|
Israeli, Palestinian Conflict: Israel Fires on Gaza City
With Warren Bass
Council on Foreign Relations
Monday, Dec. 3, 2001; 2 p.m. EST
Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles near the headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat Monday morning, in apparent retaliation for weekend suicide bombings by Islamic militants.
Warren Bass, fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, was online Monday, Dec. 3 at 2 p.m. EST, to talk about the heightened military action in the Middle East and the state of Israeli-Palestinian relations.
Bass is currently finishing a book tentatively entitled "Support Any Friend: Kennedy, Nasser, and the Origins of the U.S.-Israel Alliance." Articles by Bass have appearing in publications including The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, The New Republic, Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, U.S. News & World Report, Columbia Journalism Review, The Jerusalem Report, and Slate.
A transcript follows.
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control
over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
Chicago, Ill.:
The answer to what is happening in Israel at the moment is clear: bomb and destroy ALL of the Palestinian Authority's infrastructure, not a building here or there, but all of it. Given the mood in our own country at the moment, I think there would be sympathy for such action. As for what the rest of the Muslim world thinks, they will find reason to hate Israel no matter what. So why not bolder action?
Warren Bass: This question isn't a bad sample of what Ariel Sharon will be hearing now that he's back home in Israel. In the Middle East, of course, nothing's this simple. If Sharon yields to pressure to destroy the Palestinian Authority (PA), what comes next? Would Israel reoccupy the major cities on the West Bank? Or would destroying Arafat's government just mean that the only Palestinian leadership was Hamas--the people who brought you this weekend's horrifying bombings? The grim reality is that the two sides are doomed to live with each other--and to try to sort out some way to make that bearable.
But let's be honest: the political pressure on Sharon to swipe back, hard, will be intense.
West Chester, Pa.:
Yasser Arafat seems unwilling to tell the Palestinian people that any eventual Palestinian state will have to accomodate Israel. Is there anyone in the Arab world with the credibility to make that argument to the Palestinian people?
Warren Bass: For better or for worse, Arafat is what's there. He's a towering figure in Palestinian politics--the grand old man of Palestinian nationalism, the guy who brought them out of obscurity into the international spotlight, the godfather of the revolution. We used to say here that "Only Nixon can go to China." Similarly, Arafat's unique stature in Palestinian politics could let him make the hard concessions that would bring the Palestinian national movement to finally come to terms with Israel. But he's risk-averse. Arafat likes to govern by consensus, and he doesn't like the idea of a Palestinian civil war--let alone one waged on behalf of Ariel Sharon. He could go to China, as it were; it's just not clear he wants to. At Camp David, Arafat got offered a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem, on more than 90 percent of the West Bank, and he balked.
But is there anyone other than Arafat? Not really. Certainly, there's nobody with his stature. Your options would either be a series of local warlords, who'd be no treat, or the sort of radical Islamists who planned this weekend's bombings.
The hard fact is that making foreign policy is often about choosing between rotten options.
Austin, Tex.:
With the war of terror also comes fundamental American interest. Americans who died on Sept. 11 are the victims of the failed American foreign policy. The best policy to protect America from further terrorist attacks is for Americans to be the best friend of both sides in the Mideast. Our one sidedness no matter what position has to be changed
Warren Bass: Let's be clear: Americans who died on Sept. 11 are the victims of an organized group dedicated to mass murder. That goes for the victims of the many other countries who also died in the World Trade Center, including many citizens of Muslim nations.
And it's not self-evident to me that U.S. policy in the Middle East is one-sided. Remember, at Camp David, President Clinton was pushing the Israelis to dismantle settlements and let the Palestinians have a capital in East Jerusalem--at just about the same time he was pushing the Palestinians to bend on the "right of return" and on the need to go all the way back to the 1967 borders. One of the neat tricks about the Clinton policy--and I'm hardly going to argue it was flawless--is that he came over as both the most pro-Israel and the most pro-Palestinian president in memory.
I'd be careful about assuming too much about what U.S. policy is. This is a pretty complicated part of the planet.
And in some ways, it's precisely the attempts by the U.S. to befriend Middle Eastern countries--helping back Saudi Arabia and Egypt--that's wound up breeding much of the anti-Americanism that opportunists like Osama bin Ladin so gleefully feed off.
Philadelphia, Pa.:
Do you give any credence to those who theorize that Sharon would rather deal with Hamas than the Palestinian Authority and that by getting rid of Arafat, Sharon and other hardliners within his cabinet will have a free hand to redraw the post-Oslo map and deal with Hamas later? In other words, could there be a level of cooperation between Hamas and factions within Israel's defense and intelligence communities around such a outcome?
Warren Bass: Frankly, I have a hard time imagining that Sharon is that stupid... Dealing with the PA is a big headache. Dealing with Hamas is just impossible. Hamas is on a mission from God, on some level; part of their moves are about jostling within the Palestinian political arena, and part of their moves are about theology. Nobody's ever won an argument with a fundamentalist, and I can't imagine why Sharon, of all people, would want to try to do business with them. So I wouldn't put a lot of stock in this one.
What's worth keeping an eye on is the Netanyahu factor. Binyamin Netanyahu, the former Likud prime minister, is gunning for Sharon's job, and he's using the allegation that Sharon has gone soft on terrorism as his main comeback theme. That puts real pressure on Sharon to crack down harder after the weekend's atrocities for fear that the Likud party base will desert Sharon for Netanyahu.
Tampa, Fla.:
Although the Israeli-Palestinian conflict obviously requires an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, what are your thoughts on the obligations of neighboring countries such as Lebanon and Jordan that have refused to accept Palestinian refugees into their societies, and instead force them to live in camps? Wouldn't the part of any solution necessary be the willingness of these nations to grant more freedoms to the Palestinians on their soil?
Warren Bass: It couldn't hurt. But the issue here has to do with a clash between two nationalisms, and it's a mistake to think that one could buy off the Palestinian refugees elsewhere in the Arab world simply by making them more comfortable where they are. (Some of those refugee camps, for the record, are pretty much neighborhoods now--like Sabra and Shatila, the scenes of the biggest blots on Sharon's reputation, which are de facto poor neighborhoods in West Beirut.)
The question of what to do with the 1948 refugees remains completely excruciating. It's a lot of why Camp David collapsed. The pieces that seem clear would be letting many of them immigrate not back to Israel proper but to a new Palestinian state on the West Bank, as well as some sort of compensation package for those who choose to stay put in their host societies. But the plight of the refugees remains the elemental grievance of Palestinian nationalism, and it's not going to be easy to take that thorn out of the Middle East's paw.
Washington, D.C.:
What do you think of the fact that shortly after the horrific coordinated suicide bombings on Saturday, U.S. news organizations were calling the men "Islamic extremists?" That they are Muslim is probably true, but wouldn't it be smarter to call them "nationalists" or "nationalist extremists" since nation building -- or, rather, nation destroying -- was the apparent goal? Doesn't attaching the word Islamic to every terrorist loon in the world who happens to be Muslim contribute to the prejudice? I mean, I don't remember hearing Timothy McVeigh being called a "Christian extremist"...
Warren Bass: I've got no problem calling McVeigh pretty much any name in the book...
I also don't have a problem calling the killers from the weekend extremists (although I like the term "Islamist" better than "Islamic" for these guys--it conveys the idea that they're using Islam as an "ism"). Let's face it: Hamas are not nationalist extremists in the same way as the secular nationalists elsewhere in the PLO. Their vision of a Palestinian state is strongly influenced by a desire to see it look like the early Islamic polity at the time of the early caliphate. That's a pretty radical vision, and it's deeply influenced by religion, rather than modern nationalism.
That said, blaming all Muslims for the crimes of a few is as offensive as it is inaccurate. Bigotry doesn't look any better after 9/11 than it did before. In fact, it looks worse. But let's face it, there is a real problem in the Arab and Muslim world--not just because those worlds' societies produced a bin Ladin, but because those worlds' politics produced a climate where many, many people cheer him on. Fixing that is going to be a real, real tough challenge--and it's not going to get met in Washington. It's going to get met in Cairo, Riyadh, Amman, Tehran, and so on.
And it would help if decent Arabs around the Middle East would respond to the cold-blooded murder of Israeli kids with revulsion. I don't much care for the "yes, but" school of response to terrorism.
Rockville, Md.:
Is the late King Hussein's son, now the ruler of Jordan, up to the task of being a moderating influence in the region? how likely are Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria to be cooperative partners in brokering a peace.
Warren Bass: It'd be wonderful if he was a chip off the old block. Abdallah, the young king, is certainly smart and savvy, but he's a relative novice. There's no doubt that the late King Hussein could get away with things that King Abdallah can't. But the Jordanians still have the warmest peace with Israel going, unlike the downright frosty one with Egypt and the tattered one with the PA.
As for Lebanon: it'll do what Syria tells it to do.
As for Syria: you'll find them in the dictionary under "uncooperative." Four Israeli prime ministers--Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Barak--offered the entire Golan Heights to Hafiz al-Asad, and he never went for it. Would Bashar al-Asad (Hafiz's son and heir) move on peace now? Perhaps the strongest card to play is the Syrian fear that they'll get left on the wrong side of the fence in the global struggle against terror. But with Syria, one hates to hold one's breath.
Washington, D.C.:
Were the bombings a direct reponse to the arrival of Zinni, as they appeared to be? What does Hamas ultimately want?
Warren Bass: The timing feels custom-designed by Hamas to make Arafat look bad. Think about it: this happens while Zinni (the new U.S. special envoy on the peace process) is on his first trip ever to the region--and it happens while Sharon is in Washington!
But the timing also has to do with Israel's recent killing of the senior Hamas terrorist on the West Bank. Hamas' leaders figure that if they don't respond dramatically to that sort of thing, Sharon will figure he can pick off Hamas' leadership with impunity. And Hamas is also jostling to show Arafat off as weak within the Palestinian political arena. Hamas is feeling its oats--it's convinced (rightly) that Arafat is scared of a showdown. So it's riding him.
What does Hamas ultimately want? It's hard to say. In an ideal world, they'd like Israel gone, utterly, and to see Palestine stretch from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, and to see it ruled by sharia (Islamic law). But in the real world, they might settle for a slice of the pie in an Arafat-ruled Palestine--or at least, that's always been the PA's wager. But either way, they are deadly serious about killing Israelis, and they could care less if it happens to be a 14-year-old kid out for an ice cream.
Bethesda, Md.:
As we can clearly see Sharon's policy of tit for tat is not yielding the desired results. If he is successful in killing Arafat -- politically -- doesn't he risk replacing Arafat with a war hawk like himself -- Sharon? Should Sharon not honor the numerous agreements that they have signed; returning occupied Palestinian land? And what is so demonic about The Palestinians declaring statehood? Don't all people of the world have the right to live in a State? Why are the rules different when it comes to Isreal and Palestine?
Warren Bass: A few quick points in here.
Sure, Sharon's reprisals haven't brought quiet. The only thing that will do that is political will. Until Arafat really decides to take the gun and the bomb out of Palestinian politics, civilians will continue to die.
If Arafat goes, the alternatives aren't appealing. It could be local warlords like Marwan Barghouti (the leader of the Tanzim militia); it could be Hamas. It might also be some combined leadership of other PLO folks, which is the least-bad option on the table. But it could also be Jibril Rajub, Arafat's West Bank security chief, simply because he has a lot of guns.
The agreements take two to tango.
The older I get, the more nationalism in general makes me sigh; but yes, the theory does go that if the French can have France and the Belgians can have Belgium, the Jews can have Israel and the Palestinians can have Palestine. So no, nothing demonic about it. But there's plenty demonic about those bombings.
The rules of international politics should--and, I think, do--apply to the hard case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict like anywehre else. The tragedy of all this current bloodshed is that it's unnecessary. The Camp David deal would have been hard to make and harder to sell, but it was as good as it was likely to get. Arafat's short-sightedness there is going to go down in the history books, I'm afraid.
Nationalism is fine. But I wish that nationalists on both sides of this conflict could find a way to indulge their principles and also worry about the other guy's children.
Warren Bass: Thanks for all your thoughtful questions. I hope that you'll all continue monitoring this agonizing conflict; it's truly an important one.
And for now, remember: the name of the game isn't peace. It's ceasefire. And it'd be pretty good work even to get to that.
Thanks again, all.
| |
© Copyright 2002 The Washington Post Company |
