An Eye for an Eye, Forever?
Palestinians and Israelis, Doing Everything to Go Nowhere

By David Grossman

Sunday, June 23, 2002; Page B03
JERUSALEM
More victories for madness: Yet again last week, a tentative step forward in the grinding Israeli-Palestinian crisis was preempted by Palestinian suicide bombings. On Tuesday, a murderer from the Hamas faction blew himself up in a bus in Jerusalem, killing 19 civilians and wounding 70, just before President Bush was to make a speech outlining his proposal for a provisional Palestinian state. That announcement was further derailed on Wednesday, when still another bombing at a Jerusalem bus stop killed seven and injured more than 40. The attacks drastically reduced the Palestinians' chances of gaining their own state; on Thursday the White House put off the speech until this week and possibly later.

Despite such barbarous deeds, according to a survey published Tuesday in the Palestinian territories, and reported in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, 80 percent of Palestinians support more terrorist attacks against Israelis. If that's the case, we must reach the conclusion that the Palestinians are now doing everything necessary to ensure that they will never have their own country.

On the other side, the Israeli government is being pushed into a corner. Chained to its aggressive, mechanical, one-dimensional way of thinking, it immediately declared an escalated response after the Tuesday attack. >From now on, the government said, after each attack the Israeli army will reoccupy areas held by the Palestinian Authority. And this time the army will not clear out quickly. It "will instead remain in them until terrorism ceases," as the official cabinet decision put it.

Since terror won't stop in the foreseeable future, certainly not as long as there is no political settlement granting the Palestinians an independent state, this means that the Israeli government has decided to reconquer the entire area under the Palestinian Authority, in order to ensure that terror will continue. Why is Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement, which seeks to destroy Israel, so eager to harm the interests of the Palestinians as a whole? Because Hamas fears the reforms that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat will soon be compelled to institute, reforms that will restrict its terrorist activity.

Hamas is also worried because the positions of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia on the need to fight terrorism are drawing closer to those of the United States and Israel. Hamas's immediate goal is to induce Israel to attack the Palestinian Authority, perhaps even reoccupy its territories, in a way that will force these relatively moderate Arab states to retreat into their previous extremist positions.

So why is the Israeli government -- under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's leadership -- playing into Hamas's hands? Because it doesn't believe that it has anyone to negotiate with on the Palestinian side and because it contains people who oppose any real compromise. But mostly because the Israeli government is at a loss, confused and in despair.

Israel is so much at a loss that last week Interior Minister Eli Yishai proposed that, instead of surrounding itself with a protective wall and fence, it should surround every Palestinian village and city with fences, to isolate them one from the other.

Israel is in such despair today that the idea of expelling the Palestinians from the areas of the Palestinian Authority, and expelling the 1 million Israeli citizens who are Palestinian, is gaining support and legitimacy in public opinion and at the cabinet table. After the Tuesday bombing, at the entrance to Jerusalem, there was a demonstration by supporters of "transfer" (a nice name for expulsion and deportation).

I saw a sign there: "Transfer: the only way to peace!"

In other words, the way to peace is not through dialogue, compromise, mutual recognition, a consensual border and a cessation of terrorism. No, the way to peace and tranquility is to expel a few million more Palestinians!

You get dizzy listening to such unfounded claims, from seeing the horrors that come, each one hard on the heels of the last, creating a kind of surrealistic continuum in which a madman's logic rules. If we follow each side's line of thinking a little further, we'll quickly get a view of the reality in which we'll soon be living -- an endless jumble of murders and expulsions and reoccupations and strategic terrorist attacks, perhaps even nuclear ones, the destabilization of the moderate Arab states, perhaps even an all-out war whose outcome no one can predict. It all looks like a nightmare, and maybe only a future historian, gazing back, will be able to explain the hypnotic effect of the nightmare we are striding into with open eyes. Both sides are doing everything in their power, each in turn, to ensure that it comes to be. Three weeks ago I went to London to participate in a unique encounter organized by the British newspaper the Guardian. Israeli and Palestinian supporters of peace spent three days conferring with the leaders of the formerly warring factions of Northern Ireland. The Irish -- Catholics and Protestants who had been murdering each other just a few years ago -- sat next to each other and spoke the language of peace. They expressed their grave concern that the conflict might break out again. We, the Israelis and Palestinians, listened to them, with much yearning and envy. At one point, one of the Israelis asked: "How did you do it? How did you manage to pluck yourselves out of hundreds of years of violence and hatred and put yourselves on the track of dialogue? What was the moment at which you understood that there was no other way?" David Ervine, a Protestant leader who was once caught with a live bomb in his hands, looked at Martin McGuinness, a Catholic leader, a man whom he had fought and who had been his utter enemy. He said: "There was a moment when I simply understood that this war cannot be won." McGuinness nodded to himself.

A sigh of relief passed among us, Israelis and Palestinians, relief at having made contact with a conclusion that was so simple, at having heard such a clear, longed-for formulation. But then we grew somber again.

I made a quick computation: In Northern Ireland, it took 800 years to reach this obvious conclusion. Does that mean we have another 700 years like this one to wait?

As I was writing those words, I heard on the radio that a terrorist with an explosive charge on him was somewhere on the streets of Jerusalem. Again the stomach knots up, the thoughts race. You do a quick mental map of those close to you -- where each of them is right now. And in your mind's eye, there is an image of a huge roulette wheel, slowly, slowly, coming to a halt.

David Grossman, an Israeli, is the author of five novels, most recently "Be My Knife" (Farrar Straus & Giroux). His works of journalism include "The Yellow Wind" (FSG). This article was translated from the Hebrew by Haim Watzman.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company