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New Challenges

The Clinton administration will continue to try to stem the violence and make noises about a possible resumption of serious talks.
[additional-authors]
October 12, 2000

Yasser Arafat, that master of missed opportunities, has done it again: He has won the battle but lost the war.

In less than two weeks, the Palestinian leader has apparently accomplished his tactical objective by using violence to provoke a strong Israeli response, thereby turning world opinion against the Jewish state.
But in the process, Arafat has come close to killing the peace process that represents his only viable opportunity for statehood, and he has made it unlikely he will ever get a second chance to consider the unexpectedly generous offer Israeli prime Minister Ehud Barak made at Camp David this summer.

He A-bombed support for Barak’s peace drive within Israel, whose citizens must approve any final status settlement and who could replace Barak with a hardline Likud leader. And he has badly damaged support among American Jews, a majority of whom have supported the peace process and generous aid for the Palestinians.

The Clinton administration will continue to try to stem the violence and make noises about a possible resumption of serious talks.

There are some who believe that only a cathartic last spasm of violence can break through the final barriers to a full-scale agreement.

But don’t count on it. And pro-Israel forces in this country shouldn’t count on it, either.

The radically redrawn Mideast landscape poses stiff challenges to Jewish groups on the right, the left and the battered middle.

For the left, the dilemma is obvious. The images of the past two weeks – the Palestinian “police” acting a lot like an army recruited to battle Israel, the trashing of Joseph’s Tomb, the wild rioting on the Temple Mount despite Barak’s taboo-breaking offer to talk about Palestinian sovereignty over the site – badly damaged many of their underlying assumptions.

For years, the left has argued that more flexibility by Israel would pay peace process dividends. At this summer’s Camp David talks, Barak showed unprecedented flexibility – but the only dividend he got in return was an eruption of Palestinian hatred, stoked by his putative peace “partner.”

Pro-peace process activists argued that it would be possible to find formulas for sharing sensitive parts of Jerusalem. Instead, the Palestinian wrecking crew at Nablus made it clear what they would do to Jewish holy sites if they got their hands on them.

Groups on the left have to explain just how this process can continue when its foundations have been so badly weakened.

In the past, these groups have refused to take Arafat’s maximalist threats seriously; in the wake of this week’s violence, they no longer have that luxury.

They have to send a clear message that they will no longer overlook or minimize Arafat’s refusal to prepare his people for peace, or his periodic returns to the rhetoric of violence.

They have to acknowledge that if talks do resume, they are unlikely to resume at the point where the Camp David talks left off; the new Intifada has radically narrowed Barak’s maneuvering room.

And they have to find credible explanations for how land-for-peace negotiations can be restructured to provide an added measure of security in an environment of undampened hatred.

On the other end of the political spectrum, leaders on the right seemed almost to welcome violence that they said confirmed their direst predictions about the peace process. But their credibility, too, is at stake; saying “I told you so” is not sufficient.

For years, these groups have been heaping abuse on the Oslo process without suggesting alternatives.
The whiffs of racism that emanate from some of these activists, their intemperate accusations and their apparent belief that the best solution is a state of permanent armed confrontation will continue to polarize the debate in the Jewish community here.

Jews may now accept more of the right’s pessimistic assumptions, but if the future involves endless civil war and periodic vigilantism, as the right seems to believe, many will want no part of it.
Pro-Israel groups in the political middle face a different kind of challenge.

In the short term, they have to fight Arafat’s effort to brand Israel as the primary culprit in “Intifada: the Sequel,” and they have to ensure that Washington does not overlook Arafat’s critical role in igniting it.
But the real challenge they face is this: If the sickening descent back to chronic confrontation continues, pro-Israel groups will face a public and a Congress that will be increasingly eager to simply walk away from the entire Mideast mess.

“It’s just those crazy Middle Easterners doing what they always do – killing each other over little scraps of land” will be the response of many if the hopes of the past few years are dashed and the huge U.S. effort seems like a waste.

Lethargy, fatigue and disgust, and not anti-Israel animus, could shape the American public’s reaction to the renewed violence.

Berating Arafat and criticizing skewed media coverage of the riots will not be enough; Jewish groups will have to find new ways to explain why, for all the setbacks, the pursuit of a fair peace remains a vital U.S. interest.

And they will have to educate Congress and the American people about why the alternative – an American withdrawal from active peacemaking – would compound the tragedy now unfolding in the region.

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