Sahur have pushed precisely the right buttons to arouse Western, and especially American sympathy. By unfurling the slogan “No taxation without representation,” they have made their struggle into a cause with which no patriotic American can fail to identify. This is not just happy coincidence; Palestinians are as attuned as anyone else to public relations. If Beit Sahur were on the coast, the tea would already be in the harbor.

“No taxation without representation” is an ambiguous slogan, and it would be interesting to ask whether the Palestinians who raise it are calling for the end of taxation or the beginning of representation. But in the present context, the question would be pointless. The tax revolt is not a civic protest against the denial of the elementary right of representation in decisions about the raising and spending of public revenues.

If that is what Beit Sahur and the rest of the West Bank and Gaza wanted, they could have had it many years ago; local elections and autonomy have been officially on offer at least since the Camp David agreement of 1978.

Instead, the tax revolt is part of the struggle for control of the territories and its political objectives are the end of Israeli occupation and the creation of an independent Palestinian state. It is difficult to blame the people of Beit Sahur for acting as they have. Most of them undoubtedly share these objectives, as would most other people in similar situations. But while the tax revolt is clearly not terrorism, neither is it the purely spontaneous voluntary demonstration described in many media accounts. Individuals inclined to settle their tax bills were threatened by local “shock forces,” especially those of George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

When a group of about 50 merchants and municipal leaders met in the last week of October to discuss the possibility of a compromise with the Civil Administration, two PFLP activists burst into the room and threatened to kill anyone who paid taxes or approved any full or partial settlement of the strike. On the way out, they smashed the windshield of the mayor’s car. Through such means, the sporadic withholding of taxes common elsewhere in the West Bank was turned into an organized, general tax strike in Beit Sahur.

In the end, however, appearances matter far more than reality. Israel was unable to isolate the enforcers of the strike or to oblige individual tax resisters to pay up through normal collection practices, and it was unwilling to lose the political struggle for control.

As a result, it resorted to a variety of methods. Most attention has been focused on the collective punishments that have alienated the population of what had previously been a fairly quiet town and aroused the indignation of observers everywhere else.

Israel is fighting a battle for control and a war of images. The outcome of Beit Sahur suggests that Israel is winning the battle and losing the war, and it will probably go on losing that war until the occupation is succeeded by a political settlement.

Even then, the Palestinians will be very lucky if they get democratic representation along with their taxation. But at least the redcoats won’t speak Hebrew.