As the New Year Dawns: Tough Decisions and
Potential Rewards Loom on the Not-so-Distant Horizon
Weekly Briefing on Israeli and Middle Eastern Affairs
January 4, 2004

Dr. Eran Lerman
Director Israel/Middle East Office
American Jewish Committee

For the fourth time since "ha-matzav" ("the situation," the semi-neutral term Israelis use to describe the present conflict) was thrust upon us, a new year of the Common Era has dawned upon us. (Given its universality, Israelis no longer think of this reckoning of time as the Christian calendar, but rather call it the "civil," as distinct from the Jewish, yearly cycle.) Once again, this is an opportunity to take stock. As Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel once put it:

And we note our place with bookmarkers
that measure what we've lost...

We look, with guarded (very well-guarded) hopes and thinly disguised fears, at an uncertain and complex future, which is nevertheless richer with promise than it seemed to be a year ago. At the root of this promise are the profound changes that American soldiers have brought with them, to Iraq and beyond Iraq's borders, as they broke Saddam Hussein's regime (and then caught the man himself, in circumstances that shattered the mindless hero-worship so common in the Arab world).

In essence, we now face a year of transition, which even in the Middle East will be largely dominated and defined by the twists and turns of the American presidential campaign. The larger war - World War IV against Islamicist totalitarianism, WW III having been the so-called "cold war" - is far from over and, in a number of places, the level of violence is rising. Dangerous elements and manifestations of hate are still all around us. The hate was palpable at the massive Hamas rallies and marches in Gaza in mid-December, celebrating the movement's 16th anniversary, and during the Fatah attempt to catch up, with children chanting, "We shall destroy the Hebrew state," on January 1, the 39th birthday of the "Palestinian Revolution" commemorating the first armed Fatah attack on Israel. Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia, in his vicious remarks to the Organization of the Islamic Conference; the cruel suicide bombings in Istanbul; and the Muslims who rejoiced at the loss of the space shuttle Columbia, with its American, Israeli, and Indian-born crew members aboard - all these incidents remind us just how deep and virulent such hate can be. What could be uglier than the Iranian regime's refusal to allow any help "from the Zionist entity" to the earthquake-stricken residents of the Bam area, where tens of thousands have perished.

Yet this was also the year in which one key hater - and his Ba'athist Arab "Nationalist-Socialism" (a hyphen he worked hard to earn) - was brought down and humiliated. The full consequences of this watershed event, unlike anything seen in the Arab world since the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, are only now beginning to reverberate across the region. Another hater was marginalized; the tidal wave of visitors to Yasir Arafat's Muqata has now dwindled to a trickle. Even in Europe, the manner in which he destroyed his first prime minister and then hobbled the second, dug deeply into the reserves of sympathy and understanding he had once enjoyed.

Meanwhile, in Libya the abandonment of the strategic weapon programs signaled an even broader adjustment of historical expectations. One more room in what Fouad Ajami called, in a book by that name, The Dream Palace of the Arabs, has been evicted of its denizen - a peculiar version of the fantasy of Arab revolutionary unity. In Egypt, a leadership that has been sober about such fantasies for many years (but has let the media and the intellectuals run wild, particularly on Israel) was now being asked - politely - by the U.S. to tend to its own inadequate advance toward a functional civil society. Even Saudi Arabia, facing terrorism on its own soil and the dangers of violent destabilization, no longer blithely ignored calls for change of its political culture.

Terrible terror attacks - pigu'im, as they are called in Hebrew - against civilian targets inside Israel marked 2003 again and again. At times this nearly broke the spirit of those who had been told that better days were around the corner. The fighting in areas such as the tunnel zone in Rafah, next to the Egyptian border, continued day and night. Still, the overall balance of this strange and murderous war has shifted decisively against the suicide bombers and their senders. Successful prevention - targeted operations, driven by accurate and verified intelligence - played a key role, as did the strategies of short-term deterrence. ("We are still committed to the armed struggle," some terrorist leaders would say, "but right now might not be a good day to try.") Increasingly important was the sense among the Palestinians that the war has gone nowhere and has taken a terrible toll, not least because it has brought upon them the separation fence and regular Israeli incursions. Quite recently, a protest movement among local Palestinian residents in the southern Gaza Strip denounced the tunnel system, which serves "the security bosses and the gangsters" to the detriment of all who live above the tunnels and become the unwitting victims of Israeli countermeasures. Such sentiments are no longer exceptional. Hamas, in fact, may be curbing suicide attacks inside Israel in response to such trends in Palestinian public opinion. We are tired, but so are they.

It will not be easy to translate this complex new reality into purposeful political action in 2004. Despite the hopes for an early breakthrough, which recently have been used and even manipulated, it will certainly not be possible to move toward any permanent status agreement, at least until a broader transformation takes place in the region as a whole (in other words, when regime change-or a radical departure from present patterns-takes Iran out of the business of sponsoring terror, and Arafat is finally left without the option of playing both sides against the center). It is equally unclear whether the new stirrings in Syria will add up to any sign of willingness to re-consider the Arab interpretation of UN Security Council Resolution 242, the issue against which Ehud Barak's peace efforts foundered in March 2000. And frankly, given the truly painful nature of the decisions that need to be taken on the Palestinian front (three of the populated "outposts" that Ariel Sharon has now ordered to be evacuated are named in memory of Israelis, including Rabbi Binyamin Kahane and his wife, Talia, who were murdered nearby in the last three years), neither Sharon nor the majority of Israelis are eager to consider relinquishing parts of the Golan just on young Bashar Assad's say-so.

None of this, however, can alter the basic meaning of the decisions already taken. 2004 will be the year in which a line of partition - either through negotiations or, in all likelihood, unilaterally - will become a fact of life for both sides. A rough political fight within Likud looms within the next few days; then will come ugly scenes on the ground; but the irreversible course of separation is already visible. This will make 2004 a year in which we here shall need all the support we can get from across the ocean