One of Israel's principal challenges, and perhaps its greatest, is to live alongside the Palestinians.
It is far from easy, insofar as much, perhaps most, of what we hear and read from the Palestinian political and intellectual elite (inside and outside of Israel) is their monopoly of justice, and demands that Israel cannot accept. Prominent examples are an extensive right of return, and Israel's giving up the concept of a Jewish state for a "state for all its people." The last is code for giving so many privileges to a 20 percent minority of the population as to threaten the western, democratic nature of the society. Israel may not be Paradise for all its people (or any of its people), but it is the best for its majority and minorities that the Middle East has produced in modern times.
Currently the more pressing problem is the Palestinians outside of Israel. They begin a few hundred meters from these fingers, and are mixed with substantial Jewish settlements and a very recent history of violence.
Just this morning we are hearing the responses to the government's decision to allow two aged Palestinians, with the dried blood of numerous Jewish women and children on their hands, to enter the West Bank in order to give Mahmoud Abbas enough votes to form a government without Hamas.
The government's point is to give, once again, an Oslo like opportunity for the Palestinians to create institutions that look like a state, in the hope that they will take the advantage in a way that is not threatening to Israel. The exercise is limited to the West Bank. What is called the Hamastan in Gaza remains beyond the pale. Israel provides enough food, fuel, and electricity to hold off starvation, but not much more. If it is risky to predict events in the West Bank, it is foolhardy to predict them for Gaza.
Israel's government is again giving peace a chance. It will free about 200 Palestinian prisoners, agree to stop hunting a hundred or so more who sign statements foregoing violence, and let those two old terrorists give their votes to Abbas.
The families of those killed and injured are expressing themselves. The aged mother of a young girl killed in 1974 spoke of her pain, and we heard a poem the child wrote in behalf of peace shortly before she embarked on a school trip that ended badly. Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Israel Our Home party, is sure there is no chance Abbas can create a responsible regime. He knows of other Palestinians who might succeed, but he is not releasing their names.
With pathos on one side and nonsense on another, it is not easy to manage Israel's gestures for peace.
Many Israelis learned long ago that they cannot manage the details of the Palestinian regime. Macro demands we can make: no violence; no incitement that assures continued violence. Micro management is not for outsiders.
The problem is not only Israeli. George Bush and friends did not learn from the Kenney-Johnson follies in Vietnam. Avigdor is not likely to be any more successful in picking Palestinian leaders and telling them what they can do than John or Lyndon were in Vietnam, or George in Iraq.
Israel's government is not likely to be innocent. If the Palestinian authority continues to demand the entire West Bank and an extensive right of return for the refugees of 1948 and 1967, it will be disappointed. If the old terrorists express themselves in behalf of continued armed resistance to Israeli occupation, they may not be allowed out of the West Bank. If the new regime does not take significant steps to curtail the violent among its people, and tone down the incitement of armed resistance, Israel will treat it like the old regime.
Giving peace a chance means just that. It does not mean surrendering to Palestinian dreams. So far the Palestinians have come close to destroying Palestinian nationhood. They may yet succeed in that miserable scenario if their political and intellectual elites do not give peace a chance.