Only Washington can make it happen
The timing of Tuesday night’s suicide bombing near Tel Aviv could not have been
worse, providing as it did an umbrella for Ariel Sharon during a meeting with George W.
Bush in which the Israeli premier should have been showered with admonitions from the
American president to adopt a realistic approach to the peace process. Palestinian
President Yasser Arafat dutifully “condemned” the bombing and ordered his
security agencies to “prevent all terrorist operations against Israeli
civilians,” but these are empty words from any perspective: Whatever means the
Palestinian Authority had to quash militancy were almost completely destroyed during the
Israeli military’s rampage through the West Bank, nothing Arafat says or does will in
any way attenuate either the severity or the scope of Sharon’s revenge, and
declarations that it is wrong to kill Israeli civilians accurate though they may be
ring awfully hollow in the face of an occupation that is about to enter its 36th year.
At this point, neither Arafat nor Sharon has the power to end suicide bombings and/or
other forms of attacks on Israelis: The former has tried to do so by emphasizing the gains
to be realized by negotiations, only to have the rug pulled out from under him by a series
of Israeli leaders who have steadily undermined the peace process by refusing to honor
interim agreements; and the latter’s insistence on military solutions has,
predictably, been badly discredited by Tuesday’s carnage and another near-miss on
Wednesday.
In the current climate, the only party that can reasonably hope to end the cycle of
violence is the United States. It alone has the clout to bring about a peace deal, the
resources to back it up with advice and infrastructure, and the influence to make both
sides respect their commitments. But it cannot put its good offices to effective use
unless and until it produces the vaunted road map that shows both sides but especially
the Palestinians the way to a better future: It is the Palestinians whose land is
occupied, whose children grow up without hope, and who are humiliated on a daily basis.
War is a dirty business, especially when the belligerents possess what analysts refer to
as “asymmetrical forces,” i.e. when one side’s military capabilities so far
outweigh the other’s that the targeting of civilians takes on the appearance of a
necessary requirement rather than a necessary evil. The disproportionately tragic nature
of such unequal conflicts is further exacerbated when the weaker side is offered little
hope of obtaining fair compromises, convincing many people that they have nothing more to
lose.
Bush has said many of the right things, but now he has to flesh them out. Palestinian
statehood is a fine vision, but only if viability replaces vulnerability as its motive
force; rebuilding Palestinian security agencies is likewise a worthy goal, but only if
helping to establish the rule of law is as high on the agenda as “protecting”
Israel. The United States has got to put its foot down this time, and not solely on the
side that has been under the boot of occupation for three-and-half decades: Sharon must be
told in no uncertain terms that either expelling Arafat or launching another orgy of
bloodletting is verboten.
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