[I guess this is the fat lady singing. It's all in the last two paragraphs.]
New York Times January 15, 2003
The New Math
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
J ERUSALEM You can understand everything you need to know about the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict today through a simple math equation
offered by Danny Rubinstein, the Haaretz newspaper's Palestinian
affairs expert. The equation goes like this: Suppose Israel discovers
that 10 Palestinians from Nablus are planning suicide attacks. Israel
says: If we can kill at least two, that will be progress, because only
eight will be left. The Palestinians, by contrast, say: If you kill
two, four more will volunteer to take their places, and you will be
left with 12. So for Israel 10 minus 2 is 8, and for the Palestinians
10 minus 2 is 12.
And that explains why Ariel Sharon's all-stick-no-carrot crackdown
over the past two years has failed to improve security for Israelis.
When Mr. Sharon succeeded Ehud Barak, roughly 50 Israelis had been
killed in the Palestinian uprising; today the number is more than 700
Israelis dead, and over 2,000 Palestinians. When I asked an Israeli
defense official why all the killings and arrests of Palestinians had
had so little effect, the official said: "It's like we're mowing the
grass. You mow the lawn one day and the next day the grass just grows
right back."
Then why is Mr. Sharon still likely to win the upcoming Israeli
election? Two reasons.
First, because as futile as the Sharon strategy has been, the
Palestinian strategy has been even worse. The Palestinians still act
as if they believe they can get more out of Israel by making Israelis
feel insecure rather than by making them feel secure. After a while,
you can't call this a mistake. After a while, you have to ask whether
it reflects a conviction that a thriving Jewish presence in the middle
of the Islamic world is simply not acceptable to them. Sure, the only
thing Mr. Sharon knows how to do is cut the grass. But the only thing
Yasir Arafat knows how to do is grow the grass to sacrifice one
generation of Palestinians after another to the fantasy of a return to
all of Palestine.
The second is the failure of Israel's Labor party to develop an
alternative to the Sharon policy. The problem for the Labor candidate,
Amram Mitzna, an enormously decent former West Bank commander, is not
that he is advocating what 70 percent of Israelis want separation from
the Palestinians and giving up most of the settlements. Rather it is
that he has not persuaded Israelis, on a gut level, that he and his
party are tough enough to bring this about in a safe way.
As a Haaretz essayist, Ari Shavit, explained: "I compare it to
open-heart surgery. Israelis know that if we don't do it, if we don't
separate, we will die. But if we do it in a rushed or messy way, we
will also die. So when Mitzna calls for separation, 70 percent of
Israel agrees. But when he says he is ready to do it unilaterally, if
necessary, or to negotiate with Arafat, or even to negotiate under
fire while the Intifada goes on, most people refuse to go along. It
feels wrong to them in their guts. So they want a left-wing surgery to
be carried out by a right-wing doctor. The problem is, Sharon won't
carry out that surgery. He is so committed to the settlements that he
built, he appears to be paralyzed."
Indeed, Mr. Sharon benefits from the people's desire to see him
implement the Mitzna separation. But instead of really trying to do
that, Mr. Sharon manipulates the public's fears to stay in power and
maintain the settlements while winking to the Americans that one day
he will really make a deal.
As a result of all this, the conflict is entering a terrible new
phase: the beginning of the end of the two-state solution. Under Mr.
Sharon, the Jewish settlers have expanded existing settlements in the
West Bank and also set up scores of illegal ones. The settlers want to
ensure either the de facto or de jure Israeli annexation of the West
Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. And with no credible Arab or
Palestinian peace initiative to challenge them, and no pressure from
the Bush team, and no Israeli party to implement separation, the
settlers are winning by default and inertia. Winning means they are
making separation impossible.
But if there is no separation, by 2010 there will be more Palestinians
than Jews living in Israel and the occupied territories. Then Israel
will have three options: The Israelis will control this whole area by
apartheid, or they will control it by expelling Palestinians, or they
will grant Palestinians the right to vote and it will no longer be a
Jewish state. Whichever way it goes, it will mean the end of Israel as
a Jewish democracy.
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