Sharon's Moment

June 4, 2001 The Wall Street Journal

People get confused about the direction of aggression in the
Middle East, so let's see if we can get the past days events
straight. On Friday night a Palestinian suicide bomber blew
up 20 young Israelis, mostly Russian immigrants, outside a
disco. Israel does not retaliate. While Israel's cabinet
meets, Yasser Arafat appears to issue a cease-fire. Israel
replies that it wants Arafat to match words with "deeds,"
specifically rearresting the Islamic militants who in the
fall were let out of a Palestinian prison and then proceeded
to the recent terror campaign. A more fundamental "deed"
would be if Mr. Arafat ceased indoctrinating Palestinian
school children with hatred of Israel. Alas, no.

On Sunday a meeting of Palestinian factions -- there are 14
factions -- said in a statement that "Our people have a
right . . . to pursue the popular Intifada (uprising) as a
legitimate means against the continuing occupation of our
land and to achieve our national rights."

We have arrived at a familiar place. Let us explain.

It's almost 20 years ago that Ariel Sharon stopped by the
editorial rooms of The Wall Street Journal to tell us, as he
had just finished telling the Reagan administration, of the
danger of war in Lebanon. He pulled out his famous maps, and
sketched the problem, which was that Soviet- and Syrian-backed
terrorists had set up operations in the village of Damour and,
from that redoubt, were running terrorist operations against
Israel and other nations.

Upon the next incident that could be traced to any one of the
terrorist factions operating out of Lebanon, Mr. Sharon warned
that Israel, which had already massed its troops, would invade.
He was then asked what, minimally, Israel would seek to
accomplish. He said it would seek to seize enemy weapons and
materiel that had been stockpiled at caves near Damour. He said
Israel would go as far into Lebanon as need be, and he said the
country intended to dismantle the PLO infrastructure that was
there. The Wall Street Journal printed 2 million copies of its
story conveying that news.

Not long thereafter, Palestinian Arab terrorists operating out
of Lebanon attacked Israel's envoy in London, and the war began.
Arabs and their communist sympathizers and other left-wingers
sympathetic to the Arabs sought from the start to undermine
support for Mr. Sharon in Israel and abroad. Eventually, after
the Syrian-backed assassination of Lebanon's president, Bashir
Gemayel, Lebanese phalangist forces seeking revenge entered the
Palestinian Arab refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila and committed
a terrible massacre. Mr. Sharon's enemies pounced. An Israeli
commission said Mr. Sharon should have foreseen the danger.
He was driven from the defense ministry. The left-wing history
of the Lebanon war prospered, and it took a generation for
Israel to call back Mr. Sharon to lead the nation in its worst
crisis. It would not be surprising to us if this history turned
out to be the explanation for one of the most puzzling facts
about the Middle East crisis today -- the fact that the question
heard most frequently: Why doesn't Prime Minister Sharon do
something? Far from being reckless, it turns out that Mr. Sharon
has been exceptionally prudent in his conduct of the country's
leadership, as the past weekend makes clear. No doubt he knows
what he is doing. Our sense of the situation is that the
terrorist violence has reached the point where even his political
adversaries at home in Israel and erstwhile skeptics overseas
understand the need for action.

What the American President can do at this point is articulate
his support on behalf of the U.S. and the world. Mr. Sharon has
said all along he will make his decisions based on what is right
for Israel, without allowing himself to be pushed around by any
foreign power. He is right to do so. What was the point of having
Mr. Bush demand that Yasser Arafat condemn the latest bombing?
Stopping civilian massacres is a "deed" Mr. Arafat should have
accomplished long ago.

It would have been far more appropriate for Mr. Bush to say,
simply, that Mr. Sharon and his democratically elected national
unity government, including hawks and doves, will -- when they
make their move -- have the support and understanding of the
administration, the Congress and the American people. There are
some things that cannot be settled by diplomacy, and the kind
of terrorist war that Yasser Arafat has launched against Israel
is one of them. That he launched it in the face of an offer from
then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak that was far more generous than
anyone had a right to expect only underscores this point.