Posted on 09/10/2001 7:03:59 AM PDT by SJackson
Analysis By (September 10) - In the conventional analyses, yesterday's Palestinian attacks and the Israeli responses are part of a deadly cycle with no apparent exit. According to this view, Israelis and Palestinians will continue to die until one or both are exhausted, and even then, only a limited cease-fire will be possible. As in the conflicts in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, etc., the tragic cycle of attack and response appears to be chronic.
However, this analysis is overly simplistic and pessimistic, missing important differences in the tactical and strategic dimensions, as well as in the ethical aspects. The Palestinian tactics (aided by Hizbullah and Israeli Arabs) are based on random terror: striking at restaurants, discos, shopping areas, buses, and train stations. Areas in which large numbers of Israelis are congregated, as well as vulnerable vehicles traveling on the roads, are considered appropriate targets.
The Palestinian use of random terror attacks is essentially the same approach that has been used for decades (long before any "occupation" and "settlements"), including car bombs and sniper attacks. Then, as now, the objectives were to use terror to force Israeli Jews to leave, dissuade others from coming, and to accept limitations on sovereignty.
This strategy failed in each of the earlier phases, and despite (and to some degree, as a response to) these campaigns of terror, the population of Israel has grown by a factor of 10, from 600,000 in 1948, to over 6 million. While creating deep anger among Israelis, Palestinian expectations that the current attacks will produce different results are likely to be proven false.
In response, Ehud Barak's government decided to avoid a massive invasion, as this was seen as a trap set by Arafat in order to regionalize or internationalize the conflict. Instead, Barak - and now Sharon - have opted for a graduated response to wear down the Palestinians.
Counterattacks are not launched against random groups of Palestinians, but rather are focused on individual terrorist leaders and planners. The combination of extremely detailed intelligence, arrests when possible, and precise missile attacks when necessary, are having a cumulative impact on Palestinian capabilities and morale.
In addition to the obvious ethical contrast with Arafat's terror, these tactics are designed to change the strategic balance over the longer term, thereby breaking the cycle of violence.
The goal of the counterattacks is to gradually but severely reduce the capabilities of the Palestinian groups to mount suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism. The assumption is that as the most experienced Palestinian terrorists from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, etc. are killed or caught, their replacements will be less effective. Instead of building bombs, these individuals will be spending most of their time in hiding.
In addition, the creation of an effective buffer zone between Israeli and Palestinian populations is an important component of the strategy.
The proponents of this approach argue that by making it more difficult for Palestinians to penetrate and approach Israeli targets, the terrorist threat will steadily decrease. While no one expects that the buffer zone and separation alone will create a hermetic seal around our cities, the combined approach, including the targeted attacks against the operational echelon, are expected to shift the balance of terror in Israel's favor.
This will be a slow process, and despite numerous successes, some failures are inevitable. The coming weeks are likely to be marked by continued attacks and responses, and the relief, even in the most optimistic scenarios, will take considerable time and patience. In the meantime, no one has come up with a better strategy for replacing the violence with a stable structure of mutual coexistence.
(The writer is director of the Program on Conflict Management and Negotiation Political Studies, Bar-Ilan University.)
If the Israeli theory that this war is primarily stoked by leaders, and not a pure grassroots effort is correct, then the war on leadership will succeed in the end for Israel.
It also makes it much more difficult for the PLO to get foreign funding for their cause. For one thing, their attacks on civilians greatly limit their potential financial contributors, and for another, Arab and Persian leaders will become decreasingly enthused about giving money to young, less-experienced, less-trained PLO replacement leaders much in the same way that TV advertisers are decreasingly willing to pay large sums for ads while replacement teams scrimmage during football strikes.
Ever since I wrote a column last October called "Myths of the Middle East," readers from around the world have asked me what is meant by the term "Palestinian." The simple answer is that it means whatever Yasser Arafat wants it to mean.
Arafat himself was born in Egypt. He later moved to Jerusalem. Indeed, most of the Arabs living within the borders of Israel today have come from some other Arab country at some time in their life.
For instance, just since the beginning of the Oslo Accords, more than 400,000 Arabs have entered the West Bank or Gaza. They have come from Jordan, Egypt and, indirectly, from every other Arab country you can name.
The Arabs have built 261 settlements in the West Bank since 1967. We don't hear much about those settlements. We hear instead about the number of Jewish settlements that have been created. We hear how destabilizing they are -- how provocative they are. Yet, by comparison, only 144 Jewish settlements have been built since 1967 -- including those surrounding Jerusalem, in the West Bank and in Gaza. The number of Arab settlers is based on statistics collected on the Allenby Bridge and other collection points between Israel and Jordan. It is based on the number of Arab day workers entering but not leaving Israel. The numbers were published by the Israel Central Bureau for Statistics during the administration of Binyamin Netanyahu and subsequently denied as "recording errors" by the Ehud Barak administration.
Of course, the Barak administration had incentives for denying the high illegal immigration numbers, given its heavy political reliance on Arab voters. Is this a new phenomenon? Absolutely not. This has always been the case. Arabs have been flocking to Israel ever since it was created and even before, coinciding with the wave of Jewish immigration into Palestine prior to 1948.
Winston Churchill said in 1939: "So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population."
And that raises a question I never hear anyone ask: If Israel's policies make life so intolerable for Arabs, why do they continue to flock to the Jewish state? This is an important question as we see the Palestinian debate now shift to the issue of "the right of return."
According to the most liberal claims by Arab sources, some 600,000 to 700,000 Arabs left Israel in and around 1948 when the Jewish state was created. Most were not forced out by Jews, but rather left at the urging of Arab leaders who had declared war on Israel.
Yet, there are far more Arabs living in these territories now than ever before. And many of those who left in 1948 and thereafter actually had roots in other Arab nations.
This is why it is so difficult to define the term "Palestinian." It always has been. What does it mean? Who is a "Palestinian"? Is it someone who came to work in Palestine because of a bustling economy and job opportunities? Is it someone who lived in the region for two years? Five years? Ten years? Is it someone who once visited the area? Is it any Arab who wants to live in the area?
Arabs outnumber Jews in the Middle East by a factor of about 100 to one. But how many of those hundreds of millions of Arabs are actually Palestinians? Not very many.
The Arab population of Palestine was historically extremely low -- prior to the Jews' renewed interest in the area beginning in the early 1900s.
For instance, a travel guide to Palestine and Syria, published in 1906 by Karl Baedeker, illustrates the fact that, even when the Islamic Ottoman Empire ruled the region, the Muslim population in Jerusalem was minimal.
The book estimates the total population of the city at 60,000, of whom 7,000 were Muslims, 13,000 were Christians and 40,000 were Jews.
"The number of Jews has greatly risen in the last few decades, in spite of the fact that they are forbidden to immigrate or to possess landed property," the book states.
Even though the Jews were persecuted, still they came to Jerusalem and represented the overwhelming majority of the population as early as 1906.
Why was the Muslim population so low? After all, we're told that Jerusalem is the third holiest city in Islam. Surely, if this were a widely held belief in 1906, more of the devout would have settled there.
The truth is that the Jewish presence in Jerusalem and throughout the Holy Land persisted throughout its bloody history, as is documented in Joan Peters' milestone history on the origins of the Arab-Jewish conflict in the region, "From Time Immemorial."
It is also true that the Arab population increased following Jewish immigration into the region. The Arabs came because of economic activity. And, believe it or not, they came because there was more freedom and more opportunity in Israel than in their own homelands.
What is a Palestinian? If any Arabs have legitimate claims on property in Israel, it must be those who were illegally deprived of their land and homes after 1948. Arafat has no such claim. And few if any of those shooting, bombing and terrorizing Israelis today do either.
Joseph Farah is editor and chief executive officer of WorldNetDaily.com and writes a daily column.
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