Soccer Dad

Shooting down green shoots

In "Green Shoots in Palestine" Parts one and two, Thomas Friedman hails the growth of an entrepreneurial or merchat class among the Palestinians.

But Barry Rubin admonishes Friedman for failing to grasp the whole picture:

But you do write a little about politics. You say:

"Make no mistake: Palestinians still want the Israeli occupation to end, and their own state to emerge, tomorrow. That is not going to happen.":

Why isn't that going to happen? Because of Palestinian, not Israeli, politics and ideology. I'm fascinated by the sentence about Palestinians want their state "tomorrow." That seems obviously true. Yet in fact it isn't. Of course, Palestinians want a unilateral withdrawal of all Israeli forces immediately, just like what happened in the Gaza Strip. And because of the way the leadership and people handled that one (rockets and mortars, you might recall, and cross-border raids), it is less likely to happen.

So, no, the leadership doesn't want it to happen tomorrow because it wants the state only on its own terms. If it has to pay a reasonable price, Fatah and the Palestinian Authority would rather wait for decades. They say so every day.
If you do write something about the Fatah meeting, please mention how Fatah has failed to reform itself, or to moderate. In fact, the leadership of the Palestinians is so ar from being a rational actor that it just voted unanimously--and with no evidence--to accuse Israel of murdering Yasir Arafat, its previous leader. Not the slightest gesture was offered to persuade Israelis that Fatah wants a secure and lasting peace. The most extreme rhetoric was used instead to make clear what a diabolical--and it's implied, permanent--enemy Israel is.

Now it's true that the merchants are pragmatic people and may not think this way. But they have no choice. When the gunmen say "jump," or more likely, close down and be on strike; boycott Israel; hand over money; and things like that, the middle class will do so. The shutters close down, unemployment goes back up.

It's what Mao Zedong called, "Politics in command." And, he further explained, "Political power comes out o the barrel of a gun." Good guidelines for understanding the contemporary Middle East. Not out of the doors of a high-price boutique.