<http://www.townhall.com/columnists/jeffjacoby/printjj20050418.shtml>
Townhall.com
Does Israel want Palestinian democracy?
Jeff Jacoby (back to web version) | Send
April 18, 2005
During their press conference in Crawford, Texas, this week, President Bush
and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon referred several times to
Palestinian democracy. Bush, for example, mentioned his "vision of two
democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side." Sharon said
the Palestinians should "choose the path of democracy and law and order."
But there was little in their words or body language to suggest that
this democracy talk was anything more than lip service. An Arab Palestine
in which ordinary citizens could freely criticize their rulers? In which
political power wasn't monopolized by terrorist groups? In which the
government didn't stoke the fires of anti-Semitism in order to deflect
attention from its own corruption? In which there was freedom of speech and
conscience? In which the outcome of elections wasn't predetermined? No --
that sort of genuine and vibrant democracy seemed far removed from anything
that Bush or Sharon was expecting, let alone demanding, from Mahmoud Abbas
and the Palestinian Authority.
In Sharon's case, this comes as no surprise. Like his predecessors
dating back to Yitzhak Rabin, Sharon has never regarded the democratizing
of Palestinian society as a priority. Quite the contrary. Believing that
only an iron-fisted ruler could suppress terrorism and make peace, Israeli
leaders have actually welcomed Palestinian autocracy. In a notorious
comment early in the Oslo years, Rabin assured Israelis that Yasser Arafat
would be able to crack down on terrorism since he, unlike Israeli
authorities, could operate "bli bagatz u'bli betselem"-- unhampered by a
supreme court or by human rights groups. The absence of Palestinian
democracy and civil liberties, far from being seen as a root of terrorism,
was hailed as a boon in fighting it.
But if Sharon has never believed that Arab democracy is essential to
peace and progress, the same can't be said about Bush. No contemporary
political leader has championed freedom and self-government for the people
of the Middle East more fervently. None has argued with more conviction
that the key to ending terrorism and the fanaticism that spawns it is
decent, democratic governance. None has proclaimed a more sweeping doctrine
of liberation and human dignity. "It is the policy of the United States,"
he avowed in his second inaugural address, "to seek and support the growth
of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with
the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."
In recent months, the bubbling of democratic ferment has lifted hopes
across the Middle East. In Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait, even in Syria and
Saudi Arabia, an "Arab spring" is beginning to transform what has been till
now the most reactionary region on earth. Sooner than anyone predicted,
Bush's faith in democratic revolution has begun to bear fruit -- to seem
not just idealistic, but realistic.
If that faith should have special relevance anywhere, it is in the
Palestinian Authority. For it was with regard to the Palestinians that Bush
first expressed the idea that diplomatic gains and international legitimacy
must be linked to democratic reform. In June 2002, he declared that before
there could be a Palestinian state, there would have to be "a new and
different Palestinian leadership . . . not compromised by terror."
Palestinian society, he said, must become "a practicing democracy based on
tolerance and liberty."
But with no corresponding Israeli interest in promoting Palestinian
reform, Bush's principled stand came to naught. Arafat was shunned, but
Sharon embraced Arafat's longtime crony Abbas -- a PLO veteran deeply
"compromised by terror." Instead of making Palestinian progress on human
rights and freedom the price of further Israeli concessions, Sharon
announced that Israel would unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip and
expel the Jews living there. Sharon's retreat will do nothing to encourage
democracy. It will simply condemn a million Gaza Arabs to the permanent
despotism of the Palestininan Authority.
In Crawford, Bush loyally described Sharon's plan as "courageous," but
he must know that it is nothing of the sort. It is a blow to Israeli
democracy no less than to Arab democracy, and a blow to the cause of Middle
East freedom for which the United States is sacrificing so much.
For the first time in Israel's history, the United States is led by a
president determined to see liberal democracy take root in the Arab world.
For the first time, the Arab Middle East is alive with democratic
possibility. Never has there been a better opportunity to transform
Palestinian society from a dangerous, hate-filled dictatorship into a
civilized, self-governing democracy. If Israel squanders this chance to
nurture liberty and tolerance in its own back yard, it may never get
another.
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