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Mon. Nov 19, 2001

A Vision of Hope and Promise?

A Vision of Hope and Promise? – That’s the phrase Colin Powell used yesterday regarding the US approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As the top US diplomat, Powell must exude a certain optimism on even the most intractable matters. It’s the nature of the gig.

I hope he’s right. I hope he’s successful in new attempts to broker a ceasefire. But my vision is far more gloomy, and it’s a simple observation of what seem to be the ”facts on the ground.” I see two sides that invest far more energy in friction than peace, that both publicly revel in the death of their opponents, that both teach children to perpetuate the conflict to the next generation, and that both now share indistinguishable levels of blame for the mess they’re in, even while they point fingers at everyone else.

I see leaders on both sides more interested in political posturing than in peace, even in the aftermath of 9-11, which should have been a wake up call for all involved: escalating warfare in the name of religion could be the end of us all. Our bloody cup runneth over. And yet both sides continue to pour more.

Based on the actions of current ”leadership” on both sides, I don’t expect to see peace in Jerusalem in my lifetime. It would appear that’s the way both sides actually prefer it. Of late, they’ve done little to show otherwise. But I didn’t always feel that way.

It always been assumed it was America’s responsibility to wave a magic wand over the Middle East and end this conflict. We are apparently the only ones with a magic wand, as no other country has made anywhere near the effort we have to broker an honest peace agreement there. Not even the UN. Such is the burden of being a superpower, I guess. And for some time, this was fine with me, because what other method had shown any success?

The Camp David accords of the 70’s provided the standard. Two previously warring leaders shaking hands with the American President, after agreeing to return to their pre-war status and borders. It’s the standard by which every summit since has been measured. While some provided temporary hope, even calm, all were eventually failures, of course.

And we haven’t limited our peacekeeping efforts to strictly suits at a table. We’ve put our uniformed butts on the line. Were it not for the the US President sending in the Marines, Yasser Arafat and 6,000 PLO fighters would be dead.

That forgotten truth bears repeating, boldly: Were it not for the US President sending in the Marines, Yasser Arafat and 6,000 PLO fighters would be dead. When the Israeli’s invaded Lebanon in 1982, they wiped up big time. They had Yasser Arafat and what remained of his fighting force holed up in Beirut, backs to the sea, surrounded and outnumbered by the toughest army in the Middle East. The Israeli’s destroyed 400 Syrian tanks meant to ”distract” them from the PLO, and retained a death grip.

US Marines to the rescue. The Reagan Administration brokered a ceasefire and withdrawl agreement, and sent in the US Marines to evacuate the PLO: ”The 800 Marines arrived on August 25. On August 28, under the watchful eyes of the MNF, the PLO began to pull out. The evacuation, which took three days, went off without incident. Nearly 14,000 Palestinian and Syrian fighters left by sea and land. A comparative calm seemed to settle over Beirut.”

We literally saved Yasser’s life. Yes, some will argue America did not protect their families, who were then killed in a bloody massacre by a local Christian faction, as the Israeli’s stood by and did nothing despite their commitment to prevent such a massacre. There is no doubt that was a great tragedy, one that must largely be blamed on the Israeli’s, but the simple fact is that Yasser and his men would have shared a similar fate, if it was not for the US stepping in to evacuate them. The Marines were soon sent back in due to Israel not honoring those commitments, and got blown up for their trouble, likely by some of the very folks they’d saved.

We were the patsies, played by both sides. It should have been perfectly clear to us ever since then, when we tried to be a ”player” in brokering an Israeli-Palesinian peace agreement, we would get played by those who have no interest in peace.

It’s even more true today, hardened by almost a generation of conflict since 1983. And much effort is being put into indoctrinating the next generation, in words and action. Take a look at the Palestinian Authority’s schoolbooks. An example of the education of Palestinian children: ”There are a number of reasons that caused the Europeans to persecute the Jews, everywhere they were: The Bible is full of texts that support the Jews’ tendency to racial and religious zealotry, and they respond with the spirit of hatred toward the other nations The Jews of Europe were hated because of their hostile Jewish belief towards Christianity, and their seclusion, they did not join the western societies and continued to view them with suspicion. Another reason for the hatred towards them was their taking over the economy…”

But it’s not just the Palestinians. The Israeli’s work hard to educate the Palestinian children as well. ”Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered – death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo – but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport. [...] ’We all threw rocks,’ says Ahmed Moharb, ten. ’Over the loudspeaker the soldier told us to come to the fence to get chocolate and money. Then they cursed us. Then they fired a grenade. We started to run. They shot Ali in the back.’ ”

If you can bear it, read this NY Times reporter’s Gaza Diary, and try to find Colin Powell’s Vision of Hope and Promise: ” ’My five-year-old son was pretending to present the news,” he [Osama al-Farra, the mayor of Khan Younis in Gaza] told me. ’He began by saying that five Palestinians had been killed by the Israelis today. His two-year-old brother, who wanted to play, threw himself on the floor and said he was a martyr.’ ” [...] Ibrahim Abu Awad, a dirty and disheveled boy of ten, pesters me for a shekel, and finally stands and stares intently at the post. I ask him what he wants to do in life. ’Kill Jews,’ he says.”

A couple of month’s ago, Yahoo distributed a photo of two Israeli children kicking an elderly Palestinian woman and pulling her veil. One would hope current leadership would make some headway before all these kids grow up. But on one side we have a ”leader” whose directional drifts on the wind of opinion and opportunity are worse than any American politician, nevermind his long-term links to the very terrorism that derails the peace process, and on the other side, a ”leader” who deliberately enraged Palenstinians by visiting a Muslim Holy site (along with hundreds of security troops), intentionally and successfully derailing the peace initiatives of his predecessors.

Unfortunately, it’s not just the leaders and the children (you need a scorecard to tell them apart sometimes). You don’t have to be a leader to derail the process, just a lone extremist. If one Israeli extremist feels his leader ”wants to give our country to the Arabs”, an assassination will quickly fix that. And the demand that 7 days of no violence must pass before Israel will resume its withdrawl places the whole region under the thumb of any individual jihadist who decides, on Day 6, to seek martyrdom via suicide bombing. Throw in an organization like Hamas or Islamic Jihad committed to destroying Israel, and that demand assures a stalemate and continuation of the violence.

There are no clean hands on this one. Much of the blame has been put on the US. We give Israel $3 Billion per year in economic and military support. This policy is rooted in the historical fact that Israel, a country a bare 50 miles wide in places (no strategic depth to pull back, like the Russians had against Germany), was surrounded by countries that far outnumbered them and had vowed to literally drive them into the sea. And they lived up to their word, trying very hard in 1967 and 1973. It was also one of our proxy battlegrounds of the Cold War, especially in 1973, when it almost lost the ”proxy” aspect. But those days are gone.

One of the things that came out of the Camp David accords was $2 Billion a year in economic and military support for Egypt, a sort of quid pro quo. It appeared possible that American Largess might simply buy off peace in the Middle East. But that didn’t exactly work out either, did it?

However, decades later we seem to be left with some perverse diplomatic version of ”legacy support,” in which the worst Israel ever gets from us is a tut-tut, while, in my opinion, over time the Israeli’s have become more and more oppressive. And this is a country whose birth came from the worst ethnic oppression the world has ever seen. Regardless of the usual claims that a government must be allowed to determine its own internal policies, the Israeli settlements in occuppied territories are a clear violation of the Geneva Convention, as the UN long ago noted. The US just delivers a few extra tut-tuts with the next check.

Meanwhile, random acts of terror by Palestinians have become an unfortunate way of life (and sudden unexpected death) for all Israeli’s, ratcheting up the level of violence, and ensuring harsh reprisals. Since those reprisals utilize mostly American made weaponry, more blame is thrown on our shores. The fact we are the home of the argument ”Guns don’t kill people, people do” hardly matters to anyone. After all, some American cities have sued gun manufacturers, in effect blaming them for the armed crime in their cities, rather than the criminals who commit the acts.

The US (and almost secondarily, Israel) also often gets blamed for the fact the West Bank and Gaza are not yet the nation of Palestine. The US has never occupied either of those areas. Israel, born in 1948, has occupied them since 1967. But what about that missing era, 1948-1967? Who occupied those lands then, and also failed to create a Palestinian state, in fact, failed to even try? Their Arab brothers. The ones who built refugee camps to contain the Palestinians rather than assimilate them into their populace, nevermind make a nation for them. This isn’t news to the Palestinians, who have long complained of the lack of support from many of their Arab brothers, right up to Osama bin Laden. Palestinians complained earlier this year that he never mentioned their cause in his calls to jihad, and he only strapped them to his bandwagon (along with the Iraqi children) post 9-11.

There are no clean hands. ”Supporters” on both sides have only made things worse. But that’s the past, and no outside force is to blame for where they are today. For almost two decades, there have been only two players in this game, both largely ignoring the sideline crowd unless it threatens to spill onto the court and cause a delay, or provides one side some kind of edge.

It’s like trying to help an addict. You can only help someone who wants to be helped. I don’t see very much of that in either side, what they seem to want most is more of the ”enemy’s” blood. There seem to be very few players on either team, or among their supporters, who fully support a Two State Solution. The majority clearly prefer a Winner Takes All Solution. Until the players themselves get past that, our efforts will remain fruitless.

But we should no longer shoulder the blame. We should lay it all out in public, and plainly state that which is clear, not sugar coat it with the diplomatic gobbledy-gook of ”cautiously optimistic incremental progress between reasonable parties.” Something more along the lines of, ”American stands ready to throw its full weight behind any serious and reasonable peace initiative by either party involved, but, sadly, we currently see no such sincere effort from either side. We stand ready with a monetary program to ensure the economic security of both states [carrot], but we will no longer throw money down the dark hole of current circumstance.” [stick]

”America is ready to help, but we remain on the sidelines, waiting for the responsible parties to start acting responsibly.”

It’s probably a Good Thing that I’m not Secretary of State. But that’s my sad assessment. We’re wasting our time and capital on people who aren’t ready to be helped. And may never be.