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Pro-Israeli editorials/columns

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Diplomacy by Other Means

Thomas L. Friedman – The New York Times – November 3, 3000

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- The other day I was interviewing Marwan Barghouti, the leader of the Palestinian Tanzim movement, which has led the street war with Israel, in his office in Ramallah. He had a photocopy of the Israeli paper Maariv on his desk, with a headline about him. With my rusty synagogue Hebrew, I couldn't fully understand the headline, so Mr. Barghouti happily translated it for me. He speaks fluent Hebrew, thanks to long years in Israeli prisons and long negotiations with Israeli leaders. The encounter underscored something you forget when you're not here: how much Israelis and Palestinians are intertwined.

And that's why although there is something very real about this latest mini-war, there is also something staged about it — true guerrilla theater. Yes, both sides would love it if the other disappeared, but both sides know their economic integration makes total separation impossible and both know there is no military solution, which is what makes this war so perplexing. Everyone knows how it will end — eventually there must be some deal — but no one can still tell you why it began.

True, at one level there is nothing new here. In all the romantic peacemaking of the last seven years, we've forgotten that violence is how Israelis and Arabs negotiate. This is not Scandinavia here. The 1948 war led to the first Arab-Israeli armistice agreement. The 1967 war led to U.N. Resolution 242, with the Arabs tacitly recognizing Israel. The 1973 war led to the Egypt-Israel peace. The Lebanon war led to the P.L.O.'s tacit acceptance of Israel. The first intifada and the gulf war led to the Madrid conference and Oslo I. And, I suppose, this Intifada II, and Israel's tough response, will eventually produce some new arrangement, but it surely will be less than what the Palestinians could have gotten through negotiations. Unlike all the previous wars, this one truly was unnecessary.

One hopes it will remain limited. President Clinton's Camp David summit was the second great attempt to partition Palestine. There is only one difference between the Clinton attempt and the one the U.N. sponsored in 1947: this time, when the Palestinians didn't get what they wanted and started fighting, the seven surrounding Arab nations did not invade Israel — so far. The Arab states have middle classes now, who don't want to go to war. In 1948, they sent seven Arab armies to fight the war; in 2000, they sent seven Arab TV stations to cover the war. The Arab regimes are doing all they can to avoid the heroic stupidity of their predecessors.

The biggest danger is an accidental war that could start on the Lebanon border, where the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia has been daily probing Israel's northern frontier. "We will not let the Syrians and Hezbollah unilaterally change the rules of the game and move the war from Lebanon into northern Israel," says a senior Israeli official. Therefore, he added, if Hezbollah penetrates Israel, Israel will destroy Syrian positions in Lebanon and supporting radars inside Syria. Presto — regional war.

Hezbollah, and the Palestinians, have fallen into a very dangerous fantasy about Israel — the notion that Israel has become just this rich, soft Silicon Valley of the Middle East, where all the Jews care about is the Nasdaq. One Palestinian leader was even quoted in Haaretz as saying, "Our ability to die is greater than the Israelis' ability to go on killing us." Wrong. Badly wrong. That may have been true when the war was in South Lebanon, but not when it's in Jerusalem. And if the Syrians push Hezbollah into northern Israel, they will discover the other side of Israel's Silicon Valley — its huge high-tech military superiority over the Syrian Army.

It was said of the Hapsburg Empire in its final years that its situation was hopeless but not serious. The same is true of Israel today. It is hard to imagine how you put this puzzle with the Palestinians back together again and produce some stable arrangement. But Israel is in no way threatened by this war. It's a bad rash, not serious cancer. Israel's high-tech industry is humming along. That is not true for the Palestinians. Everything they have built up over the past seven years of Oslo — their nascent state institutions, an emerging middle class and some real ability to plan their future — is now imperiled. Yasir Arafat is making Israel miserable at the price of making Palestinians destitute. What a way to run a railroad. 

An Elusive Mideast Truce

Editorial – The New York Times – November 3, 2000

Anew terror bombing in Jerusalem yesterday quickly deflated hopes for an early cease-fire between Israelis and Palestinians based on the understandings reached between Shimon Peres and Yasir Arafat Wednesday night. But if nothing else, the steps agreed to by the former Israeli prime minister and the Palestinian leader show a recognition on both sides that further escalation of the fighting would serve no one. Despite the latest violence, Israeli and Palestinian leaders were still hoping last night that a truce might yet be established. If the latest agreement can be fully carried out, open warfare can be avoided and many lives saved.

Judging by what he told Mr. Peres, Mr. Arafat may now be ready to start delivering on the promises he made to President Clinton last month about taking firm steps to end the violence. It is not yet clear what brought about this more responsible position. Mr. Arafat always had warmer rapport with Mr. Peres than he has with Prime Minister Ehud Barak. He also cannot help but have noticed Israeli military preparations for intensified retaliatory attacks against Palestinian-ruled areas and administrative offices.

Islamic Jihad, the group that took responsibility for yesterday's bomb attack, may be beyond Mr. Arafat's immediate control. But it was his unfortunate decision to release Islamic Jihad and Hamas terrorists from prison last month, giving him at least indirect responsibility for yesterday's attack.

The real test of the latest truce talks will be whether Mr. Arafat effectively uses the well-armed Palestinian police force to keep stone-throwing teenagers and armed Palestinians away from Israeli positions. If he does, Israel is prepared to withdraw its military blockade of Palestinian towns and permit Palestinians to return to their jobs in Israel. Israel is also willing to suspend the plans drawn up by its cabinet earlier this week to launch more forceful retaliatory strikes against Palestinian administrative and political offices.

Regrettably, the Jerusalem bombing derailed plans for Mr. Arafat and Mr. Barak to make televised appeals yesterday to end the violence. Those broadcasts should be rescheduled quickly. Since the clashes began five weeks ago, Mr. Arafat has not yet personally appealed to the Palestinians for peace.

Until Wednesday night, Israelis and Palestinians seemed to be readying themselves for many more months of fighting. Palestinians spoke of a war for independence. Israeli forces were preparing to shed restrictions that now limit their attacks on Palestinian areas. Israel would enjoy enormous firepower advantages in such a conflict. But the results could still be devastating, with no guarantee that the fighting would stay confined to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. There can be no satisfactory military solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. A negotiated peace, however long it takes to achieve, is the only realistic way out.

 

Another bombing in Israel could shatter chance of renewing talks

Trudy Rubin – The Philadelphia Inquirer – November 3, 2000

JERUSALEM - When a car bomb explodes in central Jerusalem on the same day as an Israel-Palestinian cease-fire is announced, you don't get a good feeling about how long the cease-fire will last.

Everyone has been expecting a bomb since the violence started with the Palestinians. The city's malls are empty, parents won't let their kids ride on buses, and even the scene of the bomb - the Mahane Yehuda market - was uncrowded on Thursday, when most people normally shop for the Sabbath.

This time only two people were killed. But one more bomb will blow up any illusions about restarting peace talks. If that's not what Yasir Arafat wants, he'd better redefine his new and dangerous relationship with radical Islamist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Until the current violence, Palestinian intelligence forces were cooperating with Israeli counterparts to control the radical Islamists, as required by the Oslo accords. In the first years after Oslo, that cooperation was spotty, and in 1996 Islamist suicide bombers killed 57 Israelis. But since then, with CIA help, cooperation improved greatly and Arafat's security services had arrested many Islamist leaders and confiscated huge amounts of their weapons.

When the conflict moved from the bargaining table to the gun five weeks ago, cooperation between Palestinian and Israeli security services was halted.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which took credit for the car bomb, saw a chance for a comeback. As groups which oppose peace (and Israel's existence), they tried to take advantage of the public thirst for action. They jockeyed with Arafat's Fatah movement for control of "the street."

In true Arafatian fashion, the Palestinian leader moved to co-opt the Islamists. He made a tactical alliance with his former antagonists and let dozens of their activists out of Palestinian prisons.

Only a small number have been rearrested - Hamas political leader Mahmoud Zahar says 13 went back "voluntarily" on the West Bank, and two or three were rearrested in Gaza. The most notorious prisoners are apparently still jailed, and Palestinians say those who were released had never been formally charged with any offenses. But Israeli military sources say those freed "definitely include men who carried out deadly attacks."

Arafat's Fatah movement has also joined with the Islamists and other political groups in two broad political committees, one in Gaza and one in the West Bank, known as Higher Committees for Following Up the Intifada.

These committees make day-to-day decisions, such as when to hold strikes or demonstrations, or issue leaflets. But Arafat's key lieutenant, Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, has outmaneuvered Hamas by taking control of the streets with his armed militias, known as the tanzim (organization).

"There is a lot of tension behind the scenes," says a senior Israeli military source. "They compete for who will be stronger on the streets, and the tanzim is in a good position now." At a recent West Bank meeting of the Higher Committee, Hamas activists complained that the Authority was still arresting and torturing its members.

But the key question is whether Fatah will stop the military wings of radical Islamist groups from planning terror operations.

In his spartan medical clinic, on a narrow Gaza street, physician and Hamas political leader Mahmoud Zahhar told me, "I think the time of explosions in Tel Aviv will come." Zahhar, a stern, bearded figure, speaks with confidence, in fluent English. He says events have justified the Islamist strategy of war rather than Arafat's strategy of negotiations.

The Palestinian Authority's strategy of throwing stones makes no sense, the doctor says, because the casualties lopsidedly favor Israel. "The only thing to stop Israel is to attack Israel itself," said Zahhar. However, the Israeli military source told me "[we] don't think Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have a joint plan for terror activity - not yet. At a point where the Palestinian Authority is being pressured by the Americans to tone down the violence they don't want now to let Hamas steal the show."

Still, Hamas and Islamic Jihad can act without Fatah's approval. So will Palestinian security services try to prevent more bombs?

I asked Mohammed Dahlan, the clean-shaven, well-tailored head of preventive security services in Gaza - and Arafat's right-hand man - in his large wood-and-glass paneled office in Gaza City. Dahlan is heavily criticized by Hamas for past security cooperation with Israel (he used to meet often with Israeli ministers) and with CIA chief George Tenet. He once famously arrested Zahhar and humiliated him by having his beard shaved off.

Dahlan seemed particularly incensed that Israel had bombed a Palestinian security headquarters - after the Authority failed to prevented a lynching: "What do you want to get from the Authority when its headquarters are shelled?"

But Dahlan insisted that "we have no terrorist operations toward Israel."

More pertinent, he hinted that his forces were still trying to prevent terrorist operations against Israel.

"Ask yourselves," he demanded, "why there are no explosions in Tel Aviv. Palestinian public opinion wants explosions. The Palestinian Authority doesn't want that. We still say there is a small chance for peace."

If Dahlan and company don't thwart the bombers, they will destroy that chance - and maybe Arafat as well.
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