The message of the first anniversary of the intifada observed yesterday, which turned out to be one of the bloodiest day in the history of the uprising, is that here is a conflict that cannot be solved with patchwork solutions. It will not begin to get solved so long as it is treated as a nuisance that need to be shoved out of the way so that the movers and shakers of the world can sit down to attend to the businesses they consider serious from their national perspectives. Events have proved that it is not a sideshow; it looks like the main show.
The “tentative peace accord” signed by President Yasser Arafat and Israel’s Foreign Minister Shimon Peres has not made a wee bit of difference to the facts on the ground. The Palestinian rage remains as strong as on the day Ariel Sharon, then a political pariah and now prime minister, chose to sabotage the painstaking search for peace with his visit to the Al-Aqsa compound. The Israelis, for their part, remain determined to deny basic dignity to the victims of their half-a-century-long rapaciousness.
The anniversary has added four more Palestinians to the list of the dead and seventy more to that of the injured. The signs are that more and more bloodshed will continue to define the struggle. Homage will continue to be paid for peace efforts, but the conflict will go on, claiming victims in the lands of the occupied and the occupier and also of those who stand aside and watch. Left to themselves and ordered to “go and find peace”, the Palestinians and Israelis can find nothing more than the kind of accord that was produced a couple of days ago and was being violated even while it was being signed. The reason was that both the sides were not seeking peace with each other, but with the United States and Europe. They were going through the motions because neither of them wanted the stigma of having sabotaged the big “war against terrorism”.
They were not seeking peace with each other because one had no hope of getting it and the other had no intention of giving it. The Palestinians, tasting the fruits of the peace process, had found them bitter. All that it had done, as far they could see, was to legitimize the occupation. For over half a century, they had suffered humiliation from their occupier. The peace they got had not ended the humiliation, but they were told that there was a big difference: the ones humiliating them were no longer the occupier, but their “peace partner”. And the sponsor of the peace process was telling them that any other attitude was an incitement to violence that Arafat had to end it before he would even look at them.
As for Israelis, they were satisfied with the process. They had things pretty much the way they wanted, except for the bombings that disturbed their peace once in a while. But they knew that, with the violence against them reviled as terrorism and the assassinations and mayhem they were responsible for applauded as reprisals, they could ride out the trouble.
If it is to change, there has to be a concerted international effort no less earnest than the one that is now being exerted to end international terrorism. Platitudes are no substitute for justice. The United Nations has set out, in its resolutions, how it has to be solved. Those who have the voices that will be listened to must be prepared to say to both parties, as they are telling Bin Laden, “This is how you do it”.
