A rchive Date
[ 30-09-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Israel ]
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[http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/1590936
On dead-end ride with Israel's Sharon
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Sept. 25, 2002, 8:46PM
I happened to be in Israel on Sept. 11, 2001, and on Sept. 12 went to the Israeli Defense Ministry to talk to security experts there about what Israel had learned from dealing with Palestinian suicide bombers that might help America. The main lesson, they said, was this: In the end, the only people who can effectively stop suicide bombers are those in the community they come from.
Only if their political and spiritual leaders delegitimize suicide bombing, only if their security forces and intelligence agencies are mobilized to prevent it, can it really be stopped. Israel, they told me, could never penetrate Palestinian society the way Palestinians could. Therefore, the ultimate task for Israel was to find the right pressures and incentives to get the Palestinians themselves to stop the bombings.
Unfortunately, that message does not seem to have reached Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who, I believe, has never had a plan for how to reach a stable accommodation with the Palestinians, is only interested in making the West Bank safe for Israeli settlers to stay, not to leave, and is going to lead Israel into a dead end -- if he sticks to his present course -- and will take America along for the ride.
I have enormous sympathy for Israel's plight today. There is no society in the world that has ever been exposed to what Israel has over the past two years -- repeated suicide bombings of its civilians in their buses, restaurants and city centers, compounded by anti-Semitic attacks by Europeans, who call for a severing of ties with Israeli universities when Israel retaliates. That is enough to make any civilized society crazy.
But the Sharon response is not working. Months ago Sharon dismissed Yasser Arafat as "irrelevant," smashed his security services and announced Israel's intention to assume responsibility for its own security in the West Bank. But when Palestinian suicide bombers then perpetrate more suicide bombings, Sharon attacks Arafat's headquarters as if Arafat sent the bombers himself.
If Sharon believes that Arafat sent these bombers, then he should evict him. If he thinks Arafat is irrelevant, then he should ignore him. But what makes no sense is to treat Arafat as if he's totally irrelevant and totally responsible. Because all that does is get Palestinians to rally around Arafat and abort any possibility of producing a new leadership relevant to negotiations and to Israeli security.
That's not a pipe dream. Thanks to President Bush's blunt call for Palestinians to dump Arafat -- and thanks to Sharon's crackdown on Palestinians to prove that the foolish intifada they launched two years ago (in the wake of President Clinton's peace overture) will not pay -- Israel and the United States had begun to sow the first seeds of internal Palestinian reform that were needed to rein in the suicide bombers.
For the past months a few Palestinian leaders and commentators have been speaking about what a mistake it was for Arafat to have turned down the Clinton plan for a Palestinian state; Palestinian legislators have voted no confidence in Arafat's Cabinet and pushed forward more responsible alternatives; and secular Palestinians have begun openly questioning suicide bombing. All of these trends are bad news for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Iraq and Iran. So they have been pushing out even more suicide bombers to trigger a Sharon reaction that would rally Palestinians around Arafat's failed leadership and abort the emergence of any new consensus. Arafat is celebrating.
Sharon has a tough job. He has to pursue a peace settlement with the Palestinians, as if there were no terrorism, and to hunt the terrorists, as if no peace settlement were possible. That requires subtle distinctions. But Sharon's policy seems to be to ignore all distinctions -- between Hamas and Arafat and between Hamas and the secular Palestinian mainstream, who would like to see change.
One has to wonder whether Sharon really isn't out to undermine the whole Palestinian national movement in hopes that one day some quisling Palestinian Authority simply surrenders to the Israeli occupation. He sure doesn't seem interested in nurturing a more responsible Palestinian Authority to cede land to.
If that is where Sharon is going, the effort will come to tears, and the Bush team, if it goes along for the ride, will be very sorry. Always remember, the leading Hebrew biography of Sharon is titled He Doesn't Stop at Red Lights.
Friedman is a columnist for The New York Times and a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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