Terror War II, The Mideast Front?
Peace in the Middle East may require putting aside the rhetoric and working with Arab leaders, according to this Against the Grain commentary by CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer.
After a bloody weekend of terror, Israeli Prime Minster Sharon delivered a rare speech to the nation where he clearly and deliberately declared that Israel and America now have a common cause. "A war has been forced upon us," Sharon said, "a war of terror."
"Just as the United States is conducting its war against international terror, using all its might against terror, so will we, too," Sharon said, drawing the picture.
His words, his rhetoric, carefully mirrored President Bush's address to Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks: "Do not believe false prophecies and do not be misled by promises of immediate results. This struggle is not an easy one; this struggle will not be short. But we will be victorious."
Does America want its lot to be cast with Sharon in this way? It's a prospect that scares us. Before the sun set on Sept. 11, many Americans felt sure that another violent crisis between Israel and the Palestinians had become imminent and inevitable. The worries were especially intense in the Jewish community, understandably.
Two doomsday scenarios were widely current then. The first was that Sharon would believe he had new popular support here for a definitive and lethal crackdown on the Palestinians that would entirely isolate Israel and scupper any possibility of a negotiated settlement.
The other was a more complicated, perhaps paranoid, concern. The thinking was that with Americans victimized by grand terror within our borders for the first time, support for Israel would instantly evaporate because such support could make us more vulnerable in the future.
Those forecasts didn't play out. But the crisis did come.
The dominant thread of reaction and public conversation in this country since the weekend attacks has been to personalize the conflict and make it into a digestible "horserace" story about the fate, powers and stratagems of Yasser Arafat.
"Yasser Arafat has survived any number of 'defining moments' and 'turning points' in his decades as a Palestinian leader," wrote the editorialists at The Los Angeles Times. "Now comes another, perhaps the final one." USA Today said, "Arafat's room to maneuver finally appears to have run out." The New York Times agreed that, "Time is rapidly running out on Mr. Arafat."
Obviously, Arafat is key and the strategic box he is in is a fascinating geopolitical classic. If he wages war against the Palestinian terrorists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, he risks provoking a Palestinian civil war that he could easily lose and that would guarantee Israeli occupation well beyond the foreseeable future. If he doesn't launch a serious, sustained crackdown, Israel will do it for him, probably annihilating the Palestinian Authority and sending Araft himself back into exile, or worse.
But just as eliminating Osama bin Laden is not the end of the war on Islamist terrorism, controlling or vanquishing Arafat will not be the end the of the war on Palestinian terrorism or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Enduring suspensions of both wars will probably never happen without the active commitment of the rest of the Arab and Muslim world. Al Qaida-style terrorism will not fade away if Saudi Arabia and Egypt, for example, do nothing about it. Americans take it for granted that this will never, ever happen.
The same is true with Palestinian terrorism, according Dennis Ross, who began negotiating with Israel and Arafat during the Reagan administration and then was Bill Clinton's envoy to the Middle East.
Writing in The New York Times, Ross said, "A Palestinian war on Palestinian terrorists is the only way to save the Palestinian Authority and re-establish the core premise of peacemaking: security for Israelis; for Palestinians, an end to Israeli control of their lives. That is what we must tell Arab leaders in the region, too. If they want to help the Palestinians — if they want our help to promote peace — terror against Israel must stop. Mr. Arafat can no longer avoid his 'moment of truth,' as Secretary of State Colin Powell put it Sunday. Mr. Arafat's Arab supporters will have to tell him that, too, while there is still time."
Americans take it for granted that Arab leaders will never, ever do this either. We have lower expectations for these nations, we demand little accountability and we haven't challenged our own double standards for them. And we've paid the price in blood.
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