The Complete Idiot's Guide to Middle East Conflict

by Mitchell G. Bard, Ph. D.

  Israel’s Court Martial

  The security fence does have a harmful impact on some Palestinians. After hearing grievances presented by the Palestinians, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that although the construction of the security fence is consistent with international law, and based on Israel’s security requirements rather than political considerations, the government has to give greater weight to the harm inflicted on the Palestinians. As a result, the court required the government to move the fence in an area near Jerusalem to make things easier for the Palestinians. The government subsequently changed the route and factored the court’s ruling into the planning of the rest of the barrier.

  Israel Is Called on the International Carpet

  The Israeli Supreme Court’s action did little to mollify opponents of the fence who had taken the issue to the United Nations. The General Assembly condemned Israel for building the fence and asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to issue an advisory opinion.

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  Tut Tut!

  Many other nations have fences to protect their borders, including India, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. The United States is building one now to keep out illegal Mexican immigrants. Ironically, after condemning Israel’s barrier, the UN announced plans to build its own fence to improve security around its New York headquarters.

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  Israel’s supporters questioned why the ICJ was singling out Israel’s actions when it had never ruled on the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir or the conflict between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus or any of the dozens of other international border disputes.

  The ICJ offered the opinion that the construction of the barrier was contrary to international law and that it should be dismantled. Israel said the court had no right to tell it how to protect its citizens and would ignore the opinion and follow instead the decision of the Israeli Supreme Court.

  If peace negotiations succeed, it may be possible to remove the fence, move it, or open it in a way that offers freedom of movement. Israel, for example, moved a similar fence when it withdrew from southern Lebanon.

  Bad Choices

  The uncomfortable reality for the Palestinians is that Israel controls most of the territory they covet, and the Palestinians have limited options for achieving their goals. They find the status quo unacceptable, so that leaves them with the choice of negotiating a compromise that would give them a state in most of the West Bank and all of Gaza or continuing to pursue a terror campaign in the hope of either convincing the Israelis to withdraw unilaterally, forcing them to capitulate to their demands at the bargaining table or driving them into the sea.

  Some Palestinians believe in a strategy of stages that involves accepting less than their maximal demands now, and building a state in as much territory as they can get from Israel in negotiations, and then using that area as a base for pursuing their ultimate objective of liberating all of “Palestine.” As the intifada gradually fizzled out by the end of 2004, however, more and more Palestinians were tiring of conflict and expressing a greater willingness to coexist with Israel.

  Israel’s Options Narrow

  With the road map going nowhere, Israel found itself back to square one in evaluating its alternatives to the status quo. Given radical Islam and the commitment of groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad to continue their terror campaigns to replace Israel with an Islamic state, Israel has adopted a realistic rather than idealistic approach. Its goal is to maximize the amount of peace and security for its citizens and minimize the degree of danger they face. As Benjamin Netanyahu is fond of saying, Israel lives in the Middle East, not the Middle West, and the neighborhoods are very different. Although it is certainly the dream of all Israelis, they realize they’re not likely to have the same relations with their neighbors that the United States has with Canada and Mexico.

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  Tut Tut!

  The Palestinians and other Arabs routinely accuse Israel of trying to enlarge its territory, but it is the only power in history that has repeatedly withdrawn from territory it captured. In fact, Israel has already withdrawn from approximately 93 percent of the territory it won in the 1967 War.

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  The Population Bomb

  Palestinians have long maintained that Israel is expansionist and seeks to establish “Greater Israel” by taking over the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Although prime ministers from the right—Begin, Shamir, Netanyahu, and Sharon—allegedly believed in this policy, none of them annexed the territories to Israel. Thirty-eight years have passed, and Israel could have simply said that this is all Israel at any time, but it has chosen not to. This option is foreclosed in part by what is referred to as the demographic time bomb.

  If Israel annexed the territories, approximately three million Palestinians would come under Israeli rule. The Israeli population is now six million, with five million Jews. That means Jews would go from composing more than 80 percent of the population to just over 50 percent overnight. Given the higher birth rate among Palestinians, it would just be a matter of years before the Palestinians became a majority, or at least a substantial minority, and Israel would lose its Jewish character. One way to prevent this would be to deny the Palestinians the right to vote, in which case Israel would no longer be a democracy. Every Israeli leader has recognized this dilemma, and that is why as much as some might have liked to control all the territories, none was willing to take the next logical step.

  Talk, Talk, Talk

  Israelis have always hoped they could sit down with their Arab neighbors and reach a mutually satisfactory agreement that would end the conflict. This presupposes that both sides have a sincere interest in compromising to reach a settlement.

  This was the basis for the Oslo agreements. Many Israelis now believe, however, that Oslo was a mistake. They maintain that Arafat was a terrorist and a liar and they should have never tried to make a deal with him because he could not be trusted to keep it.

  Oslo was a calculated risk, however, based on the precedent of the Israel-Egyptian negotiations. Remember, Anwar Sadat was no Zionist. Egypt had fought five wars against Israel. Sadat had no love for Israel’s leaders, but he made a strategic and psychological decision to make peace with Israel. But Israel didn’t trust him completely. As in the Oslo case, negotiations and implementation proceeded in a gradual way. Israel returned some of the Sinai and waited to see whether Sadat kept the peace. They gave back more of the Sinai, and Sadat still maintained peace. It took five years of tough negotiations before the issues were all resolved (and some actually lingered longer). During that time, Israel did not withdraw far enough or fast enough to suit Sadat and did many other things that upset him, but Egypt never responded with an intifada or terrorism. By keeping the peace, even when he was angry or disagreed with Israeli policy, Sadat convinced the Israelis of his commitment to peace.

  Rabin was betting with Oslo that Arafat had also made the psychological leap and was going to pursue Sadat’s approach. After nine years, the Israelis concluded that Arafat was no Sadat, and that he wasn’t a valid negotiating partner.

  Let’s Disengage

  In December 2003, Prime Minister Sharon shocked most Israelis and the rest of the world when he announced that he was going to begin to unilaterally withdraw from occupied territories. In what President Bush later called a “historic and courageous” plan, Sharon called for a withdrawal of Israeli forces and settlements from the Gaza Strip and the eventual dismantlement of virtually all settlements in the West Bank.

  Sharon chose to act decisively after it became clear that Palestinian leaders were unable and unwilling to negotiate a peace agreement that recognized the right of Israel to exist even beside a Palestinian state. Though considered the father of the settlement effort in the territories, he also came to accept the demographic reality and conclude that Israel’s security would be enhanced by withdrawing to more secure borders.

  Should We Stay or Should We Go?

  Initially, the pla
n calls for the dismantling of the 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip, which are currently home to approximately 7,500 Israeli Jews. In addition, Israel will dismantle four small communities in northern Samaria that encompass an area roughly equal to the Gaza Strip.

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  Mysteries of the Desert

  Although the Palestinians contend Sharon has no interest in peace and is pursuing the strategy of creating “Greater Israel,” the Israeli prime minister has changed his views dramatically. Once among the most hard-line of politicians, he now accepts the idea of establishing a Palestinian state, and is proposing the dismantling of settlements, in the process standing up to opposition from his own party.

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  Sharon also singled out five specific places in the territories where Jews will remain: Ariel, Maale Adumim, Givat Zeev, the Etzion Bloc, and Hebron. These areas contain more than 40 percent of the total Jewish population of the West Bank. The overwhelming majority of Israelis believe the first four communities must be a part of Israel. Only Hebron is controversial because the Jewish population is surrounded by approximately half a million Arabs. Sharon no doubt included it in the plan because of its unique place in Jewish history.

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  Mysteries of the Desert

  Hebron is the site of one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, which dates back to biblical times. According to Jewish tradition, the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the Matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah are buried in the Tomb of the Patriarchs. Rachel’s tomb is near Bethlehem. Jews lived in Hebron almost continuously throughout the Byzantine, Arab, Mameluke, and Ottoman periods. It was only after the 1929 Arab riots that the Jews left the city, and it had no Jews until after the 1967 War, when the Jewish community of Hebron was reestablished.

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  For Israel, Sharon’s disengagement plan involves grave risks. By withdrawing without a peace agreement, it is possible that Palestinian extremists will claim that terrorism has achieved its goal of driving out the Jews. Hamas already is making such declarations. The Palestinians may be led to believe that continued violence will lead to further withdrawals and that will provoke greater terror. However, Israel is actually withdrawing from a point of strength—it controls the territories and is not being forced out—and establishing clear borders. Moreover, as President Bush also acknowledged, Israel will retain its right to self-defense should the Palestinians continue to wage war.

  Whether the disengagement is permanent depends entirely on the Palestinians. If they prevent terror attacks from the areas Israel has withdrawn from, there will be no reason for Israelis to be in the area. Israel will also feel more comfortable discussing further territorial compromises. On the other hand, if terrorists take advantage of the absence of the military and launch attacks across the border, at a minimum Israel can be expected to mount counterattacks and, if the security situation deteriorates beyond a certain point, no one should be surprised if Israeli forces retake the areas.

  Bush Backs Israel

  President Bush sent the prime minister a letter on April 14, 2004, in which President Bush reiterated the U.S. commitment to the establishment of a Palestinian state, and made clear that U.S. policy will not be held hostage to Arab demands, and that he will not accept the specious argument that supporting Israel, and standing up for the democratic values our nations share, will damage relations with Arab states.

  In particular, President Bush endorsed Sharon’s intention to dismantle most settlements but to retain large Jewish communities. He recognized that “in light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.”

  One of the Bush administration’s important policy statements regarding this issue was to go on record against the Palestinian claim that refugees have a “right” to move to Israel, stating that the solution to the refugee issue will “need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.”

  By recognizing realities that others have chosen to ignore—namely, that no Israeli government would ever dismantle cities in the West Bank where tens of thousands of citizens live, that no Israeli leader would ever recognize a “right” for Palestinian refugees to move to Israel, and that no democratically elected prime minister would ever withdraw to the 1967 borders—President Bush has forced the Palestinians to abandon longstanding ideas about what they can expect from negotiations.

  The president reasserted America’s “steadfast commitment to Israel’s security and to preserving and strengthening Israel’s self-defense capability, including its right to defend itself against terror.”

  The Money Trail

  Israel and the United States were working increasingly in concert to marginalize Arafat in the hope that the Palestinians would realize that they had no chance of achieving independence so long as he retained power. The Europeans refused to go along with this strategy, however, and led Arafat to believe that he could still influence events even while Israel kept him isolated in his headquarters in Ramallah.

  One reason for Arafat’s confidence was his control over a vast financial empire first established by the PLO through its criminal activities and later augmented by hundreds of millions of dollars siphoned from donations by the international community to the Palestinian Authority. Rather than use these resources to live in a luxurious lifestyle, Arafat used his money primarily to buy loyalty.

  In 2003, a team of American accountants hired by the Palestinian Authority finance ministry began examining Arafat’s finances. The team determined that part of the Palestinian leader’s wealth was in a secret portfolio worth close to $1 billion—with investments in, for example, a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Ramallah, a Tunisian cell phone company, and a bowling alley in the United States. The head of the investigation stated that “although the money for the portfolio came from public funds like Palestinian taxes, virtually none of it was used for the Palestinian people; it was all controlled by Arafat. And none of these dealings were made public.”

  The International Monetary Fund (IMF) conducted an audit of the Palestinian Authority and discovered that Arafat diverted $900 million in public funds to a special bank account controlled by Arafat and the PA chief economic financial advisor. It was, therefore, not surprising when Forbes ranked Arafat sixth on its 2003 list of “Kings, Queens and Despots,” estimating his personal wealth at a minimum of $300 million.

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  Ask the Sphinx

  Arafat’s wife Suha reportedly received a stipend of $100,000 a month from the PA budget to live an opulent lifestyle with her daughter in Paris. In October 2003, the French government opened a money-laundering probe of Suha after prosecutors learned about regular transfers of nearly $1.27 million from Switzerland to Mrs. Arafat’s accounts in Paris. After her husband’s death, Suha was paid millions more by the PA to stay in Paris and keep quiet.

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  Arafat’s Final Days

  Arafat survived several assassination attempts over the years, as well as a plane crash in a sandstorm in the Libyan desert on April 7, 1992. For the last several years of his life, he was in failing health and rumored to have Parkinson’s disease. His condition suddenly worsened in October 2004. Israel agreed to allow him to be transferred to a hospital in Paris on October 29. He died November 11, 2004, at the age 75, in France.

  After his death, Arafat’s body was flown from Paris to Cairo, where a ceremony was held in his honor and attended by numerous foreign dignitaries. Arafat’s remains were then flown to Ramallah, where he was interred in a grave near his headquarters.

  For nearly half a century, Arafat was the symbol of Palestinian nationalism. Though he was not a professional military man, he was rarely seen out of his uniform in an effort to project strength and his commitment to armed struggle. He wore his kaffiyeh i
n a unique fashion, draped over his shoulder in the shape of Palestine, that is, all of historic Palestine, including Israel. The high-profile terrorist attacks he directed helped gain international attention and sympathy for the Palestinian cause but, ultimately, his unwillingness to make the psychological leap from terrorist mastermind to statesman prevented him from achieving independence for the Palestinian people, and brought them decades of suffering that could have been avoided had he abandoned his revolutionary zeal for liberating Palestine and agreed to live in peace with Israel.

  Arafat’s Death Changes (Almost) Everything

  Many people predicted a bloody power struggle after Arafat’s death, but the Palestinians avoided internecine warfare and called an election.

  Several Arab countries hold elections, but they typically have only one candidate, and there is no doubt about the outcome. The dictators are typically reelected with nearly 100 percent of the vote. In those nations, no one seriously claims the elections are democratic.

  In the case of the Palestinian Authority (PA) elections held on January 9, 2005, the standards were higher. These were advertised as an example of democracy and, compared to other Arab states, the voting was a considerable advancement toward free elections.

  The outcome was never in doubt, however, with former Prime Minister Abbas the clear favorite. He won with 62.3 percent of the vote. His nearest challenger received less than 20 percent. About 62 percent of eligible voters turned out, though supporters of the Islamic terrorist organizations largely boycotted the vote, as did Arabs living in east Jerusalem.