The American Jewish Committee

 Weekly Briefing on Israeli and Middle Eastern Affairs

People (like myself) with a preference for paradoxes find much to ponder in the current murky realities of preelection Israel and prewar Middle East. Four such paradoxes stand out (or lurk in the shadows?):

            First, the painful business of political corruption in Israel—probably exaggerated, and certainly in line with affairs familiar in many other democracies (particularly in the media-driven world of the last decade, where the price of being politically active has spiraled out of control). One thing can be said already: The legal system has withstood the test. It remains a well-built structure, with its solid original beams made by German Jews back in the 1920s. As Menachem Begin once said, “There are judges in Jerusalem.” The decision to reinstate even Arab radicals like Azmi Bishara and Ahmed Tibi and semi-racists like Baruch Marzel as Knesset candidates reflects a robust sense of the strength of Israeli democracy, highly unusual for any country in time of war. Supreme Court Judge Mishael Cheshin’s decision to take the prime minister himself off the air last night because he used his personal press conference (convened to explain his campaign funds mess) to attack the Labor Party was a unique reminder of the rule of law. At least this is left standing amid the political wreckage—not a trivial achievement under the circumstances.

            Second, the “rift” (not really) with the British over the Palestinian “reform conference.” Not every act, driven by pique and frustration, of the Sharon government deserves to be defended—but this time, paradoxically, they probably did the right thing. British intentions may have been honest (although colored also by a transparent wish to help Mitzna), but with Arafat still in power, “reform” and “conference” cannot go together. Well-meaning Palestinians such as the finance minister, Salam Fayyad, can do nothing useful when Arafat’s stooges look over his shoulder. Reform needs no conferences; it needs decisions by individuals who already know what they should do. Moreover, insofar as the whole thing was a way of “legitimizing” action against Saddam, it is utterly useless: Only an American victory will retroactively legitimize the war, and no amount of maneuvers by the Western powers on the Palestinian front will compensate for a messy war or a weak position. In this region, the weak have few friends.

            Thirdly, there are the hopeless but useful talks in Cairo, sponsored by Egypt, in an attempt to get all the Palestinian factions to agree to put an end to terrorism. Hopeless, because Arafat himself is not on board—it was members of Fatah itself who carried out the attack in Tel Aviv and earlier murdered an elderly Israeli in the Jordan Valley—and because Hamas, let alone Palestinian Islamic Jihad, have no intention of giving up their key identity tool. The reason they have come at all is because they are frightened: With the United States increasingly visible in the region, they fear being cornered, abandoned by Iran and Syria. They also hope to break the Egyptian taboo on dealing with the Islamists at all. Yet paradoxically, it is also useful, in the view of the Israeli security establishment, for these talks to go on, as long as the goal remains a total and enduring ceasefire, not a flimsy excuse as in 1995. Their participation means that key Palestinians have come to accept the implicit message that the violence is bad for them, even if they find it heartbreakingly difficult to sell this to their retrograde leader and to their extremist brothers.