I have been scouring eBay for the last couple of days, hoping to snag a
one-of-a-kind item. But, alas, it hasn't turned up yet. I'm looking for the
late Yasser Arafat's Nobel Peace Prize. It was looted from Arafat's Gaza
compound by the victorious forces of Hamas, a jihadist group backed by Iran
and Syria that has routed the once-mighty forces of Fatah from power in
Gaza. According to the Jerusalem Post, a Fatah spokesman added: "They stole
all the widow's clothes and shoes."
The widow in question would be Suha Arafat, Yasser Arafat's photo-op wife.
Who can blame the looters for wanting to grab as much of her swag as
possible? First of all, she wasn't using it. Suha hasn't been to Gaza for
years. And her favorite shoe designer is Christian Louboutin, whose wares
can fetch about $1,000 a pair, which is more than many Palestinians make in
a year.
But it's that peace prize, won by Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin for
agreeing to the 1993 Oslo accords, that really captures the lunacy of it
all. It's the perfect reminder for everyone, myself included, of the Arabs'
refusal to yield to idealism, hope or good intentions - and the West's
refusal to recognize reality.
"The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves,
only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that
there may be something to them which we are missing," former Egyptian
President Gamal Abdel Nasser once said. But from the U.S. point of view, the
Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Maybe they
just don't want what we're selling?
For example, in 2005, Israel simply gave Gaza to the Palestinians. According
to the international community's land-for-peace mantra, a peaceful society
should have sprouted like a stalk from Jack's magic beans. Instead, the
Palestinian people voted for a band of Islamic fanatics - even the European
Union calls them terrorists, not that it matters much - dedicated to the
destruction of Israel. But the diplomacy-uber-alles crowd has long been
immune to contrary evidence. Remember when Arafat fanned the second intifada
in response to an unprecedented peace offer? Members of the Nobel committee
openly talked of revoking the peace prize - from Peres.
Now, President Bush, the leaders of the EU and the editors of the New York
Times all say this is the moment for Israel to offer more concessions to
Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas. So much for the fresh-from-Iraq cliche
that it's pointless to choose sides in a civil war.
Margaret Beckett, the British foreign secretary, lamented, "Once again,
extremists carrying guns have prevented progress against the wishes of the
majority who seek a peaceful two-state solution." But how do you square this
with the fact that Hamas, the party promising the destruction of Israel, won
the Palestinian elections in 2005? Meanwhile, the leaders of Fatah - the
"moderates" - had not long ago set the standard for Israel-hatred
themselves.
The great irony is that Hamas now labels members of Fatah as Jewish
"collaborators," a designation that apparently justifies even the execution
of wounded Fatah prisoners in hospitals.
The German foreign ministry went so far as to suggest that Hamas' triumph
necessitates increasing aid to Gaza because of the hardships Hamas rule will
cause. It seems that if you choose terrorism, either at the ballot box or in
the streets, the Europeans, like the good hands at Allstate, will be there
to pay for the mess.
But there's another, perhaps more important, lesson to be drawn from the
Hamas ascendancy. The Bush administration pushed for democracy in the
Palestinian territories and got what it wished for - in spades. The
assumption behind the push for democracy in Gaza and in Iraq is that Arabs
can be trusted to handle political freedom. Even the Democrats demanding an
immediate pullout from Iraq hope that with democracy, the Iraqis will be
able to sort out their problems themselves via some euphemistic "political
solution." That is unless the antiwar Democrats are really advocating
turning all of Mesopotamia into one giant Gaza Strip - the far more likely
result of U.S. withdrawal.
For many disciples of the "international peace process," it's a matter of
faith that the Palestinians just have to want peace, because how else can
you have a peace process? For many supporters of the Bush Doctrine, Iraqis
have to want democracy, because if they don't, what's the point of having a
freedom agenda? But what if these are just beloved Western fictions? We see
a well-lighted path to the good life: democracy, tolerance, rule of law,
markets. But what if the Arab world just isn't interested in our path? As a
believer in the freedom agenda, that's what scares me most.