Posted on 6/27/2003, 12:49:26 PM by SJackson
President George W. Bush deserves credit for sticking to his guns. When asked about the hudna (temporary cease-fire) reportedly in the works, Bush repeatedly brushed aside the idea and kept the focus where it should be.
"The true test for Hamas and terrorist organizations is the complete dismantlement of their terrorist networks, their capacity to blow up the peace process... In order for there to be peace, Hamas must be dismantled." The questions are, who will do the dismantling and what happens if they don't? Though a cease-fire is being billed as a chance for the Palestinian Authority to build up strength to take on Hamas and Islamic Jihad, there are major problems with this theory.
First, Mahmoud Abbas and Muhammad Dahlan are presumably leading the charge, and they say there will be no confrontation with presumed Palestinian rivals, only dialogue. Second, if they will not crack down now, when there dozens of warnings of terrorist attacks (a suicide bomber was caught 10 minutes before his bomb went off this week), why would they do so when there is a cease-fire and there seems to be no need?
Third, the same cease-fire allows everyone to regroup and strengthen, especially the terrorist organizations. More fundamentally, the Palestinians throughout the Oslo period and contrary to that agreement, believed that the threat of terrorism should be kept on the side for use at the appropriate moment. So a crackdown would not only contradict the PA glorification of "martyrdom" over the past 1000 days, but would be giving up the "good cop/bad cop" game that Yasser Arafat has played for so long. What is more, how would we know that a crackdown is actually taking place?
It is easy to imagine the PA making a show of some arrests or collecting some weapons, similar to past actions. Perhaps there would be some real confrontations, and Israel and the US could let it be known that progress was being made against the infrastructure of terrorism, but the reality would be that Hamas had lived to fight another day. There is much to be said under such circumstances for the distrustful stance of the US and Israel, which demand to see actions rather than more promises and shell games. But the emphasis on the more concrete side is certainly insufficient and possibly misplaced.
By now there is much more understanding than there was that ending Palestinian incitement against Israel is necessary, and that goal is featured in the road map. Secretary of State Colin Powell just mentioned it among the steps being demanded of the PA.
Less appreciated, however, is that what seem to be "soft" issues, may actually be more important than the supposedly more real benchmarks that are given most of the attention.
Collecting guns and arresting terrorists are considered real and measurable steps, and sometimes they are. Just as often, such steps are reminiscent of the classic order issued by the Vichy captain in Casablanca after he witnessed Rick (Humphrey Bogart) shoot a Nazi officer, "Round up the usual suspects!" In some ways, it is harder to take back a word than an action. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, for example, later downplayed his dressing down of his own Likud faction, saying it was time to "end the occupation." But once those words were uttered both friend and foe looked at him differently. The Palestinians seem to understand the power of words better than we do.
Regarding the "right of return" (itself a brilliant way to frame the demand to demographically wipe Israel off the map), the Palestinians have always been happy to negotiate over numbers, which they care less about, provided the principle is recognized. Similarly, many Israelis seem more willing than are Palestinians to give on the issue of the Temple Mount, though it is Judaism's holiest site and symbolic of our entire connection to this land.
Incitement is also seen as a "soft," symbolic issue. Actually, Yigal Carmon of MEMRI (www.memri.org) is on to something when he calls incitement the "ideological infrastructure" of terrorism. Dismantling this infrastructure may be even more important than its physical counterpart. Imagine, for example, if the PA did make a wave of arrests, but continued to broadcast and print images of Israelis as merciless killers of Palestinian children, who should be eager to die for their cause, the elimination of Israel. And what would happen if, on the contrary, the PA began to say it sees place to fulfill both Jewish and Palestinian national aspirations in this land.
IT IS STRIKING that the peace movement is at the forefront of efforts to dialogue and "educate for peace," and yet these same activists tend to dismiss Palestinian radicalism and hate-sowing as understandable "rhetoric." Again, many now recognize that not paying attention to incitement was a mistake during the Oslo years, but the same mistake continues to be made.
In general, if they want the road map to fare better than Oslo, the US and Israel have to decide on a point where they willing to stop the process if the PA does not comply. Bush's unwillingness to be satisfied with a hudna is a promising sign that this time the Palestinians will be held to some kind of standard. But the red line should not just be measured in arrests and weapons confiscations, but in the reversal of PA positions that lay the groundwork for terrorism just as surely as any physical infrastructure.
As Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch documented on these pages (June 20), the Palestinian media is as bloodcurdlingly anti-Israel as ever. A new Palestinian video clip that has been broadcast regularly since January, and continuing after the Aqaba summit, includes a portrayal of a girl laughing on a swing, who is then engulfed by an Israeli firebomb. Next, children are shown playing football, until a bomb hidden by Israel inside the ball explodes when a child kicks it. Then a father reads his young son a section from the Koran that calls for fighting enemies, and hands him a stone to throw. Actors then depict Israeli soldiers murdering an elderly man by shooting him in the head. This is followed by a mother and her infant being blown up by Israeli soldiers.
The PA can claim, without much credibility, that it is powerless to confront Hamas. It cannot claim that it is powerless to stop its own incitement. The road map should be frozen until the Palestinians start educating for peace rather than for terrorism.
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