Terrorism and Arab Cause: the Lesson of 20 Years of Failure

Each week adds a new series of pointless deaths to the long list of those who have died or been hurt at the hands of terrorists associated with Palestinian or other Arab extremists.

So far this month the victims have included a pro-Arab American school administrator in Beirut, a largely Muslim and Hindu group of passengers on a Pan Am flight in Pakistan, shoppers and office workers in Paris and worshipers at a synagogue in Turkey. Only that attack specifically targeted Jews, and as citizens of a Muslim country their support for Israel was surely of negligible effect. Only once in a very great while is a victim of terrorism a citizen of Israel--and then almost always an innocent civilian.

It is time that the Arab world took a close look at the cost of these actions and just how much damage Arabs are doing to their fellow Arabs. Palestinian terrorism is producing not victories but a constant series of self-inflicted wounds.

No one can keep precise count of the number who have died at the hands of Palestinian extremists and their allies in the two decades since Israel occupied the Golan Heights, the West Bank, the Gaza and Sinai. But it is certain that the main victims of the Palestinian “armed struggle” have been Arabs, and that most have been Palestinian. Many of the most effective Palestinian spokesmen for peace and moderation, the potential negotiators of a just peace settlement, have paid for their courage with their lives. In fact, Palestinian terrorists pose so great a threat to other Arabs that no state in the Arab world feels fully safe; virtually all put severe constraints on offering Palestinians citizenship or a stable and secure life as expatriate workers.

It is true that each new killing or kidnaping re-focuses the West’s attention on its own dead and wounded. This has had a powerful negative effect, particularly in the United States. Despite the statistics and the odds, Americans tend to think of themselves as the leading victims of terrorism, and tend to identify terrorism solely with the Palestinian movement. In turn, they tend to identify the entire Arab world with that movement. Few Americans are aware that most of the 23 Arab states pose no threat of violence to Israel, or that there are at least 40 other causes and countries in the Third World where internal or external struggles result in violent acts of terrorism.

The American consciousness of Middle Eastern issues is being steadily and systematically driven in precisely the opposite direction from the one that Palestinian terrorists want to achieve.

What is most striking and consistent about Western reaction to Palestinian terrorism is that it forecloses potential sympathy for any rational Arab objective. The time has long since passed when new and more dramatic incidents of violence have done anything positive to focus the world’s attention on the Palestinian cause. Without exception, the West now treats each further killing as another irrational act that must be dealt with solely through counterterrorism.

No terrorist action or threat now influences any Western state to change its policy toward Israel, accommodate the Palestinian movement or seek new peace initiatives. The only effect is to push Western governments to create new anti-terrorism forces, tighten airport security, focus police attention on Arab visitors and workers and aid Israeli hard-liners who argue that no peace settlement with the Arab world is possible.

This is the message that every Arab should take to heart: Over the last two decades the Palestinian “armed struggle” against Israel has totally ceased to serve the Palestinian cause.

The Palestine Liberation Organization--indeed, all Palestinians--have been virtually excluded from serious political consideration either as a nation or as a people. Each new act of violence by any Palestinian faction simply drives another nail in the coffin of the Palestinian cause. Each act of terrorism deprives Palestinian moderates of their credibility. And terrorism has virtually destroyed the esteem that has been won by the Palestinian people, who, despite decades of refugee status, have become one of the best-educated groups in the Third World and the Arab world’s key source of skilled managers and teachers.

Indeed, terrorism increasingly is leading much of the American population to think of all Arabs as terrorists, regardless of the obvious fact that only a tiny minority of the Arab world has ever shown any support for such acts.

The only lesson that the Palestinian “armed struggle” has for the world’s other ideologues and fanatics is its futility and self-destructiveness. Terrorism does not intimidate the West, and particularly not the United States and Israel. It simply enrages the victim and makes the possibility of rational discourse ever more remote.

This becomes clear when one assesses the current price tag of terrorism. It discredits every Israeli and American Jew who speaks out for negotiation and moderation. It makes it steadily more difficult for any Jew to reach out across the gulf between Jew and Arab. It has virtually paralyzed the peace movement in Israel, although it is important to note that opinion polls still show that 30% to 40% of Israeli adults still would trade at least some of Israel’s occupied territory for peace.

The politics of the Arab world make this situation worse. Because Arab nationalism is based on the idea of Arab unity, and because Arab governments have long substituted hostile rhetoric about Israel for hostile action, no Arab leader can openly say that Palestinian “freedom fighters” are their own worst enemy. No Arab journalist can point out that every terrorist “martyr” really dies in order to increase U.S. aid to Israel and U.S. tolerance for Israeli settlement of the occupied territories. And virtually no Arab-American, no matter how moderate, dares to avoid paying lip service to the idea of solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

Combined with the related need to somehow defend or excuse Col. Moammar Kadafi, this linkage between Palestinian terrorism and Arab nationalism threatens to virtually destroy Arab political influence in the United States. Even the most skillful Arab spokesmen --such as Clovis Maksoud, the Arab League’s representative at the United Nations--cannot command real policy-level attention.

No major U.S. politician really cares at this point what the Palestinians or Arab Americans want. In fact, Arab-American lobbying groups, in their attempts to rationalize the excesses of Palestinian nationalism, simply strengthen Israel’s cause on Capitol Hill. The threat to destroy Israel, which remains a stated goal of the PLO, does not seem idle to people in Washington, and becomes less so when zealous promoters of the Arab position carelessly label all Israelis, Jewish Americans and even non-Jewish supporters of Israel as “Zionist.”

It has always been obvious that a sustained U.S. peace initiative could be built only by creating ties between Jewish and Arab Americans, just as it must ultimately be built on creating such ties between Israelis and Palestinians. The endless hijackings, kidnapings and murders of innocents on three continents make this impossible. To the extent that the United States must play a role in the peace process, Palestinian terrorism has served only to prevent that role from being an effective one.

The Palestinians’ cause has become factionalized, and it may be impossible for its more radical practitioners of terrorism to reach a common understanding that no act of violence--no matter how high the body count or how heavy the media attention--does anything other than make their situation worse.

It seems equally unlikely that Yasser Arafat and Abu Nidal can face the fact that they have one thing in common: They are the natural allies of the Likud, of every Israeli who believes that Eretz Israel can be based on the permanent occupation of territory with a Palestinian majority, and of those like Ariel Sharon who speak for a military solution to every problem and the constant suppression of Palestinian rights.

Unfortunately, there is at least one axiom that never seems to have been translated into Arabic: Against stupidity, the gods themselves are helpless.