- The Israeli populace's
utopian vision of "land for peace" has been completely
debunked, in two ways. First,
the manner in which Arafat refused the Barak/Clinton offer
of roughly 97% of the land Palestinians wanted; it wasn't
a "no, let's talk more" or an "almost, let's
talk again next month."
It was a "no, there's no right of return for Palestinian
refugees and no Palestinian capital of Jerusalem, therefore
we're going back to another intifada, complete with
suicide bombings." An
Israeli concession of land brought more terror upon its own
citizenry. Second,
however ill-advised it was to invade southern Lebanon in the
first place, it was a piece of land Israel took by force on
the ground, and they gave it back in a full withdrawal recognized
by even the stridently anti-Israel United Nations.
Their reward has been Hizbullah fighters firing Katyusha
rockets into Israeli territory, the only response to which
would be a full-scale war with Hizbollah's sponsor (and Lebanon's
domineering force) Syria.
Again, a concession of land led to more violence and
a more destabilizing position for Israel proper.
You can argue about the wisdom of settlements all you
want. What incentive does Israel have in dismantling
them and pulling back if the response will be hostile forces
closer to the heart of the country?
None, and Israeli public opinion, formerly buoyed by
land-for-peace agreements with Egypt, has now given up on
the concept. Fearing for the very existence of their
country, world opinion no longer matters to them. All that matters is their own opinion,
which Ariel Sharon relentlessly reinforces and acts out militarily.
- Yasser Arafat's
position is, by design, completely incompatible with anything
Israel will accept, and has been amplified to the Palestinian
people well beyond the point of no return.
Though there was no such thing as "Palestine"
before the British made it so by partition, the idea is now
so deeply ingrained in the culture-reinforced by years upon
years of Palestinian and Arab media propaganda, not to mention
what's taught in Palestinian schools, whose maps don't even
contain Israel at all-that for Arafat to agree to anything
less than the complete return of the land thought rightfully
theirs would be suicidal.
(Not that he wants it any other way.)
The carefully cultivated collective myopia has created
a culture that stands morality on its head and spits at itself:
The killing of Jewish grandmothers and children at a marketplace
is justified because we don't live where we used to live,
and someone else lives there now, and those people happen
to be the root of all possible evil in the universe. And so while Israel is called to the carpet
as "war criminals" for sending their military into
the Jenin refugee camp and fighting it out street by street
with the hardest of the hardened radical elements (instead
of, say, a carpet bombing, which would have saved 23 Israeli
soldiers' lives), the Palestinian Authority unapologetically
funds the efforts of suicide bombers that intentionally target
civilians-because, of course, any tactic is OK in the
battle against an "occupying" force, and especially
against the hated Sharon.
(Who, by the way, didn't appear out of thin air; Arafat's
response of terror after the blown Camp David proposals is
what got him elected.) Finally,
there is Arafat's political power to protect. Remember, earlier this year, Hamas and
Islamic Jihad were becoming more popular among Palestinians
than Arafat because of their willingness to use suicide bombers,
and there was a rivalry brewing for the Arab street's loyalty. Arafat's response? To
create a suicide bomber division of his own-The Al-Aqsa Martyr's
Brigade-and to recruit women to do the job because Hamas wouldn't
allow it under Islamic law.
All of which was designed to provoke exactly the kind
of brutal military response they eventually got, so that the
Palestinians could again claim victimhood to the world, with
Arafat as victim-in-chief. And they thank him for this! Only a society over the edge-led and brainwashed by a man
not interested in any kind of compromise-based peace-could
see this as a defensible strategy.
One wonders what, if not this massive strike by Sharon,
it would take for the Palestinian people to consider the fact
that their own leaders may not be serving their best interests.
But if that really mattered to the Palestinians, they
wouldn't have been suicide bombing Israel in the first place. All that matters to them is the level of their own provoked
misery on display for the world, which Yasser Arafat provides
by any means necessary.
So,
the end result is that both sides feel their very identity is
at stake, both sides feel they have nothing left to lose, both
sides consider the other murderers, and both sides have leaders
with popularity ratings of well over 70%.
Both sides have made tactical mistakes, but they're irrelevant
because the strategies don't allow for compromise.
This is the stuff that wars are made of.
* * * * *
And
now I'll take sides. I
firmly believe that Israel should be allowed to do what is necessary
to keep their nation on the face of the earth.
No other country in the world has been given restrictions-and
even adhered to them in the past!-on what it can and cannot
do when enemies less than ten miles away are attacking it on
a daily basis. Europe's
reaction is pathetic and infuriating, but not altogether surprising,
especially considering their dismal history in the area of anti-Semitism. And the U.N., with its demand for immediate
Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank regardless of the terrorist
consequences that would certainly be visited upon them if they
don't finish the job, is equally offensive.
Countries don't commit suicide because the U.N. tells
them they have to. (Unless you're modern-day Palestine, in which
you commit suicide because Yasser Arafat tells you to do so.)
Yes,
what's happened to the Palestinian people is truly, truly terrible. What everyone seems to forget is that it is
the leadership of Yasser Arafat that has made a bad situation
far worse than it ever had to be-at least for everyone except
himself. You have to understand that this is what he has always wanted. He holds candlelight interviews with the Western
press, the classic guerrilla warrior, fully in his element. He is more popular than ever. The Arab street holds demonstrations in which
he is lionized. The
moderate, U.S.-friendly Arab governments-Egypt and Jordan-are
facing instability the likes of which they haven't seen in decades.
The Palestinian Authority has formed a loose coalition
with Hizbullah and the Islamic Jihad, all of which are backed
by Iran and Syria. The Arab governments won't talk to anyone-not
even Colin Powell-about making a deal unless he is talked to
first. The Arab governments are afraid not to back
him. He has been
waiting for this moment all his life.
Which is exactly why he won't settle for anything less
than total victory.
In
essence, even since his return to the West Bank, he has dictated
the events on the ground, up to and including the Israeli response. Now, he is provoking a full-scale, region-wide, all-the-marbles
war. You can accuse
him of a lot of things, but being ineffective isn't one of them.
* * * * *
I believe the Powell mission is doomed to fail, and
that his very presence there is actually making things worse
rather than better. I believe Israel has no other option than to continue occupying
the West Bank to some degree, a position that will continue
to provoke attacks that will then provoke them to further military
action. I believe that, eventually, a northern border
skirmish will lead to war between Israel and Lebanon/Syria,
followed by Israel and Iran, and ultimately Israel and Iraq,
all funded by Saudi Arabia.
Like World War II, only a total military victory will
end this conflict, a tragic witches' brew of colliding history
and incompatible, ancient cultural and political objectives. The loser will have to be annihilated-or face
a Hiroshima-like vision of their eventual annihilation-in order
to stop fighting.
The
only question left to resolve is thus: what will the U.S. do
when it can no longer delay the inevitable?
Will it stand by its culturally similar and democratic
ally in an effort to accomplish a shared objective-the elimination
of terrorism as an option for those who wish to use it-or will
it continue to try and preserve a so-called "Arab coalition"
so it can one day wage an Arab-government-supported war against
an isolated Iraq without sending the entire region into chaos? If the last sentence seems silly in its simplicity,
well.it is. To everyone
but the U.S. State Department, I suppose.
I
know I'm lining up with some strange bedfellows here. In my eyes, the only Amercian political opinion that has this thing
right is.the right. The
far right, even. We're
talking Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Charles Krauthammer, George
Will. I admit that I, like many a secular American Jew, was a land-for-peace
proponent in the 1990's. I've
since learned my lesson. The
fact that America is still talking with a man like Arafat in
light of 9/11 either betrays a naiveté so profound that even
the most dim estimations of George W. Bush would be proven insufficient,
or a cynicism so transparent it shames the very phrase "moral
clarity" out of existence.
The
reflexive yearning of the Western world for a "peace process"
has now come dangerously close to legitimizing terrorism as
a usable means of gaining political objective.
(Forget about Arafat's most recent statement; look at
the past eighteen months.) How long it will take Europe-and the United
States-to taste the bitter fruit of that harvest? If they're lucky, Israel will do the hard work for them despite
their protestations. If
not, you can bet that U.S. interests will eventually be targeted
by a network far more widely supported than Al Qaeda.
It's
very simple. The radical
Islamic world-with Arafat as their relentless, tiger-by-the-tail
proxy leader-despises us for many reasons, but most of all because
we support Israel. The degree to which we do so is inconsequential
to them. But it is gravely
important to us.
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