Alone at the Dance
DON'T LOOK NOW, BUT THE MIDDLE East's old diplomatic game of make-believe is back. The peace process is hopelessly deadlocked, but the key players pretend otherwise, hoping that wishing will make it so. There's an old saying in the sands of Araby: "If you can't manage to get control of the camel, at least get control of its saddle." Israel has control of neither.
What everyone knows but doesn't like to admit is that the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, have, once and for all, given in to the gunmen. Abbas pledged to establish "one authority, one law, and one gun." He has failed on all counts. When radicals threatened to break the cease-fire several weeks ago, he caved, freeing nine of their jailed gunmen. He caved again when the radicals threatened to kill Fatah supporters unless he released another terrorist who had been firing rockets in Gaza. When Israel gave the Palestinian Authority the names of militants involved in a February suicide bombing in a Tel Aviv nightclub, he caved yet again, arresting several, then releasing them. Instead of living up to his promise to keep tabs on a "Most Wanted" list of 495 terrorists, he tried to slip many of them in as employees of the Palestinian security forces, to legitimize and launder their possessions of arms so they could attack again. When Israel provided the names of weapon smugglers, Abbas's security chiefs tipped them off that the Israelis were on their trail.
Now you have armed gangs playing pretend democracy. Gunmen of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades run Jenin. In Ramallah, dozens of wanted men, joined by 80 members of the presidential guard, opened fire in the courtyard of Palestinian Authority headquarters. In Tulkarm, another gang opened fire on the Palestinian governor's building. In Gaza, Hamas still fires scores of rockets and mortar shells at Israeli homes while Islamic Jihad defies the agreement for a "calm," saying, "We joined the tahdiya [calm] to give the combatants rest. . . . As far as we are concerned, the intifada has not ended; it is still going on."
What is also still going on is the incitement of hatred. In print and on broadcast media controlled by the Palestinian Authority--and subsidized by Europe and the United States--Israelis and Jews continue to be demonized, their murders blatantly encouraged. Palestinian kids are still taught that the greatest glory is dying for Allah in battle as jihadists. They save terrorist cards the way American kids save baseball cards.
What is Israel to do? It's amazing that Israelis have kept their patience for this long in the face of such betrayals. It would have been a dereliction of Israel's duty to its citizens not to respond as it has--retaining control of land, sea, and air access to Gaza; resuming arrests and the targeted killings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist leaders; and tightening security all around. The Palestinians have only themselves to blame for the fact that Israel is now slowing the withdrawal program and has delayed transferring more West Bank cities to Palestinian control.
Victimhood. The Palestinian Authority is in disarray and decline. Abbas ducked elections in Gaza that were scheduled for July 17. Hamas opposes a negotiated peace with Israel, but it is filling the void left by the PA. It provides health and education services, exploiting popular revulsion over the PA's corruption in siphoning off vast amounts of the aid donated to the Palestinian people by the international community.
Abbas's strategy has been to present himself as a victim. His desire is that this will take the heat off him to confront terrorism, in the hope that the international community will force Israel to make still more concessions to help him out. But Israelis rightly ask: What's the point of strengthening a leader whose popularity is plummeting, who cannot or will not exert control over terrorists, and who has proved incapable of carrying out his promises?
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is determined to proceed with the disengagement despite the fact that the postponement of the Gaza election means Israel does not know the full extent of Hamas's political strength there, leaving open the risk that it may be transferring territory to enemies who will seek to destroy Israel.
The sad fact is that everything is going wrong. Terrorist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad are using the relative calm to rearm and regroup for the next intifada. They smuggle longer-range missiles through dirt tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, for use after disengagement against Israelis now across the fence.
Sharon has taken a huge gamble with the Gaza withdrawal. But instead of playing weak, Sharon plays strong, determined to complete the disengagement. How sad that there is no comparable leader on the other side, someone with a vision of what a Palestinian state might be and with the courage to save the Palestinian Authority from being a fig leaf for an increasingly anarchic terrorist state.
This story appears in the August 15, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.