Haaretz
Tamuz 7, 5766
Last Thursday, the state of Israel provided
resounding proof for the old argument that it has no partner for dialogue
among the Palestinian leaders: It arrested a significant number of them
and physically removed them from office. From now on, there can be no
doubt that Israel has no one to talk to in Ramallah. And if the abduction
of Corporal Gilad Shalit is not resolved, then in the near future, the
Gazan half of the Palestinian leadership will be unavailable as well.
According to the Israeli plan, it is destined for targeted assassination.
Yasser Arafat was the first Palestinian leader with whom dialogue
was impossible. He was the grandfather of impurity, the devil whose entire
raison d'etre was to destroy the state of Israel. Even after gaining
recognition as a result of the Oslo Accords, he continued to be depicted
as a nefarious plotter whose handshake concealed a dagger. The official
Israeli version, which was based on credible intelligence work and learned
personality analysis, was that Arafat had not given up his intention to
throw the Israelis into the sea. After the failure of the Camp David
summit in 2000, he was said to be responsible for carefully readying
Palestinian terror organizations for the Al-Aqsa Intifada. When the
intifada broke out, it reconfirmed the old saying that there is no one to
talk to on the Palestinian side and that the leader of the Palestinian
people was nothing but a sly, violent thug who temporarily impersonated a
statesman.
Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, was labeled a
helpless weakling. Israeli intelligence conceded that his intentions were
good but said he was powerless. Once again, proof that Israel had no
partner in dialogue. Ismail Haniyeh, who was elected prime minister in an
election which Israel agreed to, was considered a leper who must be
shunned. Now even he is being portrayed as a puppet whose strings are
being pulled by arch-terrorist Khaled Meshal, who Israeli intelligence
believes can make things happen in the Palestinian Authority with a single
word. Once more, no one to talk to.
Even if this is true, and
Israel is (as Ehud Barak has said) a villa in a jungle filled with
predatory animals, it is not exempt from asking itself whether its best
chance of survival lies in not recognizing its neighbors, in alienating
itself from them and in humiliating them. The day is coming when the
international community, and some Israelis too, ask themselves (and the
government) whether the claim that all Palestinian leaders are unfit for
dialogue is logical, effective and credible. Is this attitude not also a
self-fulfilling prophecy on Israel's part, the fruits of prejudice,
self-righteousness and perhaps hidden intentions? How does the government
hope to create a stable relationship with the Palestinians if it negates
the legitimacy of all of its leaders and denies the authority of the
Palestinian people to sovereign rule led by its elected representatives?
The arrest of public figures in Hamas is intended to provide
Israel with a bargaining chip vis-a-vis Gilad Shalit's kidnappers. So that
Israel itself will not be seen as a state that takes hostages, the arrests
are justified on the grounds that Hamas is a terror organization, but
everyone knows that in the jungle sometimes one is dragged into behaving
like one's neighbors. Still, the residents of the villa would be well
advised to look ahead: If circumstances indeed lead Israel into
imprisoning or killing the current Palestinian leadership, will this give
rise to a more comfortable dialogue partner? Will the gross humiliation of
the Palestinian leadership make him more conciliatory? Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert hopes that his power-drunk approach will prove effective in the
long run: Its purpose is to remove abduction from the Palestinian toolbox.
He could be proven wrong: In the long run, Olmert's policy could also make
the Palestinians' more stubborn and unified and reinforce their dreams of
revenge.