ON FRIDAY, GEORGE BUSH urged Ariel Sharon to make progress on ending the violence between Israelis and Palestinians. He also called on the Israeli prime minister to take advantage of diplomatic channels between Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat. Apparently, Sharon took up Bush’s call, at least on paper. Sharon yesterday said 48 hours of absolute calm were needed before he would give Peres a green light to meet Arafat. And he also offered to stop raids into autonomous Palestinian areas if Arafat declared a cease-fire. Not surprisingly, Sharon dangled all these carrots as Israeli tanks were rolling into the West Bank.
Arafat did not directly order his troops to lay down their weapons for he had already said he was committed to a cease-fire and was ready to meet Peres, any place, any time. As for the much-anticipated Arafat-Peres encounter, Sharon’s veto on an immediate meeting heightened tensions within the Israeli government after Peres said he did not understand why Sharon should say no to a meeting when he had initially given the green light. But if anything, Sharon’s hesitation explains his motives as well as his ambitions for his country — while showing the limits of his vision.
Through a combination of armored raids into Palestinian territory, assassinations, air strikes and blockades, Israel was supposed to wear down the Palestinians. But nearly six months after Sharon took office and almost a year since the uprising began, the violence continues and the Palestinians still stand. The violence continued unabated yesterday as three Palestinians were left dead and more than 40 were injured. Sharon had said almost next to nothing about the kind of concessions Israel is prepared to make for the sake of peace with the Palestinians, instead demanding a complete halt to Palestinian violence before any negotiations can commence. His determination that no negotiations will be conducted as long as the violence continues might sound justified but it is erroneous. One dare not give a veto to the extreme radical holding the gun.
What he is prepared to offer is dismissed as an attempt to kill the Palestinians’ long-sought goal of statehood. There is no indication that Sharon would agree to halt the construction of Jewish settlements in Israeli-occupied territories, as was recommended by the Mitchell Commission, or take steps to end the current crisis, or put in place confidence-building measures, or resuming the negotiations.
Sharon’s strategy is aimed as much at pleasing his constituency as defeating the Palestinians. Over time, he believes the pressure that he can bring to bear on Arafat will become unbearable. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have an agenda as well. They, too, have a goal: To be free of Israeli occupation, to regain sovereignty over East Jerusalem at least; and to have the refugees of 1948 and 1967 free to return. The Palestinians’ is a liberation struggle. Theirs is a supremely moral cause. And it is from the morality of their cause that they derive their greatest strength.
Sharon must bury the notion that he can somehow subcontract Israel’s security to the Palestinians. Responsibility for Israel’s security rests solely on Israel, not on the Palestinians, and a government that refuses to shoulder that burden, or cannot figure out how to do it, forfeits its legitimacy. There is only one way out of this current spiral of violence. It requires that Israel limit its sovereignty to areas which it can on its own assume responsibility for its citizen’s security. That can only mean a return to Israel’s pre-1967 borders.
Now Sharon finds himself in an uncomfortable position. He is all but required by Bush to tell the Palestinians and in fact the world that he is ready for a negotiated settlement to resolve the strife. But no one close to Sharon says he is prepared to offer the Palestinians territorial concessions even remotely akin to what international law stipulates they should receive.
