Bibi Defines the Problem Wall St. Journal 15 May 2002 Benjamin Netanyahu's political theater in Tel Aviv Sunday night was a headline-writer's dream; the New York Times' was typical: "Likud Party Repudiates Palestinian State." But headlines can mislead, and behind the drama and the headlines was an issue of substance that Israel and the world will have to address. In what has inevitably been widely seen as a rebuke to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a founding member of Likud, 60% of the central committee of his party voted against supporting the creation of a Palestinian state. But too much can be made of a word, and in this case the word in question is "state." The party of Messrs. Sharon and Netanyahu did not vote against self-rule for Palestinians, or in favor of pushing them east of the Jordan, or for reoccupation of the territories currently controlled by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. What they did do is make clear that they do not want a state in the West Bank and Gaza, one that was free to raise an army, amass military materiel and sign treaties with nations hostile to Israel. These are all sensible concerns. Israel should not be forced to accept the creation of a state on its borders capable of threatening its very existence. Of course, it is possible for a state to be constituted in such a way as to ameliorate some of these dangers; in the wake of World War II fears of renewed aggressive Japanese imperialism at some future date led to the creation of a state that was constitutionally prevented from building or fielding an effective military. In the end, what the land occupied by the Palestinians is called is much less important than what it is. Israel learned this lesson once in the 1990s when it signed on to the creation of a Palestinian Authority run by Arafat and his PLO. As a trial-run for showing the viability of a two-state solution, it can only be considered a failure. Fearing that excluding the PLO from the leadership of the PA would lead the PLO terrorists to undermine the PA's authority, Israel and the international community invited them in. As a result, Israel is stuck instead with a PA that itself conducts terrorism. Which is about what you'd expect when you ask terrorists to run a place, whatever name you give it. What is essential then to any viable settlement is not whether "Palestine" is a state or a Special Administrative Region or some other term, but that the entity not pose a threat to its neighbors. To the extent that Mr. Netanyahu's gesture Sunday was designed to highlight the limits of what a Palestinian state should be allowed to do within its own borders, we are in sympathy with the substance of his stand. Arafat's petty dictatorship is corrupt, violent and an active sponsor of terror against Israeli civilians. There is no sign that Arafat is willing to change any of these things. But there is also the question of political rhetoric. On the one hand, Mr. Netanyahu's hard line does suddenly make Mr. Sharon, frequently derided as "extreme," look more moderate in the eyes of the world. But on the other hand, Mr. Netanyahu, despite protestations to the contrary, has publicly undermined his own prime minister by delivering a rebuke to Mr. Sharon's repeated statements in support of Palestinian statehood. Mr. Sharon says the central committee vote, which polls indicate do not reflect the feelings of a majority of the party rank-and-file in any case, will not change his policies nor force him to retract those statements. Those statements, it should be noted, do not differ so much from Mr. Netanyahu's on what requirements a future Palestine would have to meet. Their differences appear to us to be more semantic than substantial. What is regrettable in all this, however, is that Mr. Netanyahu has handed a rhetorical club to Arafat and his supporters, who are now in a better position to continue to paint their terrorist campaign as a life-or-death struggle for political autonomy. Mr. Netanyahu says he is not interested in ruling over one single Palestinian, and we believe him, but that is just the sort of nuance that the headline writers tend to miss. Of course, even the Palestinians' cries about the desperation of their struggle are counterproductive. Even if it were true that suicide-murder were the only means at their disposal to advance their cause, it undermines the very thing that it is now incumbent on the Palestinians to demonstrate, which is that they can live side-by-side with the Israelis in peace. Until that can be shown, talk of a Palestinian state must, in any case, remain just that -- talk. |
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