THE REGION: Arafat should have known
By Barry Rubin
(January 9) As the calendar year 2000 approached, there was great fear of a phenomenon called Y2K, meaning Year Two Thousand (k for kilo = thousand). It was expected that computers would crash and all sorts of other bad things would occur.
Nothing happened at all.
Or did it? For actually, the Middle Eastdid have such a crazy glitch. Call it YA2K (YA = Yasser Arafat). Perhaps the predictions weren't completely wrong; they were just one letter off the mark.
One of many fascinating aspects of these past two years has been the miscalculation of the balance of forces made by Arafat and his colleagues. They should have known that violence against Israel was a losing proposition; yet that mistake cost about 1,000 people their lives, flattened the Palestinian infrastructure, and threw away - perhaps for many years - any chance of a Palestinian state being created.
Yet such massive mistakes are typical in the region.
A central element in Arab nationalist and Islamist thinking is the inevitability of their victory. The apparent balance of forces will be overcome by some secret weapon, most recently suicide bombing.
The type of calculations made by other countries, leaders and movements - in which weaker states or the losing side show eagerness to avoid war and make peace - are simply irrelevant.
As long as this type of thinking prevails in the greater Arab world, and especially among the Palestinians, peace will be a distant dream and disaster will continue to be their handmaiden. This is not courage against difficult odds, but foolhardiness and irresponsibility in the face of reality.
But what is reality? For as long as you keep fighting, reject compromise and never give up the cause, you haven't lost yet. The years may roll along, the rest of the world may pass you by, but you are still a heroic freier, i.e., a sucker of massive proportions.
Examples of this blind confidence in inevitable success include Arab expectations of easy victory in 1948 and 1967, Iraq's belief that it could not be driven out of Kuwait, and the certainty of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban that they would defeat the United States.
Radical Islamists know God is on their side; militant nationalists know that history is on their side; and Arafat somehow believes he has the Europeans and Arabs on his side.
It's a good way to get sideswiped.
Statements by Palestinian leaders during recent months resemble what those same people were saying 20, 30 and 40 years ago. Among younger Palestinian activists, the failure to learn from history is extraordinary.
I'm not referring to the goal of destroying Israel - which the nationalists, though not Islamists, don't talk about so much any more - but the extolling of patience, of the certainty of victory, of belief in the same tactics that failed before; and total miscomprehension of Israel and the US.
IN OCTOBER 2001, as the United States was about to destroy the Taliban and chase Al-Qaeda's leadership deep into caves, Ayman al-Zawahiri, a veteran Egyptian Islamist and close aide of bin Laden, taunted: "O US people, your government was defeated in Vietnam and fled scared from Lebanon. It fled from Somalia and received a slap in Aden [when the USS Cole was attacked]. Your government is now leading you to a new losing war, where you will lose your sons and money."
Remarkably, the statements of Arab leaders and writers during and after 2000 - including the younger Palestinian activists - were often identical to explanations of strategy made 30 years earlier and proven wrong.
In 1970, for example, Arafat explained: "The Israelis have one great fear, the fear of casualties." He intended "to exploit the contradictions within Israeli society." Killing enough Israelis, he said, would force the country's collapse, its surrender to Palestinian demands, or - the new version - unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza.
A PLO official said in 1970: "Any objective study of the enemy will reveal that his potential for endurance, except where a brief engagement is concerned, is limited."
The goal of Palestinian violence, Arafat explained in 1968, was to destroy tourism, prevent immigration, weaken the Israeli economy and "create and maintain an atmosphere of strain and anxiety that will force the Zionists to realize that it is impossible for them to live in Israel."
In the 1980s, too, similar themes were expressed in PLO documents. The enemy's "greatest weakness is his small population." Attacks against civilians in the streets would demoralize the Israelis and make them give up.
Even in December 2001, a few days before Arafat, recognizing (though not admitting) defeat, asked for a cease-fire, Farouk Kadoumi, head of the PLO's Political Department, claimed Israel was heading toward collapse:
"Sharon is the last bullet in the Israeli rifle. If Sharon is defeated, the rapid countdown [to the end] of Israel will begin, because that country was established through historical coercion and will find its end as the USSR and Yugoslavia did."
Having learned all too little since 1965, the Palestinian leaders have continued to espouse the same basic concepts and expectations. Even if the PA were ready for a compromise, no basis has been laid for accepting real concessions or persuading the people that they are necessary.
No one taught younger Palestinians that these ideas had never worked. And so they believe that their readiness to become martyrs, sacrifice material well-being and sustain the conflict will make the difference. Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon and the alleged decadence of Israeli society render Israel's military might irrelevant. Even Palestinian suffering is an asset, since this will bring international sympathy, followed by international intervention.
But things didn't work out that way and Arafat demanded a sort of cease-fire.
Bin Laden and the Taliban were similarly sure that God would strike down the US, or the Americans would be afraid to fight, or the Islamic world would rise up on their behalf. How could they possibly lose?
But things didn't work out that way, and now bin Laden may be hiding in a cave while the Islamist demonstrators are staying home and the Arab journalists are keeping quiet.
And so here we are again at the end of another cycle.
You know what? The real problem is not the cycle of violence, but the cycle of miscalculation.
And there's every indication that nothing has yet changed.
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