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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (27802)	4/30/2002 2:28:08 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Here is another column from the WP saying that "Sharon is wrong" and "Get rid of the Settlements" washingtonpost.com A Mideast Moment of Transition By Stephen Rosenfeld Tuesday, April 30, 2002; Page A19 Charlie Wilson, former Texas congressman, observes that three main things matter to Israel: (1) having a safe, secure and accepted homeland, including its rightful share of Jerusalem; (2) maintenance of extensive West Bank settlements, where 200,000 Jews now live; and (3) a live democracy where law and conscience rule. But Israelis can have two of the three, only two. There can be no safe homeland and no working democracy if Israelis have to police a military occupation. Yet Israeli parties supporting the settlements are in power. This puts on those of us who feel differently a burden of persuasion, in Israeli politics and American public opinion, that we have not yet met. The demand for democracy and decency in public transactions imposes a further defining burden in this conflict. Decency in, for instance, methods of armed struggle: What causes are rightly fought for? With what weapons? At what targets? How to preserve respect for civilians? These are ethical questions for both sides. Palestinians require statehood; that is an ethical matter for Israelis as well as Palestinians. But, of course, the new Palestine-to-be must also accept compromise. It must stop the terrorism. It must accept Israel as a Jewish state. It must be prepared to make some territorial concessions. There are signs that we are approaching a moment of transition. Some new ideas are in the air. One is dubious, the other promising. The dubious one goes to Israeli methods of battle, which are moving from reactive to proactive, from proportionate retaliatory raids to long and large, stunning military operations, virtually a reoccupation. These operations have unavoidable civilian costs. Many of us are at once skeptical of Ariel Sharon's military results, fearful of expanding hostilities and worried about the resulting strains on Israel's relations with the Bush administration and America's friends and allies. A second new idea in the air goes to American methods of negotiation, and is starting to percolate in and around official circles. Current negotiations center on small steps, confidence-building and direct talks by the Middle East parties. The new idea is to seek agreement first on the hard political questions, including those (refugees, borders and Jerusalem) put off as too hard. This would let both sides know the final destination of negotiations early on. It would then be worked out, imposed and policed by the international community. The objective would be an international settlement satisfying the major accepted goals of both sides: land and peace. The rationale for this change is, of course, that the small-steps confidence-building approach familiar from the Oslo Israeli-Palestinian talks got ground up in the intifada. Something else was needed. Israel currently is trying to tuck its national aims -- security for its citizens, expansion for its governing right wing -- under Bush's anti-terrorist umbrella. Its hope is to provide Israel more time and more political space in which to destroy the Palestinian "terrorist infrastructure." Bush, who got 20 percent of the Jewish vote in 2000, has been notably supportive of this quest, which has happened at some cost to gaining support for other American objectives, such as removing Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Many American Jews and others believe toughness is precisely what qualifies Sharon for leadership. I wonder whether toughness is enough. My problem with him is not that he is tough. His politics are so narrow. He wants land, holds it, asks for "peace" to confirm the hold, and then protests that peace is denied. Yet it is undeniable that Israelis across most of their political spectrum favor the big-bang theory now being put to military test by Sharon. They favor action to protect them and their terrified families from horror. Arafat remains a figure of outrage. He is a terrorist, a liar and, worse, a weak reed on which to rest Israeli hopes for Arab cooperation in reducing terrorism. Optimists consider that after a somewhat promising anti-terrorist start, Arafat returned to support of terrorism mainly to catch up to the boiling Arab street. If there were some progress on the political or negotiating track, then he might back off and crack down on terrorists again. To encourage him, Israel itself needs to consider backing off. Pessimists fear, however, that Arafat is conducting a strategy of deception whose intent is to return all Palestinian refugees to their homes not just of 1967 but of 1948. Sharon's contention that Israel is waging not just a struggle for a decent life but a full-fledged "war for survival" would then be affirmed beyond any reasonable doubt. Israel as a democracy and an outpost of the civilized West is owed the presumption of favor by its fellow democracies and their publics. But this does not absolve it of an obligation to make painful policy choices. The right-wing gang says concessions reveal dangerous weakness. Blindly wrong. Carefully wrought concessions build strength. As for us journalists, none of us has it all straight. All of us struggle to see beyond the despair of the moment. All of us believe, however, that behind the darkness of the Middle East lies a vision of justice and peace that can yet be brought into the light.