U.S. Peace Plan To Include Palestinian State

U.S. Peace Plan To Include Palestinian State
Palestinian Cabinet Minister reports that plan would put current status of Jerusalem on hold. Israel declares its resistance.

(Mark Lavie, Associated Press Writer)

JERUSALEM (AP) - U.S. President George Bush's Mideast peace plan--which has not yet been formally released--includes a Palestinian state and a freeze on the current status of Jerusalem until negotiations conclude, according to a Palestinian Cabinet minister.

But Israel is resisting the plan. Environment Minister Tzachi Hanegbi said Wednesday that if Israel has disagreements with the U.S. administration, Bush must be "fully aware of the unprecedented level of support Israel has in the Senate and Congress, and it will therefore be very hard to pressure Israel."

Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath told The Associated Press that Bush planned to disclose his program in a speech at the United Nations on Sept. 24, but it was delayed because of the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington.

Shaath said Bush talked with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah about the plan. Then Saudi Foreign Minister Saud el-Feisal informed Jordan, Syria and Egypt about it.

He said Bush planned to declare support for "the Palestinian right for self-determination, including the right to establish their state on their land." He said the status of Jerusalem would be decided in negotiations, and in the meantime, "the situation there should not be changed."

With ongoing Mideast fighting, the Bush administration has said it would not attempt to force a settlement on the Israelis and Palestinians.

However, the Americans are now seeking calm in the region as they try to gain Arab support for an international coalition against terrorism.

Bush, speaking Tuesday in Washington, said, "The idea of a Palestinian state has always been part of a vision, so long as the right to an Israeli state is respected."

Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia said the declaration is an "important step." He told The Associated Press on Wednesday, "Establishing a Palestinian state is a basic condition to achieve a comprehensive and lasting peace in the area."

Though best known for his hard-line views, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has also spoken of a Palestinian state, though he has also said he would not give the Palestinians more territory than they already partially control - about 40 percent of the West Bank and two-thirds of Gaza.

Referring to more than a year of Palestinian-Israeli violence, Hanegbi charged that Israel now has "no balanced and rational partner" for negotiations.

In peace talks that broke down in January, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians a state in all of Gaza and about 95 percent of the West Bank with sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem and control of a hotly disputed holy site in the Old City of Jerusalem, plus a corridor connecting the West Bank and Gaza, according to Israeli negotiators.

However, the Palestinians insisted on a total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, the removal of Jewish settlements and right of millions of refugees and their descendants to reclaim their former homes and land in Israel.

Shaath said the Bush plan would be based on implementing recommendations of an international commission headed by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, a sequence starting with a case-fire and proceeding through a cooling-off period, confidence-building measures and resumption of peace talks.

Also, Shaath said, a truce plan worked out by CIA director George Tenet would be implemented, he said. In the meantime, another truce, agreed on last week by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres appears to be unraveling.

Palestine is not just a state of mind

Blair's talk of creating a Palestinian state is heady stuff, but it will take much more than words, says Derek Brown

Tuesday October 16, 2001

Yasser Arafat is more used to being shunned than wooed by western leaders. For more than 20 years he was vilified and condemned; an obstacle to Middle East peace rather than an architect of it.
Today the west has a greater terror on its collective mind than Arafat ever threatened, and the Palestinian leader is once more on the centre stage of regional and world diplomacy. This time he is an ally, not a villain.
The rich irony is of course that the west is out to defeat terrorism, once personified by the head of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. If it is to stand any hope of success in the Afghanistan campaign, it needs the support, however grudging, of Muslim governments.
To get that support, it must damp down the conflict in the Holy Land and somehow revive the peace process. But it goes further than that.
George Bush and now Tony Blair, in their zeal to change the world, are talking not of new talks but of the outcome of those talks. Both are openly espousing a Palestinian state with a sovereign presence in Jerusalem.
The prime minister said after an hour of talks with Arafat, that the creation of a Palestinian state was central to his vision for peace: "A viable Palestinian state, as part of a negotiated and agreed settlement, which guarantees peace and security for Israel is the objective."
The US is already signed up to the notion of a Palestinian state, with at least partial control of east Jerusalem, including the Islamic and Christian holy places.
The Bush administration, radically departing from decades of US policy, is said to have affirmed not only the right to statehood, but support for UN resolutions 242 and 338, calling on Israel to withdraw from all the lands it has occupied illegally since the Six Day war of 1967.
This is heady stuff. But saying it is not the same as achieving it. In the summer of last year, at the US presidential retreat of Camp David, Arafat and the then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, came within a whisker of concluding a permanent peace settlement, based on the creation of a new Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
But that was then, and this is now. Three main factors - one old and two new - stand in the way of a Camp David Mark Two agreement:
* There has been no progress on the issues which scuppered the negotiations: the status of Jerusalem and the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return. Both issues are hugely emotional.
* Soon after the Camp David failure, the Palestinian territories erupted in frustration. The intifada (uprising) is still raging more than 12 months later. Hundreds have died, and nerves and tempers have been scraped raw.
* Ehud Barak has long gone. His successor, Ariel Sharon, is the most hardline prime minister Israel has ever had. He has never troubled to conceal his contempt for Yasser Arafat, or his support for the Jewish colonists of the Palestinian territories.
Sharon could now be on a collision course with the US, Israel's main champion and patron. He is evidently infuriated by Washington's attempts to bring calm to the region, arguing that Israel has to wage its own "war on terrorism".
His extravagant comparison of peacemaking proposals with western appeasement of Hitler in 1938 earned him a savage rebuke from the US, but still he shows no sign of softening the hard line - though some on the Israeli far right think he is not going far enough.
The National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu Knesset faction in the Knesset (parliament) has formally announced its resignation from Sharon's coalition government, bitterly condemning his decision to withdraw Israeli soldiers from two neighbourhoods Hebron on the West Bank.
Hebron, where a handful of Jewish settlers live amid 120,000 Palestinians, has been the scene of some of the most vicious clashes of the intifada.
Although Sharon has been accused of caving in to US pressure, there is little evidence of any real moderation of Israel's harsh security policies. In the past 24 hours, two senior members of the Islamist militant movement, Hamas, have been assassinated.
They were the latest victims of Israel's execution-without-trial tactic.

A socialism of fools

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict must be settled - but it is not the source of most misery in the Muslim world

Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday October 17, 2001
The Guardian

There hasn't been much good news since September 11, so we should probably seize on whatever crumb comes our way. A decent-sized morsel came this week with the visit to London of the PLO leader, Yasser Arafat - and the promise he picked up from Tony Blair.
Granting the Palestinian leader a rare joint press conference, usually the preserve of a visiting head of government, the prime minister committed Britain not only to a Palestinian state but to making that state "viable".
Palestinians were delighted. "Viable" is their word, used to rule out any future attempt to fob them off with an unworkable mini-homeland: a pocket Palestine. They say the flaw of previous peace efforts has been the unworkable shape of any future state -a swiss cheese, impossibly full of holes. Now they have America's closest international ally echoing their demands.
That's good news, and not only for Palestinians. Friends of Israel, who believe that country's best hope for security is peace, should welcome Blair's move - along with the clear signs that Washington is at last about to face up to its superpower responsibilities and start seeking a peace accord between Israelis and Palestinians.
Intervention from George Bush may be the spur that is needed. An odd lesson of recent history is that the only force capable of shifting a rightwing Israeli prime minister is a rightwing US president. The proof came a decade ago when Bush's father got locked in a stand-off with the then premier, Yitzhak Shamir. Bush snr, a Republican who had won office with few Jewish votes - and therefore had little to lose - refused to release $10bn of US loan guarantees unless Shamir agreed to halt the building of illegal Jewish settlements. Even as Israel's defenders officially denounced Bush snr, many on the Israeli left were quietly cheering: perhaps if they could not make the Israeli right see sense, Washington could.
Now we are poised for a re-run, with Bush jnr picking up where his father left off. Last time round, Shamir's alienation of Israel's best friend so angered the Israeli electorate they booted the PM from power. Now Sharon has angered Washington even more egregiously than Shamir, accusing Bush of acting like a latter-day Neville Chamberlain, with Israel as Czechoslavakia, offered up to appease terror. The tacit hope of the Israeli left is that voters, anxious not to lose their American protector, will sacrifice Sharon as swiftly as they despatched Shamir a decade ago.
So those hoping for a Palestinian-Israeli peace should support the latest noises from Blair and Bush. They can even applaud the reasoning. Clearly, both London and Washington are eager to rob Osama bin Laden of a key propaganda weapon - his claim to be Palestine's new champion. Bin Laden's smartest move in his video address last week was to wrap his frail, delicate frame in the Palestinian flag. By insisting that Americans would not sleep soundly until Palestinians could do the same, he transformed himself - at least in the view of the Arab and Muslim "street" - from murderous outlaw to defender of a dispossessed people.
By cosying up to Arafat, the US-led coalition hopes to dim that appeal - showing themselves to be Palestine's friends, too. On this one question at least, Blair, Bush and Bin Laden agree: the plight of the Palestinians is a hot-button issue across the Islamic world. Anyone who wants Muslim support has to press it.
Judged purely on the facts, that unlikely trio are correct. All the evidence, from polling to street demonstrations to editorials in the Arab press, shows that Muslims do indeed put Palestine at or near the top of the list of grievances that matter to them most.
The trouble is, they shouldn't. Of course Palestinians should care passionately about Israel pulling back from the territories it has occupied since 1967. Of course, Israelis should make the same demand. Without it, there can never be the just peace both sides crave. They both have a life-and-death stake in ending this bitter, wasteful conflict.
But for Muslims around the world to see this dispute as the central question in their lives makes no sense at all. An Israeli withdrawal from Gaza is essential for the dispossessed of Gaza - but how, exactly, will it transform the life of an unemployed youth in Morocco? A Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem is a fair goal for the Palestinians - but how, precisely, will it rescue Pakistan from military dictatorship? A new border between Israel and Palestine is essential for those two nations, but how will it stop the Muslims of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Egypt and Saudi Arabia living under brutal, repressive regimes? It will not.
And yet, this local, admittedly bitter dispute is constantly described - from John Pilger to the Foreign Office - as the "running sore" of the Middle East, as if it lay at the very heart of that region's troubles. Solve it and the rage Bin Laden has so adroitly exploited will recede. That flabby thinking is fast settling into received wisdom.
But it makes no sense. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict affects Palestinians and Israelis profoundly, but it does not begin to explain the dire state of today's Arab and Muslim world, nor why it has spent decades languishing in economic stagnation and political suffocation. The Saudi royal family does not behead criminals because of Israel; Syria did not slaughter thousands of its own people in 1982 because of Israel; Afghanistan is not in the dark ages because of Israel.
Of course, the governments of those countries would like their peoples to think precisely that - that Israel is the satanic force responsible for all their woes. "Don't look at us, with all our corruption and incompetence; it's Israel's fault!" has been the cry of rotting dictatorships from Algeria to Iran. That's why their state-controlled presses are full of cartoons that could come straight from the Nazi press of the 1930s. Check out the Steve Bell slot in Egypt's al-Ahali: a regular procession of hooked-nosed, fanged Jews, their hands dripping in blood.
In the absence of a free press, it's perhaps understandable that the people of those closed societies have fallen for this diversionary tactic by their rulers. But western liberals have no such excuse. We should know better than to fall prey to what amounts to a latter-day socialism of fools. When August Bebel first coined that phrase a century ago, he was urging German workers not to be duped into hating Jews when their real foe was capitalism. Today's brand of anti-Israelism risks becoming a new socialism of fools - blaming the Jewish state for the Islamic world's troubles, rather than the vast, structural malaise afflicting that region.
Progressives should not let up the pressure on Israel for a just settlement: two secure states, sharing Jerusalem as their capital. They should do that because it will bring justice to those two peoples and some symbolic balm to bruised Arab and Muslim pride. But it's a dangerous delusion to imagine such a breakthrough will address what the Muslim-American intellectual, Fareed Zakaria, calls "the political, economic and cultural collapse that lies at the roots of Arab rage". That is a task that will take decades, cost billions and demand tectonic change for hundreds of millions of people. There are no magic short cuts, not even via the holy land.

EDITORIAL

The opinion of the Mercury News
The crucial word
``A Palestinian state.''
There, he said it.
At his prime-time press conference last week, President Bush stated what he had not, until now, made explicit: His administration, like the Clinton administration, would support the establishment of Palestinian statehood.
Palestinians have been waiting for those words. They have become increasingly frustrated by the Bush administration's hands-off approach to the Mideast conflict, and increasingly impatient over the chance of resolving it. Bush's comment -- a brief answer to a question -- falls short of what he should say and what his administration should do in coming weeks but is a significant step nonetheless.
On Monday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair met with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in London. Blair used the key word, in calling for the creation of a ``viable'' Palestinian state. Arafat denounced the terrorism of Osama bin Laden and bin Laden's claim that he was acting to advance the Palestinian struggle.
Bush would do well to follow Blair's lead and invite Arafat to Washington, something the president has refused to do. Bush should endorse a Palestinian nation with credible borders, not a balkanized state divided by Israeli settlements. He should demand, in turn, that Arafat repudiate terrorism by groups like Hamas, against Israelis, and recognize and respect Israel's right to exist.
News accounts since Sept. 11th have said Secretary of State Colin Powell has already drawn up a plan for peace with principles similar to those that Clinton proposed last year. A Palestinian state would include part of Jerusalem as its capital. U.S. recognition would be predicated on the Palestinians' formal acceptance of Israel's right to exist.
Powell should formally present his plan, not simply leak elements to the news media. He should act soon.
Doing so would counter the propaganda of bin Laden, who has been selling himself as the great liberator of Palestine. It would send a signal to Muslim nations that the United States will take an active and even-handed approach to the Mideast conflict. It would give Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat something hopeful to present to his cynical, disaffected people at a critical moment.
Arafat is in a tough predicament, albeit one that he brought on himself. A year of violence in the occupied territories has weakened his hold on power and radicalized his people. That has made the task Arafat now reluctantly faces -- cracking down on radical groups he had cozied up to -- more risky.
Arafat needs assurance that there would be a payoff for confronting those opposed to the peace process. Bush should give it, and seize the opportunity to dislodge the impasse in the Mideast.

Palestine state essential for peace, says Blair

London talks Arafat told to reduce violence to secure deal with Israel

Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Tuesday October 16, 2001
The Guardian

Tony Blair yesterday used a meeting with the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, to make his most unequivocal endorsement yet of the creation of a Palestinian state.
He told a joint press conference with Mr Arafat at Downing Street: "A viable Palestinian state, as part of a negotiated and agreed settlement, which guarantees peace and security for Israel, is the objective."
The talks, set up before September 11, took place against a drive by the US to push Israel and the Palestinian authority beyond the present shaky truce to the negotiating table.
Mr Arafat called for an "immediate" resumption of talks with the Israeli government on a peace settlement.
Mr Blair reminded journalists that he had visited Gaza and spoke expressively about the injustices suffered by the Palestinians. He rejected a suggestion that his enthusiasm for the Palestinian cause was influenced by the attacks on September 11.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the main causes of resentment in the Muslim world towards the US, which has long backed Israel.
The US and Britain are both anxious to reduce the tension caused by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to blunt the message of Osama bin Laden, who in a videotaped statement last week identified himself with the Palestinian cause.
Mr Blair's being pictured shaking hands with Mr Arafat will help to counter Bin Laden's propaganda move. Mr Blair told the conference that Bin Laden did not speak for Palestinians or their cause.
Mr Arafat, though in a delicate position because of Islamist support for Bin Laden within his Palestinian authority, repeated his condemnation of suicide attacks on America and described such violence as contrary to Islam.
Mr Blair was scheduled to hold further talks by phone last night with the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon. A meeting between the two will take place in London next month.
An Israeli government source said that, in spite of jitters about the consequences for Israel of the new international landscape, Mr Sharon was content that Britain was keeping Israel in the loop in its discussions with the Palestinians.
The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, phoned his Israeli counterpart, Shimon Peres, on Saturday as part of the preparations for Mr Arafat's visit.
Mr Blair and Mr Arafat discussed new US proposals that set a framework for discussions on the future of Jerusalem, which both peoples want as their capital; the future of Israeli settlements on the West Bank and Gaza; territorial boundaries; and the right of return of Palestinian refugees.
Mr Blair told Mr Arafat he had to work harder to produce an end to, or at least a decrease in, violence for talks to begin.
The prime minister said he supported the UN resolutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which, among other things, call for Israel to leave the occupied territories, the West Bank and Gaza. He said: "The end we desire _ is a just peace in which Israelis and Palestinians live side by side, each in their own state, secure and able to prosper."
Mr Blair, who was left in no doubt during his visit to the Middle East last week about the animosity generated in the Muslim world by Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said there was a "renewed sense of purpose to move things forward".
Mr Arafat used the conference to call for a resumption of peace talks: "I call on the Israeli government to immediately rejoin us in the permanent status negotiations so we can reach a just, comprehensive and lasting solution to all issues on the agenda. That is an agreed agenda: Jerusalem, settlements, borders, refugees, security, water."
He has made similar calls over the past few months, but has met with the same Israeli response: no talks without a complete end to Palestinian violence against Israelis.
Mr Peres said yesterday: "What we have to do is to start introducing the complete ceasefire, then we can start completing [peace] negotiations."

'The Origin of Islam Is Peace'
An interview with Sheik Abdullah Nimr Darwish, founder of the Islamic Movement in Israel
BY JAMIL HAMAD

Friday, Oct. 5, 2001
Sheik Abdullah Nimr Darwish, 53, founded the Islamic Movement in Israel in 1971. Now he heads its High Guidance Committee. He was jailed by Israel from 1979 to 1984 for his Islamic and political activities. He spoke with TIME's Jamil Hamad two weeks ago.

TIME: What is your opinion of suicide attacks?

SHEIK ABDULLAH: First of all, I am against this because the letter of the shari'a [Islamic law] firmly prohibits suicide. So we should commit ourselves to the prohibition of this phenomenon and we shouldn't violate that, whatever the reasons. Some sheiks and scholars made fatwas in which they permitted committing suicide with a bomb by Palestinians inside Palestine, because the Palestinians suffer from circumstances not less terrible than death itself. I wrote about these fatwas and I showed proof and evidence that the origin and letter of the shari’a prohibits this kind of suicide.

TIME: Why are you saying this publicly now?

SHEIK ABDULLAH: I believe that our Islamic, universal project has no space for fear or hypocrisy or following those who are trying to sabotage the Islamic project. In my opinion, we Islamists can't hesitate in telling the truth publicly, honestly and frankly. I do not accept silence, though it may bring me applause. But I insist on speaking the Islamic truth as it is, even if this truth angers the extremists who claim falsely that they are protecting the Muslims.

TIME: What about those who say that this is part of jihad?

SHEIK ABDULLAH: There is a big difference between martyrdom and suicide. He who resists oppression and aggression and is killed in this battle is a martyr, whether he was part of the political or cultural or military resistance. Jihad does not mean just fighting, in all cases. The military battle is one of 13 pillars of jihad. Why do some people either from the enemies of Islam or from crazy, radical Muslims try to limit the jihad to its military side only? Martyrdom is bigger than being killed in war. For example, he who dies when he is far away from his home while he was seeking education is a martyr. He who defends his family and his house, his neighbor, the dignity of a human being, he too is a martyr. In brief, the ways of jihad are very wide and fighting is only one of them. The terrorist extremists who claim that they represent Islam, in fact represent only their dark minds and their bitter souls and their terrible psychology. Islam is a religion of love, cooperation for the good. The origin of Islam is peace, stability. Fighting in Islam is only an emergency measure when somebody is threatening the Muslims.

TIME: Is the attack on the World Trade Center based on Muslim hatred of America?

SHEIK ABDULLAH: I don't want for our American friends to forget that this ugly attack in New York targeted civilians from all races and religions. The ugly terror which hit those buildings in fact hit the efforts toward cooperation between different nations and religions. Those who were in those buildings were not Americans only and were not Christians only. There were Muslims, Jews and Buddhists among them. Therefore, we in Palestine can understand the anger in the American street. We understand it very well, because our people have suffered from this kind of destruction by the Israeli military machine, which to our sorrow is made in America. We feel the pain of the American mothers. We are angry exactly as they are angry against this kind of terror, although we Palestinians did not find many other people who got angry while we were suffering from this destruction.

TIME: Why do Muslims hate America?

SHEIK ABDULLAH: There is a misunderstanding. Muslims and Arabs do not hate America or the Americans. He who claims that is a liar. Arabs and Muslims hate the unfair policies of the American administrations. There is a big difference between those who hate a policy and those who hate a people. The American people is a friendly nation. The Americans resisted British occupation and want to live in peace, stability and in freedom. We have no enmity between us and the Americans. But the policy of the American administrations, especially foreign policy on the Palestinian problem, is not fair. While we are uniting the whole world against terror, the American administration should change its policy toward the Palestinians. If not, then the administration will cast this injustice on the shoulders of the American people, because I don't expect what happened on September 11 will be the last events, if Americans continue to take the side of Israel against all others.

TIME: Why do Muslims scholars differ on these issues?

SHEIK ABDULLAH: Unfortunately, until this very moment, there are some sheiks and scholars who come out with ideas and fatwas just to serve the interest of a particular movement or organization. The fatwa has become something that doesn't show the real face of Islam. The fatwa has become an instrument in the hands of certain movements to legalize their un-Islamic behavior. When you tell me about a sheik who speaks about a forbidden terror and terror as an Islamic duty, it is because he misinterprets verses of the Koran. The original base of Islam is that military preparations are only for deterring the enemy and preventing him from attacking and launching a war against the Muslims. This is a deterrent force and not a terrorist force.

(Liberation Spirituality)

Ariel Sharon: The War Criminal Takes Over
(Michael Lerner)

Many American Jews are responding to the election of Ariel Sharon as prime minister of Israel with sadness, mourning, and disgust. When Ariel Sharon was forced to resign from his position as defense minister during the Lebanon War, most Israelis felt that they had finally rid themselves of a man whose record of violence could no longer be ignored. Though his troops only supervised but didn't personally do the shooting of the hundreds of civilians in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps, the Israeli public knew of his many other acts of terror (including massacres of civilian Bedouins in the Sinai).
By standards now being applied in Kosovo and Serbia, Ariel Sharon should have been brought to trial for war crimes. Instead, he has now been elected prime minister.
Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Barak would like to blame this all on the Palestinians and their failure to accept his generous offers. But the reality is that Barak's offers were mean-spirited and limited. Barak was elected in a euphoria of hope for peace--and he had a mandate to move ahead decisively. Had he announced an unequivocal intention to dismantle the West Bank settlements, to allow for a limited number of Palestinian refugees to return each year, and to create a climate of real cooperation that would provide Palestinians with the economic infrastructure to make a Palestinian state viable, Barak could have built his electoral mandate into a permanent peace force. Barak could have appealed to traditional Jewish values such as the Torah's unequivocal commandment to "Love the stranger."
He could have urged Israelis that it would be a patriotic duty to begin to create dialogue groups with Palestinians and Israeli Arabs and to explore other paths for people-to-people reconciliation.

Instead, Barak played to his right. He insisted early on in his tenure that he would never compromise on Jerusalem or dismantle settlements. He did nothing to prepare the population for concessions he would eventually find necessary.
Nor were his peace offers as generous as the media sometimes portrays. Even his last offer would have left 200,000 settlers, many hostile to Palestinians, on the West Bank. Israeli Arabs contributed mightily to Barak's electoral victory last time, but Barak refused to give them even a single seat in his cabinet, on the grounds that having such an Arab presence would "discredit" his government. When Israeli Arabs protested the massive use of force to repress their Palestinian brothers and sisters rioting in outrage after Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount last September, dozens were wounded, thousands faced pogroms from angry Jewish crowds wandering through and stoning their homes, and at least 13 were killed by Israeli bullets--yet Barak could only find the courage to apologize for this in the last three days of the election, when he finally realized to what extent he had lost his own base of support. No wonder so many found it hard to rally to his support.
The path that Israel is following is no surprise. Countries that seek to maintain by force the occupation over another people will eventually drift toward repressive or even fascistic leadership. Half-way measures of the sort offered by Barak cannot work. Israel had the choice to end the occupation, dismantle the settlements, and get out of the West Bank, but it chose not to, and in doing so ensured that it would drift to the right until it was inevitably faced with the likes of Ariel Sharon at its helm. And with Sharon, Israel could follow a path designed to provoke a wave of ethnic cleansing much like that which caused the Palestinian refugee problem in the first place.
The elder George Bush was the only U.S. president to have the courage to stand up to the "Israel right or wrong" lobby that claims to speak for most American Jews. Bush told them to stop expanding settlements or lose U.S. "loan guarantees" for money Israel sought to resettle Soviet Jews. When Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir refused, Bush stuck to his guns, and the result was to create economic pressures inside Israel, which helped elect pro-peace prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1992.
It seems unlikely that George W. Bush will have similar courage or vision. Ironically, standing up to Israel and insisting that it dismantle the settlements, get out of the West Bank and Gaza, and accept publicly part of the responsibility for having caused the Palestinian refugee problem (and state its willingness to take back a portion of those refugees small enough not to upset the Jewish character of Israel) is the most pro-Jewish thing he could do, though many Jews wouldn't read it that way.
The truth is that Judaism and the Jewish people are suffering from the impact of the occupation. The mean-spiritedness in Israel that leads to a Sharon landslide makes many younger Israelis wish to leave Israel and settle in the U.S., and causes many young American Jews to deny their connection to Judaism rather than claim an identity aligned with oppressive policies and defined by people who think that power is more important than love. When the American Jewish establishment rallies around such an Israel, they do more to drive young Jews to assimilate than any fear of anti-Semitism could ever do.
So, many American Jews greet the election of Ariel Sharon with great sadness and mourning--mourning for Israel and mourning for the soul of the Jewish people. With Ariel Sharon leading Israel, the world will be a scarier place for everyone.