[iwar] [fc:U.S..Pressure.on.Israel.Is.Misguided]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-23 16:31:19

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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 16:31:19 -0700 (PDT)
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                U.S. Pressure on Israel Is Misguided
                        By Yossi Klein Halevi

Yossi Klein Halevi is the author, most recently, of "At the Entrance to
the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for God with Christians and Muslims
in the Holy Land."

October 23, 2001

JUST AS AMERICA and Israel should be drawing into deeper strategic and
emotional affinity, the war against terrorism has opened new and
potentially dangerous rifts between the two nations. 

In its desperation to find allies within the Muslim world, America has
angered Israel by distancing it from the anti-terrorism coalition, even
as it woos terror states such as Iran and Syria.  And in its current
incursion into West Bank towns following the assassination of Tourism
Minister Rehavam Ze'evi last Wednesday in Jerusalem, Israel has angered
Washington, which fears the escalation will intensify Muslim resentment
against the United States. 

Until the Ze'evi murder, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had, in fact, shown
sensitivity to America's dilemma.  Despite intense pressure from the
Israeli right - led by Ze'evi - Sharon quietly suspended Israel's policy
of targeting terrorists.  And he withdrew Israeli troops from an Arab
neighborhood in Hebron where Palestinian gunmen had fired into a crowd
of Jewish pilgrims at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, burial place of
Abraham and Sarah.  The very day before his assassination, Ze'evi had
resigned from the government in protest against Sharon's moderate line. 

But the unprecedented terrorist attack on an Israeli cabinet minister -
and the ease with which the assassins entered a Jerusalem hotel and then
escaped to nearby Palestinian-controlled territory - reminded Israelis
just how vulnerable Israel has become since the Oslo process began.  The
upgrading of the terrorists' operational capacity is a direct result of
the empowerment of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, under whose watch
the terror organizations have thrived.  The current Israeli incursion is
a long-delayed response to that growing threat. 

Another factor in loosening Israeli restraint has been the Bush
administration's recent endorsement of a Palestinian state with
Jerusalem as its capital.  Until a year ago, the Israeli mainstream
might have been persuaded to accept that solution.  But after Arafat's
year-long terrorist holy war, few in Israel are willing to accept him
any longer as a peace partner - let alone as an intimate neighbor in
Jerusalem. 

By raising the nightmare of Arafat's further empowerment, Bush
compounded the insult of Israel's exclusion from the anti-terrorist
coalition.  The final blow came with the revelation that the
administration had informed Arab countries, but not Israel, about the
new American initiative.  That triggered Sharon's angry declaration that
Israel wouldn't become a second Czechoslovakia, a victim of appeasement. 

Perhaps recognizing that it had gone too far in alienating Israel, the
Bush administration responded forcefully to the Ze'evi assassination -
explicitly linking, for the first time since Sept.  11, the struggles
against terrorism being fought by Israel and the United States. 

But Washington cannot continue to treat Israel as a pariah and threaten
it with an imposed solution to the Palestinian problem, and then expect
Israel to act like a responsible ally.  Only by offering Israel
reassurance that the Arab world won't benefit politically from Osama
bin-Laden's terrorism will Sharon be able to resist the pressure from
the political right to respond ever more forcefully to Palestinian
provocations. 

Sharon would like nothing better than to once again dispatch Arafat into
exile, just as he did during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.  And no one
deserves that fate more than the Palestinian chairman, who has set back
the chance for reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis by a
generation. 

Still, Sharon is unlikely to order the Israeli army to destroy the
Palestinian Authority.  Israel's goal, after all, is to pressure Arafat
to act against terrorism.  The Israeli public doesn't want to reoccupy
the West Bank, and Sharon's Labor Party partners in the unity government
won't permit it. 

American pressure, then, should be primarily aimed at Arafat who, unlike
Sharon, has no domestic constraints nudging him toward restraint.  Only
external pressure can force Arafat to undertake a genuine crackdown on
terrorism, and not the farcical "revolving door" whereby Arafat arrests
terrorists and then quietly releases them when media attention subsides. 

More profoundly, Israel and the United States need to reach an
understanding whereby Israel refrains from far-reaching acts that could
inflame the Muslim world, while America refrains from imposing a
political solution to the Palestinian-Israeli crisis.  At this delicate
moment, Israeli and American leaders need the wisdom of empathy,
appreciating each other's predicaments and accommodating, as much as
possible, each other's basic security needs. 

Copyright © 2001, Newsday, Inc. 

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