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.

 

Peace can't be far off now.