councilor.org
| Source | Steve Zeltzer |
| Date | 01/01/05/16:31 |
| January 2, 2001 New York Times
FOREIGN AFFAIRS Three Blind Eyes By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Tne good thing about the creative compromise President Clinton has put on the table for Israelis and Palestinians to consider is that at least we now know what the only realistic final deal looks like: Israel gives up most of the West Bank, but keeps most of the settlements and all of Jewish Jerusalem and gets an end to the conflict; the Palestinians get most of the West Bank, all of Gaza, a slice of Israel's Negev desert and all of Arab Jerusalem, but have to give up Palestinian refugees' returning to Israel. Now that we know what the deal looks like, the only question left is: Will either side be able to take it? Israel says maybe, the Palestinians say maybe not — although Mr. Clinton will try to change that when he meets today with Yasir Arafat. But this will take more than a little persuasion. Because three issues negotiators have long turned a blind eye to are now going to haunt them. The first is the behavior of the Palestinians with their latest uprising, Intifada II. To listen to Palestinians, they had to mount this Intifada II because the Palestinian street just couldn't take the pressure of Israeli occupation another day. To be sure, the lingering Israeli occupation of the West Bank was onerous for Palestinians. But all the Palestinian explanations ignore a simple fact: they were dealing with an Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, who was trying to break the cycle and who, at Camp David, had put on the table a sweeping Israeli proposal for a Palestinian state. Violence was not the Palestinians' only recourse. But how did Mr. Arafat respond to the Barak offer? First he went on a world tour trying to generate pressure on Mr. Barak for more concessions, then he winked at Intifada II. "The street made me do it," Mr. Arafat indicated. What Mr. Arafat never did was talk to Israelis — go to them directly, explain why he needed 100 percent, and demonstrate to them why, if they accepted, Israel would be so much better off. Oh, that's not Yasir Arafat, say his apologists. He's not Anwar el-Sadat. Too bad. Mr. Sadat got 100 percent for a reason. Why should Israelis now believe that if they give Mr. Arafat a state in the West Bank, when he gets in trouble next time, say because he can't run a modern country, he won't trigger another uprising against Israel and say, "Sorry, the street made me do it again"? Intifada II has crushed those in Israel who argued that the Palestinians had made a strategic choice for peace. So, as Israel mulls the Clinton compromise, the Israeli opponents of this deal are now more energized than ever, and the Israeli advocates of the deal are deflated and depressed, with a little voice in their heads saying, "Well, if the Palestinians say they had to mount Intifada II because Israelis understand only force, not persuasion, maybe we should deal with them the same way — give them a dose of Ariel Sharon." The second blind eye is the one that many Israelis, U.S. diplomats and American Jews turned for years toward Israeli settlement activity. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank began in self-defense, but it gradually mutated into a traditional colonial occupation — driven at its core by dangerous religious and nationalist fanatics, seething with contempt for Arabs. Jewish colonialism was no different than any other. It involved the brutal suppression of another people and the stealing of their land. Some 40 Jewish settlements that were placed (often by Mr. Sharon) deep inside heavily populated Palestinian areas must be uprooted in the Clinton compromise, but doing so now could trigger civil strife in Israel. The last blind eye was turned toward the real political debate within the Arab world today. In Israel, virtually every party favors a peace deal with the Palestinians, and the debate is over how much to compromise. In the Arab world, the debate is over whether to compromise — with one group rejecting peace with Israel on any terms, and others advocating peace with Israel, but only if the Palestinians get 100 percent of what they want. So no Arab or Palestinian leader has prepared his people for the Clinton deal, the only deal that is possible — a deal in which neither gets 100 percent. Too many Arab regimes today are frail and illegitimate, and cannot settle for anything less than 100 percent. They are too afraid of their own people. Big problem. The peace process has gotten as far as it did by turning a blind eye toward these three realities and by assuming that — in the crunch — the lure of and pressures for a deal would overcome them. Alas, it may be the other way around. |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho