Yes, by destroying Saddam's regime and the real strategic threat posed to Israel by Iraq, the Bush team has taken away one of the strongest security arguments from Israeli hawks: that Israel needs to keep the West Bank, or at least troops on the Jordan River, as a buffer in case Iraq again tries to come through Jordan to strike Israel, as it has done before
I have a news flash for Tom Friedman - the Israelis will believe Iraq is all tidy when they see it tidied up, not before. The threats of massive arms smuggling from Syria, Iran and an always potentially destabilized Jordan are not to be sneezed at either. The West Bank was given up with Oslo. No one but the useful idiots in Geneva intends to give up outposts on the Jordan or to trust to the Palestinians' good will for Israeli security.
I think Friedman is misreading Olmert's remarks. I think they were a trial balloon sent on behalf of Sharon (Olmert works closely with the PM) intended to show some movement on the Israeli part so they didn't get painted as the bad guys while Hamas was debating with Fatah whether to offer another hudna (they decided not) and the Geneva idiots were strutting their stuff. I don't think anything will come of it. The majority of the Israeli public is too well aware of the cost to them of handing the Palestinians any victories.
I could be wrong here, but that's how I read it. Derfner of the Jpost seems to agree with Friedman, though:
Quietly, the ground is shaking
By LARRY DERFNER
This is a strange, surprising moment in Israel's democratic life. For the first time since the intifada began, there is real political ferment in the air – a possibility, even an anticipation, of the beginning of the end of the Israeli occupation. Yet despite the Israeli public's famous political vitality, the spark behind this movement for change is not coming from the people, from the street, at all.
Rather, it's been initiated by individuals of stature calling out like prophets in the wilderness – from the refuser air-force pilots, to IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. General Moshe Ya'alon, to the four former Shin Bet chiefs, to Yossi Beilin, to Ehud Olmert – with nods of encouragement from Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz and George W. Bush.
(The "People's Voice" petition of Ami Ayalon and Sari Nusseibeh has tens of thousands of Israeli and Palestinian signatures, but peaceniks will sign petitions in their sleep; this does not represent a burst of grassroots energy.) Even the most concrete signal of changes to come – Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's repeated remarks about "unilateral steps," and now about "moving settlements" – weren't prompted by public demand. There have been no demonstrations lately because there haven't been enough protesters willing to leave their homes to mount one.
While Israelis obviously aren't pleased by the unabating threat of terror and the diplomatic futility, and even though a large majority theoretically would like to see isolated settlements dismantled, they haven't been moved to open their mouths about it.
ONE REASON is that they don't have a leader for change. The Left has been thoroughly discredited by Palestinian violence. Israelis won't even trust a Labor hawk, a dovish ex-general, anymore because as far as they're concerned it was dovish ex-generals – Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak – who got us into this mess in the first place.
The only leader they'll follow is Sharon. No matter how badly he fails the "results test," in these dangerous times he projects strength, wisdom and courage like no other politician. As Yediot Aharonot's Nahum Barnea wrote, "The public doesn't support Sharon, it clings to him."
But I think all these prophets in the wilderness have had a gradual effect on the public, possibly even on Sharon himself. The quiet on the Israeli street is deceptive. Most people in this country, I'm convinced, are quietly, passively rooting for Sharon to start taking down settlements.
The reason for this seeming paradox – a silent majority in favor of wrenching, divisive, maybe violent political change – is that the new element in Israeli thinking isn't something that gets people to hollering, that sends them out into the streets.
That new element is the demographic threat, or rather the public's recognition of it; the threat itself, of course, is old. It used to be considered a marginal issue, one of those long-term problems like the water shortage that academics are always warning about, but which always get ignored because there are so many more urgent problems to command people's attention.
But gradually, maybe because it's become clear that Sharon and the IDF cannot subdue or neutralize the Palestinians, the demographic threat has moved from the margins of this country's political awareness to the core.
The fact that the Arabs will soon outnumber the Jews in the land now under Israel's control, and that such an Arab majority will only get bigger, has finally seeped into the general public's thoughts.
It troubles not only the Left, but the center and the mainstream Right no less, possibly even more. Ehud Olmert didn't talk about anything but demographics in his now-famous interview in Yediot, when he endorsed a far-reaching unilateral withdrawal from the territories.
Sharon's supporters have finally realized that they can refuse to be defeated by Palestinian terror, refuse to make territorial concessions to it, refuse to give it any prizes, but the longer they refuse, the more Arab the Jewish state will become.
The silent majority has by now grown familiar with the term demographic threat and learned what it means. Today most Israelis can say: We've seen the future, and it doesn't work.
This is a strange, heartening moment in Israel's democratic life. After three years of battle-weariness and hopelessness, people here seem ready to start creating a different future. If they've been quiet about this, maybe wisdom is supposed to emerge quietly.
jpost.com |
