Dear Mr. Obama, it's time for a peace plan that works
Israel's massive assault on Gaza is the worst sort of déjà vu all over again. As news commentators wearily point out that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a never-ending story, there are shifts in that story. The most important one: George Bush's decision to studiously ignore the whole problem. For eight years the U.S. has abandoned its responsibility to broker peace. The result has been an ongoing catastrophe. No one needs reminding of that.
With so much on his plate, the incoming president must not be tempted to let Israel determine its own fate. That is more or less our current policy, despite the symbolic visits that various envoys make to the region. On President Bush's last visit, he fatuously declared that a peace accord would be in place by the end of his administration — while doing zero to bring an accord about. (There's a vein of right-wing fundamentalism that wants to see turmoil in the region as part of their hallucination about the End of Days. We'll never know how much that has played into the administration's so-called thinking.)
Now Mr. Obama needs to act decisively on Israel and Palestine. His hand has been forced by the international outrage over Israel's massive assault on Gaza. The two combatants are totally stalemated. Israel futilely builds a wall around itself — a new Maginot Line — and retaliates against homemade rockets with modern-day mechanized war. Hamas, backed by an eager Iran, pursues the toxic dream of destroying Israel. Since the U.S. is committed to having Israel as a client state, we can't stand by and let this dance of death continue.
But what to do?
As a first step, we must impose reality on everyone concerned. We know what doesn't work, and we should lead the world in telling the truth.
1. The two-state solution, as currently envisioned, won't work. Israel left Gaza in peace three years ago. Hamas could have built upon that peace. Instead, it turned Gaza into an armed terrorist base. The same will happen if the West Bank and Gaza become independent states.
2. The wall won't work. Israel already contains a large Arab population, and Palestinian day workers must be allowed access to their jobs in Israel. Without a steady flow of workers, Israel will suffer economically, and out-of-work Palestinians will fester and starve.
3. An eye for an eye doesn't work. Killing members of Hamas only increases their prestige in the imagination of Arabs around the world. Experts assure us that the 2006 war in which Israel destroyed Lebanon's economy and much of Beirut served basically to make Hezbollah stronger. In any case, this is an enemy that wants to suffer a martyr's death, so killing them fits their own ideological agenda.
4. Endless negotiations don't work. There's no need to expand on this point.
5. Unilateral withdrawal by Israel doesn't work. Besides the failed Gaza experiment, Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon eight years ago was read as a show of weakness by Arab extremists, who massively infiltrated the area with rocket emplacements.
6. Elections won't work, not at present or for the foreseeable future. On the Israeli side, elections are skewed by right-wing fundamentalists. On the Palestinian side, the choice is between a fatally corrupt Palestinian Authority and Hamas, which is committed to terrorism. The trend toward the latter shows no sign of abating. The world hates Hamas, but the Arab street loves them.
When nothing works, somebody has to provoke change from the outside. That's the second step that Mr. Obama must take. First he must focus on ending Israel's tactic of military occupation, settlements, and retaliation. Despite its recent actions in Gaza, we must accept that between Israel and Hamas, Israel is the more rational party in this conflict. Soon Iran will have a nuclear weapon, and there is no sign that they will give up their policy of funding Israel's enemies. Those two facts must be faced. The Arab world could have solved the Palestinian refugee's hardships anytime it wanted to by using a tiny fraction of its oil wealth to lift the wretched poverty of the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, it chose to use the Palestinians as political pawns. Even now, 60 years after the founding of Israel, most Arab states pussyfoot around the issue of whether Israel should be allowed to exist while covertly sympathizing with vicious anti-Semitic emotions.
Which brings us to the third step. When you are a superpower, your power must be used for more than national self-interest. Smaller countries can only look out for themselves. The U.S., even crippled by two wars and an economic crisis, can afford to be a global moral force. In this case, morality has been tainted on both the Israeli and Palestinian side. A third party has to step in to stop the cycle of mutually assured loathing and mistrust. Our own morality went askew when we allowed oil to selfishly control our thinking. Let's do the right thing whether Saudi Arabia gets mad or not, and whether gasoline goes to five dollars a gallon or not. The Arab states must be pressured to commit themselves to Israel's legitimacy by no longer supporting Israel's avowed enemies.
One can only speak as a private citizen, but the things I've mentioned seem irrefutable. America's good will toward Israel is unimpeachable, and the Arab states are supposedly our longstanding allies. We alone can bring the opposing parties to a tipping point in favor of peace. It will be to our shame if we continue to ignore this problem and chronic hostility crosses over into mutually assured suicide.
