The Middle Easts Military Delusions
Jeffrey D. Sachs
The paradox of the current violence in Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon is that the
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not hard to see. A large
majority of Israelis and Palestinians favor a two-state solution essentially
along the pre-1967 boundaries. The major Arab states, including Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, and others, share that view. The problem lies not in seeing the
solution, but in getting to it, because powerful and often violent minorities
on both sides oppose the majority-backed solution.
Perhaps three-quarters of Israelis and Palestinians are eager for peace and
compromise, while a quarter on each side often fueled by extreme religious
zeal wants a complete victory over the other. Radical Palestinians want to
destroy Israel, while radical Israelis demand control over the entire West
Bank, through either continued occupation or even (according to a tiny
minority) a forcible removal of the Palestinian population.
When peace appears to be close at hand, radicals on one side of the conflict
or the other provoke an explosion to derail it. Sometimes this involves overt
conflict between moderates and radicals within one side, such as when an
Israeli religious zealot assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin when
peace negotiations were making progress. Sometimes this involves a terrorist
attack by radical Palestinians against Israeli civilians, in the hope of
provoking an exaggerated violent response from Israel that breaks the process
of trust building among moderates on both sides.
The moderates are in a daily battle with their own extremists, who claim that
compromise is impossible. Israeli extremists insist that all Palestinians are
intent on destroying the state of Israel itself. They take the Palestinian
suicide bombings and kidnappings as proof that peace with the other side is
impossible. There are no partners for peace, goes the refrain.
Palestinian extremists insist that Israel is simply plotting to maintain its
occupation over all of Palestine and that withdrawal from Gaza or announced
plans to withdraw partly from the West Bank are merely tactical, without giving
up real control over land, transport, water, defense, and other attributes of
sovereignty.
The extremists have been able to block peace because any attack from one side
has systematically provoked a violent counterattack from the other. Moderates
are repeatedly made to look weak, naïve, and idealistic. The extremists also
peddle the appealing fantasy that total victory is somehow possible, often by
personalizing the battle. Israeli forces regularly try to decapitate the
violent opposition by killing Palestinian leaders, as if the problem were a few
individuals rather than ongoing political stalemate. Violent Palestinians, for
their part, propagandize that Israel will lose its nerve in the face of another
terrorist attack.
In an environment as deadly as this, the details and symbolism of a possible
settlement are bound to loom very large. Israelis and Palestinians came close
to agreement on land for peace in the context of the Oslo peace process. Both
sides endorsed something like the pre-1967 borders, yet the deal was not quite
struck, with each side claiming intransigence by the other on one or another
point. Such a deal can be struck now, but only by avoiding the useless debate
over who blocked peace in the past.
An insight of Nobel Prize-winning game theorist Tom Schelling is especially
useful in this context. Schelling identified the practical importance of a
bargaining focal point as the way forward for negotiators who are in range of
an agreement. The pre-1967 boundaries are the inevitable focal point in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both sides should agree to the pre-1967
boundaries in principle, and then swap small land parcels and definitions of
control (especially regarding Jerusalem) in slight and mutually convenient
deviations from the 1967 boundaries.
In other words, quibbling over details should come after both sides agree on
the principle of respect for the pre-1967 borders, which are recognized by key
countries throughout the region and around the world, and are enshrined in
numerous UN resolutions.
Todays tragedy is that we are receding from this possible agreement. Israel
is rightly aggrieved by the abduction of its soldiers by Hamas-backed
insurgents in Gaza and Hezbollah forces in Southern Lebanon, but Israels
massive and disproportionate military response plays into the hands of the
extremists.
Indeed, each side says that the other struck first. Israel refused even to
negotiate with the Hamas-led Palestinian government, trying to squeeze it
financially and make it capitulate. Hamas refused to acknowledge a two-state
solution except obliquely, and then under considerable pressure. Yet broad
Palestinian public opinion is on the side of compromise. Blame is easy enough
to assign, but misses the point. Compromise based on the pre-1967 borders is
the way to peace.
Nor is the United States playing a stabilizing role. It, too, is playing into
the hands of extremists by fighting terrorism with military rather than
political means. Just as the war in Iraq was a mistaken response to the threat
of al-Qaeda, the Bush administrations green light to Israels military
assaults in Gaza and Lebanon offers no real solution. The US and other powerful
outside parties should be pressing both sides to the focal point solution, not
sitting on their hands as the violence spirals out of control.
The most powerful ideology in the world today is self-determination. Until
there is a Palestinian state and an Iraq free of US occupation, Islamic
extremists will win recruits. Military reprisals will swell their ranks still
further, and, until political grievances are addressed, the spread of democracy
will not change that equation, because the extremists will win at the ballot
box.
In short, specific terrorist threats should be fought through narrowly
targeted counter-terrorist operations, while moderates should undercut
extremism through the politics of compromise rather than the false and
dangerous delusions of military victory.
** Jeffrey Sachs is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth
Institute at Columbia University.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2006.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sachs113
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