A Plan of Attack For Peace

With Gaza in flames, the prospects for a Middle East deal seem minuscule. But there is a way out, and both sides know what they must do.

By Daniel Klaidman | NEWSWEEK. Published Jan 3, 2009 (see sig)

In the remorseless logic of the Middle East, war is diplomacy by other means. This was true when Anwar Sadat launched a surprise attack on Israel in October 1973, a move that gave him the credibility and stature in the Arab world to make peace six years later with the Jewish state. It is also true today as Israel continues its assault on Hamas in Gaza, attacks that were prompted by Hamas missile strikes on Israel. The recent violence has reportedly cost more than 400 lives and left over 2,000 wounded; on Saturday, Israeli ground forces began moving in. Much of the outside world, not without justification, views the Gaza campaign as yet another atavistic explosion of Arab-Israeli violence that will, once again, set back the efforts for peace. But these strikes were not simply a reaction; they were a calculation.

Indeed, an Israeli source intimate with Olmert's thinking, speaking anonymously in order to speak freely, says the prime minister went into Gaza with a two-tiered set of objectives. The first was simply to stop the missiles Hamas was sending into Israel and to force a renewal of the ceasefire that existed until Dec. 19. Olmert's second goal, the source says, is far more ambitious—and risky: the prime minister wants to crush Hamas altogether, first by aerial attacks and then with a grinding artillery and infantry assault. The hope, however faint, is eventually to allow Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah government to reassert control in Gaza, clearing the way in the future for a return to serious peace negotiations. With Hamas out of the way, Olmert believes there is a chance that Israel and the Palestinians can put flesh on the outlines of a comprehensive peace plan he negotiated with Abbas over the past year.

Wishful thinking? Probably. After so many failed attempts, the phrase "peace process" has little meaning. Olmert's own motives in Gaza may have as much to do with domestic politics as foreign policy. Badly weakened and facing possible corruption charges, he has been grasping to rescue his tarnished legacy. But the fact that Olmert wants to negotiate, and that Abbas wants to negotiate, underscores the stubborn, maddening fact about the Israeli-Palestinian relationship: there is only one path to peace, and both sides know what it is—and yet neither side has been willing to take it. The violence, the bombings, the threats and counterthreats are all the more exhausting and senseless because they are, essentially, an elaborate delaying tactic. The broad contours of a peace were laid out eight years ago when President Bill Clinton brought the two sides together at Camp David and tried to broker a historic deal. The current Olmert "shelf plan" is remarkably similar to the Clinton parameters: a two-state solution in which Israelis and Palestinians make painful compromises on the core issues of territory, security, Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees. The 2000 talks collapsed partly because time ran out on Clinton's term and partly because neither side had the political clout to sell the deal back home. Bush, fixated on Iraq and terror, has paid little mind to the conflict until recently.

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http://www.newsweek.com/id/177840

"The IDF is a bunch of pussies." -- Steele el primero.

What I don't get is what caused Israelis to become so afraid all the time. And yeah, those IDF kids are, a lot of them, scared to death.

Time was Israelis seemed to me to be very brave and stalwart, all those Sabras and their Iron Thighs and their Kibbutzim pioneering in what we were led to believe was a Middle Eastern Empty Quarter, standing up for themselves and defending their women -- firm but fair -- against the Arab Hordes. They weren't afraid of anything.

Rockets rained down on the Kibbutzim all the time, and the pioneers brushed them off. Threats from the Devils Outside were routinely pished and tushed, there was nothing the Arabs could do to scare the Israelis, they stood tall and proud.

They were -- in many cases -- the survivors of the Holocaust.

Who could scare them? After what they'd been through? Ha.

Yes, yes, yes we understand -- now -- how Israel was founded in terrorism, and how hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven into exile and how that festering sore is still wide open. But that doesn't explain Israeli fear.

Is it guilt?

What really makes me angry is when an American, having his hands drenched in blood from the conflicts his government undertakes, focuses on a brutalized people to make himself feel morally superior. A Palestinian could easily make similar observations about Americans's reactions to their brutal slaying of innocents in the muslim world. In fact, they do. A lot.

The difference being that I never voted for GW, I was against the Iraq war from the beginning, and even converted people to my side, to throw the bastards out. And we did throw them out, and now we're going to get out of Iraq and stop bloodying our hands.

Americans' reactions have largely been that of apathy and indifference. I'm definitely not going to try to justify that apathy, and if you made an argument that this deliberate ignorance was every bit as evil as (while not being equivalent to) the celebration of killing, I'd be hard pressed to disagree. So don't paint me with your brush either.

Hallelujah, Praise Allah, Thank God, Amen.

Theirs is a culture that celebrates death over life.

I found this element of your statement to be the one that gave it a particularly racist tenor. As if any culture celebtrates death over life. As we see today from Goldfarb, there are some on both sides that find something to celebrate in the deaths of innocent civilians, as long as their on the other side.

Dropping high tech bombs on an open-air prison is the work of heros!