LIVING BY THE SWORD

Suicide Bomber Hits Tel Aviv; Top Palestinian Denounces Terror: A suicide bomber killed at least two other people hours after the Palestinian parliament voted to confirm a new government. (JAMES BENNET, 4/30/03, NY Times)

The Palestinian parliament voted Tuesday night in Ramallah to confirm a new government, clearing the way for an American-backed peace plan after the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, denounced terrorism "by any party and in all its shapes" and appealed for a "lasting peace" with Israel.

Hours later, underlining the fragility of every step toward peace, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up outside a seaside pub here early this morning and killed at least two other people.

After Mr. Abbas's speech, the Palestinian parliament overwhelmingly approved his new government on Tuesday night, in a jubilant session that met President Bush's condition for proceeding with a new peace plan, known as the road map. After the suicide bombing, the White House confirmed that it would proceed with the peace plan, which calls for creation of a Palestinian state and a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace in three years.

There's an understandable but absurd bit of juvenalia going on among the hawks, who are insisting that continued terrorism proves that the Palestinians don't deserve a state or even a plan for one. It's worth considering that had the same logic been applied to the terrorists from 1945-48 there would be no Israel.

We've mentioned this letter previously, in another context, but it's worth looking at it again, The Meaning of the American Revolution: A letter to H. Niles (John Adams, 13 February 1818):

The American Revolution was not a common event. Its effects and consequences have already been awful over a great part of the globe. And when and where are they to cease?

But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations. While the king, and all in authority under him, were believed to govern in justice and mercy, according to the laws and constitution derived to them from the God of nature and transmitted to them by their ancestors, they thought themselves bound to pray for the king and queen and all the royal family, and all in authority under them, as ministers ordained of God for their good; but when they saw those powers renouncing all the principles of authority, and bent upon the destruction of all the securities of their lives, liberties, and properties, they thought it their duty to pray for the continental congress and all the thirteen
State congresses, &c.

We need not think the PLO and Hamas comparable to the Founding Fathers in order to recognize that the first Palestinian Revolution is already over-- just as the first Israeli Revolution was over long before there was a state--and the Palestinians will not ever give up violence until they are governing themselves in their own state, just as Americans and Israelis continued violence until they had their own states.

MORE:
The Road Map to Nowhere: Do we really need another doomed Mideast peace process? (Joshua Muravchik, April 30, 2003, Jewish World Review)

The first thing one might say about the plan itself is that its pace is breathless. Comprehensive political reform, a new constitution, free elections--all within the first few months? Never mind that this seems unrealistic. (We are now 19 years past the deadline for Palestinian self-rule set in the Egypt-Israel peace agreement of 1979 and four years past the date for completing "final status" talks under the Oslo accords.) It is even undemocratic. Aren't the citizens of Palestine entitled to a little time to acquaint themselves with their new political system, not to mention to assent to it, to discover what the offices are for which they will vote, to form political parties, to debate the issues? From there, we press on frantically to sovereignty within a few more months and a complete laying to rest of the Arab-Israeli conflict by 2005. Inshallah. There is no disgrace in a rush to peace, provided one's hurry does not result in losing one's way. [...]

THE STILL DEEPER FLAW in the road map's premises is the presumption that with the terms of settlement fairly apparent, all that is needed is a guide for getting there. In the final analysis, however, the missing ingredient for peace between Israel and the Palestinians is not a blueprint of the destination, nor is it the route. The missing ingredient is a decision by the Palestinians and the other Arabs to accept the existence of a Jewish state in their midst and to live in permanent peace with it. Despite all the Palestinians have suffered these two and a half years, public opinion polls show that a clear majority of them support continuing the intifada and suicide bombing and that about half say that the goal should be the "total liberation of Palestine," in other words, the elimination of Israel. The other half of the Palestinians say they want a two-state solution. When that half grows and becomes dominant, then and only then, will real peace be possible.

Since the Six Day War, the critical divide in international approaches to the Arab-Israeli broil has been between a negotiated settlement and an imposed one. Israel has insisted on the former precisely because it wants a settlement to be more than pro forma. In an imposed settlement, the Arab representatives might make some empty prescribed gestures in return for concessions that could facilitate future efforts to destroy Israel.

Two problems with this analysis: (1) Palestine has more deeply planted civil institutions right now than Israel had when it was told it would become a state and the pace of that statehood was no slower; (2) there's a third option, one supported by members of Sharon's own circle, a settlement imposed by Israel instead of upon Israel. As even Mr. Muravchik concedes, the terms of the settlement are "fairly apparent"--so why not just impose them? Posted by Orrin Judd at April 30, 2003 10:08 AM