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Balanced (or as balanced as it can get in the US)

Tough Choice for Barak

Editorial -- October 25, 2000 -- The Los Angeles Times

The prime minister should look to Israelis still calling for peace, not seek to form a coalition with Sharon.

Last weekend's Arab summit in Cairo predictably excoriated Israel for the violence that has swept across the West Bank and Gaza Strip in recent weeks and hailed the Palestinians for what it deemed their efforts to liberate themselves from Israeli occupation. But the conference turned aside radical demands that Arab states sever all ties with Israel and prepare for war. Major credit for that choice goes to Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah II of Jordan, who are wise enough to know what fresh disasters await their region if belligerency again prevails.

The Cairo meeting was convened to mollify protesters who have taken to the streets across much of the Middle East in support of the Palestinian cause. Few Arab states--Libya and Iraq being exceptions--are ready to pronounce the peace process dead. But passions continue to run high. Arab leaders worry that the calls they are hearing for action against Israel might suddenly be redirected against them.

Israel's embattled Prime Minister Ehud Barak has responded by announcing a "timeout" in the negotiating process, a decision strongly opposed by a Cabinet already shrunken by defections. Barak also wants to accelerate a study of how Israelis and Palestinians might be physically separated, a hugely complicated task given the economic interconnections that now exist.

At the same time Barak has stepped up his courtship of the right-wing Likud Party, which he hopes to bring into a national emergency government. Creating such an unnatural coalition could spare Barak, who now controls only 30 votes in the 120-member Knesset, from defeat on a no-confidence vote early next month. But by sharing power with Likud's hawkish and devious leader, Ariel Sharon, whose price for entering the government would be the withdrawal of virtually all the concessions that Barak has made to the Palestinians, the prime minister would be declaring not just a pause in peace efforts but an indefinite suspension.

A poll last week found that more than 60% of Israelis continue to support the peace process, despite all that has happened since Sharon took his provocative stroll around Jerusalem's main Muslim holy sites on Sept. 28. Barak ought to appeal to that base and take his chances in a new election rather than shackle himself to Sharon and accept the responsibility for what could follow. It's true that Barak has lost much of the popularity that won him a landslide victory last year. It's also true that his is still the most reasoned and feasible approach to peace.

There's no hope of reviving that approach until the daily confrontations and bloodshed stop. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat can't control every extremist among his people. But he can command his security forces to impose order in the streets, a first step that would allow Barak to pull back his troops without appearing to have surrendered to rock throwers and gunmen. That is the minimum needed to resuscitate what at best promises to be a long process to rebuild a foundation for peace negotiations and to turn the Middle East away from the grim threat of more war.

The harsh realities of Mideast deadlock

James Carroll -- 10/24/2000 -- The Boston Globe

Israelis behold a killer raising his bloody hands in triumph or hear their leader damned to hell, and they ask, How can we make peace with that? Palestinians wither under the brutal mismatch of heavy guns and stones, counting almost all of the dead their sons, and they ask, How can we make peace with that? And so voices on both sides of the conflict declare the Middle East peace process finished.

But was the peace-making ever an effort between friends? Wasn't it the point that the negotiations were going on between enemies, antagonists who had reason to hate each other's guts? And weren't the negotiations that began years ago in Madrid slow, painstaking, and frustrating because the aspirations of each side seem wholly contradictory?

It should be no news, in other words, that the passions of Palestinians are entirely authentic, that their demands for justice will not be silenced until the occupation ends and their homeland is restored. Nor should it be news that Israel, seeing itself gravely threatened by a terrorist-friendly regime that exploits its own, stone-throwing children, will use all of its power in self-defense.

How could the present situation between Israel and the Palestinians be worse? Easy. It would be worse if the present situation were made permanent - and that is what will happen if the peace process is renounced.

If Arabs freshly embrace the rhetoric of holy war, and if the new generation of Palestinians - all those rock-wielding teenagers - continue to identify their hope with the destruction of Israel, then - it will be worse.

If Israel embraces a strategy of ''separation,'' as proposed by members of Barak's own Cabinet, withdrawing from the failed and explosive occupation but sealing off Palestinians from contact with Israelis, condemning them to poverty - it will be worse.

The harsh, nearly hopeless realities of the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock have never been more clearly exposed - yet it was precisely those realities that had spawned the peace process in the first place. Hate was its precondition, not love. Despair was its starting point, not hope.

With this tragic new manifestation, those same realities - hate, despair - must revivify peace-making, not end it. It is when human beings glimpse the bottomless depth of the abyss that we know to step back from its edge. Palestinians and Israelis are at the abyss together. It alone unites them.

A Christian, aware of his own tradition's historic implication in the Jewish-Muslim conflict, must be careful not to address this crisis from above. Yet Israelis and Palestinians themselves have already stated very clearly what must happen now. They did so in the mutually acknowledged aims of the peace process. As some voices on both sides still insist, instead of abandoning peace, the parties should return to its idea and its ideal.

For Israelis, that means recommitment to democracy with equal rights for all citizens within Israel; eventual recognition of an independent Palestine, the dignity and economic security of whose citizens are essential to the whole region.

Over the last 10 years, as the shape of a global economy forced revisions in the meaning of national sovereignty everywhere, the scope of the Israeli imagination on what is possible only broadened - even to the point of a shared Jerusalem.

For Palestinians, a return to the idea and ideal of peace means an unambiguous recommitment to the right of Israel to exist with security, and the historic right of Jews to be at home in Jerusalem. Palestinians must reject the univocal claims of the irredentists, renouncing the temptation to fight the last battle of 19th century nationalism.

Instead, they should reclaim the identity they had already begun to embrace, as the transforming effect of the high-tech boom entered the Middle East through Tel Aviv. Peace means that instead of being Israel's intimate enemy, the Palestinians would be Israel's first partner.

Three months ago these ideas were the cliches of the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, hopes openly shared by all. Now they seem like the figments of a dream. The rush to war carries with it the simplistic thrill of an apparent actuality, but the righteous passion of violence is the greatest illusion of all.

It is not peace that is the dream, but war. And the dream of war is always a nightmare, from which, alas, too many will never awaken. Whether the spasms of killing are long or short, they will end one day.

When they do, the ideas and ideals of peace will be what remains. Far better to come to the reality of what is still possible sooner rather than later. Because the ideas and ideals of peace seemed broadly achievable once, they can again. The peace process, in other words, must not be allowed to die.

James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.

The Not-So-Secret Weapon: Hezbollah
GRAHAM E. FULLER – October 23, 2000 – The Los Angeles Times

     The Oslo peace process is dead and perhaps American dominance of the peace process as well. A new process will eventually emerge after perhaps a prolonged period of violence. Meanwhile, Israel's conflict on its other borders with Syria and Lebanon will not remain quiescent. The struggles are interrelated like the workings of a complex, geopolitical mobile.
     The most important non-Palestinian force in the conflict today is the Shiite Islamic organization in Lebanon, Hezbollah. Formed in the 1980s, Hezbollah has fielded the most lethal guerrilla-terrorist group of all, whose punishing attacks managed to expel both the U.S. and Israel from Lebanon in the mid-1980s and then proceeded to harass Israeli occupation forces in southern Lebanon to the point of ultimately inducing a unilateral Israeli pullout this spring.
     Except for a small area involving a disputed farm on the border, Hezbollah has so far been careful not to launch attacks against northern Israel across the new international border. But Hezbollah's ideology of commitment to a broader Islamic front against Israel impels it to press its confrontation with Israeli forces through kidnappings of border patrols. Most recently, it has seemingly lured to Lebanon and captured an Israeli intelligence officer operating against Hezbollah in Europe, although the Hezbollah account, not surprisingly, is denied by Israel. It has played lethal cat-and-mouse games with Israel over many years, and each side accumulates hostages for periodic prisoner swaps.
     But Hezbollah is not a routine "terrorist organization" by any stretch of the imagination, which is what makes it so hard to deal with. Although Hezbollah has been involved in genuine terrorism against non-official targets in the past, it has focused in the last decade primarily on guerrilla warfare against combatants.
     Hezbollah's many faces are characteristic of much Islamic strength in the region: It is at once a paramilitary force and a social movement with great clout within Lebanese Shiite society, providing widespread social welfare and administrative services and fully in charge of the poor Shiite neighborhoods of south Beirut. It is also a movement that seeks to introduce more Islamic values into society and politics even while realizing that an Islamic state in multisectarian Lebanon is not an appropriate or realistic goal. It is also a full-fledged political party with multiple seats in the parliament, where it enjoys full acceptance for its professional approach to national political issues. Despite some of the nervousness that its armed power elicits among some elements of Lebanese society, Hezbollah is an acknowledged national Lebanese institution in this battered society that now seeks to get back on its feet.
     Hezbollah came into existence with the strong financial and organizational backing of Iran, and with Syria's logistical support and blessing.
     While not truly controlled by either, it still receives various forms of support from them. For Iran, Hezbollah offers the chance to perpetuate the longer-term struggle against Israel's very existence, while for Syria, it is one of the few valuable instruments of pressure against an otherwise overwhelmingly powerful Israeli state. Yet it would be a serious strategic mistake to view Hezbollah as simply the puppet of either state: It has deep roots in Lebanese society and emerges from within the long-marginalized Shiite community, now no longer so oppressed or marginalized.
     Even the Lebanese government views Hezbollah as the only domestic force available to it to give weak Lebanon some cards in dealing with Israel.
     Hezbollah's international guerrilla functions--as opposed to its domestic political functions--are its ace in the hole and will continue to operate as long as the conflict is unresolved between Israel and its neighbors. Its guerrilla functions are too useful to the Palestinians, the Syrians and even the Lebanese to be dispensed with at a time when Arab irregular warfare represents the only possible match against overwhelming Israeli conventional force. Islamist Hezbollah also represents the international Muslim face of the struggle, in which Arab combatants try to universalize the scope of their struggle through appeals to the Muslim world. If the violence remains high, it is likely Hezbollah may come to figure prominently in clandestine military operations within Palestine as well.
     When settlement is eventually reached after, sadly, what may be more prolonged agony on all sides, Hezbollah will almost surely revert to its more political and social functions. That day, however, is far from sight at the moment.

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Graham E. Fuller Is Former Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the Cia

The Men Who Undid the Peace

HENRI J. BARKEY – October 22, 2000 – The Los Angeles Times


     BETHLEHEM, PA.--Amid the disheartening images and stories coming from the Middle East, the truce agreement achieved at Sharm el Sheik, Egypt, was a welcome development. But a cessation of hostilities will not make up for the fundamental change that has taken place in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship.
     Yes, these two peoples, as the old adage goes, are destined to live together and make compromises. But the old assumption that the Palestinian state would come into existence as a result of a negotiated outcome has given way to a new one: the Palestinian state is likely to be born out of violence. Therefore, it is also likely to be revanchist and not at peace with Israel.
     The new Palestinian state will be at the head of a new regional effort aimed at isolating Israel. Having concluded that the Palestinians and, for that matter, the rest of the Arab world will never agree to a real peace, the Israelis will turn their backs completely on the region. They will rely on their military superiority to extract revenge whenever they feel it is necessary.
     This is an ominous development for the Middle East and U.S. interests there. It means that the region will remain unstable and prone to bouts of interstate violence. Moreover, it will put an end to economic and political reform that has begun in the Arab world. Oligarchs will continue to rule and deflect internal criticism onto the external enemy, Israel. As a result, the Middle East will remain impervious to the winds of pluralism. For many leaders in the region, globalization is a fad that they hope will soon disappear. Already, the Middle East, with the exception of Israel, lags behind almost every region of the world in integrating with world markets and attracting foreign investment. The absence of change will, in the long run, contribute to greater disillusionment and instability.
     To avert this development, one needs to understand what went wrong. There is plenty of blame to go around, but the two principal culprits are Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's predecessor.
     Netanyahu deserves blame because he debased the currency of the peace process. In the name of safeguarding security, he forswore the principles that the Oslo agreement had implied and that Yitzhak Rabin, the assassinated former prime minister, had understood so well: that Israel could--and would--not be maintaining its domination over a large Palestinian popu lation, which had come into its own after the intifada. Netanyahu dallied, wasted time and strengthened Jewish settlements, but, more important, he conveyed the unmistakable message that he was not really interested in the Palestinians or their ambitions. Hence, he contributed directly to the disillusionment of the average Palestinian. He squandered the precious capital that Rabin had put together.
     Arafat, by contrast, refused to transform himself and his movement into a state-building enterprise. He was more interested in crisscrossing the globe in pursuit of support for this or than tactical gain. Ironically, as he professed his desire for a Palestinian state, he failed dismally in building the requisite institutions to sustain it. Instead of institutions, he relied on money, money donated to him and the Palestinians, with the best of intentions, by Western countries.
     Just like many authoritarian Arab leaders, Arafat established his rule on the back of an elaborate security apparatus instead of becoming a leader capable of inspiring a much-beleaguered Palestinian population to build the new Palestine, brick by brick. All the while, he imagined he could rely on his secret weapon: the power of the street and a new intifada. He should have remembered that the original intifada was not controlled by him; neither is the current one.
     Arafat is much weaker today than he has ever been, but probably stronger than he will be tomorrow and the day after. His ability to stop rioting in the street will depend largely on the kind of deals he makes with diverse group leaders. Moreover, the violence in Gaza and in the West Bank has accelerated the plans of the Iranian-sponsored Lebanese Hezbollah to convert the Palestinian cause into a massive anti-peace and violent movement. Longtime Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has been quite open about his objectives: With Iran's blessing and support, he was preparing the painstaking process of building a Palestinian counterpart. The recent bloodletting may have just signed him the first thousand volunteers.
     We should not forget Barak. He made two terrible mistakes. He, too, succumbed to pressure from right-wing zealots in allowing underhandedly the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. But more tragically, Barak also permitted the use of deadly force against citizens of Palestinian origin within Israel's boundaries proper. While this is not the first time such a thing has happened, symbolically, it may have united Palestinians on both sides of the green line, once and for all.
     If Barak was trying to distinguish himself from Netanyahu, and there is no question that he was, these two mistakes may have cost him all the credibility he enjoyed with the other side. To his credit, he not only pulled the troops out of southern Lebanon, but he also went farther than any Israeli leader in contemplating concessions on Jerusalem and other sensitive issues. In other words, he returned to the spirit of Oslo. Palestinian negotiators at Camp David, but not Arafat, realized this; you could see it in their faces after the summit when they alone were claiming that this Camp David was not a failure.
     Where do we go from here? Peace will come, but at what price and in what form?
     The United States has done its utmost; it has invested its prestige and every ounce of its foreign-policy leadership's imagination and wits. President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeline K. Albright have devoted enormous amounts of energy to this issue. It will have to do more. The first item on the agenda is to get Arafat to understand that he is going to be swept aside by his own people if he does not begin to construct his "state."
     Second, the United States will have to act as a midwife to the rump Palestinian state about to be born and make sure its birth is as peaceful as possible. Symbols are important. Arafat can rename this intifada the "Palestinian War of Liberation," declare his state and then reenter negotiations with Israel. Barak will have to grudgingly accept the new state on territories currently controlled by Palestinians and negotiate from the beginning, provided the violence has come to an end. He has to; more than 60% of the Israeli population still think that the peace process ought to continue in some form.
     Third, the United States will have to impress on European and Arab leaders that this is the only way out and that they should support this process without sniping from the sidelines.
     Finally, this would be made all the easier if Likud leader Ariel Sharon were to just quit politics; he is an interim leader and anathema to the Palestinians. With his unnecessary trip to the Temple Mount, he provided the extremists on the Palestinian side with a perfect opportunity to put a match to the current crisis. But Barak is weak; he has lost his majority in the Knesset. He can no longer rely on the Israeli Arab parliamentarian bloc. He faces the prospect of either early elections or the formation of an emergency national-unity coalition government with Sharon.
     Israelis, however, must also realize that Sharon should not expect that if he were to become Israel's next prime minister that he would enjoy an easy tenure with either Arab or European leaders. Maybe not even with Washington's. Almost everyone will hold him responsible for the death of the peace process. As weakened as he may be, Barak thus still holds the key to peace. *

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Henri J. Barkey, a Professor of International Relations at Lehigh University, Served on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff From 1998-2000

In the Middle East, Neither Side Is Innocent

William Raspberry -- October 20, 2000 – The Washington Post

How could the Palestinians come so close to peace and the statehood they've coveted so long, only to toss it away like so many aimless stones? Don't they want peace?

The questions had been working their way to the very front of my consciousness, pushed there by both the U.S. media and political leadership. The Israelis have given away so much in the quest for peace, with scarcely a gesture in return from Yasser Arafat. And now this senseless violence . . .

Two writers are forcing me to take a second look. The first is Muhanned Tull, an official with the Palestinian Ministry of Labor, whose article appeared in The Post last Sunday. You won't be surprised to learn that Tull thinks we've got it wrong. But listen to him:

"I used to drive from Bethlehem every morning to work in Ramallah. I would stop and get coffee, and Israeli soldiers would hold me up for half an hour at the coffee shop for an identity check. Every day they were the same soldiers, and every day I was the same person. What I and millions of Palestinians wanted was a life free of that kind of humiliation. . . . We wanted to teach our children how to enjoy life, not how to stay alive."

And, he says, there was reason to believe those dreams weren't so far-fetched after all. The Oslo accords, signed in 1993 after six years of the intifada, set 1999 as the target date for ending the Jewish occupation of Palestinian territory. No more confiscation of Palestinian land to build Jewish settlements. East Jerusalem would be the Palestinian capital, and something would be done about the millions of Palestinian refugees scattered around the world. That was the hope. Here, says Tull, is the reality:

"Israel has avoided implementing interim agreements; settlement activities and confiscation of lands have doubled if not tripled; the peace process has turned into a never-ending, never-yielding quagmire, making no significant improvements in our lives. We still have to submit to Israeli rules to move between cities, to travel abroad, to export or import goods, even to try to teach our children their history. . . .

"The way the Oslo process has been carried out, the Israelis are portrayed as generously giving away land--instead of withdrawing from occupied territories in accord with U.N. resolutions."

As I say, hearing such an interpretation from a Palestinian official is unsurprising (which is not the same as saying it is untrue). This, from Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the California-based Tikkun magazine, is surprising, at least to me:

"Since taking office, [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Barak has expanded existing settlements, built new roads into the West Bank and made it clear at Camp David that he would insist on keeping the vast majority of settlers in place," Lerner said in a recent piece in the Los Angeles Times. "The state the Palestinians would then be offered would have within it a group of Israeli nationalistic fanatics, many of whom moved to the West Bank precisely to ensure that there would never be a Palestinian state."

Lerner, whose son served in the Israeli army, isn't saying that the bloodshed of the past weeks is entirely Israel's fault. But he does insist that the lynching by Palestinians of two Israeli soldiers is not fundamentally less moral than the killing by Israeli soldiers of scores of Palestinians and the wounding of thousands more.

"Palestinian violence is both immoral and irrational. Yet the preponderance of responsibility lies with Israel and with an international media that continue to obscure the basic realities facing the Palestinian people, and continue to treat the death of Israeli soldiers enforcing a brutal occupation as somehow more outrageous and barbarous than the killing of many times as many Palestinian teenagers who were resisting the occupation."

So what is Lerner calling for? In the religious sphere, atonement; acknowledgment that neither side is innocent in this continuing evil. On the civil, political and diplomatic side, recognition that things in the Middle East are not always what they seem to us in America.

"For every outrage on one side," says Lerner, "there is a story of outrage on the other." It's time, he says, for both sides to look beyond their own pain.

Status Quo a Bearable Outcome

Editorial – October 18, 2000 -- The Los Angeles Times

The leaders of Israel and the Palestinians have agreed on the need to end the confrontation that has all but erased every advance toward peace made over the last seven years. Now they must show they have the authority and the will to implement the agreement that they reached Tuesday at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik. Their work won't be easy, even with the best of intentions.
     On both sides, the constituencies for moderation have been drastically reduced by the violence of the past few weeks. Radical Palestinians, cheered on by Iran, Lebanon's Hezbollah and others in the Arab world whose notion of an acceptable settlement is the extinction of Israel, promise to go on waging war in the streets, a tactic that is guaranteed to produce more deaths and deepen hatred. In Israel, the peace forces have suffered a major loss of credibility; support is growing for those who proclaim that the Palestinians can never be trusted and a hard line is the only answer.
     The Sharm el Sheik agreement is, significantly, a verbal understanding and not a written commitment. As summarized by President Clinton it calls for a return to the pre-crisis situation. That essentially requires the Palestinian Authority to prevent mob actions and to re-incarcerate the recently released leaders of the extremist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. It requires Israel to pull back the forward forces it deployed near Palestinian towns and end its closure of the Gaza airport. The United States will lead a "fact-finding" committee "on the events of the past several weeks," an alternative to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's demand for a broad international investigation into the causes of the violence. Finally, if only pro forma, the United States will consult with the parties about restarting peace talks.
     Credit is due those, especially Clinton and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who brought the two sides together and persuaded them to endorse measures necessary to defuse the crisis. But from here on it will be up to Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and those they command to restore and maintain order. It's clearly much too soon to begin trying to reconstruct the shattered peace process. The best the United States can do is encourage both sides to behave responsibly, in their actions and their rhetoric, and to keep them focused on the future. The status quo may be widely seen as unacceptable. But in the absence of peace, the alternative--unremitting conflict and destruction--would be unbearable.

Mideast Crisis Management

 

Editorial – October 18, 2000 -- The New York Times

The emergency summit meeting that ended yesterday in Egypt proved as tense and difficult as advertised. But Israel and the Palestinians emerged from it with a fragile new opportunity to end nearly three weeks of traumatic clashes that have killed more than 100 people. Doing so can be a first step toward rebuilding the trust that will be needed to negotiate a more permanent peace.

The bloody confrontations have so strained relations between Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel and the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, that the two found it almost impossible to speak to each other directly. They conducted most of their business through President Clinton. The meeting ended without the two leaders making a joint statement. Instead Mr. Clinton announced their mutual undertakings to the world, then departed without answering any questions from the press.

The understanding calls for Mr. Barak and Mr. Arafat to make public statements urging an immediate end to the violence, which they are then expected to follow up by taking concrete steps to reduce friction. It may no longer be in Mr. Arafat's power to completely shut down all further Palestinian violence. Militant groups like Hamas have pledged to continue fighting, and new incidents flared yesterday in the hours after the summit meeting concluded. But if Mr. Barak is satisfied over the next day or so that Mr. Arafat is trying as hard as he can to rein in Palestinian fighters under his command, clamp down on Hamas and calm the broader Palestinian community, Israel will withdraw tanks from major Palestinian population centers, unseal its borders with the West Bank and Gaza and reopen the Gaza airport.

Agreement was also reached on the Palestinian demand for an investigation of the causes of the current upheaval. Mr. Arafat, who had originally insisted on a broadly international inquiry, instead accepted the idea of a committee consisting of Israelis, Palestinians and Americans, formed in consultation with the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan.

Further, the two sides agreed to explore, over the next two weeks, the possibility of resuming negotiations toward a final peace settlement. The comprehensive peace agreement that seemed in sight only a month ago no longer appears a realistic possibility, at least in the short term. But it would be useful for the two sides to return to the negotiating table, the only place where their remaining differences over Jerusalem, refugees and other issues can ultimately be resolved. It is particularly important for Israelis and Palestinians to resume regular contacts over security matters with an eye to avoiding future destructive outbreaks of violence.

Unlike most high-level diplomatic meetings, this one was set up without much preparation and with no guarantees of even minimal success. Mr. Clinton, along with Mr. Annan, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan, wisely recognized that tensions between Israelis and Palestinians were spiraling out of control and endangering the entire Middle East. Mr. Barak promptly agreed to attend, and so, eventually, did Mr. Arafat, braving the vocal opposition of many Palestinians. If the Israelis and Palestinians are now able to put into practice the understandings Mr. Clinton announced yesterday morning, it may be possible to start repairing the immense damage inflicted on the peace process by the violence unleashed in recent weeks.

The Talking Cure

Michael Kelly --  October 18, 2000 – The Washington Post

So, now, coming out of the usual precipitous marathon talks, this time in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, President Clinton brings us, again, peace in our time. Well, not exactly; it's actually, at best, truce in our time and more jaw-jaw in our time. Still, as Winston Churchill noted, to jaw-jaw is better than to war-war. Presumably, Churchill would have maintained his belief even as to Clintonian jaw-jaw.

Yet is jaw-jaw necessarily and always better? The question is particularly worth thinking about right now in the context of the choice between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Gore, like his boss, is a jaw-jaw man all the way. Clinton and Gore have talked their way from Port-au-Prince to Belfast, from Moscow to Sarajevo to Belgrade, from the Near East through the Middle to the Far. Gore sees in all this talk a fundamental reason why the presidency should be entrusted to him and not the rookie from Austin. Jaw-jaw is leadership; jaw-jaw is experience.

But, as employed in the Clinton-Gore manner, it is not, really. It is, rather, the serial and perpetual triumph of hope over experience. This president and this vice president have a boundless faith in the talking cure. Where others see intractable conflicts, they see opportunities for win-win through jaw-jaw. Where others see tyrants and terrorists and proven liars, they see reasonable men who can be trusted to adhere to reasonable agreements worked out around a reasonably good-sized table.

Sometimes this is a fine thing. In Northern Ireland, peace is closer thanks in part to the Clinton administration's insistence on talk. But excessive hope in the power of persuasion rests on excessive faith in the perfectibility of man. And that can lead to at least as much harm as good. Faith in jaw-jaw arguably has increased human suffering and the potential of human suffering in a number of places.

One is Kosovo, counted by the administration as a triumph of the intelligent use of limited war. But would war have been necessary had not Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in her negotiating-table appeasements, given Slobodan Milosevic reason to think he could get away with cleansing Kosovo one village at a time? Another is Rwanda, where swift recourse to a very limited use of armed force almost certainly would have stopped a genocide that claimed at least 700,000 lives--but President Clinton preferred talk, and single-handedly blocked United Nations efforts to use force to avert or halt the slaughter. A third may well be Israel itself. It is clear now that the administration's relentless pressure on Israel to concede more and more to Yasser Arafat, combined with its refusal to accept the obvious truth about Arafat's real intentions, emboldened the Palestinians toward the delusion that they could get it all in the end, if only they hung tough enough and made it painful enough for the Israelis.

The most important instance of the Clinton-Gore philosophy increasing the dangers of life is in the area of weapons proliferation. When Clinton and Gore took office, neither India nor Pakistan had the bomb; now both do. Why? Principally because the administration, intent on making China safe for Coca-Cola, refused to do anything but talk as China exported more and more destabilizing weapons to Pakistan--which made India more and more nervous, and which India finally decided to do something about.

And in this area, we have clear evidence that a President Gore would continue the hope over experience approach. As the New York Times reported on Oct. 13 (a day, fortunately for Gore, dominated by horrific news from the Middle East), the vice president in 1995 signed a secret pact with then-Russian Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin. The agreement, which was rooted in the extraordinary authority Clinton gave Gore over Russian policy and which was never presented to Congress, allowed Russia to secretly continue supplying arms--including a diesel submarine and hundreds of tanks and armored personnel carriers--to Iran, on the strength of Chernomyrdin's promise to put an end to such sales by the close of 1999. The secret agreement apparently violated the 1992 Iran-Iraq Arms Nonproliferation Act--an act, incredibly, cosponsored by Gore himself.

Well, sometimes, in the jaw-jaw business, you have to give a little, trust a little. Except that--whoops--it turns out that Gore's trusted friends in Moscow can't be trusted. Jan. 1, 2000, came and went and the Russians never did stop selling arms to Iran.

I think I'll take my chances on the rookie.

Michael Kelly is editorial director of National Journal.

Cease-Fire?

Editorial --  October 18, 2000 – The Washington Post

THE SHARM El-Sheikh summit concluded with a putative cease-fire agreement yesterday. Even if a truce takes hold, the summit showed how the peace process has been eroded. Parties that only weeks ago were discussing final-status arrangements could not bring themselves to sign a formal agreement to end the violence that has plagued the region for the past weeks. Instead, President Clinton sketched out both sides' commitments--but without specifying precisely who was going to do what or under what timetable.

Mr. Clinton said the parties had agreed to "take immediate, concrete measures," but there was no immediate or concrete improvement on the ground. Instead there were more gun battles in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem. And while Mr. Clinton declared that both Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak had agreed "to issue public statements unequivocally calling for an end of violence," the day came and went without any such statement from Mr. Arafat. Some Palestinian leaders seemed bent on escalating the violence irrespective of any agreement.

President Clinton made the right call in going to the summit and pouring his efforts into achieving a truce. Results may become apparent soon; and there have been scattered hopeful signs in recent days. Palestinian police, for example, have been rearresting Hamas leaders whom they had previously released. Mr. Barak has ordered a relaxation of the internal closure of the Palestinian territories and an opening of the international borders of the West Bank and Gaza. He said he would begin redeploying Israeli troops if the situation began calming within 48 hours. Whatever one now thinks of the peace process, the administration's efforts to calm tensions can't be faulted.

Less plausible is any quick resumption of final-status negotiations. Palestinians are understandably outraged by the mounting human toll of the recent wave of violence. Israelis are understandably shocked at the Palestinian leaders' betrayal of the peace process and willingness to exploit, even to encourage, Palestinian casualties to score political points. A period of cooling off and reevaluation will have to precede any return to substantive talks.

Salvaging mideast peace

Editorial – October 18, 2000 – The Boston Globe

President Clinton was doing what a statesman must be willing to do when he extracted pledges from Israel and the Palestinians yesterday to cease the violence that has unraveled the peace process and threatened surrounding states with a general conflagration.

The measures announced by Clinton at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik represent the lowest common denominator required to halt the bloodletting. Those measures include public calls to stop the violence from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Israel had been insisting on such a call from Arafat, and the formula of symmetrical public appeals from each leader allows the Palestinian side to avoid seeming to be the only party that needs to restrain its armed forces or its vigilantes.

If there is a calming effect in the ensuing 48 hours, Israel will retract troops and heavy weapons from points of conflict.

Clinton also said the United States would work with both sides and the United Nations to form a fact-finding committee to investigate the origins of the violence. This is not what Arafat had been demanding. He had wanted a UN inquiry that might affix blame for initiating the bloodshed on Ariel Sharon's provocative visit to the Temple Mount plaza three weeks ago.

In what seems an incongruously optimistic stipulation, Clinton also said the United States will consult with the parties within two weeks to decide how to advance the Oslo peace process.

The reality is that it will almost certainly be a long time before there can be a resumption of the negotiations that came close to resolving fundamental differences between the two sides at Camp David. There, last July, Israelis and Palestinians had reached tentative agreement on land, borders, settlements, and security. The peace process foundered on the emotional question of who would have sovereignty over religious sites in Jerusalem.

That momentous failure may have been caused by the pressure on Arafat from Arab leaders such as President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and from political Islamicists - not only from the Palestinian group Hamas but from as far away as Iran.

And yesterday the unrehabilitated mass murderer Saddam Hussein of Iraq, who has had nearly two years to develop weapons of mass destruction unhindered, issued a statement saying: ''Palestine will be regained only through ... the mobilization of the Arab nation forces for jihad toward full liberation.''

Clinton's effort to stop the current cycle of Mideast violence and vengeance deserves support not only from the principals but from all America's allies and clients in the Middle East and around the world.

THE POWER OF RAGE

 

Demand for Change Roils Arab World

 

ROBIN WRIGHT – October 15, 2000 – The Los Angels Times


     WASHINGTON--The danger in the latest Middle East crisis is not only the cessation of peace talks, the loss of dozens of lives and increasing the volatility of the world's most volatile region. It is also that the tensions, frustrations and anger that sparked the Al Aqsa uprising may end up destabilizing a region that has held out the longest against peace and political change.
     The first and most immediate effect of the Israeli-Palestinian clashes is that a Palestinian state may now be born not as a result of negotiations--in the spirit of hope and reconciliation and coexistence--but of the most intense violence since Israel was founded a half century ago--in an atmosphere of animosity and despair. That will set the tone and framework for all that follows, even if a dialogue resumes.
     The most profound effect, however, is more likely to be in the Arab world, which has long resisted the democratic tide. The new uprising comes amid increasingly visible anger in the normally tranquil streets of Morocco, Bahrain, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Yemen and other Arab states. It fosters a new momentum--and the kind of dynamic that inspires the hatred behind last week's attack on the USS Cole and other extremist violence extending well beyond the central players in the Middle East drama.
     The spark is not only the deaths of Palestinians as young as 9 years old. Arabs are also angry at their own plight: the absence of individual rights, political participation, economic opportunity and, in varying degrees, the abuses and misuses of power by their own governments.
     The issues behind the Palestinian cause--the broader quest for freedom and self-determination--are a microcosm. For the wider Arab world, the current crisis offers a pretext to vent grievances otherwise barred or banned at home.
     The timing is interesting. Viewed from the prism of history, it's no accident that the uprising overlapped with the revolt in Yugoslavia, where hundreds of thousands turned out on the streets of Belgrade to oust Europe's last dictator, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
     In a similar vein, Palestinians took to the streets in part because attempts at negotiating peaceful change haven't delivered. Neither have their own leaders. So they've taken action into their own hands.
     Palestinians are not alone in their aspirations. After a decade of empowerment spreading from the black townships of South Africa to the barrios of Chile and the farthest outposts of Siberia, and now Yugoslavia, Arabs increasingly feel that they, too, deserve basic rights. Growing numbers are frustrated and angry that they are being excluded from the process of change.
     In between intense policy deliberations and long hours on the phone, a senior U.S. official immersed in the crisis reflected wearily last week, "There's a very scared group of Arab leaders out there who see the streets moving beyond their control. And they sure don't like what they saw in Belgrade."
     The initiative is clearly with those on the streets, not in the Arab world's princely or presidential palaces. Indeed, the call for the first full Arab League summit in a decade--this time including Iraq--is as much a response to the unrest in their own countries as to Palestinian-Israeli clashes.
     "Egypt got out front and called for a summit as a way of showing the Arab street that something is happening," the U.S. official said.
     Arab leaders elsewhere have also been scrambling. Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah, who has been running the kingdom for five years yet remains a reticent public speaker, proclaimed last week, "Nobody should think that Saudi Arabia and the whole Arab and Islamic nation would just watch with their hands tied." Jordan's King Abdullah II rolled up his sleeves last week to donate blood for the Palestinian cause.
     The anger on Arab streets even had a ripple effect on U.S. diplomacy. It led the United States, reluctantly, to allow passage of a United Nations resolution condemning Israel for using excessive force against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. U.S. officials conceded that they feared the reaction in the Arab world if the U.S. had vetoed it. Instead, the United States abstained.
     A second force is also at play. The Al Aqsa uprising comes five months after Israel succumbed to steady pressure from Hezbollah and withdrew from southern Lebanon, ending its 22-year occupation.
     In a conflict spanning more than a half century, it was the first time Arabs had forced a withdrawal without concessions, without a peace treaty, without international mediation. They won despite far inferior weapons and training. They won because of a commitment inspired by an Islamic identity.
     It was a potent message that has rippled across the Middle East. In confronting the challenges that most trouble the region, Hezbollah is now the new model. Hezbollah has rekindled the kind of sacred rage that inflamed the region a generation ago--and has been an undercurrent in demonstrations in the region over the past two weeks.
     "The symbolism of achieving land through violence that Hezbollah represents is very powerful for Arabs, especially among youth," the senior U.S. official lamented.
     Morocco offers a potent example. A sea of people estimated to number at least half a million surged through the streets of Rabat last week calling for a jihad, or holy war, to liberate Jerusalem. In Casablanca, riot police used tear gas to break up an unauthorized demonstration in which Moroccans carried banners proclaiming "Palestine for the Palestinians and Jerusalem for Muslims."
     "Arab leaders have to take decisions concerning the war of extermination started by Israel against the Palestinians and the holy sites of Islam," warned Khalid Soufiani, president of the Moroccan Assn. of Support for the Palestinian Struggle. He then urged the Arab world to use the leverage of oil, as it did by quadrupling the price of oil during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.
     The scenes and warnings were so jolting because Morocco has been one of those critical moderate countries that supported ending a half century of conflict. It has a solid record of realpolitik with Israel, albeit sometimes discreetly.
     Three demonstrations also rocked Kuwait, a staunchly pro-Western state liberated from Iraq by a U.S.-led multinational force in 1991. On Tuesday, more than 10,000 marched on parliament chanting, "Jerusalem is Islamic."
     To quell the wave of unrest, several Arab leaders have since either banned protests or deployed more police on the streets to prevent them. It's hardly a long-term solution, however.
     Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon may have wanted to prove Israeli sovereignty over the area known as the Temple Mount among Jews and Haram al Sharif, or noble sanctuary, among Arabs. But his visit, surrounded by 1,000 Israeli troops, and the bloody aftermath may instead harden Palestinian and Arab resolve to control the Islamic holy sites in East Jerusalem.
     So far, the tensions have played out primarily in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The ultimate danger, however, is an open-ended crisis produced by the two most powerful forces in the Middle East: the frustrated quest for rights and freedoms and power, and the successful use of religious violence. The overall impact could pale the trouble in the region today. *

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Robin Wright, Author of "The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran" and "Sacred Rage: the Wrath of Militant Islam," Is Chief Diplomatic Correspondent for The Times

Broken Hopes and a Grim Future

Editorial – October 13, 2000 – The Los Angeles Times


     The Israeli-Palestinian peace process lies shattered today, and it's unlikely that it can be made whole any time soon. The events of the last two weeks, culminating in Thursday's killing of three Israeli soldiers by a Palestinian mob in Ramallah and retaliatory Israeli attacks, make it all but impossible for leaders on the two sides even to think about reopening negotiations, let alone make the concessions needed for talks to succeed. The diplomatic stalemate that followed the failed Camp David summit in July all but erased the meager trust that remained between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Now extremists on both sides, who have always denied that any basis for trust exists, are claiming vindication.
     Arafat resisted going to Camp David because, he told President Clinton, he wasn't ready for what the United States hoped would be the endgame, an agreement on the most divisive issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially control over East Jerusalem. Arafat spoke the truth: He wasn't ready to accept the creative compromises that Washington proposed, and he left U.S. officials doubting that he ever would be. Clinton took the extraordinary step of putting the onus on Arafat for the failure at Camp David. Everything since has been regression.
     There's no question that Israel deserves condemnation for using excessive and unjustified deadly force in responding to Palestinian rioting over the last few weeks. Neither can there be any question about Arafat's responsibility in condoning, if not actually encouraging, the violence that has left so many dead and injured. At any point he could have ordered his well-armed security forces to halt the rampages. Lacking the political courage to take the last steps necessary to reach a peace agreement, Arafat has reverted to form, maneuvering to boost his sagging prestige among Palestinians and win broader Arab support by again embracing militancy.
     Barak is now calling for a broad national-emergency government. That would inescapably give peace-process opponents a key voice in policymaking. Meanwhile, Arafat is again cozying up to Hamas and other radical enemies of peace to try to rebuild his power base. These tactical expedients may serve the political needs of the moment, but what Israeli and Palestinian leaders should instead be thinking about is the grim and destructive future that awaits their peoples if they fail to arrest the violence and move to resume their broken dialogue.

It's Time to Atone When We See Only Our Own Pain

MICHAEL LERNER – October 13, 2000 --- The Los Angeles Times


     My son served in the Israeli army in the West Bank, so for me the barbarous killings Thursday of three soldiers by a lynch mob in Ramallah made me feel the same anger that must have led Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to bomb Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound in retaliation and to escalate the war against the Palestinians. Yet I can also understand that to the Palestinians the three boys killed were just members of the occupying army, the army that has brutally killed more than 85 Palestinians and wounded more than 2,000 civilians in the past two weeks and which might have seemed indistinguishable from the Jewish mobs that attacked random Arab Israelis in Nazareth a few days ago, beating and burning.
     For every outrage on one side, there is a story of outrage on the other. And yet, in my synagogue on Yom Kippur we atoned for our side of the story, for Jewish violence. Our atonement was not an attempt to claim that Israel holds all the responsibility. I believe that Palestinians ought to adopt a nonviolent pose and reject any leader who advocates violence, because I believe that violence is always wrong no matter how noble the purpose and because in the context of the current struggle, it had the predicted effect of destroying rather than enhancing the chances for peace--an outcome sought by extremists on both sides.
     Palestinian violence is both immoral and irrational. Yet the preponderance of responsibility lies with Israel and with an international media that continue to obscure the basic realities facing the Palestinian people, and continue to treat the death of Israeli soldiers enforcing a brutal occupation as somehow more outrageous and barbarous than the killing of many times as many Palestinian teenagers who were resisting the occupation.
     To me, Israeli deaths are a personal tragedy. But have we not yet learned that in God's eyes every human being is equally treasured? The way we talk that discounts the huge number of Palestinians killed and wounded reinforces the desperation that led to the current tragic moment. But, you might ask, didn't Arafat irrationally reject a wonderful peace accord being offered him by Barak? Isn't this current outbreak just more of the same irrational hatred that always leads Palestinians to reject a generous peace being offered by Israel?
     The reality is quite different. Since taking office, Barak has expanded existing settlements, built new roads into the West Bank and made it clear at Camp David that he would insist on keeping the vast majority of settlers in place. The state the Palestinians would then be offered would have within it a group of Israeli nationalistic fanatics, many of whom moved to the West Bank precisely to ensure that there would never be a Palestinian state.
     The resulting scenario is obvious: The settlers would continue their long history of violent attacks against Palestinians, and when the Palestinian state tried to impose law and order, the settlers would demand protection from the Israeli army, which would use the new roads to send in tanks and heavy artillery just as it has done in the past week.
     These Israeli roads and settlements turn the claim of offering the Palestinians 90% of the land into a cruel hoax. With the Israeli military patrolling those roads that crisscross the Palestinian state, Palestinians would face humiliating searches and would not be able to move freely. Imagine someone offering you a house in which you were going to have large rooms but they were in charge of the hallways between the rooms. You would quickly realize that your freedom to be "at home" was remarkably compromised. For a people who have endured 33 years of military occupation, with a long history of documented torture, house demolitions and harassment, this doesn't sound like such a great deal.
     Nor are Palestinian demands for control over the Temple Mount and the adjacent sections of East Jerusalem irrational. Muslims from the occupied territories have frequently been prevented from coming to the Temple Mount when Israel proclaims "security closings" of the border. Israelis who were rightly outraged at being denied access to the Western Wall when Jerusalem was under Jordanian (not Palestinian) rule from 1948 to 1967 have effectively imposed similar conditions on the 1 million Muslims in Gaza.
     At the same time, many religious authorities ban Jews from walking on the Temple Mount until the messiah comes. So ceding sovereignty there would not have been a religious hardship. Barak could have conceded interim sovereignty to the Palestinians on the condition that those arrangements would be reopened when the messiah arrived (by Biblical criteria: nations beating their swords into plowshares and the lion lying down with the lamb).
     Nor has Israel ever acknowledged responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were driven out of Israel in 1948, many of whose descendants today live in refugee camps.
     None of this had been resolved at Camp David, and so most Palestinians realized that the peace process was just another mechanism to prolong the status quo of an oppressive occupation.
     I was honored to attend the signing of the Oslo accords at the White House in 1993, and in the pages of Tikkun magazine I have severely criticized those Palestinian intellectuals like Edward Said who did not believe that Palestinian self-determination would be granted in the five years that Oslo promised. Now, seven years after Oslo, I can understand why Palestinians would feel cheated and outraged over the endless occupation. Add to that the racist attitudes that led Barak to seek Israeli Arab votes in the last election, his subsequent refusal to allow Arab parties into his government for fear that their presence would make the government appear "illegitimate" and the long history of discrimination against Israeli Arabs in housing and employment, and you get the volatile ingredients that led to the explosions last week and the subsequent massive violence against Arabs both inside Israel and in the occupied territories.
     None of this justifies Palestinian violence or the far more massive counter-violence of the occupying Israeli army. But I see no hope that the disgusting cycle of violence on both sides will stop until Israel is willing to end the occupation and end its internal racism against Arab Israelis. As a religious Jew, I know that God and the Torah are served best when we insist that every human being, including our enemies, be seen as equally valuable to God and equally created as embodiments of the divine. Given my own outrage over the killing of Israeli soldiers, this is a moment when it seems easier to just forget my faith and stay in my anger. But I also know that when the Jewish people can only see our own pain, however real and legitimate, it is time to atone.

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Rabbi Michael Lerner Is Editor of Tikkun: a Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture and Society and Author of "Spirit Matters: Global Healing and the Wisdom of the Soul" (Walsch Books, 2000)

Mideast Needs Bold Intervention

Editorial – October 11, 2000 – The Los Angeles Times

     If there is anything that the violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians underscore, it is how much they have to lose if they don't reach a peace agreement. The sides have come closer than ever to a peace deal, but their accomplishment is being lost in the heat of street battles.
     President Clinton, who has guided the peace process, spoke to Middle Eastern leaders over the past few days in an effort to stop the killing. He should be prepared, however, to go to the Middle East and meet face to face with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. Barak's office said the prime minister was prepared to extend his deadline for finding an agreement. The immediate task is to stop the violence before it spreads throughout the region. Already, fighting has spilled out of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip to Israel's northern border with Lebanon. Arab leaders in Jordan, Egypt and even Kuwait are under increasing pressure from demonstrators at home angry over mounting Palestinian casualties. The bloodshed, as one Middle East analyst cautioned, is turning from an Israeli-Palestinian conflict into an Arab-Israeli one.
     Palestinians blame Ariel Sharon, right-wing leader of the Likud Party and no friend of peace, for touching off the unrest with a provocative visit to Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem. They also blame Barak for using excessive force against the angry Palestinian response. Israelis in turn claim that Arafat may even have orchestrated the violence to gain international sympathy for his negotiating position. Both sides may be right, but finger-pointing and recrimination will not help defuse the crisis.
     Despite the mounting tension, few anticipate an all-out war. Still, the spirit of compromise in which the peace negotiations have taken place is shifting as confidence in the leadership on both sides dissipates. Arab and Israeli extremists are wasting no time exploiting the crisis.
     U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov flew to the region to help stem the violence. Visits like this are useful, if only to open new diplomatic avenues and underscore the strategic importance of peace in the Middle East. But it is ultimately the United States that has played, and will continue to play, a pivotal role in the Mideast negotiations.The risks of failure are high. But the stakes are higher.
     Clinton was right in mounting a "full diplomatic press" in recent days to try to end the clashes. If that fails, he should stand ready to fly to the Middle East for a summit. Clearly, this is the time for a bold move.

Mideast powder keg

Editorial – October 11, 2000 – The Boston Globe

As desolating as the violent disorders in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza have been thus far, there is a mounting danger that they could spark a much larger conflagration that would doom the possibility of peace for years to come and set the Mideast afire.

It is precisely to preempt such calamities that President Clinton, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and leaders in Europe, Russia, and the Mideast have intervened diplomatically in the past few days. Because the stakes are so high, these efforts must be pursued unflaggingly. Pure persuasion is not sufficient to the task. All the carrots that can be offered to the antagonists must be offered, and all the sticks must be brandished.

Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak must be made to understand not only that both sides will suffer if the violence is not stopped soon, but that each has an obligation to make it easier for the other to issue orders for his people to stand down.

Barak's decision to suspend the ultimatum and the deadline he had originally set for Arafat to stop Palestinian street actions may be read as a positive sign that he is willing to heed the counsel of Clinton and the others.

It is too soon to be certain, but there have also been signs in the past 24 hours that confrontational acts on the Palestinian side may be diminishing somewhat.

If so, that is all the more reason for the international interveners to increase their pressure on the belligerents. The disaster looming ahead is all too clear. If the bloodshed is not ended soon, Barak will form an emergency coalition government including the Likud Party led by Ariel Sharon. This will be a prescription for harsher repression and an indefinite annulment of the peace process.

The consequences of such a turn to nationalist protectiveness will in all likelihood not be confined to Israel and the Palestinian areas. Already Hezbollah's capture of three Israeli soldiers near the Lebanon border has enlarged the radius of confrontation to include Beirut, Damascus, and even Tehran, since the ultimate puppeteer tugging at the strings of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon is the theocratic regime in Iran. Barak has threatened that if the three soldiers are not returned unharmed, Israel will retaliate against Syria.

A regional explosion could follow from such retaliation, and since nearly all the surrounding regimes have reason to fear their populations and a need to legitimate themselves in the old struggle against zionism, even leaders who might not want conflict could be drawn against their will into a catastrophe.

Clinton, Annan, and the other world leaders must compel Arafat and Barak to pull back before that wildfire is lit.

Guns not the solution

Arafat and Barak must face the grim reality.

Trudy Rubin -- October 1, 2000 -- The Philadelphia Inquirer

One of the most common accusations that Israelis used to hurl at Arabs - and vice-versa - is: "They only understand force."

This phrase went into the deep freeze during seven years of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. But it's back with a vengeance after two weeks of bloody clashes between Arabs and Jews.

As their casualties rise, Palestinians say they must fight, not negotiate, for independence. Israelis retort that any new Palestinian uprising will be crushed by overwhelming military might. The rhetoric of force builds its own deadly momentum.

But deep down, whether or not they admit it in public, Yasir Arafat and Ehud Barak must grasp the grim reality: Neither side can win with guns.

Why, then are Palestinian police and Israeli soldiers shooting at each other, when two months ago their teams were bargaining at Camp David about the shape of a Palestinian state?

I don't believe the violence is an organized plot hatched by Arafat to get better terms at the negotiating table - although the Palestinian leader has plenty of mistakes to answer for.

The trigger for the violence was the visit of Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon on Sept. 28 to the most sensitive spot in the old city of Jerusalem, known as the Temple Mount to Jews and the Haram al-Sharif to Arabs. On that site sits Al-Aqsa, Islam's third holiest mosque, and under it lie the ruins of the Jews' First and Second temples. The Camp David talks deadlocked on who will get sovereignty over this site.

Sharon's visit was not just about asserting Jewish rights to visit the mount. He had to know the visit would cause trouble. He is both bull and red flag to the Palestinians and a symbol of their worst fears.

Sharon bears responsibility for the 1982 Sabra-Shatila refugee camp massacre of Palestinians in Beirut by Israel's Lebanese Christian allies. He opposes any viable Palestinian state. His visit stoked Palestinian conspiracy theories about Israeli plots to destroy Al-Aqsa.

So riots flared. Heavy Israeli military response led to Palestinian deaths. The casualties, in turn, ignited Palestinian frustrations over endless delays in peace negotiations, which so far have created only a bunch of unviable Arab bantustans in Gaza and the West Bank.

How ironic that the trouble flared just as talks over the endgame had finally gotten going. Arafat certainly didn't help his public grasp the significance of the dramatic peace proposals belatedly offered by Barak.

Once Palestinian casualties mounted, Palestinian police and political leaders started stoking the new uprising. Maybe Arafat could have cooled some of the violence early on. Probably he still can. But he is wary. If public rage weren't being vented on the Israelis, it might turn on him and his corrupt administration.

Instead, we are witnessing "the independence intifada," an update on the seven-year Palestinian uprising that preceded the Oslo peace negotiations. But this time the Palestinians have guns, and they believe that the violence will lead to independence.

"There has been a threshold crossed," says University of Maryland professor Shibley Telhami, "from the psychology of peacemaking to the psychology of war."

The Palestinians have drawn the wrong lessons from Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon last year and the Israeli pullout last week from Joseph's Tomb in the West Bank town of Nablus. These events are touted as Palestinian military "victories" against Israel. Add to this the demonstrations in Arab capitals - and inside Israel by Israel's Arab citizens - and many Palestinians now believe that Israel is reeling.

Their conclusion: More violence, not renewed negotiations, is the best way to make Israel pull out of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem and let the Palestinians have their state.

This is dangerous self-delusion, and Arafat must know it. Israel left southern Lebanon - and Joseph's Tomb - because both places had become security liabilities, and it was not necessary to hold them. But Israel cannot quit the West Bank and Gaza without a negotiated deal that guarantees her security. To do otherwise would jeopardize Israel's existence.

If the lightly armed Palestinians choose to fight a "war" against Israel, rather than return to the table, they will lose.

But Israel cannot "win" an armed struggle with the Palestinians, either. The heavy use of Israeli force - and snipers - against "the independence intifada" has backfired. It has already produced dozens of Palestinian martyrs whose funerals bring more people into the streets.

Israel could crush the uprising, but only at an enormous cost. The West Bank would be turned into an Algeria-like situation, with large numbers of troops deployed to protect Israeli settlements. Settlers and soldiers alike would become ready targets.

And inside Israel, this would fuel more unrest among Israeli Arabs, creating a sectarian conflict reminiscent of Bosnia.

Return to the "they only understand force" mantra is a lose-lose situation. And that may be the one reason why the two sides will finally find a way back to talks.