JERUSALEM DISPATCH
The Way We Live Now
Israel proves there is a military solution to terrorism.
BY BRET STEPHENS - WSJ.com
Sunday, October 17, 2004 12:01 a.m.
JERUSALEM--I bought my wife a skirt and blouse at a Benetton outlet the other day--in Ramallah. I was shopping at the Plaza Mall, a gleaming, two-story affair, which opened about a year ago at a reported cost of $10.2 million, and which also boasts a sporting-goods store, an espresso bar, a burger joint called McChain's and an American-style supermarket. Nice place: I wish my local Israeli grocery were as clean and appetizing.
Later that evening, I met up with some Israeli friends at a restaurant called Shakra, in downtown Jerusalem. It took 20 minutes to find a parking space, and it was another 30 minutes before we were seated. Like every other restaurant here, there was a guard posted at the door. But inside, the atmosphere was loud and easy, and by midnight customers were standing on barstools--just slightly drunk--belting Joan Jett's "I Love Rock 'n' Roll."
Of course Palestine is not the Plaza Mall, nor is Israel the bar at Shakra. Indeed, to watch the news from the region over the past two weeks is to see a rather different picture: of young Israeli children killed by Palestinian rocket fire; of heavy fighting in the Gaza Strip; of multiple coordinated terror attacks on Israeli targets in the Sinai.
Yet for most Israelis, and for many Palestinians too, the violence of the intifada--which entered its fifth year this month--seems to be in recession. Anyone who visits Jerusalem today will not see the ghost town it was in 2002, when Israel was absorbing an average of one suicide bombing a week. And anyone who visits Ramallah will find what is, by (non-Gulf state) Arab standards, a calm and economically prospering city, where the only Israeli-made ruin is the Palestinian Authority headquarters, deliberately kept that way as a monument of Arafatian agitprop.
How did things improve so dramatically, and so quickly, for Palestinians and Israelis alike? Begin by recalling Israel's assassination, in late March, of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. At the time, the action was all but universally condemned as reckless and counterproductive. "By granting Yassin the martyrdom he craved, the Israelis have provided a motive for new suicide attacks," went an editorial in the normally pro-Israel Daily Telegraph of London. "More young Palestinians will fall in love with death, and more Israeli civilians will die with them."
Yet what followed for Israel were nearly six consecutive terror-free months. This wasn't because the Palestinian terror groups lacked for motivation to carry out attacks. It was because they lacked for means. The leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Yasser Arafat's own al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades had to spend their time figuring out how to survive, not on planning fresh attacks. The Israeli army incarcerated terror suspects in record numbers--some 6,000 now sit in Israeli prisons--which in turn helped yield information for future arrests. Most importantly, the security fence has begun to make the Israeli heartland nearly impenetrable to Palestinian infiltrators. (August's double suicide bombing in Beersheba happened precisely because there is still no security fence separating that town from the Palestinian city of Hebron, from where the bombers were dispatched.)
Taken together, these measures prove what a legion of diplomats, pundits and reporters have striven to deny: that there is a military solution to the conflict. This is true in two senses. First, a sufficiently strong military response to terrorism does not simply feed a cycle of violence (although a weak military response does); rather, it speeds the killing to a conclusion. That makes it possible for Israelis and Palestinians to resume a semblance of normal life. Second, a military solution creates new practical realities, and new strategic understandings, from which previously elusive political opportunities may emerge.
Look at Israel. Although the security fence is internationally seen as "Sharon's Wall," in his first two years in office the prime minister tacitly opposed the fence's construction for the simple reason that it implied some kind of border running through the supposedly indivisible Land of Israel. But the security fence's proven success has forced Ariel Sharon to alter his view: In today's world of asymmetrical conflict, Israel's security rests less on holding the geographic high ground than it does on physically separating Israelis from the hostile population in their midst. And once the goal becomes getting as many Israelis as possible to live on one side of the line, and as many Palestinians as possible to live on the other, then the dismantling of at least some of the settlements becomes necessary. The only real issue is how to evacuate these settlements without either provoking domestic Israeli unrest or sending a signal of weakness to the enemy--and, of course, how to win parliamentary approval for it.
Now look at the Palestinian Authority. As most serious observers now acknowledge, this intifada did not begin as a spontaneous popular outburst of rage at Mr. Sharon's walk on the Temple Mount four years ago. It was a premeditated and opportunistic move by Yasser Arafat to reassert his revolutionary credentials among Palestinians while winning by force what few concessions Israel had left to offer after the debacle at Camp David.
He failed on both counts. Israel turned its back on dovish Ehud Barak in favor of hawkish Mr. Sharon. And Palestinians, as well as Arabs generally, have turned their back on Arafat. "The PA under Mr. Arafat has started crumbling," wrote Ahmed Al-Jarallah in the Arab Times. "The Palestinians themselves have started questioning the need for its existence. Mr. Arafat should quit his position because he is the head of a corrupt authority. There is no point for him to remain in politics. He has destroyed Palestine."
Last summer, domestic discontent with Arafat nearly turned to outright revolt. This, too, was a direct and positive result of Israel's military policy: By locking up Arafat in his compound and making him look weak, he became weak. By weakening Arafat, while simultaneously decimating Hamas, it gave rise to a cohort of comparatively more pragmatic leaders ready to give up on this intifada the moment they can. Above all, by showing Palestinians that the suffering they inflicted was the suffering they incurred, it forced a quiet rethink about the utility of violence as a political tool.
The larger question for Palestinians is where the cause of their national movement is headed: For 35 years, it has been synonymous with the person of Arafat; absent him, there isn't that much that binds a Gazan to a Jeninian save an overarching Arab identity and a mutual hatred of Israel. In the post-Arafat era, watch out for Palestinian politics to move in non-Palestinian directions: probably pan-Arab; possibly Islamist; hopefully, with a bit of statesmanship and a spell of calm, Western.
As for Israel, these past four years have also brought its share of lessons. Tactically, Israeli security forces learned, after a shaky start, how to suppress a massive terrorist-guerrilla insurgency, a remarkable accomplishment U.S. military planners would do well to study. Strategically, a majority of Israelis concluded that while peace with this generation of Palestinian leaders is impossible, separation from them is essential. And morally, Israel learned that even the most fractious democracy can stand up to a prolonged terrorist assault, and choose not to yield.
It's a choice made easier when you know there is no alternative.
Mr. Stephens, until recently editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post, is a new member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
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