alan what you don't or won't understand Mar. 11, 2003The Region:...

alan what you don't or won't understand Mar. 11, 2003
The Region: What the West just doesn't get,
By Barry Rubin


Last November 23, during Israel's election campaign and just after a major terrorist attack, a New York Times editorial called the bombing "another horrifying assault on civilians" and explained it in these terms:

"The terror strategy is obvious. It aims to drive frightened voters to the extreme wing of the Likud party and then wait for new Israeli reprisals in Gaza and the West Bank that will radicalize more Palestinians."

One might be led to conclude that terrorism is bad because it makes people vote for Likud. But is there any evidence that this is what Yasser Arafat, Fatah, Hamas, and the Islamic Jihad wanted?

Indeed, both private and public remarks indicated that the first two wanted Israelis to vote for Labor hoping they would be frightened into concessions while the latter two groups believe there is no difference among Israeli politicians, since all are equally evil.

The New York Times believed that if terrorism stopped, Mitzna would win: "Palestinian terrorists do not want to see the kind of political debate in Israel that could reopen the door to a compromise peace agreement. Were it not for new attacks like the bus bombing, the coming election could encourage just such a constructive debate."

This is silly. If the fighting ended, Sharon could claim credit for defeating the Palestinian war on Israel, while a Mitzna victory would have required a major Palestinian shift toward compromise and conciliation, probably also including Arafat's departure from power.

And that's just the point the editorial and most Western discussion on the conflict or the election misses completely. The problem is not Sharon but the worldview and strategy of Arafat and the Palestinian leadership.

By rejecting the Camp David and Clinton plans, starting and continuing a war against Israel, promoting terrorism and raising incitement and hatred to new levels, they destroyed any chance for an end to Israel's presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a Palestinian state, or peace for some time to come.

But much of the Western analysis and reporting, as well as policy, sees the current situation as akin to the sporadic terrorist attacks that took place, more often than not against Arafat's preferences, during the 1990s peace process.

The problem is not that the terrorists are trying to wreck a Palestinian peace effort: Terrorism is the Palestinian strategy. And these attacks are not just the work of a few extremists but a campaign financed and partly organized by Arafat himself.

It isn't just that Israelis are emotionally upset by the attacks; the point is what the attacks have taught them.

Some people won't accept this reality because it is so horribly grim; others reject it because they want to blame Israel, or hope for a quick happy ending. But such is the experience of the last decade and especially of the last three years.

The Washington Post editorial of last December 16 was closer to the mark: "Most Israelis yearn for a peace settlement. A large majority say they are ready to support the creation of a Palestinian state in most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and to dismantle Jewish settlements to make way for it.

So why is Mr. Sharon winning?"

Because "the Palestinians have utterly failed to control the terrorists in their ranks or put forward a leadership that could be a credible negotiating partner for Israel. In the absence of such a leadership, or an uncompromising Palestinian renunciation of violence, a peace settlement seems to many Israelis more an impossible dream than a tangible choice."

But finding Sharon's victory a paradox in its January 29 editorial, the day after the election, The New York Times managed to blame him for the absence of a peace agreement.

"In this time of insecurity, Israelis feel safer under Mr. Sharon's hard-line leadership and see no Palestinian partner with whom to negotiate." Yet, it concluded, Sharon had "betrayed this promise by failing to try to advance peace and by encouraging the building of new settlement outposts."

This is false on both points.

The Times told Palestinians that they would benefit if they were to "denounce that terror, promote internal democratic reforms and give Israelis more encouragement to take chances for peace." But isn't their failure to do all that what killed the peace process, blocks progress today and has caused the deaths of almost 3,000 people on both sides?

Absent was any talk about Arafat himself, or any sense of the kind of views he expressed in his March 3 speech to the Arab summit. Among the points he made there, aside from saying that he is the one who really wants peace: Israel has instigated a war against Iraq as part of its "own war against the Palestinian people and the entire Arab nation" so that it can build an empire "extending from the Nile to the Euphrates."

It intends to expel all Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel's war is not only "racist and colonialist" but also a "war of genocide and ethnic cleansing."

Yitzhak Rabin "was killed by these extremist elements that govern Israel now."

Israel started a war against the Palestinians after rejecting all peace proposals and as the result of a "secret agreement between Barak and Sharon to destroy the peace process."

Israel can do these things because the US has given it advanced weapons including "depleted uranium and poisonous gases."

These claims are not just propaganda.

They are the operating assumptions of the Palestinian leader.

And that is the root of the problem.

The writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center of the Interdisciplinary Center and is editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA).