Losing for peace

Over the past 30 years, a notion has congealed that the Yom Kippur War allowed Egypt, the most important Arab country, to make peace with Israel. There is truth to this, but not for the reason many people think.

According to our received wisdom, Egypt could only make peace with Israel after it had restored the honor it lost in the stunning defeat of the 1967 Six Day War. To this day, Egypt celebrates the war it calls the "October War" as its glorious victory, focusing on how the great Israeli foe was taken totally by surprise.

The idea that Egypt had to beat us before making peace has become so prevalent that the same logic has been applied to the Palestinians. Some speculated that the "intifada" of the late 1980s led to Oslo. During the past three years, every time a cease-fire was in the offing it was tacitly understood that Israel must make the first or simultaneous steps so that the Palestinians could call off their attacks without losing face.

If the Arab side must win before making peace, then defeating the Palestinians, or at least accentuating the perception of defeat, is bad for peace. As strange as this logic may sound, it is pervasive, even within our security establishment, and it permeates the thinking on how to end the current Palestinian offensive, now entering its fourth year.

But does it make any sense that to win we must lose? And does history really validate this popular paradox?

Let's examine the Egyptian case - the father of the "losing for peace" theory. That Egyptians are able to convince themselves that they won the 1973 war is an impressive feat of intellectual creativity. It does not change what happened: despite the element of surprise, Egypt not only failed to destroy Israel or even to take back the Sinai, but ended the war with a large chunk of its army surrounded and Israeli forces just 101 kilometers from Cairo. Egypt did not make peace with Israel because it won, but because it lost - again.

Some argue that Egypt was ready to make peace before the 1973 war, if only Golda Meir had not rebuffed those overtures. Perhaps. But if that was the case, then Egypt did not need a victory to make peace.

That it was the reality of Egypt's defeat, and not the myth of its victory, that formed the basis of peace was indirectly admitted by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in April 2002. At that time, the Palestinian attacks against Israel had driven the Arab world into a frenzied state, including calls for the Arab states to go to war.

After supporting the need to go to war in the past, Mubarak argued that circumstances had changed: "Egypt was the first to claim that peace can achieve what war cannot... it has already been proven that war accomplishes nothing, except to increase hatred..." (translation by MEMRI). It was not an Egyptian victory that proved that war accomplishes nothing, but a defeat. So there is no paradox. Winning is good and defeating an aggressor is the surest way to secure peace. At some point, the Palestinians will likely decide to declare victory and go home, as Americans were said to have done in Vietnam. The question is whether helping the Palestinians tell themselves that they won is good for peace or not.

My view is that a Palestinian victory myth is not a good, let alone a necessary, thing. Part of making peace is reversing the glorification of terrorism, and preserving the notion that their terror war was honorable and necessary makes such a reversal more difficult.

It seems that a pragmatic case can be made for a victory myth, at least in the short term. It is certainly tempting to believe that if only we indulge the Palestinian need to feel victorious, they can call off their offensive.

But if there is something to learn from the Egyptian precedent, it is that we need not worry about how to leave space for the Palestinians to claim victory. Egypt demonstrates that no matter how resounding the defeat in normal military terms, where there is a will to claim victory, there is a way.

Helping the Palestinians feel victorious is backwards: the more Palestinians come to the conclusion that terror is futile, the closer they will come to stopping it. Once that decision is made, as in the Egyptian case, fashioning a victory myth will not be an obstacle, but the decision must come first.

The tragedy of the Arab-Israeli peace process, and of Oslo in particular, is that it was built on the premature conclusion that Israel had convinced the Arab world of its indestructibility, and therefore the Arabs were ready to make peace. It turns out they were only convinced that Israel is not vulnerable to a 1973-style frontal assault.

Our current struggle is to undo the impression that Israel can be destroyed through the back door, via terror and diplomacy. Feeding a Palestinian victory myth can only keep this back door cracked open, when peace is served by sealing it shut.

Feeding a Palestinian victory myth can only keep this back door cracked open, when peace is served by sealing it shut.

Shut it severing the dirty fingers of those who pull it

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3 posted on 10/03/2003 2:33:59 PM PDT by Support Free Republic (Your support keeps Free Republic going strong!)

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