The Catastrophe- sixty years and counting

Daoud Kuttab: Sixty Years of the Palestinian "Catastrophe"

As the state of Israel celebrates its 60th birthday, Palestinians remember the Nakbeh, or "catastrophe"- their story of dispossession, occupation, and statelessness. But, for both sides, as well as external powers, the events of 1948 and what has followed- the occupation since 1967 of the remaining lands of historic Palestine- represents a tragic failure.

Theodor Herzl and the Israel of today

Benny Morris: A prophet perplexed

Beholding Israel today, Theodor Herzl - Zionism's fin-de-siecle prophet and founding organiser - would have alternatively beamed and frowned.
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Perhaps the deeply secular, anti-theocratic Herzl would have been most flummoxed and incensed by the (burgeoning) numbers, and correlated political power of the orthodox and ultra-orthodox (some 20-25% of the country's Jews). He believed that God was dead, and religious Jews a dying breed.

Herzl's liberal sensibilities would have been shocked by the Israeli occupation of much of the West Bank and the displays of insensitivity and occasional brutality that are the common fare of most military occupations. More generally, he would certainly have been taken aback by the spectacle of Arab-Israeli conflict, of which the occupation is one of the byproducts.

A human rights crime in Gaza

Jimmy Carter: A Human Rights Crime In Gaza

The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world by sea, air, or land. An entire population is being brutally punished.

This gross mistreatment of the Palestinians in Gaza was escalated dramatically by Israel, with United States backing, after political candidates representing Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Authority parliament in 2006.

Former US President Jimmy Carter joins an ever-growing list of academics and influential people who know that the Israeli Defense Forces' (IDF) abuses in the Occupied Territories must be called out.

Condoleezza Rice and the road to nowhere...aka Jerusalam

Rice seeks Mid-East breakthrough

It is crunch time for the Bush administration as it continues to hold out hope for a peace agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

But even US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice let out a sign of her frustration at the lack of progress on the ground, particularly on the part of the Israelis.

Once again, the indomitable US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits the world's most intractable conflict. Once again, nothing is going to come out of it. Rice's optimism that a solution could be found by year's end is another promise that belongs to the trash bin of history. More than anything else, it is a signal of tired retreat. US President George Bush's time in the Oval Office is fast coming to an end, and this is undoubtedly his Administration's farewell to the Promised Land- kind of like a "no-hard-feelings" handshake that has been two presidential terms in the making.

Christian Zionists, that powerful lobby that 'protects' Israel for its own rather sinister reasons, have won another year of reprieve for the Jews they "know" will one day repent of their rejection of Jesus, convert to Christianity and ultimately help fight the dark minions of the anti-Christ.

If any lesson is to be had, it is this: Maintain bull-headedness in any phrase or statement, and you'll get away with the most outrageous things. Take for example, our Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's reply to Rice's concern over the growth of settlements in the Occupied Territories. "No growth," Ms Livni says, even when everybody knows Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had earlier agreed to build 750 new homes in the West Bank.

I think the incongruence did not go unnoticed, and as a backdoor, Ms Livni assures us that in any case, Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza Strip was proof that Jewish settlements were "not obstacles" to peace.

Perhaps, and I am guessing here, Ms Livni is promising the same kind of dismantling that took place in Gaza when the time is ripe. Ominous news for the settlers, of course. I have my doubts, though I think that Ms Livni's ambiguity is understandable. The pro-settlement lobby in Israel is a small but very vocal and influential group.

Carter, the anti-Semite

I freely admit that it is always hard to be absolutely objective in commenting on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, but I am relieved that a debate on the matter is finally picking up. For too long has the pro-Israel camp attempted to hijack discussions when things don't go their way. The charge of anti-Semite is always in the background, waiting to pounce on anyone who levels an atom of criticism on Israel. The world is expected never to forget the Holocaust of six million Jews. But to recall that at the total expense of the present oppression of Palestinian civilians surely goes beyond all boundaries of morality.

I don't deny that Jews have historically received the short end of the stick. They've spent most of their entire existence at the mercy of other powers who have typically found in Jews a convenient scapegoat. Yet, the creation of Israel was not the result of a religious awakening, but a combination of an inherent Christian hatred of Jews and the rise of a rabid nationalism amongst Jews. The latter took its name from the Biblical Zion, much as modern-day Salafis take their names from the salaf-al-salih (the Pious Predecessors). Both tap into profound religious imagery for legitimacy. And like Salafism, Zionism is also an extremely selective, absolutist and volatile discipline. Contempt for an "other" is almost always a given.

Which is why when the Iraq Study Group (ISG) led by former Secretary of State James Baker directly pointed the finger at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as being one of the causes of violent extremism in the Middle East, the Israeli government emphatically rejected it.

While I also do not believe that the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will instantly push back the tide of extremism, a viable Palestinian state will at least alleviate the livelihoods of millions of homeless refugees. It is all too easy to discard the Palestinian issue on the basis of the faulty logic of others, but to also discard the tangible suffering of millions of people is completely perverse.

To Zionism, the "other" isn't even worth speaking about. The "other" does not and should not exist, yet ammunition must be constantly expended on them. Their women and children must not be regarded as civilians, but cohorts of the militarism that has infected the whole of Palestinian society.

Not surprisingly, Palestinian militants, the real ones who blow up school buses and restaurants, use just the same kind of logic, only with less public-relations savvy and political-correctness.

I might go as far as to say that the positions taken by the ISG are bold, but only in rehashing the obvious steps in resolving the conflict. One of the recommendations, for example, suggests that the elements of a negotiated peace between Israel and Palestinians should include:

- Adherence to UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and to the principle of land for peace, which are the only bases for achieving peace.

- A major effort to move from the current hostilities by consolidating the cease-fire reached between the Palestinians and the Israelis in November 2006.

- Support for a Palestinian national unity government.

All the elements, though unoriginal, merely require a will to back them up. Furthermore, the ISG implies that it is willing to accept Hamas if it operates within the framework of a coalition government representing different Palestinian factions. To date, the Israeli government and the Bush Administration has categorically rejected Hamas, even though it remains a democratically-elected force in Palestinian society. It is hence not too difficult to translate this rejection into a total rejection of the Palestinian people themselves; a fact that no doubt benefits the ultra-nationalists of Israel.

Another heavyweight waded in recently with a book entitled, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid". It is striking that Jimmy Carter, the former President of the United States, uses the name Palestine, since the state does not yet exist. His premise is simple:

"Israel does occupy this territory deep within the West Bank, and connects 200-or-so settlements...with a road, and then prohibits the Palestinians from using that road, or in many cases even crossing the road.

This perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa..."

Again, he echoes the ISG's suggestion that Israel would never have peace until it withdrew from the territories which it has occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. And again, the pro-Israel camp unleashed the most unimaginative weapon in their arsenal, the charge that Jimmy Carter is in reality a closet anti-Semite.

The idiolect is all too familiar. I am reminded that the pro-Israel camp aren't the only ones wielding this tired club. Dubious institutions propagating a particular brand of Islam have time and again also described attacks on them as being Islamaphobic in nature. By spreading out the criticism amongst the whole community, the intent of such organizations is perhaps to win the sympathy and outrage of a greater number of people than it can realistically muster on its own. A critique on its aims, members and sources of funding, for example, becomes an unprovoked assault on Muslims and Islam itself, even though it never began that way.

From an outsider's point of view, such organizations are on their way down anyway, and are dragging with them the communities they claim to represent. Because more and more, Islamaphobia is taken to be a totally rational and legitimate response to the actions of those Muslims who claim to kill, maim and speak in the name of God.

It might be cruel to say this, but people are less concerned about anti-Muslim behavior than anti-Semitic behavior.

Logic of hate might doom Gilad

Israeli children allowed to scribble taunts on artillery shells bound for Lebanon. (courtesy of AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

The Israeli soldiers captured by militants are not coming back alive. Politically, they serve as too useful an excuse for Israel to grind two of its deadliest enemies, Hamas and Hezbollah, into dust. I say deadliest because unlike ordinary Arab governments, the militants have managed to inflict real damage on the pariah of the Middle East. Pariah from the Arab perspective, of course.

Consider that the suicide bombers of these groups are more lethal than any standing army controlled by any Arab government. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan have American hardware to match Israel's, but they aren't about to betray American interests by attacking America's favorite democracy. Israel is safe from them for the moment, content that all they are dealing with are poorly-made Qassams and woefully inaccurate Katyusha rockets. Katyusha-s have enjoyed a degree of success only because Hezbollah launch them with such punishing regularity and in swarms toward Israeli cities.

Where the rockets have struck, they have either killed, maimed or terrorized. And because Hamas and Hezbollah field militants rather than uniformed soldiers, Israel is constrained in its response. It has not, for example, launched a 'scorched-earth' policy that was used by the Americans and British against German cities in World War 2.

Yet, there is little doubt that the Israelis are inflicting collective punishment on people who have nothing to do with the kidnappings in Gaza and Lebanon. It irrationally holds the Lebanese government responsible for the actions of a militant movement it neither has power over, nor influence. Israeli shells have hit critical civilian infrastructure like bridges, shipping docks and even the international airport. In Gaza, the added destruction of the only power station has made everyday life difficult and medical aid almost impossible.

Israeli targets all across Lebanon clearly reflect their belief that the Hezbollah are nothing but a proxy army for external parties like Syria and Iran. While the escalation has directly granted Iran some respite from international scrutiny over its nuclear ambitions, the United States holds Syria to be the main puppetmaster behind Hezbollah, as revealed by George Bush in an unguarded moment.

"The irony is, what they really need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it's over..."

By targeting major byways, Israel seeks to stifle the import of weapons and ammunition from outside. But since the Israeli withdrawal from a 22-year occupation of Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah has never relinquished its state of battle-readiness. Crude watchtowers built along the border between South Lebanon and Israel speak of a group that knows all too well the value of closely monitoring its enemy. Even before the deadly ambush that killed eight Israeli soldiers and captured two, Katyusha launchpads had been carefully spread out across Hezbollah strongholds.

Civilian casualties have been high in Lebanon compared to Gaza primarily because Israel has limited intelligence assets on Lebanese territory. Furthermore, there seems to be a willful attempt by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to target communities instead of the movement itself. For the past two years Lebanon has been divided into pro-Syrian and anti-Syrian camps, with the split culminating in the assassination of Rafik Hariri and the subsequent departure of Syrian soldiers from Beirut. The anti-Syrian camp is a fragile alliance of Christians, Sunnis and Druze. Syrian allies include the two main Shia groups, Hezbollah and Amal. The Shia form about forty percent of the Lebanese population. It is therefore unsurprising that entire towns have been warned to empty out hours before air and artillery bombardments.

Israel reasons that it must act in an overwhelming manner if it wants to prevent further kidnappings in the future. While such thinking is sound military doctrine, it ignores the fact that the present conflict is grounded in several root causes, chief of which is Israel's refusal to abide by international law in leaving the Occupied Territories and allow a contiguous Palestinian state to come into being. Israel speaks blithely of Palestinian groups like Hamas desiring to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, but does little to acknowledge that its present policy of undermining Palestinian statehood by controlling its air and sea space (and hence, economy), attempting to assassinate democratically-elected government officials and the sometimes deliberate targeting of civilian lives and property has exactly the same effect on Palestinians. Both sides justify genocide on the genocidal tendencies of the other.

The media mill has made the most of this present conflict to provide a workable but typically flawed background to the whole Middle East crisis. The question is, how far back should the context go? The Israelis say it began with the kidnapping of Corporal Gilad Shalit, but Hamas counters by calling the kidnapping a retaliation of careless Israeli shelling of Palestinian civilians. Whatever the case, most mainstream media only go as far back as the Israeli version, which in my humble opinion, is a crass miscarriage of journalistic integrity. Undoubtedly, both the Palestinians and Israelis have been criminal in their actions, but covering up one side of the story only means that the other side has a freer reign to kill those it regards as enemies.

Even though Israeli commanders take far greater pains to avoid killing civilians than say their American counterparts in Iraq, the IDF's response has been frankly illogical from the outset. Firing shells into the urban centers of Gaza and Lebanon does not harm the militants one bit, and in fact, strengthens the militant's ideological cause. Demolishing civilian infrastructure allows the superbly-organized social services of these militant movements to rebuild them and claim moral credit. Killing innocent children allows the propaganda machine of the militant movements to use their deaths as reasons for savage retaliation, on Israelis who share the same distinction of being not only civilian, but innocent. More dangerously, Israel's relative impunity in territories that have ostensible military forces whose duty is to protect civilian lives and property betray the utter irrelevance of these forces' existence.

The Israelis are fostering an environment where resistance, in the form of radical militancy, becomes the only option. So even though Israel might triumph in this particular battle and leave Hamas and Hezbollah virtually rudderless, it cannot win the overarching war unless it progresses to the natural conclusion that extreme Zionism foists upon the Israeli nation, that is, the total suppression of those who oppose the ideal of a Biblically-promised Greater Israel.

Israel has a running economy, schools, running water that is often taken directly from Palestinian streams, a tourism industry; all the trappings of a developed country which cannot sustain a drawn-out war. The Palestinians can because they have nothing to begin with, and in their minds, are fighting to obtain their rightful share in the world; namely, a state of their own.

I knew I would lose friends...

Because the media has been so successful in defining what is right and wrong, it is politically-incorrect to even attempt an understanding of terrorists, or more specifically, the psychology that guides toward that evil path.

We prefer instead to turn a blind eye to injustices that are meted out on say, the Palestinians; because it is the most comfortable option. We surrender our moral compass to those who report the news. In short, we have become lazy; ambivalent to the suffering of an entire people because of false assurances that they are moral idiots.

Fortunately, the recent rash of films that deal directly with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict tries to transcend stereotypes and explore the roots of the perennial war. Little wonder that Paradise Now's recent Golden Globe win managed to ruffle some feathers.

Another troubling film is Steven Spielberg's Munich, whose central theme is the murder of 11 Israeli atheletes by Palestinian gunmen in the 1972 Olympics and the cold-blooded response that the Israeli government chose to take.

I haven't watched Munich, but Steven Spielberg is unusually frank in his opinions on those who criticize him for attempting to equate Palestinian terror with the actions of the Israeli secret service.

"The people who attack the movie based on moral equivalence are some of the same people who say diplomacy itself is an exercise in moral equivalence, and that war is the only answer - that the only way to fight terrorism is to dehumanise the terrorists by asking no questions about who they are and where they come from.

What I believe is every act of terrorism requires a strong response, but we must also pay attention to the causes. That's why we have brains and the power to think passionately. Understanding does not require approval; understanding is not the same as inaction. Understanding is a very muscular act. If I'm endorsing understanding and being attacked for that, then I am almost flattered."

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Pat Robertson's zeal for Israel

The man who once called the Prophet Muhammad a "terrorist" and Islam a "very evil and wicked religion" has done it again. This time, 'divine providence' has laid Ariel Sharon's massive brain hemorrhage at his doorstep, and Reverend Pat is not one to pass up such an opportunity.

"He was dividing God's land, and I would say, 'Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the [European Union], the United Nations or the United States of America...'"

This ardent support for Israel from the Christian camp is hardly new.

For many Jews, Israel is the fulfillment of national aspirations after thousands of years of minority status, of being alienated from their host socieities, and in many cases actually barred from becoming full citizens of the lands in which they lived.

Christian Zionism, on the other hand, is the belief that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, is in accordance with Biblical prophecy, and is a necessary precondition for the return of Jesus to reign on Earth. This is supposed to occur near the end of the world, a turbulent period known rather anti-climatically as the End Times.

As a specifically theological belief, however, Christian Zionism does not necessarily entail sympathy for the Jews as an ethnicity or for Judaism as a religion. Hal Lindsey has written in one of his books about the End Times:

"...the valley from Galilee to Eilat (a town in southern Israel) will flow with blood and 144,000 Jews would bow down before Jesus and be saved".

According to Lindsey, the rest of the Jews- an alarming two-thirds- will perish in a great conflagration called Armageddon.

So influential is this lobby in the United States, Daniel Pipes comments that Christian Zionism is probably Israel's "best weapon".

I disagree. Utilizing such 'assets' to cement Israel's position in the world might do more harm than good in the long run. Statements such as Pat Robertson's are the natural consequence of the set of End Time beliefs that is called 'dispensationalism', which many commentators say is a kind of self-willed fulfillment of prophecy.

The end of Gaza kibbutzim

Last night, the deadline for Jewish settlers to leave Gaza voluntarily was crossed. The head of Israel's military in Gaza, Brig Gen Dan Harel, said force will not be used to evict settlers until Wednesday morning at the earliest. I think the army itself is working on a tight, but unpublicised deadline. It's obvious that all settlements have to be cleared by Friday. Any action during the Sabbath period could invite violence from settlers who have so far, chosen to remain.

Meanwhile, Hamas and the PLO are trying to outshout one another on just who was responsible for the Israeli withdrawal. Both echo the same line: "Gaza today, Jerusalem tomorrow." They need to accumulate as much political capital as possible in the run-up to Palestinian elections that might well define the region's geo-political character for the next ten to twenty years. So far, frighteningly, it is the militant groups who are winning. The grassroots draw a parallel between Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. They see an Israel fleeing because of suicide bombs. The incentive for violence has just been pumped up tenfold.

Israel faces mortal danger. But Ariel Sharon was an army general. He is a strategist, first and foremost. Within his unilateral pullout plan might lie plans within plans. Like his old friend, Ehud Olmert, he believes that Israel is similarly threatened by the demographics of retaining Arab-dominated Gaza. It is a matter of weighing between two evils. The subdued, politically-correct statements that have come out of Sharon's and Olmert's mouths, coupled with occasional flashes of the pullout's true intentions, testifies that Israel's ruling elite knows what it's doing and the consequences of it.

But I am not sure that Israel will be safe from terrorism in the immediate future.

I don't agree with building settlements- deliberately called kibbutzim to evoke a kind of religious legitamacy- on the Occupied Territories. Yes, Israel annexed the lands after fighing a war that the Arabs initiated, but displacing tens of thousands of natives from their homeland, and then banning them from returning is plain terrible. It is a human issue, not a political one, as some in the Likud would like it to be.

Nonetheless, I fear too Hamas' overriding charter; which is to erase Israel from the planet's surface. Like most militant groups, Hamas overtures to truce and temporary peace are simply steps in reaching their most cherished goal.

Israel has taken a significant step back from the brink. Will the Palestinians move next?

Same pressures, same kneejerks

For the first time since Israel's creation, Israelis found out what it was like to confront a bulldozer flanked by soldiers- a scene that is familiar to most Palestinian squatters. This time, though, both machine and men were there to perform the unthinkable- remove Jews from Gaza.

For many of these settlers, perhaps, Sharon has committed a crime against the very tenets of Judaism. In a televised address, Sharon confessed that the scenes of evicting Jews from their homes were almost too painful to bear. He pleaded with people not to vent their anger on the soldiers, many of whom were moved to tears by the operation.

"Attack me. I am responsible for this. Attack me. Blame me."

A Jewish terror attack on Palestinians in the West Bank, which left three dead, points to a poignant fact. Faced with the same pressues, both Jew and Palestinian aren't that much different.

Greater Israel- minus Gaza

When confronted by angry rabbis who wanted Israel returned to the borders that King David had established in Biblical times, Shimon Peres, one of the negotiators of the Oslo Peace Accords, wryly replied: -"Not everything King David did on the ground and on the roof-tops seems to me to be Jewish or appeals to me."

Since its establishment, Israel has always used land it captured in the Six-Day War to buy peace. This policy has reaped rewards in the form of treaties with two of its closest neighbors, Egypt and Jordan, but has frustrated ultra-nationalists who dream of creating a Biblical and bulbous Israel.

While the militaries of most Arab countries remain inferior to Israel's, the state of war that exists between them and Israel means that Israelis constantly live on heightened alert. Saddam Hussein's incoherent bombing of Tel Aviv during Gulf War I brought home to many the message that Arab dictators would never hesitate in dragging Israel into the region's brawls, just to win some kind of pan-Arab sympathy.

Ariel Sharon came into power with concrete promises of settlement expansion into Gaza and the West Bank, but recent events have left him with little choice but to surrender at least one portion of the Occupied Territories. That this portion is the least fertile and the least economically-viable of the two only means that Israel intends to defend, tooth and nail, its annexation of the West Bank.

Giving up Gaza, however, does not necessarily pander to the Palestinians' own nationalistic designs on the land. The Palestinian issue is simply a nominal result of Israel's long-term considerations. A fringe benefit that might, or might not, give psychological succor to millions of displaced Palestinians. The Palestinian militants' claim that Israel was 'driven out' of Gaza is therefore, eminently laughable.

I say this because the Gaza Plan isn't a new plan; it isn't even Sharon's plan. From as early as December 2003, Ehud Olmert, former mayor of Jerusalem, had warned about Israel losing its Jewish character due to simple demograhics. Even with intensive immigration policies of Jews into Israel, the Israeli-Arab's population growth outstripped the Jewish one. Maintaining a grip on Arab-dominant lands like Gaza would tip the balance even further.

"We dreamt that it will be larger. We dreamt that it will be bigger. We dreamt that it will include all of the important places for us. But, at some point in life, we'll have to make a choice-between a larger state but possibly not Jewish, or a smaller state but Jewish. And, I want to live in a Jewish state."

Israel's increasing recognition of the problem culminated in the Knesset (Jewish parliment) passing a law partially limiting the ability of Palestinian Authority residents to receive Israeli citizenship by marrying Israeli Arabs.

Pressure arrived from another unexpected source. The United States became increasingly impatient with Israel's maneuvers to short-circuit the formation of a contigious Palestinian state, with sovereignity over the air and shipping lanes that Sharon had once warned would not be given up to the Palestinians.

A 2004 study into Israel's falling credibility in the international arena convinced many in the Knesset that Gaza disengagement was the best course to take. It entailed none of the sacrifices, or promised sacrifices that the American-sponsored Road Plan forced them to commit to, yet had the singular effect of strenghtening the argument that Israel, despite Palestinian intransigence, was still big enough to tie Gaza in a ribboned box and present it to the Palestinians.

Ariel Sharon's dreams, as that of many of the so-called defence hawks of the Knesset, is to secure, not Jewish hegemony over the world as some Arab newspapers are wont to allege, but Israel's safe borders.

Israel & Palestine- End Game

When discussing the word terrorism, most people visualize their worst enemy. For most Arabs, terrorism is linked to the military crackdowns (some might argue unprovoked crackdowns) of the Israeli Defence Forces. For most Israelis and people in the West, though, the real terrorists are the militant groups in Palestine, supposedly fighting for a place to live in and a right to live without occupation. Without going into a lengthy debate about the rightness and wrongness of each other's position, I shall state categorically that the region should be the home of two peoples. After all, in the Old Testament, Jewish (as opposed to Christian) Zion would be a place where lamb and wolf lay down side by side. This prophecy is especially instructive when one considers the current situation. Will the lamb and the wolf ever take the first tentative steps toward living together? The end-result is so easy to conceive, but the process, appearing under the recent guise of the Road Map for Peace, is a difficult one to implement. Why? Because there are extremist elements on both sides who want to destroy the lamb-wolf vision. Elements who believe that the question of the Holy Land should be an all-or-nothing affair.

Though militant groups like Hamas and Al-Aqsa have toned down their rhetoric about pushing Israel back into the sea, they continue to launch attacks against innocent Jewish civilians. More specifically, they target groups of people like women, children and the elderly whom the the religion specifically forbade from molesting in times of strife. This is wrong, and we should not find any excuses for such wanton aggression, nor should we turn away from our duties of denouncing it.

It is therefore heartening to note that Arun Ghandi's message of peaceful resistance, when he was visiting the occupied territories, is slowly (painfully so) gaining ground. The First Intifada (literally, a "great shaking off") was a largely passive affair, and it is that event in history that Mr Ghandi singles out as being a less-than-perfect example of what he is trying to sell to the Palestinians. He goes on to argue convincngly that the present Second Intifada, the most violent one, has brought nothing but misery to the common people.

Lest one is tempted to think that Israel is not itself gripped by the agendas of extremist elements, one has only to go back a few years when an assassin's gun took the life of a Jewish Prime Minister who had been prepared to give up land for peace, as was the orginal intention of the first pioneers of Israel, when they captured Golan Heights, Sinai, West Bank and Gaza during the tumultous days of Israel's formation.

Seen in this context, Mr Ariel Sharon's offer to give up almost the whole of Gaza and retain small but crucial parts of the West Bank should be seen as courageous, if not politically suicidal. There is no certainty that he will survive the next Likud vote, nor whether another Jewish extremist will rise up from the ready ranks of the Greater Israel following to claim the life of yet another leader who remianed, to a certain extent, true to the humanitarian ideals of Judaism, and the secular/strategic ideals (land-for-peace) of the first Zionists.

Not many Arabs appreciate this fact. Israel is essentially a Middle-Eastern and semetic society and a semetic society, like its Arab counterpart, is passionate and volatile. Israel is no different. There is a saying in Israel; that Israeli politics is no politics.

I have tended to ignore the ideological arguements coming from both sides, because ideology, like Usama bin Laden's, is absolutist. There is no ground for compromise in ideology because it stands and falls on its own. However, if one has a certain amount of foresight, one is able to realize that peace between Israel and the Arabs can only benefit the region in more ways than one.

Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors

In accounts of what happened at the July 2000 Camp David summit and the following months of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, we often hear about Ehud Barak's unprecedented offer and Yasser Arafat's uncompromising no. Israel is said to have made a historic, generous proposal, which the Palestinians, once again seizing the opportunity to miss an opportunity, turned down. In short, the failure to reach a final agreement is attributed, without notable dissent, to Yasser Arafat.

As orthodoxies go, this is a dangerous one. For it has larger ripple effects. Broader conclusions take hold. That there is no peace partner is one. That there is no possible end to the conflict with Arafat is another...

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