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COMMENTARY
May 7, 2003
Road map to hell
I wrote last week on the eve of the release of the latest "road map" to peace in Israel/Palestine. I expressed hope qualified by heavy scepticism that in the circumstances after the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq something previously impossible might now be achieved. I said the U.S. even if acting nimbly and alone and with a serious road map that acknowledges all the real obstacles won't finally get anywhere without putting troops on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza and accepting that they will be shot at and suicide-bombed. That they will not prevail unless they are willing to apply so much pressure to Syria that the Assad regime will actually destroy Hizbullah and evacuate Lebanon. The scepticism remains after seeing the road map; only the hope is gone. It is a rehash of all those "confidence-building measures" that made the Oslo process such a farce. Like the preceding failures it simply avoids the most difficult issues leaving them to the end. It imposes a meaningless timetable to be somehow reached with rewards for good behaviour but no penalties for bad. And the least funny part of this bad joke is the fact that the U.S. will continue to co-ordinate its position with that of the other members of the "Quartet" -- Russia the European Union and the United Nations. These parties have different interests and neither Russia nor the U.N. has any existential interest in a lasting regional peace. Russia has oil to sell whose price would collapse after an Israeli-Palestinian breakthrough; it has influence to peddle that would be lost by the same. The U.N. must within itself co-ordinate both pro- and anti-terrorist factions. We were all reminded of this latter last year when Terje Larsen the U.N.'s Middle East coordinator stood before the cameras at Jenin and insinuated there was evidence of an Israeli massacre when he was in a position to know better. It was a cynical manoeuvre to deflect the Security Council from a debate on actual Palestinian massacres (130 Israeli civilians had died in the previous month's suicide bombings). He and so many like him should never be trusted again. And the Europeans have been bankrolling Palestinian terror through few-questions-asked aid programmes: possibly not as conscious policy but with a refusal to investigate end uses of funds that goes beyond the merely na?ve. All three of these "peace partners" have recently demonstrated the political advantages to themselves of abetting anti-Americanism; none is trusted by Israel. Mahmoud Abbas a.k.a. Abu Mazen the new Palestinian prime minister and thus the new fresh face of the Palestinian Authority seems to enjoy the confidence of American and Israeli colleagues in this "peace process". Unfortunately this means he is derided on his own side as a kind of Uncle Tom and has to compensate for this. I do not know Arabic but know people who do and was interested to learn that in his major speech last week Mr. Abbas was playing exactly the same old winking rhetorical games as Arafat. He says things that fall quite differently on English and Arabic ears. In English he seems to be saying we will fight terrorism forever in Arabic the implication is we will fight Israel forever . In English we are dealing with the realities in Arabic we are winning this war . His condemnation of the terror hit in Tel Aviv which preceded the installation of his government by a few hours was in Arafat's manner. He condemned "all forms of terrorism" -- which every Palestinian would understand to mean terror strikes and Israeli retaliations equally. To be fair to Mr. Abbas he has held for some time in the intra-Arab debate not that the militarization of the Intifada is immoral but that it is a strategic mistake. It engages Israel's strengths instead of Israel's weaknesses. He holds that the Palestinians can win more concessions by embarrassing the Israelis and allowing international diplomatic pressure to do what pipe bombs and explosive vests will never achieve. As a further mark of his sincerity he has decried the Palestinian habit of gloating over the success of terror raids; arguing that if one is going to do something that so begs for massive Israeli retaliation one should at least have the intelligence not to confess. Why make it easy for the Israelis to discover whom to settle the score with? This in principle is the kind of man the Israelis and others "can do business with" -- not someone who will sell-out the Palestinian interests but who grasps the fundamental realities. The purpose of any agreement as the Israelis can understand is to produce a "win-win" -- in which each side gets less than it wanted but more than it ever expected. Mr. Abbas played an important role in the Oslo accords. He believes in the efficacy of diplomacy and he has diplomatic skill. From this I deduce that he is potentially a more effective opponent for Israel's Sharon government than Arafat would be (the expression "peace partner" ought really to be scrubbed from the diplomatic vocabulary as all failed euphemisms). But only if he can genuinely control the Palestinian militias and deliver on his word. Arafat's strength was also his weakness: that he could neither tell the truth nor negotiate in good faith; he was and remains the Palestinian Saddam; but unlike Saddam he is still in business. The question is do the Palestinians themselves sense it is the end of the road for the "Saddam/Arafat strategy" and will they thus unify behind Mr. Abbas's seeming rejection of it? Certainly not if Mr. Abbas feels compelled to use Arafat's rhetorical tricks and if every attempt he makes to disarm Palestinian terrorists is greeted as the act of an Uncle Tom. Arafat retains prestige and thus control over these various militias and is thus in a position to subvert Mr. Abbas's alternative strategy every step of the way. Which brings us to the crux of the issue. The possibility of "democratizing" Iraq exists only because the main alternative to it has been destroyed. So long as the U.S. keeps its nerve and commitment progress may be possible. (I wrote may .) Ditto in Afghanistan though Iraq has the advantage of a much more sophisticated and literate population with some idea what a "civil society" might be even after decades of Ba'athist tyranny. The Palestinians were also like the Iraqis at the forefront of modernity within the Arab world. I do not doubt a majority of them today would be satisfied with an independent state with transparent institutions on most of the West Bank and Gaza. My impression is that such a "silent majority" exists beyond the reach of anything like polling -- of people who though intimidated would dearly love to spend the rest of their lives in peace without the "glory" making money and watching their children grow safely to adulthood. But the minority that have bought into Yasser Arafat's dream of repossessing Israel -- the dream that is printed in every Palestinian geography schoolbook (funded by the EU) where the word "Palestine" is printed even over Tel Aviv -- are numerous enough to prevent a peaceful way forward. These are people who understand conquest and defeat but not give and take. And most of them are themselves the product of Arafat's creation of an extraordinary terror network throughout the West Bank and Gaza in multiple layers gradually eliding from the formal civil front of the PA through its ever-murkier Fatah militias to the sharp extreme edges of Hizbullah Hamas Islami Jihad and Al Qaeda. One cannot negotiate with people who understand only conquest or defeat. One must defeat them entirely and then impose terms. This is the lesson of the Taliban and Ba'athists and will eventually be the lesson of Al-Fatah. Peace isn't possible until they are defeated until the whole project of Palestinian irredentism is smashed and seen to be smashed. A road map that even tries to save the face of Arafatism is I am convinced bound to fail no matter how determined President Bush and others may be to make it work. I wish it weren't so; I can hope to be wrong. But I do not see a way forward on the road map selected that does not lead through yet another Arab-Israeli war. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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