Hussein Ibish - The Daily Star, 22 September 2006
Washington - The one obvious lesson to be drawn from this summer`s conflict between Israel and Hizbullah is that an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is indispensable for the two principals, the region and the world. The problem is, a great many people haven`t learned a thing.
The Israeli establishment has apparently failed to notice the total bankruptcy of a strategy based on force and unilateralism, and is busy debating technical issues. A consensus now rejects "over-reliance" on air power in the vain hope that better intelligence and more commando forces will produce a better outcome "next time."
Some Israelis and their American supporters are even trying to spin the Lebanon fiasco into some sort of "success", so unwilling are they to acknowledge the political limitations of the science of killing.
Meanwhile, far too many Arabs have been seduced by the illusion of a "divine victory" that may have enhanced Hizbullah`s image as a vanguard in the struggle with Israel, but which left much of Lebanon and its economy in ruins. Once again one hears the old siren song that if the Arabs were only united enough, steadfast enough, or religiously fanatical enough, they would defeat Israel on the battlefield.
The truth, of course, is that neither Israel nor the Arabs can improve their position by blowing each other up.
Can any Palestinian or Israeli -- other than self-serving demagogues -- seriously claim to have gained anything from the incessant violence that has wracked the Occupied Territories and, from time to time, Israel since September 2000?
Which Palestinian honestly believes that Israel can be driven out of the West Bank and East Jerusalem by guerrilla warfare or suicide bombings? Is there a single Israeli still clinging to the delusion that disproportionate force, the unilateral drawing of borders and concrete walls, especially after Hizbullah`s rocket attacks, constitute a security strategy?
The second intifada was a disaster for Palestinian diplomacy because of some of the indefensible tactics that came to define it. Israel`s already very poor international reputation suffered badly as well, and took an even more severe blow following its bombardment of Lebanese civilians and infrastructure last July and August. For much of the rest of the world, Israel has become synonymous with racism and brutality, and Palestinians synonymous with terrorism.
Another clear lesson of this summer`s bloodletting is that the region, Lebanon above all, will continue to be destabilized as long as there is an ongoing struggle between Israel and the Palestinians.
It is simply extraordinary that some Lebanese commentators would suggest that the best course of action for the international community would be to allow the Israelis and Palestinians to continue to battle it out until exhaustion might bring them closer to an agreement -- apparently without recognizing that this sentences Lebanon to the certainty of continued chaos and probable periodic calamity.
It is obvious that Israelis and Palestinians, as well as their neighbours, all urgently require a negotiated agreement to end the conflict. Solid majorities of both peoples consistently say this is what they want.
The outlines of such an agreement are well-known: mutual recognition of Israel and a Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories with some agreed land-exchanges; both parties` enjoying sovereignty -- separate or joint -- over Jerusalem; and a compensation package and the return of some refugees, within a framework that does not undermine the concept of two ethno-national states living alongside each other.
Some suggest that, given the numerous failed efforts in the past to craft such an agreement, and the intransigence of both Israel`s Kadima-led government and the Hamas-led Palestinian government, there is no point in the rest of the world`s wasting any further effort on the quest for a diplomatic resolution. And, indeed, the international community, led by the United States, has expended very little real energy on this issue over the past five years.
However, the conflict cannot be left unresolved without dire consequences for the entire world, because of its political and emotional significance for hundreds of millions of people. As Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf put it, "The tragedy of Palestine is an open wound of the psyche of every Muslim."
The question of Palestine has been infused with a reservoir of political energy that will not dissipate because the issue is being ignored by the international community. That energy is being increasingly harnessed by a variety of radical groups reaping huge political benefits, while casting moderates committed to peace as weaklings or even quislings.
Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a panacea for all ills in the Middle East. Dysfunctional political systems will not be suddenly transformed. Neither the war in Iraq nor the menace of Al-Qaeda will vanish overnight.
But ending the conflict would make those problems, and many more, including the increasing alienation between Arab and Western societies, much more manageable. Nothing else could have a comparable healing effect.
It is no longer enough to say that the parties are not ready for an agreement. Given the asymmetries of power, it`s not surprising that, left to their own devices, Israelis and Palestinians cannot untie the bloody knot binding them together.
The Arabs, the Europeans, and above all the Americans, should stop enabling this recalcitrance and must induce the parties to come to terms. Political forces in the West and the Middle East that prefer to see the conflict continue instead of making difficult compromises must give way to bolder leadership.
A tall order, perhaps, but that`s what it was always going to take to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. And as the recent Lebanon war demonstrated, the stakes have never been higher for everyone.
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* Hussein Ibish is a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews)
