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COMMENTARY
June 14, 2003
Hunting season
"Roadmap to peace" is one of those sayings like "the cycle of violence" so fatuous that it blocks thought entirely let alone clear thought. Such expressions deny the very reality they pretend to describe. If a clich? is to be insisted upon I would choose "fight to the death" to describe the present tussle between Israel and Palestinian terrorism. Both cannot survive. The clich? would also describe the current U.S. tussle with the survivors of Iraq's Baath regime and the Syrian and other terrorists who have leached into Iraq to join them. Or the tussle between the U.S.-protected Karzai regime in Afghanistan and the remnants of Al Qaeda Taliban Hezb-e-Islami and other "deadenders". These fights may not be very equal -- for in Iraq and Afghanistan U.S. power is locally overwhelming and the U.S. heartland is far away. But they have the same absolute quality as Israel's much more hand-to-hand struggle. In each case there is no prospect whatever for a negotiated peace -- zilch sunja sifr zepharino. In the case of the West Bank and Gaza there is also no hope for the creation of a Palestinian state until the terrorists are annihilated -- ditto. This hard and irreducible fact is being side-stepped by the use of fatuous language. To Palestinians who want to have a state and keep their terror militias the kindest thing that can be said is: "Choose one." For their alternative is to choose zero. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government seems to have reached the conclusion it had to reach eventually. It spent a considerable portion of last year destroying the bomb-making and other facilities of the Fatah-associated militias of the West Bank but left the worse problem of Hamas-controlled Gaza largely alone. Now it has decided to "do Gaza". Yes the current Israeli offensive includes targeted assassinations of the entire Hamas leadership. This is unpopular even among many Israelis: those conditioned by the Pavlovian recitation of the phrase "cycle of violence". To them and to their like in the rest of the world there is a reciprocal relationship such that the bombing of a bus in Jerusalem by Hamas on Wednesday is automatically paired with Israel's attempt to assassinate Abdel Aziz Rantisi on Tuesday. But in reality as opposed to Pavlovian mantra this is nonsense. As Hamas itself declared the bus attack was planned well before the Israeli helicopters were dispatched against Rantisi and the proximity in time was in their own word fortuitous . This did not however stop the Western media from claiming on behalf of Hamas even more than Hamas was claiming. Hamas is not dedicated to killing every Jew it can in response to Israeli attacks on the Hamas leadership. Hamas is dedicated to killing every Jew it can period. The targeted assassinations seem to be part of a larger mission of annihilation against Hamas. Western readers unacquainted with the Arab culture too easily confuse rhetorical with physical responses. For sure the Hamas rhetoric increased considerably in volume and broadened in imagery after the missiles slammed down around Rantisi's car. And Israel's semi-public announcement yesterday that the Hamas "spiritual" leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin is on the new list of targets will crank the rhetoric higher still. But this will not be the first time in modern Arab history that an antagonist makes wild threats while actually scuttling under the nearest rock. (Remember Saddam?) Everything else you've read in the papers is wrong. Israel has hardly undermined the effort of Mahmoud Abbas to rein in the terror masters since the Palestinian premier has publicly announced he has no such intention. He only asked for a "hudna" (temporary ceasefire) from Hamas and Hamas responded by spitting in his face. Mr. Sharon is thus doing Mr. Abbas a favour which the exigencies of Palestinian politics prevent Mr. Abbas from acknowledging. The Israelis are removing on his behalf a domestic political competitor that he could not possibly remove himself. Mr. Sharon may even be increasing Mr. Abbas's life expectancy by means of this favour. Nor is Israel creating an impediment to negotiations with the Palestinian Authority but rather removing a major impediment -- the organization that has vowed to sabotage them. The Sharon government is meanwhile proceeding with the dismantling of the first 14 "illegal" Jewish settlements as per "roadmap" agreements. Far from choosing military over diplomatic tactics Israel continues to use both and in complementary ways. Israel is not even increasing the prospect of terror hits against Israel beyond the very short term. For if the IDF can succeed in damaging Hamas or even driving it entirely underground the organization's prospects for mounting terror raids will be reduced. And as we saw last year in the West Bank one of the best methods of reducing terrorism is to put the terrorists on the defensive. This is also the lesson of the American international campaign against Al Qaeda -- the more you kill the fewer there are left to kill you and the more the survivors are ducking for cover. This is what the "war on terror" is about: war on terror. Every punch pulled prolongs it. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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