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Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CountofMoneyCristo who wrote (9117)	10/30/2001 1:04:11 AM
From: Glenn Petersen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27666

While we are in the area, Anthony Lewis feels that it is time for the U.S. to impose a solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Why not? nytimes.com "I asked a lot of people, Israelis and Palestinians. One after another gave the same answer: The world — meaning the United States — should impose a solution on us." October 30, 2001 AT HOME ABROAD/ABROAD AT HOME Is There an Answer? By ANTHONY LEWIS JERUSALEM -- Ariel Sharon made his sortie onto the Temple Mount on Sept. 28 last year. The second Palestinian intifada began the next day, and Yasir Arafat quickly embraced it. Since then, by one diplomat's count, there have been 14 different attempts to get the genie of violence and counter-violence back in the bottle. All have failed. Is there now any imaginable path to peace between Israelis and Palestinians? Force has been the answer of Prime Minister Sharon to the immediate problem of security for Israelis. After the murder of an Israeli politician by agents of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, he sent tanks and troops to invest six Palestinian towns. More than 30 Palestinians were killed and several dozen terrorist suspects arrested. A minister in the Sharon cabinet, Danny Naveh, explained that the purpose was to apprehend terrorists and deter others. "We have to do it because Arafat doesn't," he told me. But the lengthy incursion has not stopped terrorism, and it has had heavy costs. A former director of Mossad, Danny Yatom, told The Jerusalem Post: "The incursion caused great hardship to the general Palestinian population. It increases their hatred, which means that many more Palestinians join Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the P.F.L.P., which means that many more suicide bombers, which means that many more [Israeli] retaliations, and so on." The answer sought over many years has been a political solution that would reduce the bitterness and hence the violence. The latest attempt, last year, was President Clinton's failed Camp David effort to get a final peace agreement. Mr. Sharon is now talking about an "interim arrangement." The Palestinians could have a state, he suggested — one with no agreed borders and no great change in present conditions. The chance of any Palestinians accepting such a plan is zero. It would do nothing about the existing Jewish settlements that constrict their lives, nothing about their harried status in Jerusalem, nothing about the Israeli military zones that Mr. Sharon wants to control the West Bank. Some other Israeli politicians suggest what they call "unilateral separation." It is hard to take that idea seriously either. The more than 200,000 settlers in Palestinian territory would make "separation" a nightmare, as would Jewish housing planted in Palestinian areas of Jerusalem. What then? I asked a lot of people, Israelis and Palestinians. One after another gave the same answer: The world — meaning the United States — should impose a solution on us. Shlomo Ben-Ami, who was at Camp David as foreign minister, said the step-by-step approach of the Oslo process failed — "and you can't calm Palestinian agitation now with steps." The world has to give the final answer to the two parties, Mr. Ben-Ami said: "President Bush should say, 'The Clinton peace package of 2000 was not a mere expression of presidential will. It was the point of balance, supported by the European Union and Russia. The parties must accept those parameters, negotiating only how to implement them.' " Sari Nusseibeh, a philosophy teacher who is president of Al Quds University in East Jerusalem, was appointed by Mr. Arafat this month as Palestinian political representative in Jerusalem. He, too, said the outside world should intervene with a final plan. "All the Western foreign ministers should come here for two weeks," Dr. Nusseibeh said, "and invite Mr. Arafat and Mr. Sharon. It would send a message to both publics that enough is enough." Remarkably, a Hamas political leader said last month that the U.S. should impose a plan. Ismael Abu Shanab told James Bennet of The New York Times that America "should work out a just solution. This solution should be enforced on both parties. Palestinians will not be satisfied — it's O.K. Israelis will not be satisfied — it's O.K. But this is the situation, live with it." Would the U.S. government consider such an interventionist role? It has always shied away from that level of responsibility, and in any event it has another preoccupation now. But the sad truth is that the embattled parties have just about given up hope of finding any other way out.