NEWSPAPER COLUMNS
 ¶ Most Recent
¶ Miscellany
|
COMMENTARY
May 8, 2002
Whirligig
In the four weeks since I last impinged on this newspaper's supply of printer's ink a Battle of the West Bank has been brought to a conclusion. The Israelis won; but it's not yet the war. Another such battle is about to begin one which may be conducted on a larger scale. If the Israelis now go into Gaza where Tuesday night's Hamas bomber came from their incursion into the refugee camp at Jenin in the West Bank last month may come to seem a minor matter. The refugee camps at Jabalya Nuseirat Khan Younis are all many times the size and population of Jenin's little terrorist ghetto. The one at Rafah is not only large but by its proximity to the Egyptian border promises international complications. If the Israelis again try to avoid civilian casualties by going into the Gaza camps on foot the casualties on both sides will be proportionately higher. If they decide to reduce their own casualties by attacking with helicopters and fighter planes the "collateral damage" will be sickening. But given the international response to Jenin they may be thinking As well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. Likewise according to sources within the Israeli government Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is now reviewing specific contingencies for "putting Arafat on a plane" regardless of world reaction. (But who wouldn't send him right back? Not one Arab country would agree to take him and if they sent him to Kerguelen Island he would soon have the penguins strapping explosives on themselves.) International opinion is anyway irrelevant when a people are fighting for their lives. This is often claimed on behalf of that two per cent of the world's Arabs who consider themselves to be Palestinian; it pertains with still more force to the 40 per cent of the world's Jews who consider themselves to be Israelis. Some 90 per cent of these latter are now persuaded that the Arabs want them all dead and they don't intend to go quietly this time around. Hence the overwhelming popularity within Israel of the prime minister's "Operation Defensive Wall" and the demand now that it be resumed and expanded. For the moment it appears Mr. Sharon is inclined to go easy and continue harvesting his first diplomatic gains in some time. In particular he does not want to jeopardize the shift the U.S. administration is making towards "neutralizing" Yasser Arafat. But he must resist pressure within Israel itself for a bigger response; and if there are further terrorist strikes the gates of hell will certainly reopen. Until the bomb went off in the pool hall at Rishon Letzion Tuesday night the Israeli prime minister could almost be forgiven for treating his visit to Washington as a victory lap though being Ariel Sharon he isn't forgiven for anything. The Israelis are doing what they have to do: increasing the cost of the Palestinian suicide bombing campaign until it is higher than any possible benefits to Yasser Arafat. The latter's stock among his own people and his affiliated terrorist organizations rose while he remained under detention in the parts of his Ramallah compound the Israel Defence Force hadn't pulverized. It began to drop when he was released. Even before Tuesday night the Israelis understood that the chief danger in the present situation is inherent in the psychology of Mr. Arafat. He is the proverbial rat in a trap. He has no more interest in a successful peace process than a Mafia don has in free trade -- has never in his life had such an interest -- and he is trying to break out. On Tuesday Israeli security forces had redoubled their vigil in Bethlehem having been warned by intelligence of the possibility of a sudden explosion of violence inside the Church of the Nativity to coincide with Mr. Sharon's trip to Washington. They were likewise standing by to rescue the U.S. & British gaolers in Jericho in case an attempt was made to free the Palestinian prisoners there. And it was known from intelligence that Mr. Arafat was counting on a bus or market bomb within the Israeli Green Line as a gesture of defiance to recover his lost face. They had told the Americans to watch for this. Mr. Arafat's failure upon release to return immediately to Gaza and show the flag there had two causes. First he fears rightly that Mr. Sharon wants him boxed into Gaza a territory so small the Israelis can seal it effectively. Second it is beginning to appear that Hamas and other terrorist organizations not under Mr. Arafat's direct control have taken over in Gaza. And his life is now more in danger from them than from the Israelis. He remains the loose cannon on deck the wild card in any deck. But there are at least small signs of hope emerging directly from the success of Operation Defensive Wall. The long term accomplishment of this operation I believe is that a new generation of young Palestinians are learning at first hand what the Israelis can do when they are seriously threatened. They are now in a very constructive state of shock. It was many years since the Israelis last asserted themselves on the scale of Operation Defensive Wall. Only the older generation knew; and with birth rates what they are in the West Bank and Gaza that meant only a minority could remember the reasons for caution. In the old days Israel could be counted on to retaliate on something like ten times the scale against any Arab incursion. The strategy worked in the sense that it brought security; the recent sharp drop in suicide bombings indicates that it is now beginning to work again. It may not win friends in Europe let alone the Arab world but it does guarantee Israel's survival. In the West Bank itself no one is saying very much aloud but everyone is looking around and I should think assimilating the shock. Mr. Arafat can begin to count his costs from the inside of his operation but from the outside it is quite apparent that in addition to property damage the Palestinian Authority has lost a considerable chunk of its corrupt and violent security executive and had to beg for the release of Mr. Arafat himself. With his chief financial officer as well as the accused murderers of an Israeli tourism minister under guard by Americans and Britons in Jericho and the leading terrorists holed up in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity now awaiting exile (at the time of writing no one can be found who is dumb enough to take them though Javier Solana has been volunteering Spain) Mr. Arafat began to lose face. And losing face in the Middle East as Mr. Arafat himself knows instinctively means losing power. He is unlikely now to attend a planned weekend meeting in the Sinai resort of Sharm el Sheik to chat with Hosni Mubarak of Egypt Bashar Assad of Syria and Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. All have acquired personal interests in reining him in though not publicly if it can be avoided. But apart from not wanting to hear what they would say Mr. Arafat must now calculate that once he travels abroad the Israelis will not let him back in. Whether or not it is entirely sincere the Saudi peace proposal is public and it is in the interests of the Bush administration and ultimately of Israel to keep it alive. The sincerity of this offer to fully recognize Israel can be judged by a juxtaposition of remarks made by prominent Saudis in Washington who have been following in Mr. Sharon's footsteps trying to limit the diplomatic damage he is doing them. Prince Bandar bin Sultan their very slick ambassador who is a master of colloquial American complained When will Prime Minister Ariel Sharon take 'yes' for an answer? But asked by the press whether the Saudis were now speaking to Israeli officials the foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal replied first in Arabic and then translated: "That's no nyet and nein." How sincere are offers to negotiate from people who refuse even to speak with you? We will know they are sincere when that Rubicon is crossed -- the way Anwar Sadat of Egypt crossed it when he flew to Jerusalem to address the Knesset on Nov. 20 1977. A much more sincere Arab peace effort by King Abdullah II is currently being set before Washington's policy elites with little publicity. The Jordanian king is perhaps the only Arab leader who even in private fully appreciates Israel's security requirements. He is the only one whose own security forces are determined to prevent arms shipments to the West Bank -- indeed he has been willing to sacrifice diplomatic relations with Syria by intercepting arms shipments through Jordan from there. His own and his father's experience with the Palestinian leadership make him even more distrusting of them than their other "allies" throughout the Arab world. King Abdullah is telling the Bush administration privately to forget about the "Mitchell" and "Tenet" plans for a schedule of "confidence-building measures". He is saying that it is time to admit that the "Oslo process" is dead. He is signalling the Israelis to hurry up and build their "wall of separation" from the Palestinian territories -- that since this is inevitable they must get it over with. He wants something like the same sort of wall to protect Jordan on the other side. He thinks in defiance of diplomatic cliches that the only sort of peace talks that can make any sense will be the "final status" ones. And as the Bush administration is beginning to agree these must simply wait until both sides are persuaded that the times are propitious. In other words regardless of appearances no grand peace plan is presently on the table nor can be on the table so long as suicide bombings persist. As I have written previously such a plan can only emerge after not before the regime changes the U.S. contemplates in Iraq and elsewhere; and when the promise of results from militant Islamism are exposed as illusory through massive defeat. In the meanwhile all parties must get by day to day. In Washington Mr. Sharon and Mr. Bush were politely disagreeing about the role for Mr. Arafat in future negotiations. Their distaste for him is shared and was emphasized by the national security adviser Condoleezza Rice who said over the weekend: "This is not the kind of leadership that can bring about the kind of Palestinian state that we need." The suicide bombing at Rishon Letzion may have helped clinch the growing tendency within the Bush administration to give up on Mr. Arafat entirely. According to my information even the U.S. State Department is considering a proposal wherein Mr. Arafat is given merely symbolic status and negotiations proceed with other Palestinian leaders. It is a naive typically diplomatic idea: Mr. Arafat will never voluntarily stand aside. To take King Abdullah's logic one step further to where he would never dare take it himself the getting rid of Yasser Arafat is a bullet that eventually everyone must bite. But while he lives and rules he remains the only leader recognized by the Palestinians locally or the Arabs at large and so according to the still-current American policy he can't be ignored. (Defenders of this policy like to cite Israel's late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin who used to say You don't make peace with your friends, you make peace with your enemies. ) Mr. Sharon's views as expressed in Washington were not entirely candid. When the year began he was under domestic political pressure chiefly from the Labour party and to his left. This has been neutralized by events. His chief domestic political threat now is from his right where members of his own Likud coalition could vote on the weekend to disown the Israeli commitment to the eventual creation of a Palestinian state. Mr. Sharon actually needed Mr. Bush to twist his arm for domestic Israeli consumption. He must be seen to be pushed into any kind of negotiations. He was not so naive as to expect that the captured documents his staff have been releasing showing both Mr. Arafat's direct complicity in specific terror attacks and Saudi financial support for the terrorist infrastructure will move the Bush administration from any of its present stances. They know all that already. He was instead piling up political capital for the future and strengthening the hands of his four chief allies within the power structure of the U.S. government: the Pentagon the Congress the Republican right and the electorate. He will remain flexible. In particular he reserves all military options to respond to all future terrorist strikes. But for the moment it appears that Operation Defensive Wall at least began to make its point to "young Palestine": that suicide bombings were a really stupid idea. The next stage is to convince them that dealing constructively with an elected Israeli government would be a whole lot smarter. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
|
Top