Process, not peace
By Jonathan Rosenblum

(July 13) "The fatal flaw of the Oslo process," writes New
Republic publisher Martin Peretz in the June 26 issue, "is
process. Israel committed itself to an extended sequence
of negotiation and concession, while what was expected
of the Palestinians was mostly that they show up and
mutter empty formulas of reassurance." 

Michael Gove recently described in the Times of London
the iron law of peace processes supervised by the Great
Powers: any contested prize is divided down the middle
regardless of the merits of the claims. The division of
Czechoslovakia is the model. If only one side is giving,
and the process is extended over enough stages,
eventually the other side receives just about everything. 

No one understood this better than Hafez Assad. After
each new Israeli concession, Assad found a pretext to
terminate negotiations. The next round invariably began at
the point of the latest Israeli concession, and concluded
with Israel conceding half of the increasingly small
differences between its position and Assad's unchanging
maximalist demands. 

Over the years, Assad thus managed to secure Israeli
agreement to the return of the entire Golan Heights,
without making a single concession. 

Yasser Arafat has learned the same lesson. Rescued from
bankruptcy and near oblivion by the Oslo process, within
three years he found himself absolute sovereign over 95%
of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza. 

Those gains are long forgotten, and the Palestinians have
convinced themselves that they have received nothing. 

Back to ground zero. 

TODAY, ACCORDING to almost all credible reports,
Prime Minister Barak is willing to cede 85-95% of the
West Bank, including the Jordan River Valley, without
agreement on the most contentious issues - the Palestinian
right of return, and Jerusalem. Water experts warn there
will be no water to drink within 11 months, and yet Israel
is prepared to hand over vital West Bank acquifers and
grant the Palestinian state riparian rights to the Jordan
River. 

The greatest internal threat to Israel is demographic: the
rapid growth of the Israeli Arab population that openly
identify themselves as Palestinians. The Israeli Arab
population already holds the determinative votes on the
most vital issues of Israeli security, and yet Barak is said
to be ready to accept 100,000 Palestinian refugees -
refugees who have been raised for 52 years on
murderous hatred of the Jewish state. 

Worst of all, the process will not lead to peace. 

Indeed, writes Gove, embracing the peace process is the
surest way to ensure war will never end. As long as issues
are left unresolved to a later date, Arafat has a constant
incentive to threaten war. This week the Palestinian army
(not police force) conducted military operations in
anticipation of the declaration of statehood. Maj.-Gen.
Amos Malka, head of military intelligence, warned the
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of likely
Palestinian attacks on settlements. He also told the
committee that Arafat will not sign a document declaring
the end of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, leaving us
wondering what this process has been about. 

Barak knows as well as anyone that peace is not in the
cards. Shortly after forming a government, he told Mort
Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, at
a meeting of major American Jewish leaders, that it is
ridiculous to expect the Palestinians to remove the calls
for Israel's destruction from their textbooks. Peace will
have to wait for future generations. 

If so, Klein wondered, why the rush now to give away
land necessary for our defense? Barak told him that giving
territory to the Palestinians will motivate them to act
responsibly and begin the process of reconciliation. 

A nice theory. But a nation should not bet its survival on
theories. (Remember how every political science expert in
the country assured us that direct elections of the prime
minister would end the power of smaller parties?) 

Indeed, an opposite theory is far more plausible. The PA
kleptocracy will have a vested interest in distracting its
own population by continually fanning the flames of
hatred, just as Assad needed confrontation with Israel to
divert the Syrian population from his regime's failures.
And with the Palestinian army now in a position to
completely disrupt Israeli mobilization in the event of war,
the temptation for an all-out Arab attack has been greatly
increased. After a year of the Barak government, there
are not many who still share his supreme confidence in his
unique analytical powers. Israeli strategy has become a
source of puzzlement in the eyes of the world. American
senators and congressmen sympathetic to Israel, and
American Jewish leaders, are increasingly unable to
discern the nature of that strategy. 

The Jewish leaders I spoke to on a recent trip to America
were left shaking their heads by the prime minister's
penchant for unsolicited "good will" gestures - like voting
to transfer Abu Dis to full Palestinian control while Israeli
troops were under fire by Palestinian militia. 

Perhaps Barak seeks to confuse Arafat with unsolicited
presents for nothing in return. Martin Peretz's attitude
towards the Oslo process is one indication of the growing
wonderment of those who care about Israel. Once a
cautious supporter of the Oslo Accords, today he calls
them a "mistake." Once he saluted Shimon Peres as the
most literate head of state in the world. Today he refers
to him as "Shimon Peres, the French intellectual," [and]
father of this 'what's yours is yours and what's mine is
yours' process." 

In the end, Barak's principal achievement may be creating
national unity, though not perhaps the type intended. Ran
Cohen of Meretz said on television this week that "when
the full extent of Barak's concessions become known, not
only will the Israeli Right be in shock, but the Left as
well." 

As war weary as we may be, the vast majority of the
country is not yet prepared to commit suicide for peace.