HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------
April 17,
2002George W. SadatBy THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Do they know how twisted all this looks to the rest of the world? There is only one positive thing about this moment, when all boundaries of civilized behavior have been breached: It may have created an opportunity, which I hope President Bush will seize. Here's what I mean: Mr. Arafat and his boys, by cynically employing suicide bombers, have proved that they can unsettle the Israeli public more than any Arab army has in 50 years — by sacrificing Palestinian kids. In doing so, though, they have punctured the last myths of the Israeli right that somehow Palestinians would reconcile themselves to Israeli settlements, or that with enough force Palestinians could be cowed into accepting any Israeli terms. At the same time, Israel, under Mr. Sharon, has counter-punctured the fantasy that was taking wing among Palestinians that through suicide bombing they might finally have found the weapon to drive the Jews out of the Middle East. By mercilessly going after the perpetrators of suicide bombing in the West Bank, even when they were hiding among Palestinian civilians, Mr. Sharon should have ended any illusions that Palestinians can terrorize the Jews into fleeing without being terrorized themselves. The Arab leaders have been taught a lesson, too. For decades they have used the Palestinian cause to buttress their own legitimacy or to deflect attention from their own failures. But in the old days, they could regulate how their own people saw the conflict through their state-controlled media. No more. This is the cyber-intifada in the age of globalization. Thanks to independent Arab satellite TV beaming images from Palestine to Arab youths 24 hours a day, and thanks to the Internet, which allows those youths to tell each other exactly how they feel about those images, the Arab regimes are losing their grip on public opinion. No, these regimes will not be toppled tomorrow, but they are being shaken, and their economies devastated by fleeing investors. Finally, this unrestrained explosion of Palestinian-Israeli violence has taught the Bush team something as well: As much as they prefer to ignore this conflict, they can't, and if they try it will undermine their global war on terrorism. All this adds up to an opportunity, not unlike the one that arose after Egypt crossed the Suez Canal in 1973 and punctured Israel's sense of invulnerability, and then Israel, led by Ariel Sharon's tanks, crossed the canal into Egypt, grabbed Egypt's army by the throat, and made clear that Egypt was just as vulnerable. This is not a time for some two-bit international conference. The U.S. and the Soviets tried that after the 1973 war, and Anwar el-Sadat, realizing it was a waste of time, decided instead to go to Jerusalem and put everything on the table. Mr. Bush has to do the same right now. He has to be the Anwar el-Sadat of this moment, because no one else will be. That means laying down a clear American peace plan calling for a new U.N. mandate for the West Bank and Gaza to develop a new Palestinian Authority capable of ruling those areas; a phased withdrawal of Israeli troops, à la the Clinton plan; and U.S. or NATO forces to cement the deal. I believe one of Don Rumsfeld's Washington rules is: If you have a
problem and you can't solve it, enlarge it. Either we now go all the way
toward peace and demand that every party step up to it — Palestinians,
Israelis and Arabs — or they will keep going all the way the other way,
blowing out one civilizational barrier after another until their war
touches us. |
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/17/opinion/17FRIE.html |
--------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST
==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
s.gif
Description: GIF image
