THE MIDDLE EAST: Palestinian Suicide - response by Israel to suicide bombings by Palestinians - Brief Article

National Review, Sept 3, 2001

The recent spate of suicide bombings has done much damage to Israel, killing about 100 people, many of them young. Inhuman in itself, the enterprise is so demoralizing because it is so totally futile. Nothing can come of it except bitterness and the urge for revenge. The so- called peace process is well and truly over for the time being. Quite as ugly, and just as expected, is the growing criticism of Israel for taking the steps necessary to its self-defense.

Faced with these sustained murderous attacks, the Israelis could choose what may be called the Russian option: sending in the army, reoccupying territory, and installing some other regime than Arafat's. Japanese kamikaze pilots in the last war were prototype suicide bombers, and the United States discovered that total victory was the only way to overcome them. So far, Israel has instead adopted the far more moderate course of identifying the recruiters and organizers who send in the deluded young volunteers. This involves intelligence work, including the collaboration of Palestinians who are risking their own lives. Israel then asks Arafat to have identified terrorists arrested. His response is that he is in no position for such action. So the Israelis strike selectively, and so far have eliminated about a score of master- terrorists. Under the appearance of rough justice, the Israelis are taking a few lives in order to save many lives. It is a reasoned calculation of profit and loss. The outrage of Israel's critics- including, apparently, Colin Powell and the Bush administration-boils down to the proposition that Israelis are there to be killed, and have no right to be doing anything to prevent it.

Meanwhile the suicide bombers have done infinitely greater damage to the Palestinians on whose behalf they claim to be acting. Palestinian society as a whole is now in the grip of almost perpetual violence, self-inflicted from top to bottom, and compounded by chronic corruption and unemployment. Yasser Arafat, the nominal leader, continues to raise expectations that cannot be met. Islamic fanatics incite the people to believe that God wants them to kill Jews, and never mind the consequences. Mass hysteria has replaced reasoned calculations of profit and loss.

Israel has no responsibility for whatever the Palestinians might do to themselves. Yasser Arafat must live with the mess he has made until such time as a Palestinian successor can mend it. In the circumstances, the sole course of action still open in pursuit of peace is to separate the two communities as widely as possible, in the hope that each will go its own way. Israel has to decide what are its minimum demands for security and boundaries, which also means selecting which settlements are to be retained and which abandoned, and then implement its decisions unilaterally. Before the Six Day War in 1967, there existed in effect a Middle Eastern version of the Iron Curtain, with a crossing-point at the once-famous Mandelbaum Gate in Jerusalem, the local equivalent of Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie. Arbitrarily imposed though it was, the arrangement nevertheless served to keep the two communities apart, and terrorism in check. The peace-process attempt to oblige them to live together against their wishes has instead opened the descent to hell.