Magic spells, miracle cures and enchanted amulets have throughout time proven effective at deluding the gullible and blindly optimistic into denying reality and trusting illusion. Of course, there's nothing wrong with a person carrying a lucky penny around or turning to alternative medicine when all scientific treatment fails. However, when a person refuses to accept rational solutions to his problems and relies exclusively on quack cures, the problems are bound to become more aggravated. When a person or group forces this choice on other people, thereby causing great damage to them, such actions verge on criminality.
Maybe it has something to do with the history of miracles and divine presence in the region, but an unreal number of otherwise sober people choose to believe in voodoo solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian war. The hottest new magic trick? It's the premise that the election of Mahmoud Abbas will bring peace to Israel and Palestine. Who's buying it? Most of the same people who supported Oslo, who believed Arafat wanted peace, and who felt that diplomacy would magically replace the Palestinian goal of annihilating Israel with a PBS children's show-like desire for coexistence. Jimmy Carter thinks that the election "opens an opportunity for renewed peace negotiations." Bill Clinton believes that Abbas "is certainly capable of putting together a coalition which will make peace." Their lan is shared by swarms of world government officials, heads of NGOs and media commentators.
Like Alzheimer's patients, these people seem to have lost all memory of recent history, namely the period from 1993 to 2000. Like children, they seem to lack the ability to make a prognosis of the future based on current realities. And like characters in a sappy Hollywood movie, they mindlessly hope for a happy ending against all odds.
The Middle East is no Hollywood movie, and the odds are very much against peace through diplomacy. As Israelis prepared to cede the West Bank and Gaza to make peace, the Palestinians prepared for war. As Nabil Shaath, Arafat's chief peace negotiator, said in 1996: "If Israel says, 'we will not discuss Jerusalem, we will not return refugees,' we will return to violence, but this time it will be with 30,000 armed Palestinian soldiers."
The Palestinians returned to violence in 2000 and started a war of aggression against Israel. More than four years later, they have thoroughly failed. From being the most wealthy and educated Arab society without oil reserves, they have descended into anarchy and despair. Battles between the Israeli Army and Palestinian fighters almost never result in Israeli casualties while the mujahideen lose scores. Many recent terror attacks like yesterday's explosion at the border crossing through which humanitarian assistance reaches Gaza result in more Palestinian deaths than Israeli. And with more robust efforts by Israel to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties, it is now harder for the terrorists to get their own mothers and children killed by using them as human shields for the purposes of world sympathy.
Has the Palestinian leadership admitted defeat? Have the Palestinians backed away from demands, such as the right of return and the possession of Jerusalem, that Israel refused to accept in the past and will definitely not accept now, after emerging victorious from four years of self-defense against Palestinian aggression? Have they distanced themselves from their culture of terrorism and their cult of death? Perhaps Mahmoud Abbas' victory speech will provide some answers.
"We offer this victory to the soul of the brother martyr, Yassir Arafat, and to our people, to our martyrs and to 11,000 prisoners." The man who claims that he wants to end Palestinian violence and terrorism is offering his election victory to the father of modern terrorism and the current violence, to suicide terrorists, and to prisoners convicted in Israel of murdering innocent people. He also claims that he will never give up the right of return, sovereignty over Jerusalem, and the demand that Palestine be "Judenrein" through the expulsion of Jewish settlers. According to the 2004 public opinion poll by the Palestinian "Jerusalem Media and Communications Center," the Palestinian public is even more intransigent. 63.1 percent still support the continuation of the war, while 20 percent place their trust in Hamas. The media and the mosques still ring with exhortations to kill Jews and to sacrifice one's own life in doing so.
Neither Palestinian leaders nor Palestinian society have accepted defeat or the futility of their demands. However, the longer they struggle in impotence, the sooner they will realize it. As it is, the aforementioned poll shows a substantial decrease in support for the Intifada from the 76.8 percent that it was in October 2003 -- right before Israel began decisively winning the war. The Israeli war against Palestinian terror is working and should prove to be the solution to the conflict. The biggest mistake now would be to appease the Palestinians with offers of peace and negotiations. The Allied decision in 1918 to forego decisive victory against Germany by signing a premature peace without even invading German territory was one of the main causes of World War II and the deaths of millions of people. If the myopic and amnesiac proponents of making peace with those unwilling to stop fighting force Israel to appease the Palestinians once again, they will be directly responsible for Intifada III, which is sure to break out as soon as the Palestinians regroup and rearm.
Israel must continue to defend itself without sacrificing its security for the sake of conciliating the Palestinians in the context of another disingenuous peace process. The Palestinians must officially withdraw all demands Israel was unwilling to grant before the war and should no longer have any will to attack Israelis. Nevertheless, when such a time comes, Israel must be ready to facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state and to provide it with aid and reconstruction assistance similar to what the Allies offered Germany after their victory.
Ariel Sharon is not likely to be enchanted by the spell of optimism. He is a realist and a pragmatist, even to the point of forsaking his brainchild settlement project and the ideology of his party. Those that will seek to pressure him toward another Oslo are very unlikely to trick him into false futile idealism and to cause him to abandon the effective path upon which he has been leading Israel during his leadership.
This fact, and not the election of another swindling Palestinian leader, is what makes me optimistic. After another year or so of fruitless struggle, the Palestinian nation will finally acquiesce to the inevitability of Israel's existence and be ready to bury the hatchet. When such a moment comes, whether under Abbas or someone else, I am sure Israel will welcome the leader of a pacified Palestine with an embrace, a shovel and maybe even a peace pipe of sorts.
