Prerequisite to Mideast peace

By Jeff Jacoby
June 27, 2002
Boston Globe Online
http://www.boston.com

There are times, George Orwell is reputed to have said, when 
the first duty of an intelligent man is to restate the obvious. 
President Bush did his duty this week when he cut through the 
murk of the past nine years - the years of the Middle East 
"peace process" - and asserted some obvious truths. 

"Today, Palestinian authorities are encouraging, not opposing 
terrorism," he said. "Today, the elected Palestinian legislature 
has no authority, and power is concentrated in the hands of an 
unaccountable few.... Today, the Palestinian people live in 
economic stagnation made worse by official corruption."
All of this is true, and all of it has been persistently 
denied or ignored for years by most of the world's governments - 
including, until very recently, those of Israel and the 
United States. 

Having acknowledged obvious facts, Bush drew the obvious 
conclusion. Peace between Israel and the Palestinians will not 
be possible until there is "a new and different Palestinian 
leadership ... not compromised by terror" and until Palestinian 
society becomes "a practicing democracy based on tolerance and 
liberty."

Unfortunately, there is no chance that the Palestinians will 
willingly undertake such a transformation. For one thing, 
the existing Palestinian rulers will not agree to go. 
That includes not only Yasser Arafat but his lieutenants - 
the likes of Jibril Rajoub, Mohammed Dahlan, Mahmoud Abbas, 
Ahmed Qurei, and Marwan Barghouti, all of whom are "compromised 
by terror."

But it is not only Arafat and his aides who are compromised by 
terror. The Palestinian people themselves are openly wedded 
to it and deeply opposed to coexistence with Israel. Bush fudged 
when he said, "The hatred of a few holds the hopes of many 
hostage." The dismal truth is that among the Palestinians, 
it is the majority who nurse hatred and support the slaughter 
of civilians.

Just this month, a poll by the Jerusalem Media and Communication 
Center, a Palestinian institute, found that 68 percent of 
Palestinians approve of suicide bombings and 51 percent favor 
the liquidation of Israel. Palestinian TV extols the 
terror attacks that have been turning Israeli pizza shops and 
commuter buses into horrific scenes of massacre. Palestinian 
muftis preaching in the mosques of Gaza exhort the faithful 
to kill Jews "wherever you meet them." Summer camps indoctrinate 
Palestinian kids in jihad; schoolbooks teach them that Israel 
must be destroyed.

The nearly nine years of Arafat's misrule have poisoned 
Palestinian society, and in such toxic soil peace cannot take 
root. Palestinians have been steeped in hatred and bloodlust; 
great numbers of them are convinced that it is only a matter 
of time until the Jews are expelled and all of "Palestine" is 
theirs. It is folly to think that they could abruptly change 
course and extend to Israel the hand of neighborly goodwill.

As a prerequisite to peace, Palestinian culture must be 
drastically reformed. The venom of the Arafat era must be 
drained. Persons implicated in terrorism must be punished 
and ostracized; democratic norms must be instilled; the virtue 
of tolerance must be learned. There is only one way to effect 
such wholesale changes: The Palestinian Authority has to be 
dealt a devastating military defeat, one that will crush 
Arafat and his junta and shatter forever the Palestinian 
fantasy of "liberating" Israel and driving the Jews into 
the sea.

Then the Palestinian territories must be reoccupied, the terror 
chieftains executed, and the putrescence of Arafat and Hamas 
flushed away. That will make it possible to rebuild the 
structures of civil society - the legislature, the courts, 
the police, the media, and, above all, the schools - from 
the ground up. The Palestinian polity can become a true liberal 
democracy, one committed to pluralism, civil rights, competitive 
elections, and the marketplace of ideas. When that happens, 
peace with Israel will be a given, and no one will fear a 
Palestinian state.

A pipe dream? Not at all. There is a model for just this sort 
of transformation: the US occupation of Japan. 

In 1945, the United States dealt the brutal Japanese empire 
an annihilating defeat. The atom bomb broke Japan's will to 
fight and forced upon it the shame of surrender and occupation. 
General Douglas MacArthur was Japan's supreme ruler for 
the next seven year - years he used to forcibly remake the 
country. A new constitution was imposed, new laws written, 
a new educational system mandated. The values of democracy 
were explained and popularized. By the time the occupation 
ended, a frenzied warmonger had been transformed into a 
peaceable democracy. Japan remains to this day a trusted 
ally of the West. The postwar treatment of Germany was much 
the same.

There are differences, of course - no one proposes to drop 
an A-bomb on Gaza - but what was done to Japan and to Germany 
can be done to the Palestinians. Pulverizing defeat followed 
by occupation and transformation. It would be a blessing to 
all the peoples of the Middle East - to the Palestinians 
above all.

Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.