Editorial The Middle East & us
Steinfels, Margaret O'Brien
The Middle East & us The Mideast peace process is on the brink of failure. A predictable unpredictable leap could clear this hurdle the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian effort at rapprochement, after...
...Prime Minister Netanyahu can do as he pleases because he knows that the Clinton administration, the U.S...
...all of these actions end in fostering conditions which are used to justify acts of terrorism...
...If the Mideast peace process goes over the brink, Palestinians and Israelis will pay an awful price...
...But what of U.S...
...both are bully boys who have prevailed in tribal politics...
...In September, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, during her first official visit to the Middle East, spoke candidly and directly to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat about the ways in which each was derailing the peace process and the steps each must take to reestablish confidence...
...Arafat and Netanyahu are two of a kind: neither is a statesman...
...Or the same scrutiny that Evangelicals and the Christian Right have brought to persecution and discrimination against Christians around the world...
...Memories of the Holocaust, decades of interfaith meetings, and close friendships tie the Catholic church and many Catholics to the Jewish community in the United States and in Israel...
...But Israel keeps suspected terrorists in administrative detention subject to court-sanctioned torture, closes its borders to Palestinian workers, continues to build provocative settlements, revokes the identity cards of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, holds back tax monies owed the Palestinian Authority...
...The 1993 agreement signed by then-Prime Minister Yatzik Rabin and Yasir Arafat rested on the calculation that after decades of war, terrorism, and oppression, it was time to try peacemaking...
...and a secure Israel living in peace and prosperity with its Arab neighbors...
...That trust is now gone, disrupted when Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli religious fanatic, and shamefully squandered by Arafat and Netanyahu since then...
...Though never clear-cut as to means, Oslo seemed to promise a clear-cut end: A demilitarized Palestinian entity operating under its own government and its own laws on the West Bank, in Gaza, and in some portion of Jerusalem...
...Netanyahu's policies are destroying the last best chance for a peace settlement, and no one who cares for the long-term future of Israel should support them...
...And so does fear fear that criticism of Israeli policies will unleash charges of anti-Semitism...
...Though suicide bombers kill and wound scores of Israelis, Arafat still will not act...
...Those who are their friends should help them to calculate how very high that price will be...
...The unlikely event of these protests being made suggests how deeply implicated Americans are in the demise of the Oslo Peace Accords...
...The two worked at building trust and constructing a framework that would lead to a settlement...
...What about discrimination against Conservative and Reformed Jews in Israel...
...It is difficult to separate that support from the man who is the elected leader of the country...
...The travel restrictions placed on Muslims trying to reach their sacred places...
...the Palestinian Authority would not act against the militants as long as a political settlement kept disappearing into an uncertain future...
...Are the Oslo Accords history anyway...
...responsibility in allowing this war by other means to continue...
...Some of these policies have their source and support in those Orthodox Jewish groups who for religious reasons promote a Greater Israel and who are working to secure their own religious control over all of Israel...
...For what Israel needs is not uncritical friends and unquestioning support, but a clear message: Mr...
...Each man allowed the peace process to wither by useless posturing and counterproductive demands: Israel could not be secure as long as Islamic militants operated freely in Palestine...
...each has played to the extremists and religious fanatics who never wanted a peace settlement in the first place...
...Arafat's foot-dragging, urge a time out from actions that will provoke the other side, and accept mutual responsibility for negotiating a settlement (Washington Post, September 19,1997...
...This is not the moral equivalent of suicide bombers, but it is fast becoming the moral equivalent of moral equivalence...
...A predictable unpredictable leap could clear this hurdle the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian effort at rapprochement, after all, is a story of near-failures...
...That fear, if it is realistic, is also counterproductive...
...They ought to find themselves subject to the same criticism that Vice-President Al Gore made to Boris Yeltsin over legislation privileging Russian Orthodoxy...
...Congress, a significant portion of the American-Jewish community, the Evangelical and Catholic communities, and American public opinion generally will not fail in their support for Israel...
...Harassment of Palestinian Christians in the West Bank...
...Not only that...
...Knowledgeable observers in these sectors may or may not like Netanyahu's policies, but they are firm supporters of Israel...
...Netanyahu's unilateral actions as well as Mr...
...A group of American-Jewish leaders has tried to do that by urging Secretary Albright to act exactly as she did in September: Criticize Mr...
...His rebuttal that terrorism was not eliminated when Israel was responsible for security on the West Bank and in Gaza does not excuse his own failures...
...What of the Catholic community...
...Secretary Albright's blunt words to Arafat and Netanyahu and her strong departing message call me when you're ready to negotiate may be good diplomatic moves...
Vol. 124 • October 1997 • No. 17
