Expectorations and Expectations:

How Do We Climb Out of this Pit?

“And then, as the argument heated up,” reported this week’s press accounts, which some Palestinians have denied, but others have confirmed, “the ra’is, Arafat, spat in the face of his would-be minister of interior, General Nasser Yusuf.”

This expectoration—real or just symbolic—sealed the dignified old soldier’s fate and put an end to his bid to implement one of the most crucial Road Map requirements, namely, the unification of all Palestinian security forces under one reformed hand. Instead, they seem to be headed toward “consolidation” (or rather, con-liquidation) under Arafat. Yusuf tried to warn Arafat against such blatant defiance of a basic American requirement, but met with a fiery lecture about the need to keep the revolutionary flames burning; when he tried to remind the chairman that no revolution in modern times has failed as thoroughly as has the Palestinian effort in recent years, he was treated to this blast of Arafat’s ire—and possibly, his phlegm as well.

It was not in the general’s face alone that Arafat spat. He was letting all of us—Israelis, Americans, pragmatist Arabs, moderate Palestinians—know, in no uncertain terms, that he could care less about our needs (let alone our notions of civility). His answer to the admittedly clumsy threats by Israel was once again the horrifying slogan we heard in early 2002, which brought so much death and destruction with it: “Li-l-Quds rayyihin, shuhada bi-l-malayyin” (“To Jerusalem we march, martyrs by the millions”). It was as if any lesson at all about the war on terrorism and its meaning had been cast to the winds.

We thus face a paradox: As Ambassador Dan Gillerman truthfully told the UN this week, almost everyone (privately) agrees with Israel that this man—a former member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, an unrepentant master terrorist, and a relic of the era of “revolutionary” violence—has dug us all into a pit from which it will not be easy to extract ourselves. Nevertheless, the Israeli cabinet decision to “remove” him proved to be, as the Directorate of Military Intelligence had indeed warned, an even greater exercise in harmful futility. “You wanna shoot—shoot, don’t talk,” insists the wisdom of the Old West; but talk (too much) is what some of our politicians do best. In fact, this talk may have bought Arafat a new lease on political life and an international insurance policy, despite all that he had done to condemn his own people to more and more suffering.

Sadly, it does look as if political considerations—as well as blind anger at so many good, innocent lives taken by Palestinian terror, aided and abetted by Arafat’s strategies—clouded Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s often excellent tactical sense. His political troubles may be catching up with him, as some of his Likud colleagues are already playing to the party galleries in preparation for a possible struggle for succession.

On the strategic level, we once again learned a painful lesson: A deterrent weapon (and this decision of the Security Cabinet was meant, above all, to serve as a deterrent, a “sword of Damocles” hanging over Arafat’s head, so as to urge him to move aside and allow other Palestinians to take serious action against the terrorist factions) will be effective only when broad legitimacy attends its use. In Lebanon, Hizballah is restrained from using its full force, not only because we will react with overwhelming force, but also because most of the Lebanese people, as well as most Arab countries and the rest of the world, will see such an Israeli response as legitimate –after all, Israel has withdrawn from Lebanon, and the false claims to fight on over “Shebaa farms” did not take hold.

 In the case of Arafat, however, a similar basis of legitimacy for Israeli action has yet to be created. Many Palestinians may hate what he has done to their future, but nevertheless vehemently reject any Israeli right to be the judge of that. Dignity and identity override realities and practicalities. We have again fallen into the pit.

“We told you so,” say the forceful voices of the far right, in Israel and beyond. “You have been deluding yourselves with this Road Map, which went nowhere.” Self-delusion is an old Jewish trait. (At one point, the Jerusalem Post threw in with one such op-ed a photo of Polish Jews in the 1930s—a not-too-subtle hint as to how deep our delusions might run.) Wake up: There will never be peace. Steel yourself for endless conflict.

“We told you so,” say the bitter voices on the far left. “You have been deluding yourselves that a Road Map that tries to bypass Arafat and does not commit to the Arab interpretation of ‘international legitimacy’ (a total withdrawal to the 1967 lines, including Jerusalem, and some form of recognition of the ‘right of return’) could take you anywhere.” Self-delusion is an old Zionist fault. Wake up and prepare to swallow the bitter pill: Arafat is there, and peace can be made only on terms he will find acceptable.

But is this really the full range of expectations? Or is there another element out there, so big and obvious that the pessimists, who stand on top of it, simply do not see it? The answer is that they are indeed missing the point, on both sides of the divide. Right-wing pessimists see the enemy and feel vulnerable like the Jews of old. Left- wing pessimists see the enemy as essentially invincible. Both are wrong.

 Neither our tactical miscalculations, bad as they may be, nor Arafat’s manipulative successes, can change the basic balance, the very same balance that drove Mahmoud Abbas to try to stop the violence. Israeli society has proven to be resilient, far beyond anyone’s expectations, and the economy is beginning to inch up. The IDF has shown itself able to use “actionable intelligence” more and more effectively. We are the stronger party, and a vigilant American Jewry guards our special relationship with the world’s only superpower. Arafat may be hoping for an American disaster in Iraq, but if anyone in this game has shown a consistent capacity for self-delusion—on this very point—it has been him, not us.

Meanwhile, Palestinian society has eroded, and in places, broken: The ease with which Israeli agents gain information is one indication of this internal malaise. So is the ugly squabbling over the little that was left of any semblance of self-government. The Palestinian need for a better future is every bit as real as ours, and not even Arafat’s heroic antics can hide this fact for long. Indeed, we have now begun to hear from Jibril Rajoub, the security chief de jour, a fresh call for an unlimited ceasefire in return for unconditional negotiations. This suggestion is certainly not acceptable in its present form, with Arafat as the puppeteer and the terror infrastructure in place. But the very fact that the offer was made indicates that powerful undercurrents within Palestinian society obliged Rajoub to make it. (Rajoub, who speaks fluent Hebrew, is also trying to tell us that he is back—recovered from his cancer treatment—and can deliver where his old and bitterly hated rival Mohammed Dahlan failed.)

Can he? The answer is probably a qualified yes (although Rajoub’s influence is greater in the West Bank than in the Gaza Strip). The Hamas leadership, already under daily siege, may be inwardly more vulnerable than they seem when they appear defiantly on CNN. More and more Arab countries, Saudi Arabia among them, are moving to close the terrorist money lines. American and even European pressure will soon mount on Ahmed Qureia’s new cabinet (which will be announced in a few days) to commit itself to the Road Map—which is “the only game in town.”

 Thus, the ladder by which we might climb out of the pit could yet prove to be what it has always been: a series of actions taken by sober Palestinians, with or without Arafat’s blessing, to return to the simple truth recognized by Abu Mazen in Aqaba, and more recently delivered bravely to Arafat’s spitting face by Nasser Yusuf: It is time for “the most incompetent revolutionary leader in history” to stop destroying his people’s future.