It seems to me that it is difficult today to argue against Israel’s right to defend itself by retaliating against the Palestinian Authority. There is no government in the world that would hold itself back after the incessant cruel and deadly attacks in the last ten days. And yet, with all due understanding of the anger and urge for revenge that have seized the Israeli people, we need to say: Force will not resolve the severe crisis between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
The two sides have been drawing each other’s blood for almost a hundred years. Tens of thousands have already lost their lives. Yet the Arabs have not succeeded in destroying Israel, and Israel has not succeeded in cementing its occupation by force. These truths apply today as well, perhaps even more pointedly than before: perhaps the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians will have no political solution, either, without intense pressure from the international community. The two sides simply are not able today to return to a psychological state in which they can begin a movement toward compromise and conciliation. The darkest days of the Jewish-Arab conflict have not seen such polarized positions, so saturated with hatred and suspicion, as we see today.
It may well be that Arafat has lost control of his people. That is a frightening possibility, and recent events require us to discuss it seriously. I’d submit that even if it is true, no one ought to be too pleased about it, definitely not the Israelis. A crumbling Palestinian Authority, fired up because of what it sees as the “achievements” of terror — especially a Palestinian Authority that has surrendered to Hamas and Islamic Jihad — may bring a horrible catastrophe on itself, on Israel, and on the entire region.
Still, it may well be that Arafat did not order his men to prevent the recent terrorist attacks because he knew he would not be obeyed. If this hypothesis is true, it means that his declaration of a cease-fire this morning has no validity — just like dozens of his similar announcements in the past.
Arafat is now paying the price of flirting with terror. In recent years he has, time after time, released from his prisons Hamas terrorists who have committed attacks against Israel. He has done so to pressure Israel. For years he has been riding on the tiger’s back — that’s the local cliché—and now the tiger has thrown him off and confronts him.
Of course, Israel cannot be absolved of responsibility for Arafat’s weakened position. For years Israel has done everything — even during the negotiations after the Oslo Accords — to strengthen its grip on the occupied territories. The Palestinians watched as Arafat was forced to make ever-greater concessions, while the Israeli settlements grew before their eyes and many Israeli roads were paved through the territory promised to the Palestinians. It is clear that this has strengthened the position of the extremists, at the expense of Arafat and of peace.
Here is the essence of the tragedy: two peoples whose extended struggle has distorted their ability to act in a measured way and save themselves from themselves. Today, with eyes wide open — but perhaps blinded by hatred and fear — they are marching toward a terrifying confrontation.
The only thing that can prevent this horrible fate is swift international intervention. This can begin by immediately convening a summit, in the region itself, an emergency conference of the European Union’s heads of government, the UN Secretary-General, the leaders of those Arab countries that have an interest in putting out this fire, and a senior representative of the President of the United States. Afterward, international forces should be sent to the region to create an impermeable barrier between Israel and Palestine. Concurrently, negotiations should be imposed on the two sides, based on the understandings reached at Taba five months ago. This is apparently the only way that they will make the painful compromises that they are unable to make on their own. All those who see themselves as friends of Israel or of the Palestinians cannot stand aside, at a time when the two peoples are preparing for what may be the beginning of a long war.
Time to Part Company
August 2001
A mother, a father, and three of their children were among the fifteen killed in the suicide bombing of the Sbarro pizzeria in downtown West Jerusalem. Another 130 people were injured, including many more children on their summer vacation. The terrorist responsible for planning this attack appeared on a most-wanted list of terrorists previously submitted to the Palestinian Authority by Israel. Arafat condemned the attack, but failed to take concrete steps to prevent further killings.
Jerusalem’s main street was built more than a century ago, and it’s engaging in its simplicity and shabbiness. It’s lined with two rows of antiquated, outdated stone construction plastered with huge billboards. The X-shaped crosswalk painted in the middle of the central intersection is the city’s heart. There is no child in Jerusalem who does not know it, and for many it is one of the quotidian symbols of civilian Jerusalem — if you’ve crossed the street there, if you’ve gotten intermingled, as everyone does, in the flow of people coming at you, you’ve felt as local as a native.
A Palestinian terrorist picked that X as a target. He chose a vacation day, one on which many of the families sightseeing in Jerusalem stop in at one of the inexpensive downtown restaurants. As I write this, there are already fifteen dead, among them entire families and many children. There are also more than a hundred wounded. When I saw the footage of the crosswalk on television after the attack, my first thought was: This is hell, and I’m living in it.
I turn on the television and hear Palestinian spokesmen explaining with great fluency why the terrorist did what he did. Yasir Arafat will, apparently, issue an official condemnation of the attack. But who will that condemnation help so long as Arafat refuses to arrest those whose intentions to commit such attacks are known to all? At this hour the Israeli cabinet is convening to discuss how to respond. Tonight or tomorrow it will come, the retaliation. But will it really change anything? Will it be of any use to the dead? It won’t even be of any use to the living.
For more than ten months now, the two sides have been in a mad, dizzy spiral of violence. They don’t know how to stop. In the lunatic logic of this conflict it is possible, of course, to justify every murder by citing the murder that preceded it. The cruel code of the Middle East states that if you have not responded with full force to the blow you suffered, the other side will interpret it as weakness and will strike at you again even more painfully. The result is that each side is condemned to strike out at its antagonist, and then cringe in anticipation of the counterblow. The rhythm of life, the rhythm of consciousness, even contacts between one person and another, everything is conducted entirely according to the tick of this deadly metronome. In such an atmosphere, who even remembers that the real goal that we must aspire to is not the next attack on the enemy, or effective protection against him, but to attempt to bring this cycle of death to an end? We suffer so much from the outer, violent symptoms of the situation, and we are so focused in our treatment of them — of them alone. So much so that we have entirely forgotten that only if we are cured of the disease itself, at the source, will we cease, perhaps, to suffer from its symptoms.
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The Palestinian Authority is shattered and disintegrating. Palestinians are hungry and hopeless. When the doors are closed and the windows shut, they are vociferously critical of the way Arafat is conducting their affairs. They are also quickly awakening from the illusion that the world — and the United States in particular — will rush to their aid. Israelis are no less desperate. They cannot understand the reality in which they have been living for the last ten months. They are afraid to leave their homes, and especially, they despair at the thought that they will have to live this way for many years to come.