Who's facing reality?

Jerusalem Post ^ | 6-26-02

[SJackson]

One might think that a speech by the president of the United States conditioning support for Palestinian statehood on the removal of the current Palestinian leadership would spark unmitigated joy from across the Israeli political spectrum. After all, does not the main disagreement over what to do about Yasser Arafat stem from differing assessments over how the world will react, rather than any illusions about Arafat's role?

Actually, the Bush speech serves as a fascinating Rorschach test. It reveals that the prospect of a post-Arafat era causes significant chunks of the Israeli political spectrum from mainstream analysts to most Labor Party leaders to feel anything but gleeful.

Writing in Ma'ariv, columnist Chemi Shalev commented, "So one can be optimistic or, more to the point, naive, and believe that in the wake of Bush's speech the Palestinians will... decry terrorism and vomit it from their midst. Nevertheless, it is more likely that this overtly unbalanced speech will only further complicate the situation.... Bush's speech might have been a giant step for Ariel Sharon, but it was probably a very small step for the chances of peace."

Orly Azulai-Katz, reporting from Washington for Yediot Aharonot , mourned, "Those who dreamed that the president's speech would spark new hope had their dreams dashed: Bush proposed a peace process and buried it with his own speech. Even Arafat's opponents will come to his defense in the face of the American tyranny."

Her colleague Ofer Shelah wrote that Bush "included only a promise that, while the roses in the White House are blooming, the only red we will see in our streets and theirs will not be that of blossoming roses."

Then there were Shimon Peres, Haim Ramon, Shlomo Ben-Ami, and, of course, Yossi Beilin, all of whom regarded the American break with Arafat, as Peres put it, "a fatal mistake." Until now, one might have thought that the Israeli Left considered the standard strained "evenhandedness" with which the world approached Israel's struggle to be a regrettable fact of life. Now we find some Israelis accusing Bush of being "unbalanced" and hoping for more pressure on Israel and less on Arafat even in the midst of a terrorist onslaught.

How is one to understand the concern within ostensibly mainstream Israelis that the US is pressing for Arafat's removal? Why is this not a cause for celebration, even on the Left? The reason seems to be that much of the Left remains in the grips of a strange form of realism. In this view, Bush is "naive" when he makes anything contingent on Palestinian democracy, and making such demands only condemns the region to more bloodshed.

In reality, however, it is not Bush who is being unrealistic. On the contrary, Bush's speech on Monday was perhaps the greatest injection of realism into US policy in 35 years. If anything has been proved by Oslo's collapse, it is that basing a peace process on an unreconstructed dictatorship was unrealistic, even utopian.

The other beef against Bush's speech, voiced by the British government and other quarters, is that the US is wrong to choose the Palestinians' leaders. But Bush is doing nothing of the sort. All he is saying is that the Palestinians deserve better leaders, and that the US will not help found a state run by leaders who are "compromised by terrorism." In other words, the Palestinians have a right to be led by whomever they want, but their choice has consequences for the legitimacy of their cause.

Bush, contrary to his critics, is among the best friends the Palestinians have ever had. If he is successful, future Palestinians will consider him their liberator. The genius of Bush's speech is that it finally spoke the truth about who is standing in the way of Palestinian liberty and independence. Those who continue to blame Israel for Palestinian suffering are not doing the Palestinians any favors, and they certainly are not realists.

The lesson of September 11, and the core of the still-evolving Bush Doctrine, is that basing peace or stability on belligerent dictatorships is like building on sand. Bush's new emphasis on democracy is not starry-eyed naivete, but realism based on bitter experience.

[maryz]

I can only wish Bush had spoken like this sooner. Every week of delay, it seems, has probably brought "executions" of more "Israeli collaborators" among the Palestinians -- i.e., those who really do want peace as opposed to the destruction of Israel.