topic by
Seth Sims
4/23/2002 (21:57) |
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Yes to Palestine, no to terror
By MARCUS GEE
Saturday, April 20, 2002 – Print Edition, Page A19
Leaving the Middle East after his ill-fated peacemaking tour, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell once again expressed his country's support for an independent Palestinian state.
That will trouble many Israelis. After the horrors of the past month, they can be forgiven for thinking that a Palestinian state would be little more than a platform for ongoing terror attacks on Israel.
And yet a Palestinian state, independent and sovereign, remains the only true solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
The question is how to get there. Palestinian leaders appear to have concluded that they can bomb their way to statehood. The strategic purpose of the current uprising is (a) to convince Israelis that they will never be safe as long as they control the territories taken in 1967, and (b) to convince the international community that it must intervene to create a Palestinian state.
From the Palestinian point of view, the strategy appears to be working. Israelis are, indeed, deeply traumatized by the terrorist attacks, and most urgently wish to be rid of the burden of the occupation. The international community has, indeed, been pulled into the dispute, as Mr. Powell's trip demonstrates. No wonder, then, that there is such a sound of triumph in Palestinian voices. They really think they are winning.
But they are not. Israel is not likely to end its occupation and agree to a Palestinian state while bombs are going off in Jerusalem cafés. To the contrary, the uprising that began in September of 2000 has made Israelis far less likely to stand for the birth of a Palestinian state.
During the peace process that began with the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993, most Israeli opinion-makers had come around to the idea that the Palestinians should have their own country. Even Ariel Sharon, then in opposition, said it was inevitable.
Just before the uprising, at the Camp David summit, the government of Ehud Barak sketched out a deal that would have given the Palestinians most of what they want: an independent state on most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as a share in Jerusalem.
The second intifada wiped out all that progress overnight. It led directly to the end of the Oslo process and the election of the hard-line Mr. Sharon. Now it has brought the reoccupation of some Palestinian towns and refugee camps. Israelis may feel less secure, but they also feel far less inclined to live beside a Palestinian state -- controlled, as they see it, by people who want to exterminate them.
Of course, most Palestinians don't give a fig for Israeli public opinion. They would like to drive the Israelis from the land. If that fails, they hope the international community will do it for them, by sending a peacekeeping force that would act as cover for the creation of a free Palestine. Israelis call this the 'Kosovo strategy.' If the Kosovo Albanians could drag NATO into their conflict with the Serbs and emerge with their own de facto homeland, why shouldn't it work for the Palestinians?
This is a fantasy, too. No foreign cavalry is going to ride to Yasser Arafat's rescue. The United Nations may pass a thousand more earnest resolutions, but no foreign power could (or should) force Israel to accept an outcome that it cannot live with.
Whether Palestinians like it or not, the only way they will achieve their homeland is through negotiations with Israel. And the only way to bring Israel to the table is to convince Israelis that they could live in peace beside a Palestinian state. The uprising has had precisely the opposite effect.
Yes, a Palestinian state is the solution. But negotiation -- not terror -- is the way to achieve it.
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