Why comparing Sharon's war on terror with Bush's
war on terror is misleading and dangerous
"Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad are Al Qaeda - who kill
innocent civilian men, women and children," says New York Democratic
senator Chuck Shumer. "The PLO and Yasser Arafat are the Taliban
- which aids, abets and provides a haven for terrorists. And Israel
is like America, simply trying to protect its home front."
In other words, Israel should be given the green light to deal with
the Palestinian Authority in the same way that the U.S. is currently
dealing with the Taliban. Adds Schumer, "To ask Israel to negotiate
with Arafat is like asking America to negotiate with Mullah Muhammad
Omar."
The spectacle of vicious multiple suicide terror attacks in Israel
may evoke memories of September 11 among many Americans, and Ariel
Sharon uses the language of President Bush's war on terror to press
the point. And Yasser Arafat has certainly done little to impede
terrorist groups from flourishing in his domain. Still, Schumer's
comparison is still neither helpful to understanding the problem
of terrorism in the Middle East nor to solving it.
Indeed, as Israel's leftist parliamentary opposition leader Yossi
Sarid pointed out to right-wingers making the same comparison, "The
Americans have not been occupying [Afghanistan] for 30 years. They
also haven't built settlements in Afghanistan."
The difference
Unlike Schumer, the remnants of Israel's "peace camp"
know that the first step to eradicating Palestinian terror attacks
is recognizing that they are a response - however morally abhorrent
and politically senseless - to Israel's continued occupation of
the West Bank and Gaza. Failure to resolve the conflict produces
an unlimited supply of young men willing to turn themselves into
human bombs, which means any Israeli military successes against
terrorism will be temporary. And it's simply delusional to imagine
that just removing Arafat and the Palestinian Authority right now
will make Hamas, Islamic Jihad and even the Palestinian leader's
own increasingly mutinous Fatah organization any more inclined to
desist from acts of violence against Israel.
Terrorism, according to Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres,
"is the way a people expresses its aspirations through weapons."
Speaking last week he said that in order to stop violence, Israel
had to offer the Palestinians a "political horizon." Arafat
could not rein in militants absent the promise of a political process
that would realize Palestinian demands for statehood and an end
to the occupation. "If we're talking about a cease-fire,"
Peres said, "we have to meet the expectations of the other
side." In the absence of a peace process that delivers statehood,
Arafat has little incentive to tackle the militants who remain an
integral part of his Palestinian people.
Not the Taliban
That, of course, is the principle difference between Arafat and
the Taliban. U.S. success in quickly uprooting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan
appears to have been facilitated by the fact that the terrorist
network is not indigenous, and its objectives have nothing to with
Afghan interests. Most Afghan fighters appear to have turned on
bin Laden's Arabs and Chechens the first chance they got. Hamas
and Islamic Jihad, on the other hand, are indigenous and popular
- perhaps even more popular than Arafat himself after a year of
intifada. This is not only because Arafat has tolerated them, but
more importantly because they have managed to channel mounting Palestinian
rage at the deteriorating conditions in the West Bank and Gaza.
So while the U.S. war on the ground in Afghanistan has been waged
primarily by local proxy forces, Israel won't find any Palestinian
constituency to take down the militants - not if Arafat fails to
do the job.
Unlike the U.S. in Afghanistan, Israel's problem in the West Bank
and Gaza is that it is confronting an entire people increasingly
united by the experience of occupation. Thus Peres's point that
violence won't be eliminated until there are viable peaceful channels
for Palestinian to pursue their national aspirations. And right
now, those channels don't exist. Indeed, the foreign minister's
comments last week were designed precisely to warn of the futility
of Sharon's separation of demands for a cease-fire from political
negotiations over Palestinian statehood.
Air strikes and tanks can't stop the occasional suicide bomber
sneaking through the lines and wreaking mayhem. Israeli observers
agree that for a military solution to be effective, it would involve
reoccupying most of the West Bank and Gaza, destroying Arafat's
administration and cracking down directly on militant activities
in Palestinian cities. Some on Sharon's right flank actually favor
this option. But these are not people who accept the Bush administration's
basic premise that the solution lies in creating two states west
of the Jordan. Nobody can seriously imagine that simply rewinding
the occupation by a decade is likely to bring peace and security.
International Support
Another key difference between fighting the Taliban and fighting
the PA is that America found broad international support, or at
least consent, for its efforts in Afghanistan, while the Taliban
found themselves entirely isolated. But taking down the PA would
leave Israel entirely isolated - if the U.S. were to support such
a course, it would likely find a dramatic cooling of Arab support
for its own anti-terror campaign.
And while America can easily ignore any chaos in Afghanistan that
accompanies destroying the Taliban regime, many Israelis fear that
taking down the PA will leave a dangerous vacuum. The U.S. is thousands
of miles from Afghanistan, and even if that country devolves into
a volatile patchwork of fiefdoms run by warlords - as it could,
yet - the only short-term effect on America would likely be a fall
in the price of heroin (due to expanded Afghan supplies). But the
West Bank and Gaza are inside Israel's belly. The Jewish state maintains
a massive military presence and up to 200,000 settlers in those
territories, and most Israeli cities are but a commuter bus ride
away.
The most troubling element of Schumer's tirade is his claim that
"to ask Israel to negotiate with Arafat is like asking America
to negotiate with Mullah Muhammad Omar." In other words, the
peace process ought to be suspended. But if, as the Israeli peace
camp believes, terrorism is a symptom of unresolved political conflicts,
then to address that symptom without offering a treatment for its
cause simply dooms Israel and the Palestinians to repeat the cycle.
If Israel is not to negotiate with Arafat, then it needs an alternative.
A cursory survey of Palestinian public opinion polling confirms
that a majority of Arafat's own people approve of suicide bombings
and oppose any new cease-fire. If Arafat is removed, the mantle
of leadership could well pass precisely to the groups currently
waging campaigns of violence. But in the end, no matter who follows
Arafat, the issue of the occupation will continue to define and
bedevil Israeli-Palestinian relations until it is resolved. And
that, as Yossi Sarid notes, is the essential difference between
Israel and Afghanistan.
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