Are the Americans serious this time?
Yossi Alpher
An Israeli strategic expert questions the US role in the crisis, but has no doubts over the greater legitimacy of Israels actions vis-à-vis the Palestinians.
A rapid succession of major developments throughout the past two weeks has rendered the Israeli-Palestinian situation both very volatile and extremely fluid. Such a dynamic situation can be better understood by asking questions than by jumping to conclusions.
Beginning with the current Israeli offensive: what will be the long-term effect of the Israel Defense Forces undoubted military achievements in the West Bank? Israel has killed and arrested terrorists, confiscated ordnance, and gathered intelligence proving Palestinian leader Yasser Arafats direct complicity in the worst acts of terrorism. Will this buy a reduced level of terrorism for half a year, or for a month? How will the respite, if achieved, be exploited politically? And what of the negative effects the thousands of additional Palestinians who have been alienated and humiliated and will now join the ranks of terrorists? Moreover, isolating Yasser Arafat has rendered him more popular than ever. To win, all he has to do now is survive.
A military move that is not accompanied by a realistic Israeli peace plan, along with unilateral withdrawal and dismantling of settlements in Gaza and the West Bank heartland and a more aggressive United States role, appears to have little chance of improving the situation even in the medium term. Here, then, we encounter the limits of Israeli military power vis-à-vis the Palestinians.
Turning to the Arab League peace proposal of late March, which was based on the initiative of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, we confront a truly extraordinary document. The proposal with its emphasis on the 1967 borders, a just solution to the refugee problem (rather than the provocative right of return), security and normal relations for Israel, and an end of conflict offers an Arab League strategy for peace at a time when neither Arafat nor Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has such a strategy. But doubts still linger. Why, for example, did the same Arab League summit issue a separate statement supporting the right of return?
The Bush initiative: froth or substance?
This brings us to US President George W. Bushs initiative of early April. At the time of writing it is still not completely clear what motivated this turnabout, and how serious it is. Is Bushs sharp and undoubtedly justified condemnation of Arafat his main message, or is it essentially rhetoric, designed to conciliate pro-Israel American lobbies that Bush depends on for support, while he undertakes an endeavour that will oblige him to pressurise Sharon? In sending Secretary of State Powell to the region, demanding an immediate end to Israels offensive, and referring to the need for Israeli political gestures (ceasing settlement activity, ending closures), is Bush announcing once and for all that political and security measures must go hand in hand, and the US will now undertake to bang heads together to make them work? Or is this just another attempt to placate Arab and European criticism for a few weeks, brake the rise in oil prices, or reduce the profile of the conflict, however briefly, prior to an attack on Iraq?
Or is the Bush initiative all of the above? It depends how long and how hard Powell persists. After all, he has already visited the scene before and generated only damage agreeing to Sharons now abandoned demand for seven days quiet; he made a powerful speech on the conflict at Louisville in January that led nowhere; and he and the president have already sent General Zinni here three times without an adequate mandate.
One possible indication that Bush and Powell are serious this time was provided by Sharon himself when he opted in early April to expand his coalition toward the right by recruiting the five mandates of the National Religious Party. The NRP, now led by a retired general who can only be termed a messianic fanatic, is the most outspoken advocate of the settlements. Would the NRP join a government that is contemplating a settlement freeze as mandated by the Mitchell Report and President Bush? Accordingly, will the moderate Labor Party soon leave the government and trigger the countdown to new elections? How will this influence American readiness to apply additional pressure on Sharon?
A false moral equivalence
Finally, turning to the escalation of Hizbollah and Palestinian attacks along Israels northern border with Lebanon will heavy western and Arab pressures persuade Syrian leader Bashir al-Assad to curb Hizbollah? What sort of escalation might be generated by an Israeli military response against the attackers Syrian patron? While none of the Arab states seeks a conventional war with Israel, the present situation encourages radical Arabs and Iranians to pursue the option of low-level warfare against Israel by non-state proxies like Hizbollah, Hamas and Tanzim.
This brings us full circle to the issue that generated the current escalation. When an Islamic summit that convened last week in Malaysia refuses to define suicide bombings of civilians as terrorism, there can no longer be any beating about the bush: Islamic/Arab suicide terrorism has placed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the fault line of the clash of civilizations.
There is a huge moral equivalency issue here. Israel, and for the most part the West, insist that there is a critical and definable difference between the deliberate targeting of civilians-terrorism and the inadvertent, inevitable and regrettable casualties sustained by civilian populations in the course of a legitimate war of self-defense against terrorism. Most of the Arab and Islamic worlds insist there is no difference, and many Arabs and other Muslims now glorify the role of suicide bombers.
They are glorifying barbarism. This is a major obstacle to peace.
Palestinians want peace
Ghassan Khatib
A Palestinian analyst sees evidence of genuine Arab and Palestinian interest in peace, as well as an end to the occupation.
Truth be told, given the irreversible nature of the ongoing Israeli military operation and given the nature of the United States administrations position, it is very difficult to see any way out of the current bloodshed. This Israeli reoccupation of Palestinian-controlled land is creating its own dynamic that will be very difficult to reverse, in particular because the Israeli government seems not only to be applying pressure or weakening the Palestinian Authority, but entirely eliminating Palestinian security capabilities.
In addition, by officially declaring President Yasser Arafat and the Authority as enemies of Israel, the government led by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has eliminated any political negotiations role for the Palestinian Authority. The goal clearly seems to be to leave the Palestinian Authority with no other role but that of administrator.
The Palestinian side refused the Zinni amendments to the Tenet and Mitchell papers precisely because they included clauses that legalized, in effect, what Israel is doing right now. In other words, Israel had a plan to downgrade the Authority, which it pursued first through security negotiations, and then when this failed, through force.
The Israeli strategy
In this, the Israeli government has two main motives first, Sharons strategic objective of reversing the peace process, its achievements and its agreements, due to his ideological objections to territorial compromise and his desire to maintain Israeli control over all of historical Palestine, and second (and more immediate), the goal of forcing the Palestinian Authority to accept Israels ceasefire terms, which permit Israel to play a security role in the Palestinian territories.
There is no doubt that Israel has won the media and public relations aspect of this ongoing battle, particularly in the United States, simply by deluding the public and officials into believing that all this onslaught is simply a reaction to Palestinian suicide bombings. It is little noted that when Israel entered Palestinian refugee camps for one week, killing an average of fifteen Palestinians, largely civilians, on a daily basis, Palestinian, Israeli and foreign analysts all said that Israel was inviting a violent Palestinian reaction.
As such, Palestinians sometimes wonder about the specific nature of the American concern over suicide bombings. Is that concern so strong because these terrible attacks are suicidal and therefore seemingly irrational and unstoppable, or is that concern intensified because these attacks result in extensive civilian casualties? If the concern is over civilian casualties, then it is only fair that Americans should be equally concerned over Palestinian civilian casualties from Israeli army actions, seen here as a form of state terrorism of an entire populace.
Arab initiative, American roadblock
There is one difference between Palestinian suicide attacks against Israeli civilians and Israeli army attacks against Palestinian civilians. That difference is that Palestinian suicide bombings take place in the context of the aggressive military occupation of Palestinians and are a response to both that occupation and the Israeli army attacks that occur in implementing that occupation through force and humiliation.
But despite this, Palestinians and the Arab states have done their part in pointing to a way out. They did so by adopting the Saudi peace initiative, which offered Israel not only Palestinian, but Arab willingness to bring about a comprehensive final peace and normalization in return for an Israeli withdrawal to United Nations-sanctioned borders in Resolution 242, as well as a solution to the refugee problem, according to United Nations Security Council Resolution 194.
In return, not only did Israel respond officially that this was unacceptable, but also timed its reoccupation of the Palestinian territories for the very same day of the Arab summits approval of its peace initiative.
A further immense hurdle to finding a way out is Washingtons complete adoption of changing Israeli positions. In light of Israeli unwillingness to adhere to signed agreements, international legality and bridging proposals such as the Tenet and Mitchell plans, the US remains the only power that can influence the Israeli position. It appears then that the Middle East conflict is mired in internal American politics, which are preventing, if not paralyzing, decisive action on the part of the US administration at the very least to have Israel respect US-sponsored papers and initiatives. The only influencing factor on the official American position seems to be the growing anger on the Arab street, and then only because that anger threatens the stability of American allies in the region. No matter that those friendly regimes are among the least democratic and most repressive in the region.
Force will fail
This latest Israeli operation is one more permanent step towards the re-occupation of all of the Palestinian territories, and one that introduces a new dynamic towards further replacing peace negotiations with confrontational relations. The logic of force, as recent and ancient history has taught us, is that it only brings about further forceful reactions. When any neutral observer views the nature of the carnage inflicted on Palestinian civilians whether they be the demolition of homes on top of entire families or the blocking of ambulances or the prevention of the International Committee of the Red Cross from evacuating bodies and the injured or the restriction of journalists from witnessing ongoing Events they will understand that it is perfectly natural now to expect all kinds of violent Palestinian retaliation and revenge. Ultimately, Israeli attempts to achieve the legitimate goals of peace and security through the illegitimate means of inflicting pain will fail, just as they have failed since Sharons rise to power.
Thus, the only conclusion we can draw is that there will only be a way out when the Israeli public and government are ready to end the Israeli occupation. Because even in this dire state, the Palestinians who are resisting the Israeli occupation are still insisting that they want no more than its removal. They will not take less but they aspire to no more.