Retribution and Rhetoric Won’t Fix Mideast Woes

Benjamin Netanyahu was elected Israel’s prime minister last year in no small part because a series of suicide bombings by Palestinian fanatics had undercut public confidence in then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres’ approach to peacemaking. Netanyahu said he would continue negotiations with Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority and promised that the peace he sought would be accompanied by real security. Fourteen months into his term, the hard-line Netanyahu can point to scant progress on the negotiating front. And, as last week’s bombing atrocity in a Jerusalem marketplace made tragically evident, he has been unable to assure Israeli security. The negotiating process is at a standstill, the deepest suspicions of both sides have been reinforced, the hopes of moderates in both camps diminish by the day.

Netanyahu’s response to the Jerusalem bombing has been to impose a collective punishment on the Arab populations of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and to blame Arafat for doing too little to curb Palestinian extremists. Arafat has much to answer for. But without evidence that the suicide bombers came from the West Bank or Gaza, it is stretching a point to claim that Arafat abetted their crime. Meanwhile, the economic punishments Israel has put into effect are working mainly to fuel explosive tensions, as the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, has warned. Among these sanctions are barring Palestinians from their jobs in Israel and withholding millions in tax revenues from the Palestinian Authority. As the United States has pointed out, that flouts the terms of the Israeli-Palestinian agreement.

For Arafat and other Palestinian officials to suggest that last week’s bombing was prompted by frustration with the lagging peace process is plainly nonsense. Last year’s pre-election bombings, which helped topple the most accommodating Israeli prime minister the Palestinians had ever dealt with, were hardly a sign of impatience with the pace of peace talks. They were instead aimed at sabotaging the effort to achieve a settlement that would allow two peoples to share disputed territory, an objective scorned by absolutists in both camps. For all the high emotions of the moment and the profound distrust that exists, Israeli and Palestinian leaders still face this basic choice: They can let the extremists win or they can tone down their own rhetoric, moderate their actions and again make a good-faith effort to end their brutal and sterile conflict.