Fri, Jun. 13, 2003
ADAM B. KUSHNER
On
the precipice of civil conflict
In his victory lap around the Middle East last week, President Bush must have confronted an astonishing reality: By ending one war in that region, he intensified three others. Now, in addition to the low-grade Israeli-Palestinian war, both the Palestinians and the Israelis are on the precipice of their own civil wars. They may not be violent, but the stakes in these ugly internecine battles are high: the hearts and minds of constituents who can reject the peace process if they see it as unfair.
The mutual trust that Bush tried to broker at Aqaba last week cannot be borne out until these internal conflicts have been fought and won by the moderates on each side.
The most immediate aftereffect of the summit is the Palestinian civil war.
As part of the road map for peace that Bush is pressing in the Middle East, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas is expected to discontinue terrorism on Israelis. Attempting to do so will pit the secularists in the Palestinian Authority against the jihadists of Hamas, which maintains popular support through its extensive social-services network. Both groups yearn for a Palestinian state, but the jihadists see the very existence of Israel as an impediment. So Abbas must either undertake a clampdown, which would make him unpopular with Palestinian security forces that are in disarray, or persuade Hamas to end the violence.
OPENING SALVOS
Abbas' return from Aqaba was greeted with the opening salvos of the Palestinian civil war. Hamas pulled out of cease-fire discussions and criticized Abbas' statement that ''we do not ignore the suffering of Jews throughout history.'' Even Yasser Arafat, the humiliated PA chairman, took a swipe at Abbas, saying that Abbas had given away too much without winning substantial concessions in return. Then, on Sunday, the three main terrorist groups took the unusual step of coordinating an attack.
If Hamas provokes Abbas to disarm the group by force, it will set off a bloody conflict that will further erode his peace mandate. And if his standing continues to sink, he won't have the authority to curb suicide bombings or negotiate with Israelis. Stalemate.
The future of the road map depends on Abbas' convincing the Palestinians that compromise is better than war. Israeli carrots (freer borders and freed detainees) and sticks (closures, searches and arrests) can help.
Yet the prospect, however unlikely, of Abbas' emerging victorious from a Palestinian civil war -- with a mandate to bargain with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon -- has spurred a revolt among Israel's far-right governing coalition. Its members are suddenly alarmed that Sharon, like his predecessors, might be willing to trade away land for peace. Their umbrage will power the Israeli civil war.
Settlement building in the West Bank began after the Six Day War in 1967 as a security measure. The idea was to buffer Israel's western front from an Arab attack out of Jordan or Iraq. But as settlers multiplied -- particularly after the Oslo Accords -- they needed their own protection by the Israeli army. The frontier gradually crept eastward.
For Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jews, the policy took on a messianic fervor. They believed that they were reclaiming the land promised to them in the Hebrew Bible. Their vision synced conveniently with the buffer strategy until just recently. These days, neither Jordan nor Iraq poses a threat to Israel; Jordan made its peace in 1994, and Iraq's anti-Israel regime ceased to exist in April. To top it off, the second intifada made abundantly clear that Israel will never achieve a lasting peace with satellite towns dotting the West Bank.
Today the pragmatist agenda has changed -- security depends on removing settlements, not building them -- but the messianic one has not. The religious Zionists will confront Sharon and the secularists as they pursue peace with Abbas. At a party conference last weekend, many Likudniks demanded that Sharon sign his name to a policy paper ''retaining and strengthening settlement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip'' and ''retaining Israeli control of security zones and the Jordan Valley.'' He declined, perhaps hastening the civil conflict.
The more-conspicuous, low-grade war, which consumes our attention, is the war between the two peoples. But that war cannot be resolved until the wars among the peoples end.
The Israeli contest will concern the nature of a Jewish democracy, and like the Palestinian one, it will pit secularists against religious fundamentalists. Both leaders are exchanging domestic support for international credibility (and mutual trust), which means that they are treading on infirm political ground.
Adam B. Kushner is a reporting and writing fellow in residence at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.