The Desperate Choices before Israel, the Palestinians, and the US by William Pfaff

The Desperate Choices before Israel, the Palestinians, and the U.S.

William Pfaff

Paris, March 5, 2008 -- The stalemate between Israel and the
Palestinians, which implies collapse of the American policy commitment
to a two-state solution of their conflict, is now all but complete.

Israel confronts alternatives that it considers foreclosed and
unacceptable – even unthinkable. Its troops reentered Gaza Tuesday
night because Hamas was already claiming victory in Gaza, just as
Hezbollah did after Israel invaded Lebanon and was forced to withdraw
with unexpected losses, leaving Hezbollah strengthened.

The rocket fire against Israel from Gaza continued, now using
relatively sophisticated weapons with a range of some 12 miles, able
to reach the city of Ashkelon, with a population of 120 thousand.
There was a pause in Israeli military operations Tuesday when
Condoleezza Rice was in Israel, long enough to allow her to give a
speech in favor of peace.

Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president, confined to the West Bank
territories, has been forced by Palestinian opinion to suspend contact
with Israel and cooperation in Condoleezza Rice's Annapolis project
for agreement on a two-state solution "this year."

U.S.-Israeli policy has been to punish the Palestinians because they
gave victory to Hamas in the parliamentary elections of 2006, while
simultaneously raining blessings and gifts on Abbas in order to
convince the people that to support him is the only way to win a
semi-independent Palestine. The policy has failed.
The secret operation by the U.S. last year to destroy Hamas dominance
in Gaza – revealed at length by David Rose in the April issue of
Vanity Fair magazine – actually produced Hamas's total takeover of
Gaza. It further strengthened the organization's claim to be the only
Palestinian group truly committed to national liberation – however
unconvincing that claim may seem as a practical proposition.

Abbas has been able to supply no blessings for the West Bank
Palestinians. Not a single Israeli military blockade inside the West
Bank has been lifted since the Annapolis conference, despite promises
made there. Promised development projects have not arrived. The
Israeli colonies on Palestinian territory have continued to expand,
again contrary to Annapolis agreements, since rockets never ceased
being launched into Israel from Gaza.

The choice made by Israel's Olmert government has been the familiar
one of trying to destroy all resistance -- and as in Lebanon (twice),
and now again in Gaza, it is getting them nowhere.

The sheer desperation of the Israeli leadership at what may be called
the trap they deliberately walked into, when they decided to take and
keep the Palestinian territories in 1967, was made keenly evident
February 29 when the vice minister of defense, Matan Vilnai, warned
that the rockets being fired from Gaza could bring down a "shoah" on
the Palestinians in retaliation. His press people hastily claimed
mistranslation; the word in Hebrew does not, they said, mean in Israel
what it means everywhere else.

Many Palestinians now despair of the possibility of obtaining a
separate state, however attenuated its sovereignty. The proposal now
made is to dissolve the Palestine Liberation Authority, throw down
arms, give up resistance to the conquerors, and make themselves, in
Shakespeare's words, 'naked before thine enemies.'

They would revert to their original post-1967 condition, before the
Oslo accords, when they were a conquered and occupied people under the
absolute control and legal responsibility of Israel. Those who argue
this course say the Palestinians could then demand democratic rights
as forced residents of the state which occupied their land in 1967 and
has since been annexing increased portions of it.

One assumes that they would do this with no expectation that they
would be granted such rights, which would terminate Israel's existence
as a Jewish state, giving it an Arab electoral majority.

Their only hope would be that Israel would actually impose a regime of
national discrimination or apartheid, which these Palestinians would
like to think the United States, the European Union and the UN would
not tolerate. That is the assumption upon which the strategy rests.

In view of what all three have tolerated until now, this would seem a
foolish hope. It is what the French call the "politique du pire" –
making things so bad that they have to get better. But they don't have
to; they can always get still worse, as vice minister for defense
Vilnai impetuously recalled.

Stalemates never last. There are alternatives. The Palestinians could
throw themselves into what might be called the Final Intifada -- an
act of collective nihilism. The Israelis could accept the bitter need
to negotiate with Hamas.

Or the Israelis could go home. They could shut down the colonies,
withdraw all their settlers and their troops, and go back behind their
1967 borders. The could even build a new wall on those borders. Then
their future and permanence as a Jewish state could be assured. They
might expect eventually to lose all, or most, of their enemies. But
this, today, remains what I referred to as the unthinkable solution.

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