Crisis in the Gaza Strip offers chance for peace

WASHINGTON — Again.

Again.

And, yes, yet again.

Funny how ever since the invasion of Iraq five years ago, it has become fashionable in the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld dream world to think of the “Palestinian question” as being way down the line in terms of potential nightmares: Palestine, if it existed at all, was small, its importance was way overblown, it would be overtaken by the “big wars” like Iraq and Afghanistan. George, Dick and Donnie would show them how.

But here it is again, just in time to drive the calm and cool new American president crazy.

Already, as of this writing, in excess of 360 Palestinians have been killed, with 900 wounded, and the Israelis are declaring an ascent to “all-out war” while violent protests have erupted in cities across Europe and the Arab world. Many of the Arabs demonstrated not against Israel but against their own rickety and corrupt governments and, as in Yemen, against some existential “Arab silence.”

Hamas to blame

It is easy to see that Hamas, the extremist Islamic resistance movement that rules Gaza, is immediately at fault. There is no question that Hamas started the conflict by sending deadly Iranian-made rockets into southern Israeli towns, killing a handful of innocent Israelis.

Yet, if one looks very much deeper beneath the surface, one can find that, despite the horrible carnage, this moment offers a rare opportunity for a peace process finally to come to fruition. How can that possibly be?

It could be by thinking of solving that vicious old bugaboo the “Palestinian question” by looking at it in a totally different way — by essentially closing Gaza out of the discourse for the moment, and instead embracing the great majority of players who are ready and able to make peace, and by eventually establishing such a new situation across the Middle East that Hamas followers will gradually fall away from fanaticism.

UFirst, look at the Palestinians. Approximately 1.5 million live in Gaza, a tiny, miserable hothouse of a place only 10 miles wide and 30 miles long. Gaza’s coasts are policed by an Israeli blockade; Palestinians can no longer pass either into Israel or into Egypt on the southern side without special permission. Gaza has effectively become one large prison where the prisoners, not surprisingly, regularly go quite mad.

To place your hopes for peace on dealing with such a place is another kind of madness. Instead, the Israelis and the Americans should begin by somehow keeping Gaza at bay while genuinely negotiating with the relatively moderate Fatah government of President Mahmoud Abbas on the far larger West Bank.

USecond, realize that this means giving up the very fleeting pleasures of tit-for-tat with the Gazans. It means, on both the Israelis’ and the Americans’ parts, saying to themselves, “We claim we are the superior nations and forces — and in fact we are. But that should also mean that we should act like that. We should stand back and reform the situation justly and fairly so that an eventual peace process really is possible.”

That would mean Israel stopping its repugnant land, coastal and air controls of Gaza and the West Bank, and it would especially mean halting the hated settlements on the West Bank. And it would mean an American government strong enough and tough enough to take measures to force the Israelis to do just that.

UThird, it means grasping what is right out there for the taking. This is the willingness of virtually all of the major Arab states in the region finally, finally, to make in-depth peace with Israel.

No one has expressed this better or more fully than former Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Turki al-Faisal, the legendary director of Saudi intelligence from 1977 to 2001. Writing in The Washington Post just after Christmas, he laid out exactly the map of where we are:

“The Arab world has presented two clear proposals, the Fahd peace plan of 1981 and the 2002 Arab peace initiative. Both were endorsed by all Arab nations. The Arab world is willing to pay a high price for peace, not only recognizing Israel as a legitimate state but also normalizing relations and putting a permanent end to the state of hostilities that has existed since 1948.”

Egypt and Jordan have been commissioned to meet with Israel on behalf of the Arab world, he went on, and “once agreements between Palestine, Lebanon and Syria are reached with Israel, Saudi Arabia will join fully in ending hostilities and establishing diplomatic and normal relations with Israel.”

No one here, of course, denies there are endless complications — if we allow them to be so. But Jordan and Egypt have long had diplomatic relations with Israel, which work quite well. There is not one outstanding problem — no, not even the question of the division of Jerusalem, giving the Palestinians a small section for a capital — that is not negotiable today.

No time to spare

The new American President Barack Obama is not going to have a lot of time, for the Middle East is a ruthless and relentless enemy, where time is written in biblical warnings. Israeli elections are set for Feb. 10, and if they bring back to power the ultra-rightist Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, there will be little hope for any kind of peace for a long time.

One can only hope that President-elect Obama and his team realize the internal potential of this pregnant moment — and not only its external destructiveness.

Universal Press Syndicate