Posted on 04/16/2002 3:32:03 AM PDT by kattracks
If you can tell whether the situation in the Middle East is getting better or worse, you're smarter than I am.If talking is always better than fighting, then the fact that there has been less indiscriminate murder since Secretary of State Powell began his shuttle between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is a good sign.
But given that Powell's mission appears to be getting nowhere — the Israelis and Palestinians seem to believe that enough is not yet enough (to twist President Bush's frustrated formulation) — then there's little to be optimistic about.
As the mess winds on, the sorry conclusion is easily stated: No real estate deal — no land for peace agreement — will satisfy either side. And no matter how successful Israel's military operations on the West Bank turn out to be, the supply of Palestinians willing to give their lives as homicide bombers will likely remain nearly endless.
The Palestinians won't end their terror because they think they're winning — and certainly the rest of the world outside America has bought the line that they, rather than the innocent Israelis killed at the bombers' hands, are the real victims. The other fact is that Israel won't stop retaliating for those indefensible actions — and no sober person would expect them to.
Where to from here?
Well, Powell may yet broker a ceasefire and there may be yet another international conference to talk things over. But I can't see either development rising to the level of a conflict-ending breakthrough.
In the current environment, the only action that seems promising is separation. Jews and Arabs may one day live peacefully side by side, but that day is not now.
Short of expulsion, which no one should want, separation can be accomplished in only one way, by building fences such as the one around Gaza that has successfully kept Palestinian terrorists from entering Israel.
"Israel's future depends on" such an idea, says Ehud Barak, the former prime minister whose generous compromise offer Arafat rejected at Camp David near the end of the Clinton administration. "Only such a border could secure a solid Jewish majority inside Israel for generations to come, and in so doing secure Israel as a democracy and its identity as a Jewish state.
"If Israel does not find [a] way to disengage from the Palestinians," Barak argues, "its future might resemble the experience of Belfast or Bosnia — two communities bleeding each other to death for generations."
Barak would like the disengagement he urges to be determined through negotiations, but "the absence of a [willing Palestinian] partner should not paralyze Israel from taking defensive steps in order to protect its own vital interests [and] as long as there is no [peace] agreement ... Israel needs to adopt a plan for unilateral separation from the Palestinians."
Backward Thinking
In an editorial yesterday — the day after Barak offered his proposal on its Op-Ed page — The New York Times said, "Such a border might make sense at some point, but real Israeli security will prove elusive until the occupation of the West Bank ends and Palestinians are permitted to rebuild their institutions and establish their state."
I think that is exactly backward. The buffer zones approved by Israel's inner cabinet Sunday — a codification of Barak's plan — could provide the quiet needed to make Israel safer and the territory in which the Palestinians can "rebuild their institutions and establish their state."
If and when the Palestinians eventually prove they can settle for a state that doesn't demand the end of Israel's existence, the boundaries can be adjusted, cross-society commerce can commence and the buffers can go the way of the Berlin Wall.
"Good fences make good neighbors," Robert Frost famously wrote in "Mending Wall" almost 90 years ago. Applied to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute that may not be true. But absent a profound change in attitudes that seems more distant than ever, fences can make a neighborhood more peaceful.
At this point, I can't see any other solution with even a remote chance of stemming the violence that becomes more senseless each time a young Arab man or woman decides his or her life will have meaning only when it's ended in the murder of Israeli civilians.
E-mail: mkramer@edit.nydailynews.com
How we should tremble when a gang of Jews gets together, because we know they'll inevitably erupt in a violent outburst soon after! And who would want a family of Jews moving into their neighborhood, no doubt to aid in Israeli terrorist plots, instead of some nice, peaceful Arabs?
Your post goes a long way to illustrate how incredibly assinine some of the dross we're seeing in the media really is. There is no moral equivalency between Arabs and Jews. Think I'm wrong? Who would you rather have marry your daughter?
Is that racist thinking? Perhaps, but we are discussing a clash of two peoples, not a clash of two people. Murderous deeds make a compelling case against a murderous people. Much hay is being made about the IDF invasions of terrorist dens, but let's be honest: would anyone -- including (and especially) Arabs -- show as much restraint as the Jews have in the face of such savagery?
Imal
Frost was being sarcastic, as he was in most of his famous quoted lines.
I have been struggling for some time with the image of a Berlin Wall around Israel.
I think it's going to happen.
CALL IT THE "PEACE WALL"!
I wonde how the Palestinians will feel when they can't get to their jobs? Or how the Arabs will feel when they have to build industries and educate their children in something more useful than Islamic studies?
Sloppy imagery gets people killed in this world, eventually. Please think about it.
I totally disagree here! I have read more and more articles that discuss the concept of total victory and population shifts as the only way to bring peace to the region.
Israel needs to win this war and remove the muslims from their nation. Israel must act as a conquering nation and secure its borders.
Israel has deliberately targeted and destroyed Palestinian efforts at economic development. A number of foreign companies that had invested in factories there are quite annoyed about it.
As long as Israel and Palestinians are located where they are, Israel can't afford to allow Palestine to develop. On the other hand, Palestine must be freed from Israel's oppression if it's ever going to develop. Other Arab countries, who like neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians, are perfectly happy to have them continue fighting and to encourage the Palestinians to make ill-advised attacks.
Perhaps what's needed is for Israel to identify who its real enemies are (other countries are sponsoring Palestinian terrorism) and shift some of its efforts there. If, e.g., Lebanon is supporting the terrorists, perhaps Israel could capture some land from Lebanon and give it to the Palestinians. Obviously the Lebanese may not like it (and if they're not involved in sponsoring the attacks on Israel I wouldn't recommend this approach) but it might have some good effects on Israeli-Palestinian relations.
Son of Emperor Vespasian, Titus was closely associated with his father in military campaigns, and after A.D. 71 he acted as coruler with the emperor. He served in Britain and in Germany and captured and destroyed Jerusalem in A.D. 70. (From the Columbia Encyclopedia.)
A bit more research indicates that "Fikus" is a Melanesian pidgin term referring to "any tree-like parasitic plant that grows over and eventually structurally replaces a host tree..." (see source here.) Readers may make of this what they will.
As for your response to my post, let me say this: you're a fruitloop. The fence in Gaza was in fact built to keep out terrorists, and thankfully so far has been helpful in doing so. Uppity of those Jews, ain't it, to put these obstacles in the way of Titus Arafatus?
It is extremely telling that we assume that Arab children will react savagely to Israeli military responses, while no so much as implies that Jewish children will grow up to be equally savage in response to sudden, shockingly gruesome bombings. This tacitly demonstrates what everyone knows -- even "Palestinian" apologists -- but few want to admit: that what the "Palestinians" have been doing is immoral and depraved beyond sane comprehension. Unconvincing attempts to equate the Israelis with Nazis underscore the impossibility of reconciling "Palestinian" behavior with even the most base human standards.
When you act like an animal, don't be surprised when they treat you like one. If Mexico was pulling the exact same sh*t on the U.S. for the exact same reasons, there wouldn't be any debate about it at home or abroad, and the U.S. wouldn't bat an eye before dropping bombs and rolling in the heavy armor.
The Golden Rule applies in Israel as much as anywhere else.
Imal
That still won't be wide enough to protect them from the type of rockets that are being fired at them from Lebanon. Ultimately, the Israelis are going to have to retain the right and capability of taking out any threatening military assets across their borders.
I know that the Israelis feel that all of Palestine should belong to them. The Palestinians feel just as strongly that it all belongs to them. Each side is going to have to give up something, whether they want to or not. The Israelis are going to have to pull out of their settlements for now, and accept the fact that they are trying to grab for too much. Secure national survival within a part of the promised land is preferable to assured destruction while stubbornly grasping for what is beyond their reach.
At the same time, if the Israelis must abandon their W Bank and Gaza settlements, then all of the Palestinians and "Israeli Arabs" (at least the muslim ones, Christin Arabs should be welcome to stay) need to be out of Israel as well. Better a semi-peaceful transfer of populations now than a deadly ethnic cleansing later.
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