Soccer Dad

You can't hurry peace

In a fascinating op-ed, What use were all the wars? Mona Eltahawy writes

As the region marks the 40th anniversary of the Arab-Israeli war, it's been a relief to be watching from another country, one where the stain of wars and defeat have marked several generations. But no relief or distance can silence this question: Is this what we fought all those wars with Israel for?

She goes on to argue that despite the peace treaties reached by Israel with Jordan and Egypt nothing much has changed in those countries. The citizens of those countries are no more free than they were prior to those treaties, so she doesn't expect that Palestine (when and if it comes into existence) will be a boon for its citizens either.

In short We have subsumed so much into the Palestinian cause, channeling efforts that should have gone into development into a near obsession with Palestine, for little apparent good. Egypt boasts that it can talk to both the Israelis and the Palestinians, but even that has done little for its influence in halting intra-Palestinian fighting in Gaza.

. . .

My generation, sadly, might be lost to defeat and humiliation. If so, the best gift we can offer those coming behind us is clear advice: Don't walk in our footsteps, and know that the best way you can help Palestinians is to help your own countries.

This is a variation on something Daniel Pipes

What went wrong?

Many things, but most important was that the deal rested on a faulty Israeli premise that Palestinians had given up their hope of destroying the Jewish state. This led to the expectation that if Israel offered sufficient financial and political incentives, the Palestinians would formally recognize the Jewish state and close down the conflict.

Israelis therefore pushed themselves to make an array of concessions, in the futile hope that flexibility, restraint and generosity would win Palestinian goodwill. In fact, these steps made matters worse by sending signals of apparent demoralization and weakness. Each concession further reduced Palestinian awe of Israeli might, made Israel seem more vulnerable and incited irredentist dreams of annihilating it.

The result was a radicalized and mobilized Palestinian body politic. In speech and actions, via claims to the entire land of Israel and the murder of Israelis, the hope of destroying Israel acquired ever-more traction.

Denied a sovereign political world of their own, the Palestinians came to believe that they could share in the sovereignties of other Arab states, that the armies of Egypt and Syria and Iraq, and the oil wealth of the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf, and the territories of Lebanon, were theirs for the asking. Few Arabs bothered to tell them otherwise, and the legend took hold of an Arab world forever in the grip of a Palestinian obsession. The "Palestinian cause" was there, an affliction and a supreme alibi of Arab politics, and the rival monarchs and dictators picked it up at will, offering dreams of vengeance against Israel, and wars of restoration.

What is needed then is a change in thought. No number of Israeli concessions and erasing red lines will bring peace.

There's a joke "How many psychiatrist does it take to change a light bulb? One, but the light bulb really has to want to change."

A qualification similar to the one underlying that joke might well be applied to the Middle East where the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin famously said that you only make peace with your enemies. You only make peace with your enemies, but your enemies must want to make peace with you, else they will just pocket your concessions and use them against you.

Peace in the Middle can't be achieved by Arabs constanntly demanding and Israel constantly giving ground. When Amir Taheri recently wrote that Israel needs to present a peace plan he was saying in essence Israel needs to make clear what its minimum requirements are. (Though I think that Boker Tov Boulder disagrees.)

Regardless, whatever the terms of a future of peace are, there won't be peace - there can't be peace - until there is a fundamental change in the Arab world. Certainly Mona Eltahawy's is correct that greater freedom would be a welcome step in the right direction.

UPDATE: apropos of Sabba Hillel's comment below, I was imprecise. Israel must make its case that there are certain red lines that it will not cross. The most obvious are dividing Jerusalem, going back to the 1967 lines and the right of return. For too long the non-negotiable Arab demands have defined the contours of the "peace process." Israel must make clear that those demands are unacceptable.

israel, middle east, peace process.