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July 16, 2003 I suppose that if one were to conduct another poll in the Palestinian territories, assuming of course that one had no regard for life or limb, a good place to start would be with one simple question: Do you desire peace or even peaceful co-existence with Israel? Since some seem be to engaged in the fanciful practice of taking the pulse of an angry, repressed (we’ll get to that shortly) people, this would seem to be the trump card in an increasingly losing hand in the game of Middle Eastern peace. It has become clear that the US presence in the Middle East and its willingness to throw its weight around there are paying dividends. President Clinton squandered the prestige of the American position throughout the nineties by committing to a peace plan, the Oslo and Dayton accords, that not even the principal signatories believed in. Now that Saddam’s Baathist regime is gone, a major source of funding and inspiration for the fringe Palestinian groups is gone with it. But now that there is less in the way of a genuine peace, it has become even more remote- for one reason. The Palestinians are not interested in peace. Conventional wisdom used to hold that if only Hamas and Hezbollah could be marginalized and Arafat reduced to a figurehead that peace would quickly follow. But how do you change the hearts and minds of millions of homeless refugees who for two generations have heard nothing but that the root of all of their problems is Israel? The answer is – you don’t. This is the sad tragedy of this entire desert melodrama and the one thing holding back the people of the region from even a semblance of a normal life. The saddest irony is that they need only look to their so-called leadership for the cause of their misery. Even now Hamas and Hezbollah have agreed to at least think about killing Israeli civilians for a few days. But Chairman Arafat continues to show his contempt for any attempt at reconciliation that doesn’t involve him. Sadly, the UK and the EU continue to prop up this two- bit propagandist for reasons only they can explain. The Bush Administration has taken the right steps in backing the Abbas contingency that is desperately trying to maintain order in the camps. That effort will only take root when Arafat is lying on a hammock in Marseilles sipping tea. Until then, all efforts to come to an agreement will take a back seat to the last, desperate power grab of one of the world’s great terror mongers who continues to be rewarded for his intransigence. The shock and anger that greeted the non- release of the polling data in Gaza only serves to illustrate the vast gulf that separates the pragmatists in the process and the true feelings of the Palestinian people. It was very instructive in Arafat’s tiny dictatorship that when a small slice of the unfettered truth is made public, the reaction is swift, violent, and repressive. What were those people protesting? The fact that their countrymen didn’t actually desire what Palestinian mouthpieces had declared all along was a non-negotiable piece of the agreements? Or that the truth hurts? It’s still readily apparent even at this late date that the majority of Palestinians want nothing more than the destruction of Israel. It’s also a little hard to blame them entirely when they have been fed two generations’ worth of a conspiracy fiction worthy of Oliver Stone. These people have been systematically screwed by their Arab brethren in the surrounding countries and their willing accomplices in Europe but somehow, it’s Israel’s fault that they’re poor, illiterate, and have a tenth of the median income of the poorest Israeli. The fact that they repudiated one of the last remaining planks that Arafat had to bargain on is even more dangerous to him now. It shows that the Palestinian people may be ready to move on without Arafat. The trouble is: we don’t know where they’re going. ------------ About the author: Jamie Moulthrop is a political philosopher and repressed rock god masquerading as a banker at a large multi-national financial services company. He resides in Newark, DE. Email Jamie Moulthrop: Comment on this column in the forum. Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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