Israel Matzav

Beware of equivalence

Walter Russell Mead has a review of the oldest 'peace process' in the world, after which he concludes (Hat Tip: Gershon D):

None of this means that peace isn’t desirable or possible. But it means that when it gets down to the nitty gritty, both sides find much to dislike in any concrete peace proposal. They have come tantalizingly close but they have never quite inked the deal; I suspect that is where things will remain.

There are powerful interests and powerful outside players pushing both parties towards an agreement; the Middle East peace industry isn’t going away. The Americans want peace so this whole distracting and annoying headache will just stop. The major Arab countries want to deprive Iran of the opportunity to play the Palestinian card as Iran struggles to gain street credibility in the Sunni world. The EU hates all the noise and the brawling in the neighborhood, and with a growing Muslim population at home the Europeans want to reduce friction between the west and the Islamic world. China, India and Japan would like to see less chaos and trouble in the part of the world that sends them so much oil.

Neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis can afford to blow off the many interested outsiders who keep pushing them together. But the gaps between the sides are so deep (even when they are not very wide), and the gaps within each side (between Israeli settlers and the pro-peace parties, between Fatah and Hamas) are so threatening, that peace is likely to remain a rare and temporary visitor to this troubled land.

It's probably a fair conclusion to say that peace is unlikely - how he gets there is a different story. The moral equivalence on which he insists and the 'on the one hand... on the other hand...' style make it an annoying read. Along the way he also comes up with this observation:

Every ridge, every aquifer, every inch of arable land and every acre of desert is the object of an intense, zero sum game for players who have gamed every scenario and matched wits for decades. And behind the moderates in every camp are two groups of critics. There are the hard men don’t believe peace is possible and don’t want their side to make any concessions in pursuit of utopian dreams. And there are the crazies: the psychotic extremists found in both communities, addicted to a poisonous stew of rage, chauvinism and fear. Both Palestinians and Israelis (like Yitzak Rabin) have been assassinated by their own crazies; the crazies on both sides also specialize in spectacular acts of aggression and murder calculated to stop the peace process dead in its tracks.

And thankfully, the very first commenter takes him to task for it:

“And there are the crazies: the psychotic extremists found in both communities, addicted to a poisonous stew of rage, chauvinism and fear. Both Palestinians and Israelis (like Yitzak Rabin) have been assassinated by their own crazies; the crazies on both sides also specialize in spectacular acts of aggression and murder calculated to stop the peace process dead in its tracks.”

Beware the easy seduction of the false equivalence. This makes it sound like both sides are the same, as if both sides kill their moderates.

But if you look at the whole political histories of the Jews and Arabs in Palestine since the days of the yishuv: you find that Rabin was the only Jewish leader killed by a Jewish extremist, and the whole country was shocked. Can you name other examples, even of lesser men, ministers, mayors, killed by fellow Jews? I can’t think of any, even though half the country bitterly opposed Oslo.

But on the Palestinian side it’s completely different. Look at the career of the Mufti, and of Arafat – how many times did these men consolidate their power through assassination? How many moderate Palestinians were charged with “collaberation” or “selling land to Jews” (both capital crimes in the PA) and killed? And now, do you think moderates dare to speak up in Gaza?

The crazies rule in Gaza. And Fatah, with their central committee full of hardliners like Abu Ghaneim, is not far behind them. The crazies do not rule in Jerusalem.

No, the two sides are not at all the same. You do a great injustice to Israel to imply they are.

” They have come tantalizingly close but they have never quite inked the deal; I suspect that is where things will remain.”

No, they didn’t come close. Israel has offered three deals which the Palestinians have refused but never countered.

That’s what is basically abnormal about Mideast negotiations: in most negotiations, the sides start far apart and move closer together. But in the Mideast “peace process” the Palestinians response to offers is to move further away, make new demands.

That’s because they don’t want to actually make an agreement; they just want to deal, and deal, and deal some more, thinking they will get offered more and more each time. Obama has only confirmed them in the idea that they only need to wait to get everything for nothing.

Abu Mazen has already demanded that Obama step in and “impose” a deal — what does that say about his confidence that no conditions whatsoever will be imposed on the Palestinian side? Abu Mazen’s only concern at these “talks” is to get Israel blamed for their inevitable failure so that he can demand again that Obama impose a solution on the Israelis.

Comment by nadine – May 11, 2010 @ 3:19 am

Moral of the story: Sometimes it's worth reading the comments - and sometimes they're even better than the post. (Almost never on this blog, I hope).

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:08 AM