Israel's moral burden
Pfaff, William
OF SEVERAL PIIHBS WILLIAM PFAFF ISRAEL'S MORAL BURDEN The toll occupation is taking President George W. Bush and his secretary of state, Colin Powell, have discovered that it is not so...
...Israel was supposed to be a just nation, and it is—but only for Israelis...
...reprimand...
...Like it or not, after years of virtually unqualified U.S...
...The president now sees that U.S...
...Bush has repeatedly said that it is up to the Israelis and the Palestinians to find a way to reduce the violence...
...But Israel has never offered a full withdrawal, and the United States has never broached the idea...
...It is probably true that Yasir Arafat should have accepted the settlement that Ehud Barak, with the support of President Bill Clinton, offered during the final days of the Clinton administration...
...Israel was never meant to be like this...
...The Israelis face a reciprocal future of perpetuated insecurity, constant tension, and the terrible moral burden that oppressor bears...
...But Arafat probably could not have convinced his followers to accept it...
...Israel is also held hostage—by the Palestinians...
...The Israeli public does not yet fully understand the most important consideration of all: The Palestinians are, in a terrible way, winning...
...ties to Israel are not so easily broken...
...its own relations with oil-producing Arab states are, to some degree, held hostage to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians...
...Most of the people who rule Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States undoubtedly wish this were not the case...
...The Palestinians can be punished, confined, and intimidated, but they will still be there...
...Thus came the secretary of state's reprimand to Israel for last month's raid into Gaza, which he described as an "excessive and disproportionate" response to the Palestinian provocation, a mortar attack on a settlement four miles inside Israel...
...by annexing its fertile land and diverting its water...
...But they know that they, too, are at risk from the volatile Arab street, where Israel is hated, and from Islamic fundamentalist movements that want Israel and the United States ejected from the Middle East...
...Barak's justice minister, Yossi Beilin, said recently that "without the hope for peace, without the endeavors for peace, it will be impossible to maintain a viable Jewish state for long....Those [like Ariel Sharon's followers] who tell us that we cannot make peace with our neighbors bring us Job's tidings...
...OF SEVERAL PIIHBS WILLIAM PFAFF ISRAEL'S MORAL BURDEN The toll occupation is taking President George W. Bush and his secretary of state, Colin Powell, have discovered that it is not so simple to walk away from the Middle East...
...But they might accept simply obtaining what was taken from them in the 1967 war, land that has been illegally occupied and colonized ever since...
...Whatever Israel does to the Palestinians, the United States is held complicitous...
...Nor can it remain indifferent to mounting communal tension in Lebanon that is directly linked to Israeli-Syrian confrontation...
...Israeli forces were abruptly withdrawn after the U.S...
...And it is even less likely that Barak could have delivered what he offered...
...By occupying and colonizing Palestinian territory to which Israel has no title in international law, but which it holds only through military conquest...
...The more Israel behaves as an oppressor, the less it is worth living in, and the more distant it grows from the ideals upon which it was founded...
...But that doesn't change the fact that they are Israel's victims...
...The Palestinians are unlikely to get a better offer from an Israeli prime minister...
...Quite possibly, the situation is now beyond that possibility...
...The United States cannot ignore Israel's recent attacks on Syrian troops, whatever the provocation...
...Their suffering is morally destroying Israel...
...The Palestinians, meanwhile, assault civilians, carry out indiscriminate terrorist bombings, and utter extravagant imprecations and threats...
...In this respect, the United States is not an independent actor in the Middle East...
...Naturally, they would like to see Israel destroyed...
...It can make war on them, but it cannot win, since there is no authority with the power to surrender...
...They have wanted to end Washington's intimate involvement in the search for peace there...
...The president subsequently called Prime Minister Ariel Sharon...
...So what future is there for the Palestinians...
...Perpetuated oppression and suffering...
...backing for Israel, that country's acts are taken to be an American responsibility...
...They do little enough themselves to help the Palestinians and the Palestinian economy— what remains of it...
...And the two sides have been left to fend for themselves...
...by employing measures of repression that would be unacceptable in any other Western democracy— collective and exemplary punishment, destruction of civilian property to intimidate resistance, arrests without charge, and imprisonment without trial—Israel is turning itself into the kind of state it was founded to repudiate...
...It is robbing Israel of its moral substance...
...Their conduct wins them little sympathy in the West...
...2003, Los Angeles Times Syndicate International Commonweal 10 May 4,2001...
Vol. 128 • May 2001 • No. 9
