The Meetings, the Murders, and the Morals

 (And the Practicalities) of Moving Ahead under Fire

AJC Weekly Briefing on Israeli and Middle Eastern Affairs

May 23, 2003

Dr. Eran Lerman

Director, Israel/Middle East Office

American Jewish Committee

“Yihyeh be’seder,” said my taxi driver, Mamo Shibebao, an exuberant Ethiopian immigrant, as we left the airport to go home late last night. “All will turn out for the better: One must never lose hope.” As if to illustrate the forceful impressions recently offered by Ruth Wisse in Commentary (“At Home in Jerusalem,” April 2003)—and it is not necessary to adhere to her opinions to appreciate the validity of many of her observations—he prepared me for what I was about to discover once again: The country was busy with its normal life.

 There was much in the news about the adjustments made by the Knesset to Finance Minister Benyamin Netayahu’s economic recovery plan, and about the increasing tensions between elected politicians and the Supreme Court; we might as well have stayed in Washington. And here in Re’ut there was little to make me miss the lush green of the Netherlands I had just came from: In the morning it is glorious with color, a haze of purple jacarandas over the whites and pinks of oleanders, even if the hills all around have already been touched by the yellows of our parched summers. This is, and will remain, a heartbreakingly beautiful country.

Still, the pain of this week’s news is lingering. It is not easy to be awakened in a small house in the Dutch countryside, away from it all and amid family celebrations, to be told by one of my children that there has been yet another cruel attack killing seven on a Jerusalem bus. Then came the news about the bombing in Afula. In all, more than twelve Israelis were murdered in a week—and the individual losses were made all the more painful because they crashed the many high hopes that had come to be hung upon the outcome of the two prime ministers’ summit in Jerusalem. Was this Israel’s reward for the meeting between Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen)? The burst of “successful” attacks came, seemingly, in conjunction with the move ahead in the talks, but intelligence professionals tend not to see this as a deliberate new “wave” of terrorism. For weeks, the number of intelligence-based dangerous warnings stood at no fewer than a few dozen at any given moment; many were foiled, or failed, but it was only a matter of time until one or two terrorists got through before being apprehended. (Indeed, all the murders last week were attributed to two gangs, one in Hebron, the other in northern Samaria.)

Still, the broader picture does spell a profound problem. There is as yet—to say the least—no effort by the Palestinian Authority as a whole to repress the murder cells, to cut the money lines, let alone to change the culture of glorification which surrounds any “shahid” and his or her family. Moreover, Arafat’s overt support for the continuation of the armed struggle—which finally, at long, too long last, has earned him open censure even by the UN envoy, Terje Larsen, in his report to the Security Council—is being translated into efforts by Arafat’s money men and “naval” officers to cooperate with Hizballah (and Iran), once again, in procuring more sophisticated terror techniques. The capture of a key Hizballah “engineer,” and with him a sickening load of CDs instructing suicide bombers how to improve their kill ratios, on his way to the Gaza Strip (aboard an Egyptian fishing boat) raises very serious questions as to the PA’s position—as serious as those previously raised by the weapons ship Karine A in January 2002. Judging by these high-level activities, as well as by the mood in places like Nablus (where local Tanzim and Hamas thugs and old-line Fatah ideologues, not Abu Mazen’s pragmatism, still dominate), many Palestinians seem intent on leaping—not the leap of political faith leading to serious negotiations, which is now being asked of both sides, but a lemmings’ leap into further death and destruction.

Which brings us back to a basic question: We are one step away from being cornered (Prime Minister Sharon, a sheep farmer, would say “driven into the corrales”) by a “good cop, bad cop” game played by Abu Mazen, the powerless negotiator, and Arafat, the terrorist. Israeli reluctance to accept the “road map” as it stands—with all the murky question marks hanging over the two permanent status issues, namely, our right to be a Jewish state (i.e., no “right of return”) and the necessity of territorial compromise (i.e., no return to the ’67 lines, particularly in Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley)—is therefore not simply a matter of coalition politics. But is it wise to insist, as Sharon does, on “sequencing” the map’s implementation, and demanding, first of all, to see real action to bring an end to such attacks? A forceful argument has often been made (more recently, in almost standard editorials, particularly in Europe but also in Israel) to the effect that negotiations under fire are all but inevitable, an unpleasant but unavoidable part of life in this region.

Forceful—but wrong: There are two reasons for Israel—and the United States —to insist, as President Bush has done, on a Palestinian commitment on this issue before, and above, all others:

1. In the bilateral context, it is highly dangerous for Israel to be put in a situation in which the Palestinians can point to their own violence as the reason why we should offer them greater concessions; in diplomacy, this is known as a “slippery slope” situation. Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton—for what may have seemed good reasons at the time—had allowed this to happen in the autumn of 2000. The results have been tragic; and the Israeli electorate has now passed political judgment on those they held responsible.
2. In the broader regional and international context, the message—and not to Arafat alone: Syria, and above all Iran, as well as the various branches of the Saudi family tree, should hear it with equal clarity: There will be zero tolerance for those who make common cause, even if for tactical reasons, with the Islamist totalitarians and their tools of terror. It is important, on this issue as well, not to lose hope. Time  magazine did the world, the truth, and (I should think) itself a disservice when it asserted this week—in the wake of bombings in Riyadh, Casablanca, Chechnya, and Israel—that Bin Laden and what he stands for cannot be beaten. Yes, they can be: Ask the Egyptians, who ruthlessly wiped out their own terrorists (or drove them, as is the case with Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s No. 2 man, into exile). Ask the Algerians, when they rise from the shock of a deadly natural disaster, an earthquake that has claimed more than a thousand lives, and go back to their man-made disaster, a civil war that has claimed a hundred times as many. They have not yet finally won the war—people are still murdered, again and again, by the Islamists—but they have brought it to the point where the terrorists stand no hope of ever gaining power. The same can be done elsewhere, and with much lesser efforts, but the political decision must be made, in no uncertain terms, by all concerned.

Thus, Israel is expected to come soon to a sufficient understanding with the U.S. administration on our key reservations regarding the “road map” document (and given our special relationship, backed by the organized Jewish community and by the will of Congress, an American guarantee that should be as good, or better, than anything we can extract from Abu Mazen’s frail government at this point). All eyes should then be on one man: Muhammad Dahlan, Abu Mazen’s internal security minister, whose appointment had been forced on Arafat (the latter, in open breach of the map’s spirit and letter, is now working to deny Dahlan control over the various Palestinian armed forces). It will be Dahlan’s actions—quietly negotiated, in a step-by-step and area-by-area approach, with the Israeli Ministry of Defense—that will determine which side the PA is on.