IF PAST HISTORY is any guide, Israeli response to the bus attack in the northern Israeli port city of Haifa will certainly be fierce. Most past attacks have elicited tough military reprisals, including, on two occasions, the use of F-16 bombers. The Palestinians must be ready to see their land once again reoccupied. Israeli assassinations of Palestinian freedom fighters will continue, as will the economic siege of the territories. And, perhaps, Israel will come up with one more new, original way of debilitation. Whatever the case, what is next will be ugly. In Washington, Ariel Sharon met President Bush a day earlier than planned in order that he may rush back to Tel Aviv and personally orchestrate the upcoming onslaught.
The reprisals will be tough — even though the Palestinian Authority condemned the attacks in the strongest possible terms. It paid condolences to the Israeli people. And in an emergency Cabinet meeting yesterday, it said it will do everything in its power to capture those responsible. Indeed, Saturday’s attack came in the midst of the arrest of more than a dozen members of the Islamic Jihad group after the group claimed responsibility for two suicide attacks in Israel this week.
But no matter how strong the Israeli reprisals will be, they will be met in kind by a Palestinian response. That has been the format almost since the uprising began 14 months ago. There is little hope the scenario will change; nobody on either side and beyond should be surprised if it doesn’t.
The twin attacks have worsened the Mideast situation just as the new American envoys to the region were getting started in their search for a cease-fire. This should not be seen as a mere coincidence. The Palestinian leadership says all the Israeli escalation in the occupied territories — in the four days before Anthony Zinni and William Burns arrived in the region, Israel had killed 13 Palestinians — was part of a well-planned scheme by the Israeli government to sink Zinni’s mission before it had set sail. The latest attacks against Israelis was also similarly designed to torpedo Zinni’s mission. On both sides of the fence are people ready and able to stymie peace efforts by carrying out attacks on either side.
Which is why the Palestinians and Israelis, plus the United States, must continue to work for a peace settlement. Neither side will get everything it wants. Each will have to compromise. But only through this door will peace be achieved, notwithstanding the individuals who stand in the way, none more so than Sharon himself.
The Israeli prime minister never fails to sabotage any and all peace initiatives by instigating attacks and maintaining the status quo. Ahead of his trip to the US, he signaled no change in his approach to the conflict, a myopic vision which falls far short of Palestinian aspirations for a state on all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and insisted on seven days of calm before a truce-to-talks plan can take effect. Sharon’s insistence on a week without violence before implementing the Tenet and Mitchell plans were the first stumbling blocks Zinni has encountered. The idea is unrealistic, as the past 24 hours have revealed so starkly, because it provides Sharon with a reason not to have to do what the Mitchell report requires of him because there will never be seven days of absolute calm and Sharon knows it. As such, there must be a consequence for non-performance. There has been no shortage of commitments made in the past year but there has been an absence of commitments actually carried out. Accountability thus has to be a part of the process.
The killing of even once civilian, be he Palestinian or Israeli, is deplorable and is condemned. But the desperation behind such acts must be understood. The conditions that lead people to commit such acts is also condemned. The occupation that has lasted for over 50 years is the original sin.
