President Bush's success on Sunday in brokering a deal to spring Yasser
Arafat from his
Israeli-imposed house-arrest in Ramallah calls to mind a cautionary adage:
Be careful what you
wish for. Like the "peace process" this step is intended to resuscitate,
Arafat's release is more
likely to lead to conditions that will conduce to another Arab-Israeli war
than it is to prevent a
renewal of such hostilities.
Think about it. During his month-long incarceration, Arafat has become the
darling of
radical Palestinians who had previously feared he was willing to sell-out
their dream of liberating
all of "Palestine" (namely the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as
pre-1967 Israel). Of
course, this suspicion had more to do with jockeying for power within
Palestinian ranks than it
did with Arafat's real ambitions. After all, Arafat has at every turn
conveyed his true intentions
through speeches given in Arabic, repeating his determination to secure the
"phased" destruction
of Israel, and via the use of symbols (such as attending funerals for
terrorists he calls "martyrs"
and maps of the region showing no Israel, only a state called "Palestine").
It is folly to believe that, once he has been freed again to move about the
Palestinian
Authority-controlled areas, he will use his political rehabilitation to wage
a campaign for
reconciliation and peaceful coexistence with Israel. It is all well and good
for President Bush to
announce that "[Arafat's] responsibility is...to renounce, to help detect
and stop terrorist
killings....We're going to continue to hold people accountable for results."
Actually, Arafat and
his fellow terrorists are likely to conclude that -- far from being held
accountable, they will again
be rewarded for intransigence and violence.
Other things we are "wishing for" seem no more likely to have the intended
effect. For
example, take the Bush Administration's willingness to accede to pressure
from Arafat and his
sympathizers at the U.N., in Europe and among the Arabs to place "monitors"
on the ground
between the Israelis and the Palestinians. This idea has received a fresh
impetus from Arafat's
recent "get-out-of-jail-free" deal: American and British monitors are now
going to be responsible
for "supervising" the incarceration of terrorists Arafat had been protecting
in his Ramallah
compound until at last, under the physical pressure of Israel's seige, he
decided to have them
"tried" and convicted by a Palestinian tribunal.
What happens if, as in the past, a mob (perhaps incited by Arafat or one of
his terrorist
factions or allies) decides to free those whose murder of an Israeli cabinet
officer met with
widespread approval among Palestinians? Will more monitors be sent in, with
armed forces to
protect them? Or will that simply be the result when, citing the precedent
set by the foreign
jailers, the "international community" predictably intensifies its
insistence that such monitors be
inserted between the Palestinians and Israelis to prevent further violence?
Then there is the question of the negotiations whose resumption the Bush
Administration
has been so insistently seeking. Can any good come of the much-hoped-for
implementation of
the "Mitchell plan" and the "Tenet work plan," or even a renewed Oslo "peace
process"? Only
by making several heroic assumptions is there any reason to believe these
diplomatic initiatives
will bear other than more poisonous fruit: Arafat must now want a genuine
and durable peace
with a secure Israel; Arafat must be willing violently to suppress those
Palestinians who do not
want such a peace; and the rest of the Arab world must support him in doing
so. Today, nearly
ten years after the Oslo process began based on these same assumptions,
there is no evidence that
any -- let alone all -- of them apply.
Finally, there is the matter of the "vision" President Bush has embraced of
a state of
Palestine. It is hard to see, under present and prospective circumstances,
how this entity can
possibly emerge as a viable, peaceable state coexisting with the Jewish
State next door. Instead,
what we are wishing for appears destined to become another corruptly and
despotically misruled,
radicalized Arab state governed by an elite spoiling for revenge and
territorial expansion and
convinced that violence will help them achieve both.
It is tragically ironic that such a "Palestine" will pose a threat not only
to Israel but to
Jordan. After all, Jordan is not only an Arab state but a Palestinian one;
the vast majority of its
population is made up not of Hashemites but Palestinians. It is predictable
that at some point, if
Mr. Bush's vision is realized, an effort will be made to forge a single
nation to include all the
people of "Palestine" (doubtless appealing as well to Israel's Arab
citizens).
In this fashion, we can expect to see an Arab country -- one that is
currently at peace with
Israel and economically relatively viable -- destabilized and possibly
destroyed. If, in the
process, Jordan's well-equipped and -trained army falls into the hands of
Islamists determined to
liquidate Israel, the Jewish State might find itself once again facing an
existential threat from
Arab armies.
Some will say these grim forecasts are unduly pessimistic. Unfortunately,
they are
informed by hard experience with Yasser Arafat, the terrorists with whom he
is closely
associated and his unwavering ambition -- and that of many other Arabs -- to
"liberate" all of
Palestine. Neither Israel's interests nor those of the United States will be
served by recklessly
indulging in the diplomatic equivalent of what Samuel Johnson once said of
second marriages --
"the triumph of hope over experience."
