The decision by Hamas and Islamic Jihad to end their two-month-old truce following the killing of top Hamas official Ismail Abu Shanab in Gaza by the Israelis is understandable as an emotional response. But it is a bad response. The only way to a just peace in the Middle East is through negotiations and dialogue. Violence and armed struggle will produce nothing other than more violence and more deaths — both of Palestinians and Israelis.
In fact, both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been disingenuous as regards the cease-fire, which neither had wanted but had accepted as a result of massive Pan-Arab pressure on them to go along with the road map to a Middle East settlement. Within minutes of Thursday’s Gaza attack, both rushed to declare it over. But both had already claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s bomb attack in Jerusalem which killed 20 people and which prompted the Israeli attack. They cannot claim responsibility and at the same time say they are maintaining a cease-fire.
The fact that both Hamas and Islamic Jihad did so suggests that a rogue group was responsible. In other words, neither organization — rather like President Yasser Arafat and hard-pressed Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas — is in control of its grass roots, or of events in general, if it ever was. By instantly declaring the truce over, both are responding to the public mood, a mood that is almost entirely emotional and random, instead of leading from the front, with a strategic objective in mind. Oppressed, occupied, seeing friends and relatives killed by a ruthless and infinitely more powerful Israeli military machine, the Palestinians prefer the message of destructive defiance preached by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, even though in terms of achieving results it is as impotent as the all-too-similar message peddled to the Israeli public by Ariel Sharon.
It is bad enough that Israeli public opinion allows itself to be hijacked by emotionalism, willingly devouring the lie from Sharon that Israel does not need to make concessions, that force can bring it peace and security, and that reprisals will terrorize the Palestinians into obedience.
Emotionalism is the last thing Palestinians need. To win their freedom, they need to use intelligence, reason and political skill. Emotion is for losers. US Secretary of State Colin Powell has said that Israel and the Palestinians would fall off “a cliff” if they abandon the road map. It is impossible to disagree. There is no alternative — which means that Hamas and Islamic Jihad must be made to reverse their decision and re-establish the cease-fire. Arab governments must do their utmost to make that happen. Otherwise this chance of peace will disappear like all the others before it.
