AUSTIN, Texas -- Well, things do seem to be going to hell, don't
they? The beauty of having fled to Mexico for a week to escape the endless
blat of television news is that it leaves you with enough energy to tackle
the subject of the Middle East -- if not with cheer, at least with hope.
And that does appear to be the missing ingredient here -- the
expectation that anything at all can be done about the situation. Of course
it can. The Israelis and the Palestinians are not condemned to some eternal
hell where they have to kill each other forever. There is no military
solution, but there is a political solution -- and they will get there. The
United States is obliged to broker the deal because there's no one else to
do it.
The situation could certainly use a couple of good funerals, but
failing that luck, we have to deal with what's there. It is possible to deal
with people who are beyond persuasion by either fact or logic, which to an
outsider is certainly how both the Israelis and the Palestinians now seem to
be behaving. Political solutions to apparently intractable situations can be
manufactured. While the world has been paying very little attention, the
Irish Republican Army has actually been destroying its own weapons dumps.
Who thought there was a solution in Northern Ireland five years ago? Or on
Cyprus, where the Greeks and the Turks enjoyed a history of hostility of far
superior antiquity to that in the Middle East. This can be done.
The second important point is that the situation demands respect
for the moral complexity of the situation. That's where we are slightly
handicapped by our president, the moral simplifier. From the beginning, the
trouble with "war against terrorism" has been the definition of terrorism
and the immutable fact that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom
fighter. After he got us involved in this war on a noun, Bush then upped the
ante and announced it was a war between good and evil, and we would continue
until we had eradicated evil. Oh man, this is going to be a long sucker.
It is precisely because of this rigid good-versus-evil
oversimplification that Bush has been sort of snookered by Ariel Sharon into
blindly supporting his actions because they are supposed to be
"anti-terrorist."
The worst news I've read lately is several reports quoting
people close to Bush saying, "He feels in his gut ..." He feels in his gut
it is his mission in life to fight terrorism. He has a bad gut reaction to
Arafat. Trust me on this, when Bush starts thinking with his gut, we're in
big trouble.
Let me say for the umpteenth time, George W. is not a stupid
man. The IQ of his gut, however, is open to debate. In Texas, his gut led
him to believe the death penalty has a deterrent effect, even though he
acknowledged there was no evidence to support his gut's feeling. When his
gut, or something, causes him to announce that he does not believe in global
warming -- as though it were a theological proposition -- we once again find
his gut ruling that evidence is irrelevant. In my opinion, Bush's gut should
not be entrusted with making peace in the Middle East.
Bush's gut does not like complexity. When you're in the middle
of a moral crusade against evil, it's damned annoying to have to stop and
grapple with unpleasant complications, such as that we have to keep letting
Afghani farmers grow opium poppies, or that our allies the Saudi Arabians
foment terrorism, or that our allies the Pakistanis seem to have quite a few
"freedom-fighters" of their own. Moral complexity is a condition of life,
and we will serve neither our own interests nor those of the Middle East if
we keep pretending this is good versus evil.
There are many Palestinian terrorists. The Palestinians also
have legitimate grievances that must be addressed. Sharon himself started
this second Intifada with his cruelly reckless and deliberately inflammatory
visit to the Temple Mount. Took no genius to see what that was going to
touch off. If you want to blame this Intifada on someone in particular,
Sharon is the leading candidate.
It is, however, more useful to concentrate on what can be done
now. Any settlement will have to include getting the Israeli settlers off
the West Bank -- another instance where Sharon has ill-served Israel.
Removing the settlers is not a job anyone would envy -- that's where one
sees the fanaticism on the Israeli side.
There has been much discussion of the suicide bombers as though
this were some huge new spanner in the works. Everyone from shrinks to
political scientists has had a go at explaining them, but it is at base a
political phenomenon, a function of anarchy and powerlessness. I believe
Sharon has reacted in a criminally stupid way, guaranteed to do no good at
all. He is so focused on his old enemy Arafat that he is destroying Al Fatah
, which will leave, of course, only Hamas.
Actually, as a conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian mess is a known
quantity, similar to other conflicts over territory. It is the United States
that is facing the truly bizarre situation: terrorists without territory.
I am in no particular position to preach to American Jews (or
anyone else, come to think of it), but as a deeply worried Christian
supporter of Israel, I think American Jews have an important role to play in
this delicate and dangerous situation. The impulse of all Jews to support
Israel totally -- especially when Israelis are being blown up -- is entirely
understandable. But it's not necessarily helpful to Israel in this
situation.
I do not think this is a time that calls for uncritical support.
Despite the occasional full-page ad from some group pledging blind fidelity
to Israel and blaming everyone but Sharon, I am impressed with the level of
real debate and even agonizing going on among American Jews. Anyone who
tells you criticizing Israel at this parlous time is somehow helping the
Palestinians must be as dumb as, well, John Ashcroft, who maintains that to
question the president is to help terrorists.
It is troubling that the Bush administration approaches this new
attempt at negotiation so tepidly -- indeed, as though it has been dragged
into it kicking and screaming. It has always been a worry that Bush has so
little expertise on the Middle East around him -- Condi Rice, who may be his
best, is notoriously weak in this area.
It truly doesn't help to play the blame game, but this
administration was warned again and again that the escalating violence would
finally break into catastrophe. And still they did nothing, apparently out
of blind anti-Clintonism: Clinton pushed for a Middle East peace, therefore
Bush wouldn't. Hell of a policy. Onward.
Last week, I began a sentence by saying, "If Bush had any
imagination ..." and then I hit myself. Silly me. But if he did, he could
put together an extraordinary peace commission involving any combination of
Jimmy Carter, Colin Powell, Bill Clinton, George Mitchell, James Baker, Kofi
Annan, Nelson Mandela ... you get the idea. You can name your own players.
Meantime, all we can do is wish Godspeed to Powell
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other
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