Mideast "peace" results in strange coexistence

  • Jim Hoagland / Washington Post columnist
  • Saturday, June 8, 2002 9:00pm
  • Opinion

WASHINGTON — The war process between Israelis and Palestinians has achieved what the peace process failed to deliver. Unspeakable violence for 21 months has established the basis for separation and a coexistence that will be bitter and unfair, but less bloody than any other available alternative.

A seemingly final psychological separation between the Muslims and Jews of the Holy Land has occurred. It has been blasted into being by continuing waves of suicide bombings and retaliatory tank assaults. A physical separation that is permanent in many of its features will now follow.

Israelis, whether they belong to Likud or Peace Now, need an imposing set of physical and policing barriers — a fence, in shorthand — to separate them from terror groups in the West Bank and Gaza. This will be true whether or not an end-of-conflict agreement is reached. So will the need for dismantling isolated Israeli settlements.

This is the core of what has changed: The conflict now resists both the diplomatists’ promises of the fruits of peace and the generals’ threats of more war. Life will be lived in between for a long time. A fence will be built in peace or in war. Remote settlements will wither away, either way. Palestinians will live on parole under the watchful, electronic eyes of Israeli forces, whether they have a state or not.

The national traumas of nearly two years of strife cannot be dealt with otherwise. Buffer zones, foot patrols and unmanned aerial vehicles will shape the new relationship between Palestinians and Israelis far more than will the U.S.-sponsored peace conference proposed for this summer.

I hoped it would be otherwise — who wants to revive the imagery or substance of Berlin during the Cold War? And there were chances. As Amos Elon noted recently in The New York Review of Books, in 1967 the Israeli Foreign Ministry studied the consequences of freeing rather than occupying the West Bank. Imagine history’s course if the Israelis had said then to the Palestinians: "We have come to liberate you from Jordanian misrule," and meant it.

History does not disclose its alternatives. But amid the overly optimistic assessments about the hopes for peace that will be flowing from the State Department and elsewhere in the coming weeks, keep these new Middle East realities in mind:

1. There is no basis for going back to the fundamental undertaking of the Oslo accords and the various Clinton plans, which assumed that Palestinians would enforce security in autonomous areas that would gradually join and harden into an independent state. The Israelis have erased from the map the autonomous zones of Oslo and negated any possible Palestinian role for protecting Israelis.

2. The European Union, the World Bank and other donors, which spent $3.5 billion to turn the Palestinian Authority into a government, now admit failure. Yet, Yasser Arafat and his lieutenants have demonstrated beyond all doubt that they are using the "reform" process to re-legitimize their rule, not to alter it. What will Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdullah do when it becomes clear that Arafat has outmaneuvered them? That is the essential question of the summer, not when or where a formal conference will get under way.

3. Israel cannot achieve security through the conquest of land and willpower alone. Settlements in the midst of Arab populations are magnets for disaster. They detract from Israel’s self-defense abilities. That is reflected in a recent poll by Haaretz newspaper, which found that 54 percent of Israel’s Jewish population now "perceives the settlements as weakening Israel’s national interest."

And 60 percent believe that new physical means of separation are necessary to decrease terror attacks. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon approved last week a 65-mile line of defense along the West Bank frontier similar to the high-tech perimeter in place around Gaza.

It will take at least a year and $100 million to erect the fence, which will at some points be a wall up to 26 feet high, at others a set of electronic detection devices and scattered military checkpoints. It will roughly retrace one segment of the 215-mile long Green Line that separated Israel and the pre-1967 West Bank, and quarantine the towns of Jenin, Nablus, Tul Karm and Qalqiliyah.

Coexistence arrangements that do not insult the future are a responsible goal for now. Overreaching, either for the diplomatists’ final peace settlement or the generals’ unattainable total destruction of the other side, would be folly. It is a moment for thinking that is modest, clear and focused on saving lives.

Jim Hoagland can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or hoaglandj@washpost.com.

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Opinion

toon
Editorial cartoons for Thursday, Feb. 6

A sketchy look at the news of the day.… Continue reading

Curtains act as doors for a handful of classrooms at Glenwood Elementary on Monday, Sept. 9, 2024 in Lake Stevens, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Editorial: Schools’ building needs point to election reform

Construction funding requests in Arlington and Lake Stevens show need for a change to bond elections.

Lake Stevens school bond funds needed safety work at all schools

A parent’s greatest fear is for something bad to happen to their… Continue reading

Arlington schools capital levy: Say yes to new Post Middle School

Schools are the backbone of the Arlington community. Families want to move… Continue reading

Long sentences not much of a deterrent but serve justice

A recent column by Todd Welch mentions a trope that ignores one… Continue reading

Comment: Trump’s stress-test of Constitution shows it’s up to job

Keep filing lawsuits and the courts will bat down his unconstitutional orders; as long as he follows the rulings.

Stephens: Trump endangers stability of Pax Americana

Discarding the values of a ‘Great Power’ for a ‘Big Power’ will cost the U.S. its standing in the world.

FILE- In this Nov. 14, 2017, file photo Jaìme Ceja operates a forklift while loading boxes of Red Delicious apples on to a trailer during his shift in an orchard in Tieton, Wash. Cherry and apple growers in Washington state are worried their exports to China will be hurt by a trade war that escalated on Monday when that country raised import duties on a $3 billion list of products. (Shawn Gust/Yakima Herald-Republic via AP, File)
Editorial: Trade war would harm state’s consumers, jobs

Trump’s threat of tariffs to win non-trade concessions complicates talks, says a state trade advocate.

A press operator grabs a Herald newspaper to check over as the papers roll off the press in March 2022 in Everett. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald file photo)
Editorial: Push back news desert with journalism support

A bill in the state Senate would tax big tech to support a hiring fund for local news outlets.

Jayden Hill, 15, an incoming sophomore at Monroe High School is reflected in the screen of a cellphone on Wednesday, July 10, 2024 in Monroe, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Editorial: Students need limits on cellphones in school

School districts needn’t wait for legislation to start work on policies to limit phones in class.

toon
Editorial cartoons for Wednesday, Feb. 5

A sketchy look at the news of the day.… Continue reading

Comment: Costco’s work to defend its DEI values isn’t over

Costco successfully argued its values to shareholders, but a bigger fight looms with ‘anti-woke’ forces.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.