Unprovoked War (BY the Palestinians

A remarkable news article from Gaza appeared in The Washington Post last week. The article reported that for the past month, the 12 main Palestinian factions had been holding secret talks to determine the "ground rules for their uprising against Israel, trying to agree on such fundamental issues as why they are fighting, what they need to end the conflict and whether suicide bombings are a legitimate weapon."

Let me repeat: Two years into the Palestinian uprising, Palestinian factions were meeting to determine why they are fighting and whether their means are legitimate.

I can't say I'm surprised. From the moment this uprising began, I, and others, argued that it was a reckless, pointless, foolish adventure. Why? Because at the time the Palestinians had before them on the table, from the United States and Israel, a credible alternative to war — a peace offer that would have satisfied the vast majority of their aspirations for statehood.

From the moment this intifada got rolling, Palestinians have never been able to explain why they were adopting armed struggle, killing Israeli civilians with suicide bombs and exposing their own people and institutions to utter devastation — when they had a credible opening diplomatic offer to end the occupation.

Oh, yes, Palestinian spokesmen, and their chorus in the Western diplomatic corps and media, would tell you things like this: The U.S. offer wasn't for 96 percent of the West Bank, it was for only 90 percent (not true), or the U.S. and Israeli proposals did not offer the Palestinians a contiguous state, but just a collection of "Bantustans" (not true). But even if the opening U.S. and Israeli offers were as insufficient as the Palestinians claim, they never justified this ruinous war. A Palestinian peace overture to improve those offers would have gotten them so much more and spared them so much pain.

But the Arab and European "friends" of the Palestinians, instead of confronting them, became their apologists and enablers, telling us why the Palestinians' "desperation" had led them to suicide bombing. It was their enabling that helped produce this situation where the Palestinians, two years into a disastrous war, are meeting to decide what it is about.

And where was Yasser Arafat's leadership? Resting as usual on his motto: "It doesn't matter where my people want to go, even if it's into a ditch. All that matters is that I get to drive."

But there is a message in this bottle for America, too. It's the first rule of warfare: Never launch a war that you can't explain to your people and the world on a bumper sticker. The Palestinians could never explain why they were killing Jews to end an occupation that the United States and Israel were offering to end through diplomacy. There is only one bumper-sticker phrase that can explain such behavior: "Death to Israel." And if that is their real strategy, then a war to the death it will be. If it's not, then what have they been up to?

Attention President Bush: What is your bumper sticker for justifying war with Iraq? I've heard a lot of different ones lately: We need to pre-emptively attack before Saddam deploys weapons of mass destruction. We need to change the Iraqi regime to give birth to democracy in Iraq and the wider Arab world. We need to eliminate Saddam because he is evil. We need to punish Saddam for not living up to the U.N. inspection resolutions.

All of these are legitimate rationales, but each would require a different U.S. military and diplomatic strategy. If the Bush team is serious about Iraq, it needs to zero in on one clear objective, produce a tightly focused war plan around it and then sell it — with a simple bumper sticker — to America and the world. If the Bush team's different factions — which are as divided as the Palestinians' — can't do that in advance, they shouldn't move.

When you're talking about an unprovoked war to dismantle a government half a world away, any road just won't do. You need a clearly focused end, means and rationale.

Because we certainly don't want to pick up a newspaper two years from now and read that there was just a heated meeting of Bush advisers about what the war in Iraq was supposed to be about.

PALESTINIANS thought they could do much better via armed intifada than via peace negotiations. That they could drive Jews from West Bank/Gaza the way Israel was driven from South Lebanon.

Actually, I think they will do that, but they won't like it. Here are my thoughts/predictions from a recent message in another thread:

As recently as this past spring I thought that Israel should, and eventually would, in recognition of the failure of Oslo, expel Arafat and return to the pre-Oslo status by reinstituting full military governance of the territories. The program then would be to nuture the emergence of more moderate Palestinian leadership, gradually give responsible leaders some role in local governance of the territories, and then restart the peace process at such time as genuine "partners for peace" have emerged.

I am now convinced that this belief on my part was stupid. Indeed I would now argue that it has been glaringly obvious for a full decade that Israel is desperate to end their "occupation" of the territories. How else to explain the risk they took with Oslo, returning their arch-enemy, Arafat, to the territories and even arming his security forces? This much I grasped, but what is now additionally clear to me is that Israel will never again take up the task of directly governing the Palestinians. A re-occupation under military governance might easily last many years, even decades, before conditions conducive to a genuine peace agreement could be created. The Israelis simply will not go through this process again. They will not subject what could be another full generation to the absurdity of holding in trust "land for peace" while the Arabs give them "land for murder".

This, then, leaves the Israelis stuck with the present circumstances of a corrupt, terroristic government in the territories, and waiting for some more promising leadership to emerge. It's rather like Waiting for Godot, with explosively driven showers of screws and nails regularly ripping through the flesh of Jews to add to the horrible absurdity of it all.

Still the Israelis will wait a bit longer. International revulsion with Palestinian barbarism is, IMHO, continuing to build (even if the glacial slowness of the response is a deep shame to a supposedly civilized Western civilization). Even the Palestinians, through the haze of their death-worshiping bloodlust, are beginning to dimly perceive this. In addition the intifada will eventually wear itself out, possibly quite soon. Finally, the coming fall of Iraq will bring huge changes, most probably very beneficent ones, to regional conditions. Who knows how drastically attitudes may change after this, or what previously unimaginable possibilities might present themseves only a year or three from now.

Still, if I had to place a bet, I would (sadly and reluctantly, hoping to be wrong) say that the Palestinians will not step up to the plate. They will not produce or support a leadership genuinely eschewing violence, willing and able to make real peace.

So, if this is all correct -- if the Israelis will not again fully occupy and govern the territories, and they will not find "partners for peace," and they will not indefinitely suffer the current status quo -- then what will happen?

In my view, within five years, the Israelis will give Palestinians what they claim they want; they will unilaterally and permanently withdraw from the territories. But because the Palestinians have (amazingly, if true to form) been unable to take advantage of the palpable Israeli desperation to disengage and settle the Palestine issue once and for all, Israel will decide for herself, without negotiation, what is necessary for her security.

The Israelis will abandon many of their settlements, but many others will be included within a new contiguous border, behind a wall or security zone. The territory within those borders will be annexed to Israel proper, formally and permanently. The new borders will not be the basis for any future negotiation. Israel will leave the Palestinians every inch of territory that the feel they can, but that they will return to the '67 borders (under these circumstance of having to return land without a negotiated peace) is right out of the question.

Israel learned well from her experience with Lebanon that full unilateral withdrawl (without negotiation) in the face of violence will not appease violence, but only encourage it. A full withdraw from the territories will not molify the Arabs, but will only reinvigorate their quixotic and self-destructive half-century long quest to destroy Israel.

Again, I geuinely believe that Israel will leave as much of the territories as they feel they can for the Palestinians, but Israel's own security, even their survival (and, in truth, the best interest of the Arabs, and the best hope for genuine peace in the future) dictates that it must be less than the Palestinians could have had by negotiation (and this fact must be apparent to the Palestinians and the Arab world). Although Israel will try to arrange things so as to avoid it, it will also have to look to its demographics, and some expulsions of Arabs from the newly annexed portions of the territories may be necessary.

So that's what I believe is coming. The Palestinians, I suspect, are currently facing their very last chance to have a positive role in deciding their own future. If this doesn't sink in with them soon, it will be too damn late.

If Israel does, in the end, have to establish "final status" unilateraly, the difficult part is international acceptance of the result. (Or, I should say, that is the crucial part. Working out the details and the mechanics will be difficult as hell.)

It is essential that the United States certifies Israel's unilateral establishment of a final border. This is the only guarantee of international acceptance. (Sure, it will be bitterly grudging, but it will come if America says, "that's it, it's over.") Without international acceptance Israel may be able to wave her nukes and tough it out, but in the face an unblunted perpetual Jihad and continuing terror. The resulting strife and instability will also make things very difficult for Jordan, which, say what you will, is the only Arab state making real efforts and progress toward modernization and increased prosperity.

The problem here is that the U.S. cannot abruptly shift from its current advocacy of a Palestinian state (conditional on real reform within the territories) to a postition of endorsing a unilateral solution.

In my view, then, it is important that Israeli officials start mooting the notion of a unilateral solution publicly. The Palestinians must also be given one genuine final chance, in a context where they understand that failure on their part to rise to the occassion may lose them the opportunity to influence their own affairs. At the very least Israel, the U.S. and the international community must be seen to have made a good faith effort to give the Palestinians that chance. (At minimum it would mean free and fair elections in the territories. Difficult enough even if the intifada is halted. Impossible otherwise.)

If the Palestinians and the Arab world have been well and duly warned that their failure to eschew or abandon violence and move meaningfully toward peace will result in an irreversable unilateral solution of the land issue by Israel, and this warning produces no substantial improvement in behavior on the part of Palestinians and other Arabs, then Israel can move ahead, and will have American support.

The converse of this, however, is that if conditions do improve, Israel must be, and must be seen to be, willing to capitalize on them in favor of a negotiated settlement. Again, the Palestians must be given a real chance here. If they aren't the United States won't be able to support Israel, and unilateral resolution of the land issue will go very bad for her.

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