Is Ariel Sharon Leading Israel to a Dead End?
;)
Thomas L. Friedman The New York Times
The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
Thursday, 26 September, 2002
Wrecking peace hopes
WASHINGTON I happened to be in Israel on Sept. 11, 2001, and on
Sept. 12 went to the Israeli Defense Ministry to talk to security
experts there about what Israel had learned from dealing with
Palestinian suicide bombers that might help America. The main lesson,
they said, was this: In the end, the only people who can effectively
stop suicide bombers are those in the community they come from.
Only if their political and spiritual leaders delegitimize
suicide bombing, only if their security forces and intelligence agencies
are mobilized to prevent it, can it really be stopped. Israel, they told
me, could never penetrate Palestinian society the way Palestinians
could. Therefore, the ultimate task for Israel was to find the right
pressures and incentives to get the Palestinians themselves to stop the
bombings.
Unfortunately, that message does not seem to have reached Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon, who, I believe, has never had a plan for how to
reach a stable accommodation with the Palestinians, is only interested
in making the West Bank safe for Israeli settlers to stay, not to leave,
and is going to lead Israel into a dead end - if he sticks to his
present course - and will take America along for the ride.
I have enormous sympathy for Israel's plight today. There is no
society in the world that has ever been exposed to what Israel has over
the past two years - repeated suicide bombings of its civilians in their
buses, restaurants and city centers, compounded by anti-Semitic attacks
by Europeans, who call for a severing of ties with Israeli universities
when Israel retaliates. That is enough to make any civilized society
crazy.
But the Sharon response is not working. Months ago Sharon
dismissed the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as "irrelevant," smashed
his security services and announced Israel's intention to assume
responsibility for its own security in the West Bank. But when
Palestinian suicide bombers from Hamas and Islamic Jihad then perpetrate
more suicide bombings, Sharon attacks Arafat's headquarters as if Arafat
sent the bombers himself.
If Sharon believes that Arafat sent these bombers, then he
should evict him. If he thinks Arafat is irrelevant, then he should
ignore him. But what makes no sense is to treat Arafat as if he's
totally irrelevant and totally responsible. Because all that does is get
Palestinians to rally around the feckless Arafat and abort any
possibility of Palestinians producing a new leadership that would be
relevant to negotiations and to Israeli security.
That's not a pipe dream. Thanks to President George W. Bush's
blunt call for Palestinians to dump Arafat - and thanks to Sharon's
crackdown on Palestinians to prove that the foolish intifada they
launched two years ago (in the wake of President Bill Clinton's peace
overture) will not pay - Israel and the United States had begun to sow
the first seeds of internal Palestinian reform that were needed for the
Palestinians to rein in the suicide bombers.
For the past months a few Palestinian leaders and commentators
have been speaking about what a mistake it was for Arafat to have turned
down the Clinton plan for a Palestinian state; Palestinian legislators
have voted no confidence in Arafat's cabinet and pushed forward more
responsible alternatives; and secular Palestinians have begun openly
questioning suicide bombing.
All of these trends are bad news for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Iraq
and Iran. So they have been pushing out even more suicide bombers to
trigger a Sharon reaction that would rally Palestinians around Arafat's
failed leadership and abort the emergence of any new consensus. Arafat
is celebrating.
Sharon has a tough job. He has to pursue a peace settlement
with the Palestinians, as if there were no terrorism, and to hunt the
terrorists, as if no peace settlement were possible. That requires
subtle distinctions. But Sharon's policy seems to be to ignore all
distinctions - between Hamas and Arafat and between Hamas and the
secular Palestinian mainstream, who would like to see change.
One has to wonder whether Sharon really isn't out to undermine
the whole Palestinian national movement in hopes that one day some
quisling Palestinian Authority simply surrenders to the Israeli
occupation. He sure doesn't seem interested in nurturing a more
responsible Palestinian Authority to cede land to.
If that is where Sharon is going, the effort will come to
tears, and the Bush team, if it goes along for the ride, will be very
sorry. Always remember, the leading Hebrew biography of Sharon is titled
"He Doesn't Stop at Red Lights."
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