Timeout
By Berel Wein

(July 6) Land for peace was a hard pill to swallow, but
I felt it was somehow worth it. But land-for-no-peace
is a very bad bargain 

If anything should be clear to us by now, it is that the
peace process we entered into with so much hope and
naivete six years ago has turned into an enormous
disappointment. It has eroded our bargaining positions, it
has made us over-dependant on the United States, it has
strengthened the determination of much of the Arab world
to crush us, and it has created enormous divisions in Jewish
Israeli society. It has succeeded in turning the Arab
population of Israel into Palestinian loyalists. 

The desperate attempt of the government to salvage
something from the process by spreading additional
unreciprocated concessions all around also seems doomed
to failure. Not because of the presence of our resolve and
strength or any real belief in the justice of our cause or our
humanitarian hunger for peace. Rather, it is Arafat who
clearly is not really interested in declaring the 100-year
struggle of the Arabs and the Jews to be at an end. 

Our intrepid foreign minister, David Levy, has said as
much over the past two weeks. 

Anyone listening to the public speeches of the Arab
leadership here in Israel (including Israeli Arab MKs)
cannot help but hear the confident tone that they express in
demanding Jerusalem, the return of hundreds of thousands
of Arabs to the country, and the return to the 1967 partition
borders of Israel. There are even Arab spokesmen who
have begun to speak in terms of a return to the borders of
the original 1947 UN mandated partition plan of the then
Palestine! 

And why not? After all, it is by now obvious that there are
really no "red lines" in our bargaining position - only pious
platitudes, and unrealistic hopes. 

I WAS told that one of the Palestinian negotiators told his
Israeli counterpart, only half-jokingly: "This is like King
Solomon's trial with the two mothers. You are willing to
split the baby. You are not the real mother." 

Well, the imagery may not be exact, but the message is
clear. Most of the Arab world still views us as temporary
interlopers. The Wakf is busy destroying any archeological
remnants of Jewish presence on the Temple Mount. We
are apparently powerless to stop it, even though we claim
control over the premises. Instead of retiring gracefully,
our president journeys to Egypt where Mubarak tells us
that Egypt is going to recognize and help a Palestinian
state, no matter what Israel says and does. He also refuses
to discuss the question of Azzam Azzam, the alleged Israeli
"spy" languishing is an Egyptian prison. 

Our president has no response to either of these public
discourtesies. 

The air has gone out of our tires. 

For many decades the Jewish world believed that tragedies
such as the Holocaust could never recur because the
Jewish state would somehow prevent it. In fact, it was the
State of Israel itself that encouraged this idea. But our
power and influence in the world is at pretty low ebb in this
past decade. We did not respond when Saddam Hussein
fired Scuds at us, because America told us not to. We
release terrorists and murderers because we hope this will
make our adversaries more amenable to peace. We cannot
seem to get Pollard out of prison, or help the unfortunate
Iranian Jews convicted of "spying" on behalf of Israel. Our
Arab neighbors who have made peace with us maintain an
incessant barrage of anti-Israel actions and words. We
withdraw from Lebanon and every day there are Lebanese
that come to our border to throw stones and epithets at us. 

Why do we think that it will be different when we
withdraw to Netanya? Syria, Arafat, the Arab world,
needs Israel as an enemy and not as a peace partner.
Israel's presencejustifies all the tyranny, corruption and evil
which characterize the rulers of the Arab world. As long
as there is no peace with Israel, the new Assad can rule
more easily and postpone any reforms in his country that
would eventually endanger his rule. 

Arafat is better off proclaiming his own state and
continuing the graft that he so lavishly dispenses on the
Palestinians under his rule than coming to a lasting
accommodation with Israel. 

It may therefore be that Abba Eban's rueful assertion
decades ago that "Arab policy always saves us from the
follies of our diplomacy" will still be true. For great as our
willingness for concessions is, greater still are the demands
that are made on us. I must admit that I also hoped against
hope that the peace process would somehow work. Land
for peace was a hard pill to swallow, but I felt that it was
somehow worth it. We cannot engage in eternal war. But I
now realize that land-for-no-peace is a very bad bargain. 

We should call a timeout on the process. Clinton is not our
savior and there is no particular window of opportunity
open just now. Maybe in time Arafat or whoever comes
after him will yet adjust to the idea that the Jews are here
to stay, and have a right to be here. Then we can continue
the peace process. 

But as long as the present one-sided process continues, it
will only continue to destroy us internally and place us in
grave danger of the armed conflict that we are so
desperately trying to avoid.