No Exit

For all his destructiveness, Ariel Sharon has been losing his war but Yasser Arafat is not winning his either. The increasingly aggressive rhetoric of both men—notwithstanding Arafat's intermittent condemnations of violence— suggests that they must be aware of this. From his first day in office, Sharon's strategy has been to scuttle the Oslo agreement and confine Palestinian autonomy to a few isolated enclaves—surrounded by armed Israeli encampments—on about 50 (some say 30) percent of the occupied West Bank, or perhaps only in the Gaza Strip. Both sides have explicitly withdrawn the possible concessions they discussed at Taba in Egypt in January 2001 on borders, refugees, and Jerusalem; such concessions had in any case been strictly "informal" and subject to further approval, which became impossible after Sharon took office.

Arafat insists once again that Israel must withdraw to the 1967 lines and recognize the refugees' right of return. In February and March his endgame seemed even more ambitious. He may have seriously believed that Israeli morale and national unity could be broken by a combination of terror and international pressure. Watching Israeli television in March, I heard Arafat calling in Arabic for "a thousand shahids, a thousand shahids [martyrs]"—the Arabic word for suicide bombers. He and Sharon continue to exclude each other as legitimate interlocutors. The past eighteen months have shown that despite Israel's overwhelming military superiority, neither side has been able to dictate the terms of a final settlement or even a temporary arrangement during which further negotiations could take place.

For the first time since 1967, the suicide bombers have established something close to a balance of terror between the two sides. It is not a steady balance of terror maintained by two stable, responsible, and cautious powers. The growing number of shahids suggests that the Palestinian war of independence is being, so to speak, "privatized." The result is a morbid derangement of power that promises only more bloodshed and horror. Israel is no longer facing two or three terroristic organizations which can be fought and perhaps subdued. This is a new, diffuse enemy, a widespread mood among Palestinians that is harder to combat, perhaps nearly an entire people aroused, enraged, and embittered as never before.
[read more]

----------

Before There Was Terrorism

This difference in perceptions of the essential morality-the "worthiness"-of those on each side is and has always been fundamental to how policy is made in this country. Marc Ellis, a Jewish-American political scholar and professor at Baylor University, recently put it this way: speaking of progressives in Israel and in the American Jewish community who always used to be open to the Palestinian perspective but distanced themselves from the Palestinians after the peace process collapsed, he says that the underlying assumption of virtually all of these progressives, when push comes to shove, is that Palestinians are not quite equal to Israelis. "Any political empowerment of Palestinians must be limited and monitored by Israel," he said- because, ultimately, "Palestinian history and destiny are secondary to Jewish history and destiny."

This has always been, and remains, the fundamental assumption, and the fundamental inequity, of all U.S. administrations and of all U.S. peacemaking efforts. And ultimately, these perceptions and the misguided policy that has resulted from them have caused the perpetuation of the conflict-the decades-long perpetuation of a conflict that could have been resolved years ago.
[read more]

thanks to Cursor