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COMMENTARY
October 16, 2001
Diplomatic blind
In the background of the anthrax scares and the fighting in Afghanistan the world braced yesterday for a week of diplomacy. Anthrax is only a lethal disease wars (like politics) are all essentially local -- but diplomacy is the means by which local contagions are spread around the world. I'm not being entirely facetious: how many of the world's insuperable problems began with some attempt to find a verbal detour around some then-minor problem no one wanted to solve. The biggest recent setback for "Operation Enduring Freedom" has been Tony Blair's mouth. While a loyal and instantaneous supporter of the United States in its hour of need who spoke eloquently against not only the terror strikes but also against moral relativism and the instinct to appease Britain's prime minister remains at heart a good old-fashioned liberal optimist who thinks too quickly and too much aloud. He is also an instinctive "Clausewitzian" -- a person who sincerely believes or rather assumes that war is always an extension of diplomacy. Whereas once the war starts it is the other way around. In visits to Pakistan and the Gulf last week he did his best to win Muslim friends and influence people even appearing on Al Jazeera (the "Arab CNN") to refute the latest propaganda video from Osama bin Laden. Anxious to please he did not even take offence when the Saudi royal government told him not to bother dropping in at Riyadh. Mr. Blair found himself announcing that allied war aims were restricted to Afghanistan a statement that could not possibly be true. Over the weekend back in London he became the first Western head of government to shake Yasser Arafat's hand since the carnage of Sept. 11. He committed Britain and by implication the United States to the project of creating a Palestinian state in the war zone of the West Bank and Gaza. He was under the impression that he would get in return absolutely unambiguous declarations from Mr. Arafat condemning Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda and recognizing Israel's right to security and peace. As usual Mr. Arafat failed to deliver what he had seemed to promise. "Gullible" is perhaps another way to express the essential liberal worldview. It must be said of Mr. Blair as of so many of the rest of us that we want to believe others share in our cherubic motives and values. That we want to believe this so badly that we're willing to pay repeatedly for the same Brooklyn Bridge. And that the fallout from this kind of sunny optimism can be terrible indeed. Behind this "will to believe" is in the words of a droll voice within the Bush administration a challenge to all potential diplomatic progress. "How do we ever get the bureaucratic minds of the Western capitals to unlearn their deep conviction that Islamism will somehow be dispelled by creating an Islamist state in the suburbs of Jerusalem?" The hard fact for the foreseeable future is that the Palestinian leadership will not accept peace. Mr. Arafat equally with the more outwardly extreme agents of Hamas Hezbollah and the Islamic Jihad remains committed to a perpetual state of war. The whole power of this diverse leadership rests on the perpetuation of the "refugee camp" fate of the Palestinian people on the cultivation and management of their rage. Given a state they would continue the battle against Israel albeit from an improved tactical position and they would continue to enjoy support for this from much of the Arab world. They would continue to manufacture grievances as needed along the way. Israel would also of course continue to supply them. Only another Anwar Sadat -- an Arab leader willing to directly confront the political cost of peace -- would have a chance of creating any. Yasser Arafat is not a Sadat and is truly too old to become one. He consistently refuses for one example to recognize that the Haram al Sharif in Jerusalem -- what the Jews call the Temple Mount -- is a holy site for more than one religion. He has repeatedly stated that he will never accept that that no Palestinian nor Arab nor Muslim can accept that. But it is more than a symbolic sticking point. For on that point turns the whole Israeli claim to political legitimacy. The Jews either do or don't have the right to a presence in the Holy Land. Still more fundamentally: the Muslim authorities either will or won't recognize the claims of pluralism in this modern world. Either they will accept Israel and the West as permanent legitimate neighbours; or they will persist in the fantasy that we can be somehow eventually driven away. A permanent peace is not possible with a neighbour who questions your right to exist. Only a ceasefire is possible with such a neighbour. That is the crux of the matter and in some sense that is even what the destruction of the World Trade Centre was all about. Prime Minister Blair has waded back into the morass and President Bush is entertaining the prospect of doing so out of the need to pacify Arab governments and public opinion to get their support or at the least their neutrality while the West goes after its mortal enemies ensconced within the Islamic world. But it is a policy that has been endlessly tried and has failed as endlessly. It is necessary now to take the "Palestinian issue" right off the table to absolutely insist that the attacks on America had nothing to do with Israel or Palestine. That these and all other terrorist attacks and the Islamist ideology that defends them and feeds them are evils in themselves that must be eradicated regardless of cost. The Palestinians have been done no favours over these many years by the constant supply of fresh false hopes from the Western powers -- of which Mr. Blair has just presented yet another dollop. For their issue is with Israel not with us. Israel itself would be more than willing to recognize a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza if it could believe that this would enhance its security that true Palestinian self-determination could assure a lasting peace. The idea of "land for peace" has the support of a large majority of the Israeli electorate and has had this support for decades. What Israel can't accept is land not for peace but rather for a temporary ceasefire. In turn the Arab governments have been led astray if they think the West can somehow prevail upon Israel to sign what it considers to be a suicide note. Making promises to them of something we can never deliver is not sound diplomacy. It is instead incredibly short-sighted. We have now had more than half a century of this stalemate with no progress yet in sight. Surely eventually we cash out of this hopeless diplomatic cliche: that the Palestinian issue is the key to progress. Absent a real and unprecedented change in outlook from the Palestinian leadership the way forward must be along some other road. Meanwhile President Bush and his secretary of state Colin Powell take their more hard-headed diplomatic show on the road to Shanghai tomorrow. At a meeting of the Asia-Pacific summit they will be trying especially to gauge the emerging Chinese disposition towards the allied cause. There is reason to believe the Chinese are re-assessing their interests in the conflict. We hope that they will move decisively in the direction Vladimir Putin has been leading Russia -- towards identifying with the Western response to Islamist terror and offering their full co-operation. Hope is certainly a good thing but optimism would be reckless. We can at least count on the U.S. administration to be unspontaneous about making threats or promises. They alone seem to fully appreciate that this war is going to take a very long time. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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