A good review of the situation from a perspective very different from Washington or London, pointing out that the Pals will never be ready to make peace as long as they believe - with reason - that they will be rescued from their failed violence without serious punishment. This makes violence a low-risk option for them, always with golden possibilities for victory in their eyes. The Pals are nothing if not gamblers.
Question about Reuters and BBC coverage: have you ever, ever, seen Reuters or the BBC refer to any Palestinian action, say, blowing up a bus or releasing a Hamas honcho as "jeopardizing the peace process"?
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Winning, and Losing
Elliot P. Chodoff
US National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice’s statement this weekend that she expects Israel to show restraint even following a major terrorist attack was as predictable as it was misguided. It was clear that once the US administration put its reputation on the line to push for progress in the road map, it would begin to pressure Israel to accept the reality of “peace with terrorism” using some euphemism reminiscent of the Oslo era’s “sacrifices for peace” term for the victims of terrorist attacks. After all, progress is defined almost entirely on subjective perception, while realities that don’t suit the situation are likely to be reinterpreted to better fit the needs of the administration.
One long-standing belief which has guided attempts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict is that, held by most Western leaders and some Israelis as well, an Israeli military victory can never result in peace. In the event of an Israeli battlefield victory, peace can only be achieved through the negation of that victory, and the return of the status quo ante by diplomacy. This concept is the basis of the oft-repeated assertion that there is no military solution to the terrorist attacks against Israel, and is the driving force behind much of the criticism of IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon’s recent statement that Israel has been victorious over terrorism in the recent low intensity conflict with the Palestinians.
According to this school of thought, only an Israeli defeat (or at best a stalemate) will pave the way to peace. Thus Yaalon’s assertion that Israel had won is seen as anathema to those who wish to achieve a peaceful solution to the conflict. Of course, an extension of this idea is that the only way to achieve real and lasting peace in the Palestinian Israeli conflict is to promote the total defeat and eradication of Israel. In fact, most of the Palestinian leadership subscribes to this method of ending the conflict.
This approach is not new; it has guided those who have dealt with the Mideast Conflict since Israel’s independence was opposed with violence by the Arabs in 1948. Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion chose a limited victory at the conclusion of the War of Independence in 1949 partly for fear that a total victory would result in Israel being forced back to lines less advantageous than those held when the Arabs agreed to an armistice. Still, in the early 1950's numerous plans were put forward to resolve the conflict by forcing Israel to cede land to its neighbors, including an American proposal to relinquish the southern Negev and the city of Eilat to allow Arab continuity between Egypt and Jordan.
The Israeli victory in the Six Day War of 1967 was immediately followed by an offer to return the situation to the geographical status quo that preceded the war in return for peace and recognition by the Arab world. When the offer was rejected (the infamous “Three ‘No’s’” of Khartoum: no peace, no recognition, no negotiations) the UN embodied the Israeli proposal in Security Council Resolution 242, based on the principle of territory for peace. Only by negating Israel’s territorial gains, it was believed, could the Arabs ever think of making peace with the Jews. They certainly could never acquiesce to living side by side with a Jewish State that had been permitted to defeat them and continued to enjoy the fruits of that victory. Six years later, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger would take this philosophy a step further, insisting that Israel not pre-empt the Arab onslaught which was launched on Yom Kippur 1973 for fear that yet another military defeat would so embarrass the Arabs that it would make peace negotiations impossible. An Israeli defeat, on the other hand, would restore Arab pride and somehow make them more accepting of a peace plan. The result was thousands of Israeli casualties and, later, a peace agreement with Egypt that had nothing to do with their early victories of the Yom Kippur War.
When the Palestinians decided to launch a terrorist war against Israeli in September 2000, they based their tactics on the idea that, as Palestinian minister Nabil Sha’ath said, if they kill 500 Israelis they will be able to dictate better terms than those offered by Ehud Barak to Yasir Arafat at Camp David in the summer of 2000. Coming in the wake of the unceremonious Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, this tactic seemed to make sense. If Hizbullah could drive the Israelis out of Lebanon by killing a couple of dozen soldiers a year, the reasoning went, then the Palestinians could outdo them by killing a few hundred civilians in the same time period. Israeli society was perceived as weak and on the verge of disintegration, with an exaggerated sensitivity to casualties, so all that was needed was a bloody little push to achieve the capitulation of the Zionist State. Simultaneously it was assumed that the achievements of the Oslo Process were permanent; the world would never allow the Israelis to turn the clock back and re-enter territory that had been handed over to the Palestinian Authority. So the risk was estimated as infinitesimal, while the potential for gain was seen to be enormous.
Arafat and his gang badly miscalculated. In fairness, they had no way of predicting the September 11 attacks and their ramifications on American public and political opinion vis a vis terrorism, but they also grossly underestimated the Israeli population’s resilience and determination to withstand and fight terrorism. In the spring of 2002 the IDF’s Operation Defensive Wall marked the beginning of the end of the free rein the terrorists would have in operating out of the protection of PA controlled cities. Even the attempt at reversing the IDF success with the “Jenin Massacre” lie failed miserably. Arafat’s additional lies to the US, denying his involvement in terrorist activity and in particular his connections to the arms ship “Karin A,” made his diplomatic position untenable in Washington.
It took the Palestinians over a year to recognize that their tactics had failed totally, but by the spring of 2003 the terrorist organizations had come to understand that they could not successfully operate with the IDF positioned in the Palestinian cities, patrolling at will and arresting or killing terrorists on a daily basis long before they got anywhere near their objectives in Israel. It was time to request a time out to allow for reorganization and rearming. Consequently, the Hudna was born.
The declaration of the Hudna can certainly be seen as a tactical victory for the IDF given the trends in the fighting over the past three years. It is clear that the terrorist organizations never would have considered a hudna in March, 2002 when they were launching numerous attacks every day and the IDF was not permitted to attack them on their home ground, but was limited to relatively passive preventive measures which were generally successful, but failed too often for the security of Israeli citizens.
The IDF victory over terrorism must be measured only in tactical terms, however, since the hudna is only tactical in nature. The use of violence on the Palestinian side is a strategic decision, and we are thus likely to see a return to it as soon as the efforts to reconstitute their organizations succeed. The Palestinian Covenant tells us as much: armed struggle is the only means to liberate Palestine. It is thus a strategy and not a tactic. In contrast to the West, which sees the use of violence as a means to an end, to be used sparingly and only when there is strong justification, the Palestinians have always seen the use of violence as an end in itself. While it may alternate with diplomacy when the military situation dictates, it is to be eschewed only once total victory has been achieved.
In light of the history of the conflict and the various attempts to solve it, the US and its road map are yet another attempt to implement the “peace through defeat of Israel” philosophy which has failed for over half a century. Rather than allowing Israel to defeat its violent enemies, the US position, rewarding the Palestinians for their choice of violence and reassuring them that any military adventure will be guaranteed against total loss by American foreign policy, only makes the attainment of peace more complicated and distant. The Palestinians have come to realize that if they win they will win it all, and if they lose their defeat will be turned into victory by those who have bought into the idea that only through an Israeli defeat can peace be assured. We would expect no less of Israel’s enemies; the tragedy is that some of its friends have fallen into the trap as well.
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