Soccer Dad

Peace Process Progress

Some more eloquent folks have weighed in on aspects of the "peace process" that I've commented on. In "Palestinians Don't Deserve Additional Aid," Daniel Pipes writes:

Aid-wise, residents of the West Bank and Gaza have hardly been neglected until now. They receive about $300 per person, making them, per capita, the world's greatest beneficiaries of foreign aid. Strangely, their efforts to destroy Israel have not inspired efforts to crush this hideous ambition but rather to subsidize it. Money being fungible, foreign aid effectively funds the Palestinian Arabs, bellicose propaganda machine, their arsenal, their army, and their suicide bombers.

This, however, does not faze international-aid types. Nigel Roberts, the World Bank's director for the West Bank and Gaza, blows off past failures. Addressing himself to donors, he says, "Maybe your $1 billion a year hasn't produced much, but we think there's a case for doing even more in the next three or four years."

Mr. Roberts is saying, in effect: Yes, your money enabled Arafat's corruption, jihad ideology, and suicide factories, but those are yesterday's problems; now, let's hope the new leadership uses donations for better purposes. Please lavish more funds on it to enhance its prestige and power, then hope for the best.

This la-la-land thinking ignores two wee problems. One concerns the Palestinian Arabs' widespread intent to destroy Israel, as portrayed by the outpouring of grief for archterrorist Arafat at his funeral, the consistent results of opinion research, and the steady supply of would-be jihadists. The Palestinian Arabs' discovery of inner moderation has yet to commence, to put it mildly.

Pipes puts the timeline after which he'd expect a Palestinian polity to accept Israel at about 30 years. As to whether the PA is changing under purported "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas, Pipes writes:

The other problem is blaming the past decade's violence and tyranny exclusively on Arafat, and erroneously assuming that, now freed of him, the Palestinian Arabs are eager to reform. Mahmoud Abbas, the new leader, has indeed called for ending terrorism against Israel, but he did so for transparently tactical reasons (it is the wrong thing to do now), not for strategic reasons (it is permanently to be given up), much less for moral ones (it is inherently evil).

Mr. Abbas is not a moderate but a pragmatist. Unlike Arafat, consumed by his biography and his demons, Mr. Abbas offers a more reasonable figure, one who can more rationally pursue Arafat's goal of destroying Israel. In this spirit, he has quickly apologized to the Kuwaitis and made up with the Syrians; compared to this, reaching out to the Americans is easy.

In other words nothing much has changed substantively; the changes so far have been cosmetic, easily reversible. But as has been the case throughout the past eleven years the chimera of Palestinian moderation is attached to even the faintest suggestion of such. Real change is not required. Arafat's death was a necessary but insufficient step of change.
(via Real Clear Politics)In his review of Dennis Ross's book, "The Missing Peace. The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace", Victor Davis Hanson makes an observation about the appeal that Palestinian nationalism holds for much of the world:

The world is obsessed with the so-called occupied territories in Palestine, but not from any abstract principle of postbellum equity or worry over civilian deaths. Otherwise un resolutions, European subsidies, and American envoys would have been focused on occupied Tibet or Lebanon, or the killing of tens of thousands of innocents in Rwanda and Darfur. So Palestine is not so much a moral issue as a political lightning rod that involves Arab oil, Arab global terrorism, Arab fundamentalist violence in and beyond the Middle East, and Arab anti-Semitism that finds resonance in Europe.

I might add that the Israeli "peace camp" contributes mightily to this state. After all if the progressive Israelis that the media so loves feel this way certainly it is an important story.
What's fascinating is how Hanson, who seems genuinely taken with Dennis Ross's many talents, notes a certain naivitee on Ross's part.

So his memoir by needs is replete with unintended humor — full of miffs and scowls like “Enough was enough, Asad had to learn that the process would stop.” “This was b---s---.” “I was furious and wanted everyone to know it.” “I refused to take the call.” “I was angry.” “I was ready to have us walk away.” “I was stunned.” “Violent demonstrations were one thing, but these kind of clashes another.” All this angst is punctuated at last on page 756 with “Alas, Arafat was not up to peacemaking.” Should we laugh or cry?

"[N]ot up to it?" Apparently Ross is the master of understatement.
All this should be noted when reading David Brooks' "Make No Mistake". Brooks argues that despite what the elites have considered President Bush's "missteps" in dealing with the Middle East, there seems to be movement towards peace again. The necessary conditions for this transition Brooks credits to the President. I agree with Brooks up to a point. There do seem to be some changes. But like Pipes, I am skeptical that the many positive noises from Arab side have any significance. Mostly they are an attempt to separate Israel from America and encourage American mediation (read "pressure on Israel"). President Bush needs to be realistic. Saying that he intends to make peace in the Middle East in his second term has now raised the stakes and is not realistic. Usually those stakes make it easier for the Arab world to play their game of complaining of Israeli intransigence to an easily swayed President. Until now he has been reasonably good without getting caught up in phony progress. But if that progress - where the illusion of progress is more important than its substance - becomes his focus, he will allow a reversal of the expensive gains of the past four years. And then we'll be back in 2000.
In the end Hanson puts his finger on what's so frustrating about Ross's worldview:

The author of The Missing Peace seems to be waking up to relearn the ways of the world each morning, as if for all his intellect and erudition Ross cannot quite accept the asymmetry of it all. On one side is a liberal democratic society, under audit by an independent judiciary and free press. On the other a kleptocracy atop a tribal society that is illegitimate in every sense of the word, nursed on victimization born out of failure and humiliation.

Pipes writes that peace could come when that asymmetry is gone. The sign Pipes points to is:

As I have argued for years, money, arms, diplomacy, and recognition for the Palestinian Arabs should follow on their having accepted Israel. One sign that this will have happened: When Jews living in Hebron (on the West Bank) need no more security than Arabs living in Nazareth (within Israel).

Brooks may want to jump on the peace wagon, but it seems a little premature just yet.
UPDATE: I've edited one item and added a few paragraphs at the end for greater coherence.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at December 22, 2004 05:51 AM | TrackBack