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Peace in our Time
by
Yuval Levin, IASPS Adjunct Fellow in Political Studies
Deborah Sontag of the New York
Times reports with unabashed delight on June 13th
("Mideast Sides Accept US Cease-Fire Plan")
that peace in our time is once again imminent: The CIA
has done it again, and Israel and the Palestinians
have agreed to get back to the table.
For eight years, ever since that moment
at the White House when the terrorist shook hands with
the leaders of Israel and the United States, a pattern
has been in place.
First, Arafat makes an agreement to
receive Israeli land in return for promising not to
murder anyone. Then, all the nice people in the highly
regarded newspapers call him a hero; he gets his land;
the nice people say it's about time Israel gave it up;
and then Arafat murders people again. For a few days,
the nice people say that he shouldn't have done that.
Then the American government sends representatives to
convince Arafat to stop attacking Israel, and to
convince Israel to stop defending itself. Soon enough,
the nice people turn mostly to criticizing Israel for
continuing to defend itself. Surely, they say, in this
day and age we should be beyond such things.
Eventually, when Israel sees that "world
opinion" puts Israel's name and (especially) the
flow of aid in danger, Israel backs down and agrees
not to defend itself anymore...if Arafat will agree,
again, not to murder anyone. Arafat, after taking time
to think about it, agrees not to murder anyone...in
return for more Israeli concessions; and the cycle
begins again.
In September of 2000, things looked
like they might finally have changed. After Israel had
offered Arafat a list of concessions tantamount to an
agreement to begin preparations for marching into the
sea, Arafat decided that he would prefer to destroy
Israel himself, rather than let it self-destruct. He
launched a campaign which can only be described as a
war - the Rosh Hashanah War of 2000.
This time, even some of the nice people
were appalled, or at least they were at first. The
Peace Process, which, predictably, had led to war, was
suspended; at least at first. The American government
said it would no longer vouch for Arafat; at least at
first. The new U.S. president said he would not make
the CIA a broker (as his predecessor had done, to
Israel's detriment); at least at first.
But now, it has become abundantly clear
that what seemed like the end of the cycle of madness
was in fact just an extension of it. The
"nice people" took a little longer than
usual to put reality aside and focus their attention
squarely on their fantasies again, but now they have.
This week, as Deborah Sontag of the New York Times
reports with breathless excitement, the CIA is
back, the Israeli willingness to settle for "a
reduction in violence" (Sharon's words, quoted in
Sontag's article) is back, the Palestinian reticence
("Arafat consulted with his closest advisors late
into the night") to accept the burden of ceasing
to be wanton murderers of quite so many innocents is
back, the utter lack of long range vision is…well,
it never left.
As the details of the plan put forward
by CIA director George Tenet emerge, it becomes
increasingly clear that nothing has been learned from
these months of war. The explicit goal of the plan, as
one American official told Sontag, is "restoring
the situation on the ground to what existed before the
conflict erupted in late September." In other
words, the purpose is to put the players back to where
they were, so they can again move in the same
direction they moved last time. Moving in that same
direction from that same place led to the current
eight-month war, but of course doing the exact same
thing again will have a different result. Of course it
will....
Sharon's twist on the old cycle is his
desire for a "two-month cooling off between a
complete halt to violent incidents and
negotiations." Each time violence occurs, the
clock would be reset and a new two-month waiting
period would begin. This, in essence, formalizes the
cycle of madness. An act of Palestinian violence does
not result in swift firm retribution, but in a
resetting of the clock, to give Arafat two months to
sit in the corner and think about what he has done.
The end remains the same: a return to the negotiating
table. This supposedly will deter Arafat from
launching acts of violence, since what he really
wants, as the last eight months have taught us, is, of
course, a return to the table. Of course it
is....
But maybe two whole months is too long
to wait for that much anticipated return to the table?
Don't worry, Sontag's "American official"
assures her that "a push for some diplomacy would
probably be made despite Mr. Sharon's desire for a
cooling-off period of at least two months between a
complete halt to violent incidents and
negotiations." Oh, good.
Meanwhile, even Sontag cannot
completely keep reality out of the newspapers. Near
the end of her article, she deigns to mention that
"a shooting death took place as Mr. Arafat was
meeting with the CIA director. A Greek Orthodox monk
was killed while driving on a road connecting East
Jerusalem to the large Jewish settlement of Maale
Adumim." The monk's crime? He was, Sontag writes,
"reported to have been driving a car with yellow
Israeli plates," and thus might have been
mistaken by the Palestinian shooters for a Jewish
Israeli.
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