HEARTS & MINDS:

Does Israel Need a Plan? (Daniel Pipes, February 2003, Commentary)

At the heart of the problem...stands Arab rejection. However cunningly conceived, plans that attempt to outflank, leap over, or otherwise finesse this stubborn fact are doomed to failure. Instead of ignoring it, would-be peacemakers would do better to start by recognizing that the conflict will diminish only when the Arabs finally surrender their dream of obliterating the Jewish state, and then to concentrate on finding ways to get the Arabs to undergo what I call a "change of heart." How might that be achieved?

A glance at some of the conflicts of the 20th century provides a clue. Those that ended did so because one side wholly abandoned its war aims. Closure was achieved when, and because, there was no longer a fight. This is what happened in World War II and the cold war, and also in the wars between China and India, between North Vietnam and the United States, between Great Britain and Argentina, between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union, and most recently between the United States and Afghanistan. Conflict ended neither via negotiations nor by means of a wall but by one side accepting defeat.

Such a surrender can occur as a consequence of a military trouncing, or it can occur through an accumulation of economic and political pressure. However achieved, the result must be unequivocal. Should the losing side retain its war goals, then new rounds of fighting remain possible, and even likely. After World War I, for example, defeat left the Germans still looking for another chance to dominate Europe. In like fashion, the wars between North and South Korea, Pakistan and India, Iraq and Iran, and Iraq and Kuwait have not ended, for the losing side has interpreted every defeat as but partial and temporary.

This historical pattern has several implications. First and foremost, it means that Israel's enemies must be convinced that they have lost. Actually, not all its enemies, just the Palestinians. Although weak by any objective measure as compared with the Arab states, Palestinians are the ones for whom this war is being fought. Should they, having suffered a necessary defeat, give up on the attempt to destroy Israel, others will find it difficult to remain rejectionist.

What will help bring about this Palestinian change of heart is Israeli deterrence: maintaining a powerful military and threatening credibly to use force when aggressed upon. This is not just a matter of tough tactics, which every Israeli government of the Left or Right pursues. It is a matter of a long-term strategic outlook. The trouble with deterrence from the Israeli point of view is that, rather than offering a chance to initiate, it is by nature a reactive approach: boring, unpleasant, expensive, seemingly passive, indirect, and thoroughly unsatisfying, quite out of step with the impatient spirit of the Israeli populace. But it works, as Israel's own experience in the period 1948-93 shows.

A bedrock condition of such a strategy-and one no less frustrating in the short term-is that Palestinian acceptance of Israel is a binary proposition: yes or no, without any in-between. This suggests, in turn, the
futility of negotiations-at least until the Palestinians do accept the Jewish state. Such matters as borders, water, armaments, the status of Jerusalem, Jewish communities in the West Bank and Gaza, so-called Palestinian refugees-in brief, the central issues of the Oslo period-cannot productively be discussed as long as one party still aims to murder the other. In principle, something along the lines of the Oslo agreement could turn out to be workable-but only after the Palestinians definitively and unequivocally, and over an extended period of time, demonstrate that they have made their peace with the existence of the state of Israel as an irreversible fact.

If, moreover, we have learned anything over the past decade, it is that interim Israeli concessions are counterproductive and must be discouraged. As the Oslo experience proved, they inflame, rather than tamp down, Arab aggression. By offering repeated concessions even as the Palestinians failed to live up to a single one of their obligations, Israel signaled weakness. That is how, beginning in 1993, the effect of Oslo was to take a bad situation-there was some violence in the late 1980's and early 90's, but a mood of caution still prevailed on the Palestinian side-and make it far worse. Only when Palestinians are convinced there is no other way will an end to the conflict become conceivable, along with the mutual concessions that will seal it.

U.S. diplomacy has long proceeded on the theory that one must start with agreements between Israel and unelected Arab leaders; after such a leader has affixed his signature to a piece of paper, it is thought, feelings of amity will in due course develop among his subjects. That has not happened. Quite the contrary: whenever leaders like Anwar Sadat or King Hussein-and this even applies somewhat to Arafat-have signed agreements, their populations have become more, not less, hostile to Israel. It is as if the government is understood to be passing on the anti-Zionist burden to other institutions: the media, the educational system, religious leaders, the unions, trade associations. A piece of paper cannot of itself produce a change of heart, but can only symbolize it; treaties must follow, not precede, deep shifts for the better on the Arab side.

By the same token, it is a mistake to discuss "final-status" issues-i.e., how things will look when the conflict is over. There has been, indeed, much speculation about a future Palestinian state: its borders, the nature of its sovereignty, and so forth. All such talk encourages Palestinians to think they can win the benefits of a state without accepting Israel. This is not to say that policy planners in some sub-basement should not be thinking through the contours of a final-status agreement; but it is not for those in responsible positions of power to broach the topic.

This is a handy survey of the variety of solutions being offered, at least in Israel and America, to the Palestinian problem. But one wonders if Mr. Pipes, in his eagerness not to offer any concession of any kind, doesn't underestimate the value of unilateral action.

Mightn't it be possible for Israel and America to affect a Palestinian "change of heart" by simply declaring a "final-status" Palestinian state? Doesn't Yasar Arafat require continued non-statehood and an Israeli presence on the territory of the future Palestine to keep his people's anger focused on Israel rather than on the failure of their own society under his leadership? Would not Israeli/American willingness to walk away from Palestine represent just as sure a defeat for the radicals as any military setback? What, after all, can it be said the PLO or Hamas is fighting for if Israel is so self-confident and dismissive that it can just announce the statehood that is so devoutly wished for, with no fear of the state to come?

If it is the eventual destruction of Israel that they aim for, are the Palestinians really all prepared to enter into a muder-suicide pact? Is it worth killing themselves just to try and take Israel with them? Or is this just what non-Palestinian Arabs have tried to convince them of? Is Palestine's cause--particularly a sovereign state of Palestine--served by taking on the same Israel that all of her other Arab neighbors are terrified of? Or are the Palestinians a sacrifice that others are willing to make, being unwilling to sacrifice themselves? Just to get Palestinians asking such questions would be to begin the change of heart.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 2, 2003 8:35 AM