Soccer Dad

Krauthammer's journey

Charles Krauthammer is my favorite columnist and has been for over twenty years now. I've found that I agree with him most of the time and that even if I disagree with him I usually can fathom his arguments.
Not so this past Friday's, "Israel Draws the Line".

What bothered me specifically about the column, I'll discuss later. But the general problem with the article is that it seems so far afield from Krauthammer's usual keen eye when analyzing the Middle East, that I'd to explore a number of Krauthammer's past columns and see (if I can) the evolution of the article.
Dr. Krauthammer, himself, has undergone a fascinating political transformation over the past 30 years or so. In the 70's he got a job in the Carter administration in the field of public health. From there he became a speech writer for Vice President Mondale. In the 80's he started writing columns for Time Magazine and the Washington Post. He also became an contributing editor to the New Republic. As time went on his views which were generally hawkish in the arena of foreign affairs translated to a more conservative views in domestic politics. His transformation led him in the 90's to start contributing to the Weekly Standard. (I believe his name is still on the masthead of TNR but I don't think he writes for it much anymore.)
One way that Krauthammer has not changed has been rock solid support of Israel and his belief that terror must not be rewarded. I don't believe he's any less a supporter of Israel based on his most recent column. But it appears that he threw all caution to the wind when he endorsed the Gaza disengagement plan. And by doing that I believe that he's gravely mistaken.
Enough background.
Consider what Krauthammer wrote March 14, 1988 in the New Republic, "No Exit." Nearly 17 years ago here's what Krauthammer wrote Israel must do to fight the violence of the then-few month old "intifada":

However wrenching the current situation, the first responsibility of a statesman is to keep his head. And the first responsibility of Israel's friends is to consider consequences.

There is no quick solution to the current rioting. All the unilateral steps advocated threaten to make things much worse. No one wants tragedy, but tragedy is still preferable to catastrophe. Over two millennia Jews have acquired a tragic sense of history. But in the current panic, that tradition is being challenged, indeed overwhelmed, by a contending apocalyptic, messianic tendency commanding immediate action at any cost.

THE LOGIC of Israel's current occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is the following: If Israel is to give up territory, it must get something in return. If it flees in panic, it gets nothing. What Israel gets must be peace. And that peace must be secure. Thus there are three requirements for any Israeli action regarding the territories. 1) There must exist an Arab negotiating partner. 2) That partner must offer recognition and peace and be willing to say that whatever settlement is reached marks the end of Arab-Israeli wars. And 3) that Arab partner must be willing to take responsibility for control of the territories and not merely serve as cover or conduit for control by a party that rejects Israel's existence and seeks control of the West Bank as a first stage in an endless war on Zionism.

So long as these conditions do not exist, Israel has no choice but to patrol Nablus. For Israel to give up the territories in the absence of these conditions is to collaborate in its own destruction. Israel might take steps to encourage these conditions. History, however, does not make one sanguine about the prospect of Jews doing much to attenuate the desire of others to destroy them. But we do have one encouraging and instructive counterexample: Egypt. The lesson of Camp dAvid is that Israel did not win recognition and peace with its unilateral withdrawal from Sinai in 1957, which was backed by wholly illusory "guarantees" from the great powers. It won recognition and peace after four lost wars convinced Egypt that Israel was a fact, and after Israel conceded territories, but only in return for contractual peace.

It's ironic that here Krauthammer argues against unilateral withdrawal, so one question that we must seek to answer (if we can) is why he now advocates a policy that he once rejected.
In a fascinating column, February 1990, Krauthammer explored the "THE NEW CRESCENT OF CRISIS GLOBAL INTIFADA" in which he observed:

The Islamic heartland has gone through its period of decolonization. From Morocco to Pakistan these countries threw off European imperialism in a process that began earlier in the century and may be said to have culminated with the revolution in Iran. What we are seeing now is the further evolution of the Islamic awakening: the demand for local hegemony by Moslem populations at the borders of the Islamic heartland.

This demand is not without irony. In insisting upon self-determination, the activists demand what the Islamic world refuses to grant any of its ethnic and religious subgroups: neither its Kurds nor its Armenians nor its blacks (in southern Sudan, for example) are permitted sovereignty and territorial control over those lands in which they constitute a local majority.

Self-determination for whom? The Kashmiris are a minority within India. Kosovo Albanians are a minority within Yugoslavia. They demand political control of the subunit, Kashmir and Kosovo, where they constitute the local majority. But why does self-determination stop there? Will they grant similar autonomy, let alone independence, to the smaller groups within these territories? The Hindus of Kashmir and the Serbs and Montenegrins of Kosovo are hardly likely to enjoy very many civil rights, letalone national rights, under the rule of the separatists. (A reality that in the last decade has induced one-fifth of the non-Albanian population of Kosovo to flee.)

There is something arbitrary and nonreciprocal about these demands for independence. Nagorno-Karabakh is an overwhelmingly (Christian) Armenian province within Azerbaijan. It is demanding from Azerbaijan what Azerbaijan is demanding from the Soviet Union: freedom. Azerbaijan not only rejects that demand. It is prepared to go to war with Armenia to back that rejection.

What is being pursued, therefore, is not Wilsonian self-determination (though many of these intifadas have adopted its language), because in the Islamic world self-determination is permitted only to Moslems. What instead is being pursued is a pan-Islamic demand for sovereignty over any territory where Moslems form a local majority.

Perhaps then, one reason Krauthammer sees a new opportunity for Israel is the retreat of the Islamic assertiveness that was ascendant fifteen years ago.
After Israel defeated the first intifada, President Bush pushed Israel to negotiate with the Arabs, especially the Palestinians. Krauthammer rightly objected to this high-handed treatment of an ally in an August 1991 column, "ROAD TO NOWHERE":

Worse, in a replay of the Arab uprising of 1936-1939, the intifada has turned most monstrously on itself. Far more Palestinians are dying at the hands of brother Palestinians than at the hands of Israelis.

"Everyone remains terrified when he hears a knock on his door at night," writes the Palestinian newspaper Al Fajr. "This fear multiplies when he discovers that the knocker is not a{n Israeli} soldier but rather a masked {Palestinian} man, swathed completely in black from head to toe, armed with an ax or a sword, who requests that his host, or his son or daughter, come out 'for only five or ten minutes!' The next day, we hear on Israeli radio or television that a bound and disfigured body

This is how the uprising ends. Moreover, the Palestinians have not just lost the intifada. They managed to lose a second war this year, the gulf war, their proxy war against Israel and the West. They staked their political and diplomatic capital on Saddam and lost again.

In the normal course of events, a people having undone themselves yet again with their extremism, having so exhausted the patience of their friends and sponsors, having maneuvered themselves into political marginality, would have to make their own peace overtures to their enemies or fade away.

Instead, James Baker and the U.S. administration come riding in to rescue the cause at its weakest, to keep the grievance alive and to advance its demands in an international forum. Shouting "land for peace," they single-handedly revive a cause for which, as the Palestinians will tell you, no Arab state -- not Saudi Arabia, not Jordan, certainly not Syria -- really cares. And they demand that Israel, the only organic American ally in the region (meaning a country that no coup could ever shake from its friendship with the United States), gamble its existence at a conference at which that slogan is to be the centerpiece.

Krauthammer criticized President Bush for pushing Israel to stop building in Judea and Samaria and Gaza, because he argued in his November 1, 1991 Washington Post column "THE SETTLEMENTS ARE A SPUR TO PEACE":

Why then the effort? Because, as the president never tires of saying, now is the time. There is a unique opportunity for peace. Why? Because of the gulf war. The defeat of Iraq was the defeat of Arab radicalism. That has allowed the other Arab parties to go to Madrid to talk peace.

But the defeat of Iraq only allowed them to go. What propelled them to go, what moved them to act now, was a palpable sense that history may no longer be on their side. After all, the Madrid conference is convening under precisely the conditions that were offered the Palestinians 13 years ago at Camp David. In 1978 Sadat, Carter and Begin offered negotiations on Palestinian autonomy. Every Arab party rejected the offer.

Why? Because for decades the Arabs have called Israel "the Crusader state." They convinced themselves that Israelis were not a people rooted in a land to which they had returned, but, like the soldiers of the Crusades, were a collection of alien Europeans temporarily dominant but ultimately doomed by the forces of history.

If they waited and stalled and refused to accept Israel, the rejectionists calculated, historical forces would prevail. Demographic forces: The Palestinian birthrate would inundate the Jews and turn them into a minority. Economic forces: Oil would give the Arabs increasing leverage over Israel's friends and allow the Arabs to achieve technological and military superiority over Israel. In time.

No more. Palestinians have now an almost panicked sense that they might have miscalculated yet again. Two recent developments have put time on the other side. First is the huge influx of Soviet Jews into Israel that reverses the demographic trend and promises a substantial Jewish majority in greater Israel for decades to come. Second is the accelerated pace of Israeli settlement of the West Bank. "The Palestinians now realize," says Mayor Elias Freij of Bethlehem, one of the Palestinian delegates at Madrid, "that time is now on the side of Israel, which can build settlements and create facts, and that the only way out of this dilemma is face-to-face negotiations."

There can be no clearer statement that Israeli settlements are not an obstacle to peace but the very spur that is driving the Palestinians finally to the table. They know that if they don't hurry up and start talking, there will be nothing left to negotiate.

It's clear, from even this early point that Krauthammer was no proponent of "Greater Israel." It seems consistent with his recent argument that the situation has changed to the point that Israel's imperative is to separate its population from the Palesitnians.
1991 faded into 1992 and then in into 1993. 1993 was the year of Oslo. The announcement didn't much impress Krauthammer. His take in his September 3, 1993 column, "ISRAEL'S ENORMOUS RISK" was right on target:

The Palestinians do not just get an embryonic state. They get an endowment too. The Palestinians were bankrupted by their unfortunate backing of Saddam Hussein in the gulf war. The Saudis and Kuwaitis, understandably miffed, cut off their mendicant brothers. Now the Palestinians not only get the occupied territories, they get Israeli (and American) collaboration in obtaining a huge cash infusion from the West to make them a going concern.

Now, given the fact that the Palestinians are by far the weakest of all parties to the Arab-Israeli conflict, this is an extraordinarily generous deal for them. It is commensurately dangerous for Israel.

Israel is gambling its national security on PLO sincerity. It is gambling that after decades of unremitting duplicity, of factionalism and terrorism and war against the very idea of a Jewish state, the PLO has finally donned statesmen's suits and committed itself to live in a peace with Israel that it will honor.

I wish I could believe it. I am not encouraged by the stupefying degree to which the PLO continues to begrudge Israel a simple, unambiguous recognition of its right to exist. Instead, PLO officials reiterate old formulations that are as tepid as they are calculated. Bassam Abu-Sharif, senior aide to Yasser Arafat, concedes that the PLO covenant -- the Palestinian constitution that declares the creation of Israel "null and void" and pledges its destruction -- has been "superseded" by events. How broad-minded.

While there may have been reversal of the worldwide intifada, the localized was against Israel hasn't shown much of change, even now. I don't understand what has changed so significantly that Krauthammer's observations of eleven years ago don't still stand today.
The pagentry ten days later didn't impress Krauthammer either:

Last week, for example, when Yitzhak Rabin signed the letter recognizing the PLO in Jerusalem, he did it on live television. He wanted his people to see it. When Arafat signed his letter to Rabin recognizing Israel, he did so behind closed doors.

Why is this important? Because this whole peace adventure hinges on the PLO's having really changed, not on its signing pieces of paper. It requires that Arafat begin to undo 50 years of vicious anti-Israel propaganda and tell his people plainly that Israel has a right to exist. It requires that Arafat tell them plainly that the fighting must stop. And to say it not just once -- obliquely, in English, in a side letter to a Norwegian -- but repeatedly, directly, in Arabic, to his Palestinian constituency.

Instead, throughout his triumphal Washington tour, Arafat danced away from saying what needed to be said. On Tuesday, for example, he was asked: "Why don't you clearly call on Hamas and other Palestinians to stop their attacks on the Israelis?"e the causes of ... violence." Meaning: Give me what I demand ("accurate implementation") and there will be no further need to knife Israeli bus drivers. Till then? Well, I have signed it, have I not?

This is exactly how the "old Arafat" handled such questions: bobbing, weaving, maneuvering. This verbal slipperiness was lost on the American media, which have the historical memory of a newt. They were transfixed instead by The Handshake. Through misty eyes, theyinterpreted it as a sign of friendship, when for Arafat it was clearly a means of achieving instant equality of stature with two major heads of state, Yitzhak Rabin and Bill Clinton.

It is understandable that the media should have gone gaga over the ceremony and its cosmic historical significance. After all, television turns a new page in history every morning. It is also understandable that the Clinton administration should have gone overboard in staging the spectacle. The bells and whistles, the trumpets and cymbals were designed to help make a tentative turning point into a world historical event.

Then, as now, peace hinges on whether the Palestinians have truly changed. Where's the evidence that that's happened, even after the death of Arafat?

On April 4, 1997, Krauthammer showed how fraudulent Oslo had become in "Arafat killed Oslo,"

Or consider the three West Bank "redeployments" that Israel promised in the Hebron agreement (the third pact under the Oslo process). On March 7, in strict accord with Hebron and exactly on schedule, Netanyahu announced a withdrawal from 9.1 percent of West Bank territory.

Arafat went ballistic, declaring himself -- and Oslo -- betrayed because he didn't get 30 percent. The Western press meekly echoed the charge. Some journalists even appeared to validate it. NBC's Andrea Mitchell, for example, offered this on the Diane Rehm show: "The counter-argument {to charges of Palestinian violation of Oslo} would be that the Israelis were not living up to the Oslo accords because they did not withdraw adequately in this most recent withdrawal."

There is no such counter-argument. There is nothing in Oslo, nothing in the Hebron agreement, nothing anywhere that says anything about the adequacy of 9 percent or 30 percent or any percent. In fact, the official U.S. notes that explain and govern the Hebron agreement state clearly that the extent of the withdrawal is to be left entirely up to Israel. When Netanyahu announced the 9 percent withdrawal, the State Department deemed it "a serious expansion of Palestinian authority" and "a demonstration of Israel's commitment to the peace process."

Where did the 30 percent come from? Arafat made it up.

How did he get this number? Easy. Remember, Israel has pledged to make three withdrawals from the West Bank before fi\nal-status negotiations -- over Jerusalem, refugees, borders, a final peace treaty -- are completed. Do the math. Arafat figures that if he gets 30 percent in each of the three withdrawals, he's got 90 percent. Add that to what he already has now, and he pockets effectively all of the West Bank and Gaza before he negotiates the most delicate issues dear to Israel's heart,such as Jerusalem.

Clever. Make Israel give up all of its territorial chits and all its bargaining leverage before final negotiations. Obviously, Arafat would like that. But Arafat's wanting something does not make it "Oslo."

Eight years ago Krauthammer was warning about giving Arafat the whole of Judea, Samaria and Gaza before negotiating final status. Now he's approving the Gaza withdrawal plus a security fence that gives 97% of the those territories to Arafat's successor, before negotiating final status arrangements.
A few months later, on June 13, 1997, in "Netanyahu's Map" Krauthammer pointed to the unfair treatment of then PM Netanyahu as an extremist or "Greater Israel" visionary. Responding to a report in Ha'aretz that showed the final status arrangement as Netanyahu envisioned it Krauthammer wrote:

Imagine what startling, headline-grabbing news it would be if Binyamin Netanyahu, head of the most right-wing government in Israeli history, offered Yasser Arafat a final settlement of the

Israel-Palestinian conflict that embraced the principles of (1)

territorial compromise, i.e., giving up major portions of the holy "Land of Israel," (2) abandoning Jewish settlements, and (3) tacit acceptance of a Palestinian state?

Well, it happened. And if you rely on the national media of the United States for your news, you probably would have missed it. The Los Angeles Times reported it, but the New York Times did not, nor did The Washington Post. Nor did NBC, CBS or ABC. Nor the newsmagazines. Newsweek satisfied itself by reporting Arafat's rejection of the plan. The Wall Street Journal gave it two sentences -- and got the story wrong.

Yet the story was hardly obscure. It broke on the front page of the Israeli daily, Haaretz, on May 29. Indeed, Haaretz published a map of a possible territorial settlement that Netanyahu's government had in mind. It is not an official map but a reconstruction (by Haaretz defense editor Ze'ev Schiff) based on the principles for a "final settlement" enunciated at a meeting of Netanyahu's inner "security" cabinet and deliberately leaked to the press.

Netanyahu calls the plan "Allon-plus," referring to the plan of Labor Party luminary Yigal Allon, who in 1968 proposed that Israel give back to the Arabs most of the West Bank except for the Jordan Valley (nearly uninhabited desert that Israel needs to defend against land attack from the east).

Netanyahu's plan, coming 30 years later, is more generous to Israel (hence the "plus"). It has Israel absorbing some additional territory, mostly suburbs established in the intervening decades around Jerusalem and near Tel Aviv. Allon in '68 would have kept about one-third of the West Bank. Netanyahu would keep just over 50 percent.

Some critics, pointing to these percentages, say the plan is not forthcoming enough. But they miss the point, the momentousness of the principles conceded here by Likud. Likud, after all, is the "Land of Israel" party, the party whose election was greeted in the United States with teeth-gnashing anguish as the ascendancy of religious-nationalist "Greater Israel" fanaticism.

Even before Netanyahu's election, I argued that this view was a compound of nonsense and disinformation. The Netanyahu plan now proves the point. With it, Likud does the unthinkable. It lays out a territorial compromise. It leaves some Jewish settlements behind Palestinian lines, ensuring that they will eventually be razed. And it omits any mention of Likud's ritual opposition to a Palestinian state, a clear signal that it is prepared to concede this principle too. And this is its opening negotiating position!

Again this reinforces the idea of terrotorial compromise was never an anathema to Krauthammer. He's been consistent on this point over the years. He points to another problem with the peace process as its been in the past and continues to this day. Israeli concessions are treated as givens. (Palestinian obligations are treated as concessions.)
But even if Krauthammer agreed with territorial compromise he never has lost sight of the risks involved. Rarely has he made the point better than he did in "At Last Zion":

It may seem odd to begin an examination of the meaning of Israel and the future of the Jews by contemplating the end. But, it does concentrate the mind. And it underscores the stakes. The stakes could not be higher. It is my contention that on Israel-on its existence and survival-hangs the very existence-and survival of the Jewish people. Or, to put the thesis in the negative, that the end of Israel means the end of the Jewish people. They survived destruction and exile at the hands of Babylon in 586 B.C. They survived destruction and exile at the hands of Rome in 70 A.D., and finally in 132 A.D. They cannot survive another: destruction and exile. The Third Commonwealth--modern Israel, born just 50 years ago-is the last.

The return to Zion is now the principal drama of Jewish history. What began as an experiment has become the very heart of the Jewish people-its cultural, spiritual, and psychological center, soon to become its demographic center as well. Israel is the hinge. Upon it rest the hopes--the only hope--for Jewish continuity and survival.

This thesis is, I'm sure, controversial. But whether one accepts it totally or not, here was Krauthammer pointing to what was at stake in the peace process. This article served, not to analyze the peace process as much as to illustrate the importance of it not being done so recklessly as to endanger Israel's existence.

I got the impression that Krauthammer was close with Netanyahu and gave him a generous (but not uncritical) send-off in "The Israeli Earthquake: What Bibi Did, What Barak Will Do". I think he got Netanyahu and Arafat right. But he botched Barak. Barak moved even further away from Krauthammer's perceived consensus as is evidenced by Barak's offer to Arafat at Camp David. Of course, the recent Israeli cabinet decision essentially validates Barak's extremism.

Barak is not very far from Netanyahu and, indeed, from the Israeli consensus in believing that the answer to these questions must be no-otherwise Israel becomes an unviable state and Palestine's creation makes Israel's demise only a question of time.

How long will the honeymoon last? I give it six months. It will come to an abrupt end when the Wye withdrawals have been completed and final-status negotiations are deadlocked. Barak will take a position identical to Netanyahu's against dividing Jerusalem, against a Palestinian state with unrestricted powers, against the return of refugees to Israel, against retreating to the 1967 borders. On all of these demands the Palestinians have not moved an inch in the six years since Oslo.

That is when the crunch will come. That is when this administration-which fancies itself, against all evidence, the most pro-Israel administration in American history-will be tested. It is sure to be tested, because something has happened on the Palestinian side of this equation that has been entirely overlooked by the press and allowed to pass unmentioned by the administration: While everyone had their eyes fixed on Netanyahu, Arafat moved the goal posts.

Remember: Oslo is explicitly based on U.N. Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, which call for a return of the territories captured in 1967 in exchange for peace. But for the last few months Arafat has been going around the world saying that the new Palestinian position is to establish a state based on U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 of 1947.

That may all sound arcane. But it is not. The U.N. partition plan of 1947 created a Jewish state in part of Palestine. It was unanimously rejected by the Arab states and the Palestinians, who responded by launching a war to destroy the newly created Israel. But the Jewish state outlined in Resolution 181 was a much smaller state than the one that emerged from the war launched by the Arabs to nullify it. Not only were parts of the Galilee and the Negev given to the Arabs under this plan, but Jerusalem was an international city. To return to 181 means that not just East Jerusalem (captured in '67) would be lost to Israel, but West Jerusalem-exclusively and always Jewish-as well.

As unhappy as Krauthammer must have been about Barak's turn as Prime Minister, when it came to Camp David, Krauthammer wrote that only one thing mattered at that pont, "Camp David: Finality"

Finality does not mean that the Palestinians pledge an end to the conflict and a forswearing of violence. They pledged precisely that seven years ago on the White House lawn and have routinely used violence and the threat of violence ever since. Why, even as Camp David began, Yasser Arafat's own Fatah organization in Gaza declared "a state of general emergency and heightened alert" just to warn the Israelis of what would come if the summit failed.

Finality means something else. It means that Palestinian claims against Israel have come to an end. No more demands for territory, no more demands for refugee resettlement, no more demands for financial compensation.

They will get plenty of territorial, financial and other redress in any agreement, plus their own sovereign state. Indeed, Barak is prepared to give the Palestinians everything but his underwear. But in return, he must get irrevocable title to the underwear. The Camp David accords must be the last of the giving. No more claims, no more demands, no more negotiations.

Of course Arafat rejected Barak's offer and started the "Aqsa intifada" a few months later. That led to Barak's downfall and Ariel Sharon's eventual election as Prime Minister. This did not make Krauthammer happy as evidenced by his February 23, 2001 column, "Israel's Phony 'National Unity'":

Sharon did it to stay in power for more than the next few months. Without the support of Labor, he'd have to form a narrow right-wing government. In the current Knesset, however, that government would soon collapse, leading to new elections. That would bring back to power the choice of most Israelis: former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Indeed this whole election was staged to prevent the return of Netanyahu. Barak pulled a political trick -- a snap resignation that forced this election -- in order to keep Netanyahu, who was leading everybody in the polls by huge margins, off the ballot on a technicality.

The Knesset then repaired the technicality, but Netanyahu withdrew because the Knesset refused to dissolve itself. That meant whoever was elected prime minister would have to govern with a parliament elected two years ago -- before Barak's humiliation at Camp David, before Arafat's rejection of peace, before the five-month old guerrilla war that Arafat then unleashed.

The war, the terrorism, the fear and the implacable rejectionism of the Palestinians have totally changed the political culture of Israel from where it was two years ago. The left is in disarray. Its illusions of peace have been destroyed. Many even crossed over to vote for their great nemesis, Ariel Sharon.

Yet this rump Knesset -- this pre-intifada relic -- which has long outlived its legitimacy, remains. Clinging to its petty privileges, it denies any parliamentary expression for the new rightward Israeli consensus, as represented in Barak's overwhelming defeat. Hence the need for a phony, oxymoronic "national unity" government.

Although, I think that Krauthammer, here, was driven mostly by his regret that Bibi didn't get another shot at being Prime Minister, his analysis of Israel's electoral dysfunction was correct.
A few months later Krauthammer criticized the Sharon government for not doing enough to stem the terror that was enveloping Israel at that time. But it wasn't enough to criticize the government, in "Mideast Violence: The Only Way Out" on August 16, 2001, Krauthammer suggested:

There is only one way this war will stop. The scenario would go like this:

A lightning and massive Israeli attack on every element of Arafat's police state infrastructure -- the headquarters and commanders of his eight(!) security services, his police stations, weapons depots, training camps, communications and propaganda facilities (radio, TV, government-controlled newspapers) -- with a simultaneous attack on the headquarters and leadership of Arafat's Hamas and Islamic Jihad allies.

Arafat has given Israel war; he will now receive it. He either flees (as he did Jordan when trying to overthrow King Hussein in 1970) or is deported back to Tunis (as he was from Lebanon in 1982).

Israel does not reoccupy Palestinian cities. Israeli troops stay only the few days necessary to (1) begin building a wall of separation between Palestinian and Israeli territory and (2) evacuate the more far-flung Israeli settlements.

With a new border consolidated, Israel withdraws.

In the current bloodshed, not a single suicide bomber has come from Gaza. Why? Because there already is a wall separating Gaza from Israel. Palestinians have lobbed mortars over it, but it is difficult to send suicide bombers through it. Such a wall built between the rest of Palestine and Israel is the only way to ensure the reduction of violence that everyone claims to want.

Strike and expel. Abandon settlements and consolidate lines. Build the wall. And then? And then wait.

Wait for a Palestinian generation that will sign a peace treaty that it intends to live by.

(Aaron Lerner of IMRA wrote a short dissent on this column.) But now, 3.5 years later, what's come to pass and been decided how to proceed has more or less been what Krauthammer said would work.
Still there have been concerns along the way. For one thing, would President Bush let Israel do what was necessary to defend itself. The answer was yes with some qualifications. Another, would the President prod the Arab world to accept Israel. The result there wasn't as positive. During Mahmoud Abbas's first (selected not elected) term as PA PM, the President arranged a summit at Sharm el-Sheikh as a "confidence building measure." Krauthammer did not like what he saw. It was "Shades of Oslo":

Let's be plain about what happened at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. The president of the United States put his prestige on the line for the sake of Arab-Israeli peace and the Arab states gave him nothing. They refused to endorse Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. They spoke of their opposition to "terrorism," even as they repeatedly present their own publics with the most elaborate intellectual and religious justifications of why the killing of Jews in "Palestine" is "resistance" and not terrorism.

They did not take a single concrete action, not even a gesture, toward Israel. Egypt did not offer to return its ambassador to Israel. The Saudis threatened a boycott if Israel was even invited. And most important, the Arab states refused what Bush most desperately wanted: explicit endorsement of the American view that Yasser Arafat's time had come and passed.

That would have been crucial in elevating Mahmoud Abbas, who appears to want to make peace. What did Bush do? What American presidents always do in response to such rebuffs: smile politely and say thank you.

In fact not two months ago, Krauthammer noted that not much had changed in "Arafat's Heir":

The peacemaker cometh. Once again, euphoria is in the air. Once again, no one wants to listen to what is being said.

Elections for the new Palestinian leader are on Sunday. Conveniently, this being a Palestinian election, we already know the winner. How has President-to-be Abbas been campaigning?

Dec. 30: Abbas, appearing in Jenin, is hoisted on the shoulders of Zakaria Zbeida, a notorious and wanted al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terrorist. Abbas declares that he will protect all terrorists from Israel.

Dec. 31: Abbas reiterates his undying loyalty to Arafat's maximalist demands: complete Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines, Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital and -- the red-flag deal-breaker -- the "right of return," which would send the millions of Palestinians abroad not to their own country of Palestine but to Israel in order to destroy it demographically.

Jan. 1: Abbas declares that he will never crack down on Palestinian terrorism.

Jan. 4: Abbas calls Israel "the Zionist enemy." That phrase is so odious that only Hezbollah and Iran and others openly dedicated to the extermination of Israel use it.

What of Abbas's vaunted opposition to violence? On Jan. 2 he tells Hamas terrorists firing rockets that maim and kill Jewish villagers within Israel, "This is not the time for this kind of act." This is an interesting "renunciation" of terrorism: Not today, boys; perhaps later, when the time is right. Which was exactly Arafat's utilitarian approach to terrorism throughout the Oslo decade.

But with the recent summit, things are looking up, as Krauthammer observed two weeks ago in "Why the Palestinians came to the table":

What we can say about Abbas is that while we (well, some) knew that Arafat was dedicated to perpetual war, Abbas is not. That is a start.

Also encouraging is the behavior of major players Egypt and Jordan. They tired of the intifada. It was a losing proposition for both. Egypt does not want a terrorist Gaza, and Jordan does not want a terrorist West Bank.

In the heavily coded language of Middle East diplomacy, Egypt has made some significant moves. It insisted on hosting the peace summit. It invited Ariel Sharon to Egypt for the first time in 23 years. Egyptian and Jordanian ambassadors will return to Tel Aviv. And if you look closely at the pictures, you see Israeli flags flying publicly alongside the Arab flags at the Sharm el-Sheik summit.

There was no Israeli flag flying at the last summit involving Israel's then-prime minister and pathetic peace mendicant, Ehud Barak, when he came begging Arafat to make peace shortly before a disgusted Israeli public could vote him out of office.

(Actually I don't think that the Israeli flag flew at the 2003 summit designed to boost Abbas either.) This column was a fair assessment of the situation at the time. At least externally it looked like something had changed, but we'd need more evidence that it really had. That's what makes "Israel Draws the Line" so jarring.
Big Trunk at Powerline observed:

But it seems odd to me that Krauthammer is left to articulate Sharon's strategy more or less by inference and that obvious questions have yet to be asked of its advocates, let alone answered.

The column was unusual for Krauthammer in that it left too many unanswered questions. I could even take some of Krauthammer's lines from the above quoted columns as rejoinders to some of Krauthammer's claims. I'll avoid doing that but I'll use comments of my own.

But in Gaza, which is also surrounded by a fence, the bloodshed has continued. Why? Because 8,200 Jews are living on the wrong side of the fence. Defending them involves enormous Israeli military deployments, great danger and no real return. Everyone knows that ultimately this island of Jews in a sea of a million Arabs will have to go.

Actually it's not the Jews of Gaza that need defending. It's the Jews of Sderot and Ashkelon. As terror groups develop their missiles unhindered by an Israeli military presence, Jews outside of Gaza's fence will increasingly become targets. It's possible of course that Abbas's policemen will do the job. But the PA police didn't do the job before, so this is a leap of faith. If the lesson of withdrawal from Lebanon is any guide, the withdrawal from Gaza will allow the terror groups to flourish because they won't have to defend their home turf. Israel may create an umbrella to fight terror (via IMRA), but without troops on the ground I can't imagine that Israel's defense of the area will be complete.

This defensive barrier separating the two populations will not only prevent suicide bombers from killing hundreds of innocent civilians. It will change the entire strategic equation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The terrorism weapon that the Palestinians have brandished in the past -- and will surely brandish again at every turn in negotiations when their maximal demands go unmet -- will disappear.

Except Israel's latest planned adjustment to the fence leaves Israel with just 3.3% of Judea and Samaria. This is down from the 50% figure Krauthammer saw in Netanyahu's Map. For someone who sees Judea, Samarian and Gaza chiefly as bargaining chips this is astonishing. In 7 1/2 years of bad faith, the PA has managed to get Israel to withdraw nearly completely from Judea and Samaria and what has Israel received in return? It makes no difference if the negotiator across the table from Israel is Arafat or Abbas or someone else. Where are Israel's chits that Krauthammer deemed so important just a few years ago for final status negotiations? And hasn't Israel's retreat essentially rewarded terror?

Why did Ariel Sharon do this? Did the father of the settlement movement go soft? Defeatist? No. The Israeli right has grown up and given up the false dream of Greater Israel, encompassing the Palestinian territories. And the Israeli left has grown up too, being mugged by the intifada into understanding that you do not trust the lives of your children to the word of an enemy bent on your destruction.

But the biggest problem is whether the Palestinians have given up on the dream of Greater Palestine. If they acknowledge the historical Jewish rights to the land of Israel. (And reading Ha'aretz, I'm not at all certain that the Israeli left has given up their delusions.)
Krauthammer is putting a lot of stock in the security fence. The problem is that it's possible that it won't be as secure in the future with improvement made to rockets and mortars. And as long as the PA continues to espouse that its minimal demands include a full withdrawal for Judea, Samaria and Gaza and that anything less than that will not bring peace, it will be simply be biding its time until it can attempt to force the change by force again instead of suing for peace.
In a nutshell then, Krauthammer's been very consistent in his belief that Israel should withdraw form Judea and Samaria. Where his column goes astray is his seemingly easy belief that the PA Mahmoud Abbas will change things. But not being Arafat is not enough. Last Friday night's massacre makes clear that it's not enough to "co-opt" terrorists and pretend that you've fulfilled your obligation. Terrorists must be challenged and, if necessary defeated and killed.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at March 1, 2005 01:13 AM | TrackBack