A New Turn in Israel's Old Fight 
by A.M. Rosenthal
Daily News - Opinion
March 23, 2001

The basic question about the Arabs and Israelis today is 
exactly the same one that was overriding when Israel was 
created a half-century ago: Will the Arab leaders and their 
people allow permanent peace? Their answer, then and now, 
was the same: No, not ever. The only change in all these 
years since 1948 has been Arab strategy to achieve the 
death of Israel.

For most of the passing decades, it was carried out by wars — 
as many wars as it would take. Israel was seen abroad at first 
as heroic in defense of its new existence. When Israel triumphed 
again and again, almost all the nations of the world were 
terribly annoyed, and still are. They were used to seeing Jews 
lose whatever they had to lose, particularly their lives, not 
fighting wars for freedom and winning it.

The members of the United Nations kept pressuring a winning 
Israel to give in to Arab demands for land, money, arms, 
statehood — while terrorist bombs were exploding in Israeli 
cities, Arab bullets were penetrating Israeli flesh and Arab 
broadcasts were spewing hatred about Israelis making matzos 
with the blood of Arab children.

Most of the time, Israeli prime ministers did as they were 
pressured to do.

I thought of these things while I waited in a jammed ballroom 
and then at a private home for the appearance of Ariel Sharon, 
prime minister of Israel, Wednesday night as he was ending his 
visit with President Bush. He is a conservative leading that 
delicate mechanism, a left-right coalition. In younger years, 
he was a daring general. He was elected by the Israelis to 
preserve their nationhood by ending the era of Israeli giving 
away political and military assets while ducking terrorist 
attacks — not just rocks, but bullets and bombs — and with 
foreign as well as Palestinian Arab terrorists in Yasser 
Arafat's own security guard.

I've known Sharon for years, trust him and like him. He says 
Israel will no longer negotiate under the threat and reality 
of violence. He sees that position as a matter not simply of 
honor, but of the continued existence of Israel. There is not 
a lot of giving room for Israel anymore without cutting too deep 
and endangering physical and emotional survival.

Arab strategy changed, brilliantly, when they lost war after 
war to the Israelis. The goal remained the same, the end of 
Israel, but it was to be achieved through a mixture of 
continuous armed attack from within Israel and its Arab 
neighbors, and periodic negotiations for what the world believed 
— and the Israelis prayed — would be peace.

But never was this strategy intended to achieve anything but 
a temporary armistice until the next war. They carried out 
negotiations and war by terrorism at the same time — which few 
nations or movements have been able to do. But the leaders 
always let their people know that whatever they were saying to 
foreigners, the goal — Israel's elimination — and the use of 
religious and nationalist hatred against it remained unchanged 
and unending.

Most of the world came to believe that the Arab mixture of 
attack-and-negotiate could bring peace. Many Israelis believed 
it, too. They were weakened by war weariness and by something 
no Arab nation was troubled with — a sense of guilt at the pain 
of the enemy, but even more, the memory of thousands of years of 
Jewish suffering.

Countries that denounce Israel for opposing the current rebellion 
would have wiped it out in a weekend, as Syria did to its rebels.

When the Labor government of Ehud Barak offered Arafat control of 
parts of Jerusalem and he answered by ordering the new intifadeh, 
the Israeli public had had it and elected Sharon, whom both 
vilified.

The meeting between Sharon and Bush went well. They liked each 
other, not always the case between Israeli prime ministers and 
American Presidents. These first meetings are not meant to solve 
everything, and this one didn't. The Israelis are more worried 
than the administration seems to be about Iraq and Iran.

Bush went out of his way to say that despite the close relations 
between Israel and America, he would not attempt to be the manager 
of talks with the Arabs and Israelis, which is a complete shift 
from the Clintonian policy. That should be a blessing to all.