Build our confidence

by Saul Singer
Jerusalem Post
June 4, 2003 

In 1975, Ahmed Jbarra placed a refrigerator filled with explosives 
in Jerusalem's busiest square. 

The explosion killed 14 Israelis and wounded 60. This week he was 
released from an Israeli prison, and received a hero's welcome 
in Ramallah, including a personal audience with Yasser Arafat. 

Shlomo Bezem, whose brother was killed by Jbarra's bomb, told 
this newspaper, "His release isn't worth it, even if it brings 
peace." Yet this mass-murderer is not being let free as part of 
a final peace agreement, but as part of a package of "confidence-
building measures." 

We are probably the only people in the world that anyone would 
dare even ask to build the confidence of the people who have 
been showering us with terrorism for over two years. The idea 
that we have to build Palestinian confidence is essentially an 
admission that lack of such confidence is a reason for terrorism. 
It's a bit like handing over a few bills to a gangster who is 
breaking your knees, while promising to pay everything he 
claims you owe him. 

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has decided there is no point in 
trying to rewrite the rules of the game, as stacked against us 
as they are. You say the Palestinians need convincing of our 
good intentions, figures Sharon, I'll convince everyone I'm 
sincere, thereby tossing the ball back into their court. 

This strategy seems to be working so far, but there is a major 
catch. Regardless of the skewed logic applied to this conflict, 
it is Israel's confidence that must be built, not just so we 
will take risks, but for peace to be possible at all.

Which brings us to the Aqaba summit. The main purpose of the 
summit was to provide the backdrop for the paired declarations 
required by Phase I of the road map: Israel pledges support 
for a "independent, viable, sovereign Palestinian state"; 
the Palestinians pledge to end terrorism, incitement, and 
"all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere" and reaffirm 
Israel's "unequivocal" right to exist in peace and security. 

This is what happened in Aqaba. The problem, as Israel pointed 
out about the road map before its release, is that this initial 
declaratory phase was too easy on the Palestinians. It let 
them continue the dodge of recognizing Israel, while pressing 
the demand to "return" to Israel and overwhelm it, thereby 
negating this recognition. 

The Palestinians respond to this concern by saying that the 
matter of refugees is a final-status issue. The United States 
agrees, according to remarks by Secretary of State Colin Powell 
after the Sharm summit this week. 

But this wisdom received from the Oslo era must be reexamined. 

The truth is that the refugee matter is an amalgam. On one 
hand, there are legitimate topics for negotiation in 
final-status talks, such as compensation and resettlement. 
On the other hand, there is the claim of a "right" of 
Palestinians to move to Israel itself, which is a negation of 
Israel sovereignty, legitimacy, and right to exist. 

The Palestinian leadership has argued that in order for them 
to confront, one way or another, groups that do not want to 
give up terrorism, they have Israel's commitment to a 
Palestinian state up front. Fair enough. They got it. 
In fact they had it back at the 2000 Camp David summit when 
Ehud Barak offered them a state on a silver platter, without 
the war they chose to bring upon both peoples. 

But if the Palestinians need to know the end point before 
they move forward, Israel needs to know even more so. 
If the Palestinians cannot drop the idea that they have a 
right, not only to evict all Jews from Palestine, but to move 
to Israel, there is nothing to talk about it, and no point in 
Israel making any concessions. 

The need to build Israeli confidence goes further. There is 
no country or people who wants to destroy the Palestinians or 
deny them a state. Israel, by contrast, is surrounded by 
peoples who believe that Israel's existence blocks any just 
solution to the Palestinian problem. 

The just-released poll of Pew Global Attitudes Project 
(http://people-press.org/) found that 80 percent or more 
of Palestinians, Jordanians, and Moroccans believe there 
is "no way" for Israeli and Palestinian rights to coexist. 
Smaller but significant majorities believe the same in 
Indonesia, Pakistan, Lebanon, and Kuwait. 

The same poll, taken after the war in Iraq, asked people in 
a range of Western and Muslim countries which of eight 
leaders they trusted most to "do the right thing." People in 
non-Muslim countries rated Vladimir Putin, Gerhard Schroeder, 
Jacques Chirac, and Tony Blair more highly than they did 
George Bush. But this finding pales beside the results in 
Muslim countries. 

In four countries surveyed Pakistan, Morocco, Jordan, and 
Indonesia (after Bali!) Osama bin Laden came in second or 
third. And in one place bin Laden came in first: 
the Palestinian Authority. 

This poll sharpens the absurdity that Palestinian confidence 
must be earned and Israeli confidence can be assumed. We are 
being asked to hand over a state to a people that still 
believes Israel's existence is incompatible with its own 
rights, that lionizes the world's most prominent terrorist, 
and that has been systematically indoctrinating its children 
to give their own lives to murder Israeli civilians. 

It should not be surprising, then, that we find it a tad 
disturbing that even the reformist Palestinian prime minister 
cannot bring himself to utter the words "Jewish state." 
Chances are, unfortunately, that Mahmoud Abbas is missing 
either the strength or the will to fulfill his pledges to 
end terrorism and disarm Hamas and Islamic Jihad. But even 
if he did, we cannot afford to create even a provisional 
state before the asterisk is removed from Palestinian 
recognition of Israel. 

That recognition will only begin to look "unequivocal," 
as the road map states, when the demand of Palestinians to 
settle in Israel is abandoned.