Soccer Dad

The failure of independence

For as long as I can remember pundits have talked about the evil of occupation and how Israel suppressed the legitimate rights of the Palesitnians. (In 1994 or so, I remember reading a piece by Ron Pundak, one of the academics who thought up Oslo, writing how he was seeing the Palesitnian in Gaza thriving now that their economy was no longer under the thumb of Israeli occupation.)

Daled Amos blogged last week about an Efraim Karsh article from last year Who Ruined Gaza that the economic effect of ending the occupation has been devastating ...

This combination of corruption and terrorism proved catastrophic. When the declaration of principles was signed on the White House lawn in September, 1993, conditions in the territories were still better than those in most neighbouring Arab states — despite the economic decline caused by the first intifada of 1987-93. But within six months of Arafat’s arrival in Gaza, the standard of living in the strip fell by 25%, and more than half of the area’s residents claimed to have been happier under Israel.
Things got much worse in 2000. War is by its nature a destructive endeavour, and Arafat’s terror war was no exception, inflicting great damage on Israel but also eradicating the fragile fabric of civil society that had been developing in the territories during the decades prior to his arrival. Unemployment increased from 10% to an average of 41% during 2002, and the proportion of the population that was poor rose from 20% to over 50%. Private investment and trade fell dramatically.
According to a recent World Bank report, “the precipitator of this economic crisis has been the “restriction on the movement of goods and people” imposed by Israel to protect its citizens. But this analysis substitutes cause for effect. For it is not the closure of Palestinian areas that has precipitated the Palestinian economic malaise but rather the tidal wave of suicide bombers that made this closure inevitable.

(I linked to a number of relevant articles about Palestinian corruption two years ago in Pleading Poverty.)

Now Prof Karsh has dealt with the military implications of occupation and asks whether occupation hurt the Israel army? (Registration required. h/t Israelated)

It was actually the absence of occupation--that is, the withdrawal of close Israeli surveillance and supervision as part of the Oslo process--that allowed Arafat to transform the territories into a hotbed of terrorism and prompted the IDF to redirect its energies to counterinsurgency operations. If, in December 1992, Yitzhak Rabin's government could arrest some 400 Hamas militants without a single fatality to either side, Israel's withdrawal from populated Palestinian areas turned such simple police actions into hazardous military operations requiring large forces and involving substantial casualties and collateral damage. In fact--far from degrading its military capabilities--it was because of the occupation that Israel didn't do even worse in the Lebanon war.

(Karsh's military analysis was in response to a Ze'ev Schiff analysis that I commented on a few weeks ago.)

So Palestinian independence has brought neither prosperity to the Palestinians nor security to Israel. To those - including President Bush - whose vision of a peaceful Middle East requires those two conditions, the unfolding of the past 13 years stands as a refutation to that rose colored vision.

It was not the suppression of Palestinian national aspirations that caused the Palestinians to hate Israel; it was Israel's existence. If there is to be peace between Israel and the Arabs - the Palestinian issue is a smokescreen, allowing the Arab world to pose as champions of freedom while refusing to recognize the one free society in the Middle East - new thinking is required. Israeli concessions will not bring peace; a change of the Arab heart is necessary.

One of Gen Yaalon's beliefs is that education is essential to peace. Once Palestinians are no longer educated that Jews have stolen their land, according to the general, there will be peace. While it may not be as simple as that, surely a change in education will have to be a component of a peaceful future in the Middle East. I doubt, however, that, by itself education is sufficient.

I don't expect that the peace processors will acknowledge their mistakes despite the evidence against them. But if any do and try to excuse themselves, they have no response. The way Arafat and the PLO ran Lebanon presaged how they would run Gaza, Jericho and the other cities that came under their sway. There are no excuses for the failures of the past 13 years. And there are no excuses for allowing them to continue.