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December 12, 2003
Oslo was disaster says Pipes
Only a tiny amount of optimism exists in the midst of a dire situation.
PAT JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
In the 10 years since the Oslo peace process began, the situation
for Israelis and Palestinians, already strained by four decades
of real or imminent conflict, has become far, far worse.
That was the underlying message of a presentation by Dr. Daniel
Pipes at the University of British Columbia last Friday. Pipes,
an American foreign policy expert specializing in the Middle East,
was in town as the guest of Hillel Vancouver for the student group's
annual gala Sunday night at the Delta Airport Hotel in Richmond.
Prior to that engagement, he spoke to a packed theatre at the university
as about two dozen protestors chanted outside.
Recalling the famous handshake on the White House lawn between Israeli
prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat,
overseen by U.S. president Bill Clinton, Pipes recast that moment
of global optimism as the tragic beginning of a massive deterioration
in relations between the two peoples.
"This event inspired great optimism," said Pipes. "Only
a small band of skeptics thought it might turn out otherwise....
The reality of these accords is that they took a bad situation and
made it much, much worse."
In the last decade, Israel has suffered the worst terrorism it has
ever experienced and life for the average Palestinian has deteriorated
beyond previous lows.
"Everyone agrees that things got worse," said Pipes. "They
don't agree on why it got worse."
The finger-pointing, prevalent in the Middle East, is just as evident
in Canada, as representatives of Jews for a Just Peace and the Palestine
Solidarity Group shouted slogans outside the meeting, putting all
the blame on Israel. Most protestors chose not to attend the meeting,
however, permitting a civil, non-confrontational 90-minute discussion.
Pipes' presence brought out extra security precautions by the university,
which successfully avoided the bitter and sometimes violent confrontations
experienced on other North American campuses over the Middle East
issue. Pipes has become a lightning rod of sorts for Israel's critics,
who accuse his campus-watch.org
Web site of threatening academic freedom. He is a regular columnist
in the Jerusalem Post, among other publications, and is the
director of the Middle East Forum, a think tank based in Philadelphia.
While chanting dissidents disagree, Pipes lays the blame for the
decade of declining hopes on a what he sees as a single unacknowledged
fact: that even if Arab leaders, including Arafat, are prepared
to acknowledge and coexist with Israel, the mass of Arab citizens
are not.
"The Israeli position in Oslo negotiations was to assume that
the Palestinians had accepted the permanent existence of a Jewish
state," Pipes said. "The reason [peace] did not happen
is it was a wrong premise. Palestinians did not accept Israel's
existence."
Despite Arafat's official statements, incitement against Israel's
very presence continued unabated, according to Pipes, in vitriolic
school textbooks that deny any validity to the "Zionist enemy,"
in official Palestinian Authority-controlled media, in religious
sermons, in posters that appear everywhere in Palestinian communities,
and even in crossword puzzles (Q: "A city in Palestine"
A: "Haifa"). The glorification of suicide bombers, whose
funerals, according to Pipes, bear more resemblance to wedding celebrations,
is another of the most obvious and disturbing examples of non-acceptance
of Israel.
Even if Arafat was sincere about seeking peace, Pipes said, the
animosity was too deeply entrenched to change without massive efforts
from the top. Instead, public opinion moved the other direction,
Pipes suggested.
Through Israel's history of defensive wars, Palestinians and other
Arabs had come to realize that Israel was a formidable foe who would
not, in the short term at least, be beaten militarily. Coexistence
seemed like the only option for the Palestinians, according to Pipes.
That all changed, Pipes posited, when Israel made an offer of effectively
everything the Palestinians had demanded. Coupled with Israel's
abrupt departure from military positions in Lebanon, the Palestinian
"street" viewed these developments as a signal of Israel's
weakness.
"The Israelis made concession after concession," Pipes
said. Instead of leading to feelings of fraternity, he explained,
the concessions were perceived as first blood.
"Instead of negotiating something with the Israelis,"
Pipes said, summarizing what he called a prevalent attitude among
average Palestinians, "[maybe] they could beat the Israelis."
Despite series of agreements between Israel and, variously, Egypt,
Jordan and the Palestinians, no fundamental shift in public opinion
at the street level ever took place, said Pipes.
"A state-to-state agreement [with Arab leaders] isn't worth
a whole lot more than the paper it's printed on," said Pipes.
"The mistake was to focus on the leaders and not look at the
larger population."
In a question period following his presentation, Pipes was asked
how Israel and its allies could affect public opinion at the street
level in the Arab world, when free expression is limited. The answer,
Pipes said, is not in talking but in the daily experience of Palestinian
life. Over the past decade, life has deteriorated for Palestinians
and the imminence of a Palestinian state has faded.
"The Palestinians were given carrot after carrot after carrot,"
said Pipes. "It didn't work. All it did was give them a sense
that violence against Israel is the way to go."
The situation is unlikely to change, he said, until Palestinian
public opinion concludes that their personal situation will not
improve until violence ceases.
In a rare note of optimism, however, Pipes suggested that convincing
the entire Arab world of Israel's legitimacy is probably not necessary.
It would be counterintuitive for Moroccans or Egyptians to keep
dreaming of a Jew-free Middle East, he argued, when the Palestinians
have given up on the idea.
Nevertheless, the potential exists for a far worse cataclysmic conclusion
to this protracted struggle, he warned. The two sides are fundamentally
incompatible, in the sense that Israel seeks to exist in the Middle
East and the general Arab view is that Israel should not exist.
The only solution will come from one side giving up its ideal. That
could come from Israelis acknowledging that the Zionist experiment
has failed – that the goal of ingathering to a place of peace
will never be reached – or it could come from an act by a state
like Iran eliminating Israel (along with whoever else gets in the
way) through nuclear war. On the other hand, coexistence could come
through the Arab abandonment of its fundamental ideal of Israel's
illegitimacy.
Pipes called the recent Geneva Accord, created by self-appointed
Israelis and Palestinians, "Oslo rewarmed" and insisted
there should be no negotiation until the conflict ends.
"This is a war that's now taking place," he said, adding
that nations do not conduct armistice talks while fighting continues.
"We shouldn't talk about final status issues." He claimed
to have not even reviewed the contents of the Geneva Accord, and
dismissed the contents of other agreements since Oslo.
After years of United Nations resolutions against Israel, Pipes
argued it's time for the United States to pull out of the international
body, which he argued was "irredeemable" and should be
replaced by an organization of democratic states.
Though Pipes' advance billing, thanks to his critics, suggested
a horned fanatic, the academic's low-key, quiet presentation helped
keep the atmosphere sedate. Geoffrey Druker, city director for State
of Israel Bonds, was the moderator for the lunch-hour event. He
credits a strong turnout by members of the Jewish community for
preventing any demonstration against Pipes within the theatre itself,
noting that any disruptive audience members would easily have been
drowned out by an audience that was clearly and overwhelmingly Zionist.
Another issue preventing strong reaction from the floor, Druker
suggested, was the depth and breadth of Pipes' historical knowledge.
"Intellectually, I think he was quite intimidating to argue
with," said Druker.
Only two questioners challenged Pipes' suppositions. The first,
a young man, asserted that anyone with the faintest knowledge of
Middle East history would know Pipes' conclusions are unfounded.
Amid laughter from the audience, Pipes noted the statement was typical
of his critics, who use invective but no substance to deflate his
arguments. Later, a young woman noted that Pipes described how Israel
could win the conflict, but she asked how Israel could win the hearts
of the Palestinians, the United Nations and the world.
"I applaud your sentiments," Pipes told her. "But
this is war." First, Israel must achieve survival, he said,
then it can worry about winning hearts.
Pat Johnson is a native Vancouverite, a journalist and
commentator.
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