The Hamas claimed responsibility for bombing a cafeteria at the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem today. The bomb killed 7 people and also any remaining hope that the Palestinians will achieve statehood in the foreseeable future, if ever.
The conflict in Israel has lately been positioned in the western media as a conflict about the "illegal settlement and occupation of Palestinian territories", namely the West Bank and Gaza strip. "The bombings are caused by the Israel's illegal occupation", some people say, and if only the occupation would end, then the bombings would stop and everybody will get to live in peace.
We can save for another time a detailed review of the fact that Israel came into possession of the West Bank and Gaza as a result of the 1967 war that it didn't want, didn't start, won, and unsuccessfully tried to sue for peace and return the territories several times already anyway. Or the fact that there was plenty of terrorism before the so-called occupation started. Let's take at face value the implicit Palestinian claims that their thinking has changed, and that they will accept a state in the West Bank and Gaza.
Now put yourself in the mind of a Palestinian strategist. Your goal is no longer to destroy Israel, but to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. In order to accomplish this you need to persuade Israel to withdraw its military from the territories and equally importantly to dismantle the settlements. So what's the best way to persuade Israel to do this?
A thoughtful strategist should quickly grasp the following essential points:
1) Israel has previously traded land for peace. Significantly, an earlier right-wing government, headed by Sharon's mentor Menahem Begin returned all of the Sinai to Egypt and also risked conflict from its own right-wing by dismantling settlements in the Sinai.
2) Israel is a democracy. Government policy reflects public opinion as well as in any other country. The key is to obtain public support for ending the occupation.
3) Most Israelis want to preserve the Jewish character of their country, meaning they do not want to absorb or rule over a territory with an overwhelmingly non-Jewish population.
4) Israel is anything but monolithic in its opinions (ever hear the joke that for every 2 Jews there are 3 opinions?). Some Israelis are firmly in favor of maintaining the settlements for religious or ideological reasons. They will never agree to give them up, but they are a minority and can be outshouted and outvoted. The great majority of the electorate is more attached to Tel-Aviv than to Gaza and Hebron. Many would be open to trading the West Bank and Gaza for a firm belief of achieving peace with its neighbors.
5) Perhaps the biggest objection in the mind of the Israeli swing voter against returning the territories is this: The perception and fear that the Palestinians will never be satisfied only with a state in the West Bank and Gaza. They would only accept such a state as an interim step toward dismantling the rest of Israel.
So based on the above points, it would seem that the logical Palestinian strategy toward achieving the limited goal of a state in West Bank and Gaza is this: Divide and conquer the Israeli electorate. Make war on the settlers and the occupation only, while reassuring the center and the left that they have nothing to lose by withdrawing from the territories. "Stay in Tel Aviv and Netanya where you are safe. We have absolutely no designs on your home", would be the message. "Our only fight is with the settlers in the West Bank and Gaza". The outcome of such a strategy, if it were adopted, should be obvious. The Israeli center and left, which is more interested in building a prosperous society than in holding on to Joseph's tomb, would do the math and make a deal. If the choice is between (a) security in the homeland and (b) sending the sons out to defend the ultra-nationalist religious settlers in downtown Hebron indefinitely, they will take (a). If the Palestinians had in fact adopted the above strategy, I suspect that the whole issue would have been settled and done with years ago.
Clearly that is not what happened. Most of the attacks have not been in the territories, but within the Green Line, including today's bomb at the university. As in most western countries, the Israeli universities foster its society's most liberal elements, and its most vocal and effective peace camp. Today's bomb helped blow up (literally and figuratively) some of the best friends that the Palestinians could ever hope to have (including 10 Israeli Arabs who were wounded).
I propose the following explanations:
1) The Palestinian leadership is either too stupid, vengeful, ignorant or irrational to recognize and act on the obvious as outlined above.
2) The Palestinian aspirations are not limited to the West Bank and Gaza. They continue to maintain the pre-Oslo goal of abolishing Israel after all.
3) The Palestinians are not a monolithic society. Some factions may be satisfied with a West Bank/Gaza state. Others (such as Hamas) want the whole thing.
I would believe that it's all of the above. And where does this leave things? The fallout of (2) is that the mainstream Israeli public will not trust the other side enough to make any concessions, (3) implies that there is nobody who can make a deal on behalf of and rein in the people who commit the violence and (1) implies that there's nobody competent enough to bother to deal with anyway.
Today's murders will only reinforce this perception. The Palestinians have only themselves to thank for attaining the dubious distinction of joining the Hittites, the Picts, the Scythians and the Aztecs as peoples whose descendants live on, but whose countries exist only in the history books.
But what's left, then, for Israel to do to ensure its own security even though it will not have a Palestinian peace partner? I have some thoughts on this, stay tuned.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at July 31, 2002 01:09 PMActually, there never was a country called "Palestine". Nor is there a distinct "Palestinian" culture, as opposed to Jordanian, Syrian, etc.
While your analysis tends to be fair, I think most people would not want to give up all West Bank "settlements". Some of these were bought by Jews pre-Israel, but became Judenrein under Jordanian occupation. People might want to keep these.
I would propose a much more effective strategy than yours. Non-violence. What if Palestinians had a sit-in? A hunger strike? Israelis would be even more sympathetic than if they were only attacking on the other side of the Green Line.
Not every one on the other side of the Green Line is a fanatic. Most of them are just ordinary people who moved there because of economic incentives.
Posted by: Ariel on July 31, 2002 01:39 PMAriel,
Your points are well taken. I've written about non-violent resistance as well. see:
here and here
but at the end of the day its just trading one fantasy of what the Palestinians might have done for another. I'd be surprised if they have an opportunity to reinvent themselves, assuming they even want to, which I doubt.
Stefan,
Great analysis!
You should replace Shimon Peres as Israel's foreign minister - our Hasbara would be much more effective.
You got my vote. ;-)
Stefan, thanks for your sharp, perceptive piece!
I quite agree.
Not only this bombing but the thousands of "Palestinians" celebrating in the street today over the bombing make a real statement--They don't want "peace" or a "state": they want Jews dead and Israel gone and this feeling pervades the whole community--from Arafat and Yassin down to the (Islamist) men and women on the street.
They are NEVER gonna create a democratic state to live side-by-side with Israel as President Bush asked on 6/24 (and I sincerely believe HE knows this!), but the question then becomes, what do the Israels do with these Arabs in their land? To put it bluntly, they have 2 options--Kill them or exile them to their *real* homelands.
From the strategy the Palestinians have chosen, I draw only one conclusion: the top priority is that the Palestinians themselves must never sign a deal that accepts Israel's existence. Arafat cannot compromise. That is goal number two (goal number one being Arafat's continued hold on power). Any other strategic goals are a distant third.
Viewed from this light, their strategy makes sense. Since they cannot compromise, land for peace is out. All that is left is land for no peace, land for war. To accomplish this, they must hurt the Israelis as badly as possible for as long as possible, and survive the retaliations. It has not worked very well so far, but there is no other course open to them as long as they can keep fighting.
The Palestinians have thus reverted to their dominant strategy for the last eighty years, the pursuit of a ruinous maximalism, whatever the cost.
Posted by: Nadine Carroll on July 31, 2002 07:18 PMhttp://198.65.148.153/news.php3?id=27632
Hamas announces it wants all Jews out of Isarael! this needs to be posted on every pro-Israel blog lest some believe it is the territories that is the problem! The final solution!
Posted by: fred lapides on July 31, 2002 07:24 PMOf course, Israel should not play the waiting game with the Palestinians on this one. As history has shown, she'll be waiting an awfully long time.
Here's my take on what should happen. Israel should not dismantle the settlements. Rather, it (as long as the EUniks, who continually promise they'll kick in some cash) will offer economic incentives for living within mainland Israel.
Gaza already has a wall demarcating it from Israel. Finish building the one that separates the West Bank from Israel. It should be roughly '67 borders will allowances for extra buffer room between Israel and the future Palestinian state. Taking their land? Well, that's what you get for trying to kill the Jews for fifty years.
Now, the settlers have a choice: be stripped of your Israeli citizenship and live in the holy land that they feel that God gave them under a Palestinian state that will no doubt be a bastion of democracy and tolerance {/sarcasm-off}. Or move to Israel and live a normal life.
Needless to say, the borders between Israel and the territories should be airtight. This means that the Palestinians need to create a job market of their own, as significantly fewer Palestinians will be admitted into Israel to work. But that's an entirely separate post.
So effectively, Israel dumps the pesky territories without officially dismantling the settlements. After all, the settlers will have the option of staying there. (What? The PA wants its democractic state Judenrein?)
And we'll all live happily ever after. Or something like that.
Posted by: Elliott Davis on July 31, 2002 07:30 PMHi there,
Anybody who sees my website will obviously know that I agree with you. Keep up the great work!
Steve
P.S. Was Jerusalem, in it's entirety (including "East Jerusalem") within the Green Line?
Posted by: Steve on July 31, 2002 11:14 PMThe Hebrew University and Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus were an Israeli enclave during the Jordanian rule. Every fortnight, armored buses took up supplies and personnel relief to a small group of Police and University people who stayed there and maintained the place all through the 19 years of Jordanian rule. So I'm not sure if this area would be defined as withing the green line or not.
Posted by: Imshin J on August 1, 2002 12:07 AMI do not believe sealing off the Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria will work. The terrorists will break through the barriers. And the 1967 borders were not too secure. Before the 1967 war Israel was about 10 miles wide at one point. One of the corps in Zahal (I don't recall which one) used to truck its recruits down to the seashore, stand them with the water lapping their bootheels, and point out that a line of hills a few miles away, easily viewed, was Jordan, enemy territory. Then, in sight of enemy territory with the sea at their backs they took their oath of service.
Now imagine a sovereign Palestinian Arab state there and that this state has invited Iraqi and Syrian army units in, together with its own forces, to post them within a few minutes driving time of Tel Aviv. Plus they have terrorists constantly challenging the border and breaking through the wall. Israel retaliates against the infiltrators and catches hell from everybody. They call entry of Iraqi troops into Palestine a casus belli and all the EUniks scream bloody murder. Even the US might try restraining Israel from striking before the Arab alliance strikes them. That's what we did in 1967, after all.
Sad as it is to contemplate, I think the only recourse is to transfer the Arab Palestinians to Arab countries and resettle them there. If they cannot live at peace with Jewish neighbors then they must find neighbors with whom they can live at peace. The trouble is their "Arab Brothers" tend to treat them worse than the Israelis do.
Where will they go, when the Arabs treat them worse than the Israelis do but they have alienated the Israelis by their viciousness? Maybe they should have thought of that earlier, and why, at this point, should the Israelis care?
Steve, before the 1967 war Eastern Jerusalem was under Jordanian rule, and no Jews were allowed in the city. Western Jerusalem was the Capital of Israel.
Posted by: Michael Lonie on August 1, 2002 12:34 AMLike all of the previous attacks it means exactly one thing from the practical point of view: this is a psychological war and has to be fought as such, something both Israel and its supporters have gracefully abstained from so far. As long as the Palestinians are considered the worldwide foremost hitshow, the terror will continue (and, off-topic, people in other parts of the world will continue to die of neglect, b/c of the attention and considerable material and other support directed at the Palestinians - pre-9/11 Afghanistan is just one, the most prominent, case).
Instead of devising military and political tactics for the Israeli government, "peace plans", "transfer plans" or whatever, maybe we should start thinking on how to throw the Palestinians off the worldwide stage altogether? This requires much more than just running after Palestinian representatives, "rebutting them" - no offense to anyone here intended. We need to dig deeper.
Posted by: Visitor from Europe on August 1, 2002 03:49 AMI was using the term "Green Line" only to refer to anything that was acknowledged as Israeli in the 1949 armistice. That would include West Jerusalem and Mt. Scopus, even though the latter was not contiguous to the rest of West Jerusalem. It would not include the post-1967 Jewish neighborhoods such as Gilo and French Hill, etc. (I'm not certain if this is the precise definition of the phrase "Green Line" as used by Israeli officials)
I'm fascinated by the current Arab fixation over what they call the "1967 borders" (meaning the 1949 armistice borders) as being somehow cast in stone. The Arabs should really call them the "Boy did we fuck up in both 1947 and 1967" borders. The borders were only determined by the cessation of fighting in 1949, and never accepted as Israel's boundaries by any Arab country prior to 1967.
So what's the difference between land on one side of what I'm calling the Green Line and land on the other? Absolutely none. The Green Line was determined by a political settlement after the end of hostilities. Any new border would also be determined by a political settlement. And I find it difficult to imagine that any political agreement would exclude from Israeli Jerusalem any of the post-1967 Jewish neighborhoods.
Posted by: Stefan Sharkansky on August 1, 2002 11:51 AMSo sad to see a rational approach that is unable to comprehend the hopless irrationality of what it is dealing with. Example: That university is a hot-bed of diversity, mixing Arabs, Jews and Christians...and yet, kill they must.
Hamas made in clear in a release this week that their goal is to get the Jews out of Israel!
With that in mind, whatever gets done will defy any rational approach which presupposes that a state is wanted as a final goal.
Posted by: fred lapides on August 1, 2002 08:52 PM