War, as a Remedy, Is Not at Work Here

Once the Camp David summit ended in failure, Yasser Arafat turned to the so-called great powers--Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France--in search of diplomatic support. He was disappointed when all of them, even the Chinese, urged him to quickly resume negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and warned him against any unilateral declaration of independence or any reversion to violence.

Once the violence erupted nonetheless, the Russians, Chinese and French all voted in the U.N. Security Council to condemn Israeli riot-control practices. Yet they would not condemn Barak’s policy, only his police. None was willing to endorse Arafat’s new conditions for a return to negotiations: Israel’s acceptance of total withdrawal to the 1967 lines and of the right of return of all descendants of all Palestinian refugees. Russia, China and even France joined the U.S. and Britain in viewing the two conditions as excessive and wholly unrealistic.

For the first time in three decades, Arafat could not count on the backing of even a single great power.

His reaction was to turn to the Arab and wider Muslim world in which his demands are viewed as reasonable or even modest. That is why he has focused the new intifada on Jerusalem and the Al Aqsa mosque rather than all other issues in dispute.

Little is heard these days of the democratic and secular state that Arafat always promised in the past. Now he says he is fighting for an Islamic Palestine, with its Islamic capital Al Quds. But no Muslim armies are on the march, and so far no Arab state is ready to fight for the Palestinians.

In the past, Arafat’s talents gathered money, arms and great-power support for his cause. Except for the rather modest gifts of richer Arab rulers, this time Arafat’s gains are purely procedural, in U.N. voting.

Palestinian losses by contrast are substantive. Israeli counterattacks and reprisals are incapacitating the Palestinian Authority, many of whose structures are being destroyed. Israeli checkpoints and road-blocks that Arafat’s men cannot defeat fragment the West Bank and Gaza. Economic losses are accumulating: The exclusion of Palestinian labor from Israel has cut off a vital source of income, and Palestinian products and produce can no longer reliably reach the Israeli market. Israelis no longer shop in Gaza, the Arab towns of the West Bank or in the Arab quarter of Jerusalem. New shopping centers built for them are deserted. The growth of the Palestinian economy under the Oslo accords is now being reversed. Once again, the general Palestinian population--whose consent to start a war was never sought or obtained--is suffering acute distress.

But if peace cannot be achieved by diplomacy, it may yet be achieved by war--that being admittedly only a lesser peace of separation, rather than a full peace of reconciliation. War destroys itself by consuming the resources, willpower and hopes needed to keep fighting. Unless one side annihilates the other--a very rare event in history--leaders and nations eventually accept the compromises necessary for peace. War can therefore bring about peace, by exhaustion--with or without negotiations--agreements or treaties.

War is 1,000 killed here today, 2,000 killed there tomorrow, cities wrecked and villages obliterated, as in the Balkans most recently. With all passions spent, Croats, Serbs and Muslims now coexist without killing each other, even if they cannot yet cooperate.

No such war process has been underway between Israelis and Palestinians. In spite of all the dramatic television imagery and wildly exaggerated language--the prime minister of Morocco accused the Israelis of “exterminating” the Palestinians--90 killed in 12 days, 200 killed in a month, 300 killed in three months and a few dozen buildings destroyed is not war. Israeli casualties remain trivial. Therefore no peace by exhaustion is forthcoming. Today’s sporadic violence could continue indefinitely.

Progress toward a peace of separation would require substantially more violence--enough of it to induce the Palestinians to avoid armed confrontations with Israeli troops and to induce the Israelis to dismantle the most exposed settlements in the West Bank and all settlements in the Gaza Strip.

War can be its own remedy, if fought in earnest.