The Absence of Peace Feeds Palestinian Extremism

The bombing of the Jerusalem market on Wednesday was outrageous and unforgivable. But it also was the totally predictable outcome of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies.

What, exactly, did we expect Palestinians were going to do as Israel broke the peace process by constructing a new Jewish settlement at Har Homa in East Jerusalem? If, from the Palestinian standpoint, Israel’s land grab was continuing and accelerating, it was inevitable that many Palestinians would begin to see the peace process itself as little more than a public relations cover for Israeli expansion. Netanyahu, after all, made no bones of his opposition to the fundamental idea of reconciliation and mutual recognition of each other’s national rights.

Palestinians have no army, no economic leverage, no vote in the country that continues to rule over most of the territory of the West Bank. With the peace process undermined by Netanyahu, many Palestinians feel greater despair than ever. Both Israel and the Palestinians have their religious fundamentalists who have resorted to violence. Palestinian fundamentalists usually wait for public opinion in their own community to be so deeply frustrated that people are willing to support acts of desperation as the only way to articulate the generally felt hopelessness.

Liberal Jews in the U.S. will never excuse or accept the morally disgusting behavior of Palestinian terrorists. We don’t “understand it,” and we don’t exonerate them from moral blame. But we do know that the only way to save Jewish lives, and Palestinian lives, is for Israel to live up to the Oslo accords, get out of the West Bank and allow a demilitarized Palestinian state to take its place among the family of nations. Until that happens, Hamas and its various religious fundamentalist sects will seem to be the only available option. No matter what Israel does, some Islamic fundamentalists will never be happy as long as Jews have their own state. But most Palestinians respond to that kind of extremism only when their more moderate leaders seem to be making no progress toward Palestinian self-determination.

Similarly, most American Jewish progressives have no affection for Yasser Arafat and his authoritarian rule. Yet given the alternative of Arab militants, it seems clear that destabilizing the Palestinian Authority can only play to the needs of Hamas terrorists. The Anti-Defamation League ads against Arafat and the campaign of other right-wing American Jewish groups against the Palestinian Authority may help them raise money from the many American Jews whose primary source of Jewish identification is a generalized fear of non-Jews and an overheated focus on the Holocaust as the center of Jewish life, but it does little to help Israel find a rational path to the security it deserves. The weaker Arafat gets, the greater the danger from more extreme fundamentalists who can claim that Arafat’s peace path proved to be a sham that only produced more Israeli expansion.

Equally destructive are the measures now being contemplated by Netanyahu to further squeeze Arafat. The irony is that Israel and the U.S. demand that Arafat get tough, then criticize him for not following normal standards of civil liberties. Frankly, I’d prefer the path of civil liberties, because no matter how much repression and torture Arafat tries to impose on his people, he will succeed in overcoming their despair only if he can deliver substantial national self-determination. This is precisely what Netanyahu’s government is committed to thwarting.

So it’s time to hold Netanyahu and his ultra-Orthodox and ultranationalist coalition accountable. Remember that he was the one who promised he could end this kind of terrorist attack while still pursuing peace? Well, abandoning the peace process in the name of being tough only served to re-legitimate the most extreme factions in the Palestinian world. The bombing proves that his strategy is not working. Now is the time not for further punishment of the Palestinian people in the form of border closings and curfews, but for a renewed energy to conclude the peace process before Israel’s forthcoming 50th birthday.

No posturing, no reprisals, no punishments, no acceleration of the building of settlements ever will provide the security that a serious commitment to peace could bring. All the rest is commentary.