Sharon Flinches

By Charles Krauthammer

Washington Post -- Friday, December 7, 2001

You would think that the right to self-defense is elementary, 
a minimal decency one nation accords another. France has it. 
We have it. (See Afghanistan.) Yet when President Bush's spokesman 
declared on Dec. 3 that "Israel has a right to defend herself," 
it was news. Indeed, it was a thunderclap. To anyone who follows 
the baroquely nuanced language of Middle East diplomacy, 
it constituted something wholly new.

For eight years, under the tutelage of a president hungry for a 
Nobel Prize, the American position had been that when attacked, 
Israel should exercise "restraint" and not contribute to the 
"cycle of violence." Everyone knew that this was no cycle; 
it was elementary self-defense in the face of an openly declared 
campaign of Palestinian terror. But truth could not be allowed to
stand in the way of "peace."

The Bush administration embarrassed itself too. After invoking the 
solemn right to hunt down the terrorists who perpetrated Sept. 11, 
State Department spokesman Philip Reeker was asked (Oct. 15) why 
he was criticizing Israel for doing precisely the same in hunting 
down Hamas terrorists. Answer: "I can't really draw a parallel 
between the two."

Now he can. Now he will. The scale, coordination and sheer horror 
of the four bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa in 12 hours on Dec. 1-2 
finally moved the Bush administration to dispel the fog and 
mendacity of American policy during eight years of the Oslo 
"peace process." Yes, Israel may defend itself.

When Israel began retaliating for Dec. 1-2 -- Israel's Sept. 11 -- 
the State Department issued no criticism. In part, this was anger. 
State had just been pushing a campaign of greater American 
"engagement" in the Middle East. The president declared his support 
for a Palestinian state. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a 
speech in Louisville calling for an end to "occupation" and the 
establishment of "Palestine." Bowing to pressure from Arab leaders
(and to mindless criticism from American editorialists and 
columnists attributing the rising violence to Bush administration 
"unilateralism" and "neglect"), Powell sent his first personal 
representative to the region, Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni. Zinni's 
mission is to get a cease-fire. He arrives, and is greeted with a 
mass murder of innocent Jews carried out by terrorists operating 
freely under Yasser Arafat. Zinni looks helpless; Powell looks 
the fool. Even the State Department is moved by such humiliations.

The administration is also moved by simple truth: The parallel 
between America's right to respond to terrorism and Israel's right 
is no longer deniable.

The window thus opens for Israel finally to act. Here is the 
opportunity to do as America is doing to the Taliban: destroy the 
Arafat regime that harbors and protects Hamas terrorists. Here is 
the opportunity to root out Arafat's infrastructure -- training 
camps, arms depots, propaganda organs and eight personal "security" 
agencies. Here is the opportunity to detain and deport the 
Palestinian Authority leadership that brought Israel more terrorism 
in the eight years of the "peace process" than in all of its 
previous history.

What does Prime Minister Sharon do? He flinches. He temporizes. 
He attacks symbolic targets -- destroys two of Arafat's helicopters, 
tears up his Gaza airport runway, flattens a few police stations, 
blasts the office next door to Arafat's. The intent is to "send a 
message," namely, "we can get you." But the effect is precisely 
the opposite. It tells Arafat, "We can, but we dare not." 
The message is clear. Israel does not (yet) have the will -- or the
government -- to fight its own war.

Instead, Sharon is hoping that his restraint will encourage the
international community -- the United States -- to finally 
acknowledge that Arafat cynically and consistently uses terrorism, 
and to therefore take him down diplomatically by delegitimizing 
him, derecognizing him and cutting off relations.

It is a wan hope. There will be no outside rescue. The shock of 
Dec. 1-2 will soon wear off. Media attention will wander. Normalcy, 
i.e., dead Jews daily, will return. Soon you will once again be 
hearing evenhanded laments about the "cycle of violence."

There has already been another suicide bombing, on Dec. 5. But the
detonation was premature. No dead Jews, just injured ones. The 
world hardly noticed. True, the bomber's head was blown into a 
second-floor suite in a nearby hotel. But that's old news.

The moment is passing. The window is closing. Sharon's policy of 
symbolic war and sympathetic words is not a strategy. It is the 
muddling through of a hopelessly muddled Israeli government, 
a government of national disunity.

And yet, there will be an Israeli military campaign to do to the
Palestinian Authority what the United States has done to the 
Taliban. Sooner or later, the war is coming. It is inevitable. 
Israel cannot bleed forever.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company