‘Ceasing the Fire’ Is a 2-Way Street

The new Israeli government wants to set an international precedent with its demand that the Palestinians unilaterally end their violence and terrorism before Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations will be renewed.

The Israeli government’s request seems oblivious to its own violence and that of its citizens, as well as to the fact that people who live under military rule have an internationally sanctioned right to resist occupation. Peoples around the world have acted to rid themselves of foreign military rule and have never been known to stop their resistance as a condition to begin talks.

Certainly, in times of war, parties have reached cease-fire agreements. But cease-fire agreements have two basic conditions: Both sides commit to “ceasing the fire,” and the cease-fires have political support. Guarantees from a third party would strengthen any cease-fire agreement.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ran an ambitious campaign that pledged to bring security and peace to Israel. Short of Israel crushing the Palestinians and the Palestinians surrendering, this is highly unlikely to occur. Peace talks during times of conflict have been held throughout mankind’s warfare. Palestinians, fighting for the right to live in freedom, can’t be expected to stop their violent protests in order to convince their oppressors that they really want to live in peace.

A closer look at Israel’s demands shows just how one-sided and impossible they are. For 34 years, Israel, its army and its intelligence service have failed to stop the Palestinians’ resistance. Now Israel wants the Palestinian leadership to do its dirty work. Israel’s condition to restart the peace talks is for the Palestinian Authority to take an active role--if need be, military action--against its own people and stop acts of Palestinian resistance against Israeli soldiers and settlers.

During the early years of the peace process, such attempts to quash Palestinian resistance was seen in the higher national interest of the Palestinian cause. The PA did arrest and stop those extremists who were delaying and frustrating the peace process.

At that time the level of trust was high enough to allow Palestinian leaders to gamble for peace, even though the PA and Arafat took a lot of flak for this position. Arafat was called a quisling.

But now, after more than seven years of unproductive talks and watching Israel backpedal from commitments it made in Oslo, the motivation of the Palestinian Authority has disappeared.

Without any reason to trust or have confidence in Sharon’s government, the Palestinian leadership is not keen on using violence to suppress its own people and taking a chance on another open-ended peace talk that Sharon wants to start at point zero.

Armed with U.N. Security Council resolutions and successive agreements with Israeli governments, the Palestinian leadership is simply asking that Israel fulfill what it previously agreed to. For its part, Palestinian officials have said they will reciprocate. But they will not agree to be left holding the bag while Israel essentially imprisons 3 million Palestinians, shells residential areas, carries out summary executions, shoots at demonstrators and then asks our leadership to stop their fellow nationals’ acts of resistance.

The Sharon administration’s real reason behind this impossible request is simple. It is unwilling, and probably unable, to adhere to international law and the political price that a genuine, lasting peace requires between a secure Israel and an independent Palestine.