The chance of a lifetime

Editorial

This is it. This is the moment of truth; the precipice between the peaceful coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians or continued, possibly permanent, hostility.

The homicide attack last Friday on a crowd outside a Tel-Aviv nightclub shattered the hope that had gingerly begun to take root. Four Israelis were killed, but the assassin's act went further than the bomb site itself. This mass murder took direct aim at the fragile wisp of coexistence that had struggled to take hold since the death of the war-maker Yasser Arafat. The world, but especially the Israeli population, had placed enormous reservoirs of hope in the words and deeds of the new Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. The extent of optimism and relief felt by Israelis and other Zionists about the potential offered by the new leadership demonstrated a superhuman ability to risk forgiveness in the name of permanent peace. Was it misplaced? This is the moment we find out.

The bombing came mere hours after public and international outrage led the Palestinian prime minister to amend his cabinet choices, replacing the blood-stained lackeys of the Arafat era with a class of new leaders. These new cabinet members, dubbed technocratic academics by international observers, are said to herald a sea-change in Palestinian policy.

Regular readers of the Bulletin and others who pay close attention to these matters know that the universities of the Middle East produce some of the least liberal thinkers and most inciting purveyors of violence. But the new faces of the Palestinian cabinet raised the hope that a new dawn may truly have been upon us.

It may yet. The next hours and days will tell whether the new Palestinian leadership (a) wants to stanch violence and (b) is able to do so.
It would be irresponsible and naive to forget that the last genuine hope for peace ended in 2000, not because Palestinian self-determination was so distant a hope, but because it was imminent. The terrorists of Islamic Jihad, the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade and Hamas, reflecting what seems to have been a widespread belief in Arab circles, took Israel's vast and generous compromises not as a sign of a new ally preparing for peaceful coexistence, but as Israeli weakness. Four generations of Palestinians, fed on a steady diet of promises for the total violent eradication of Middle Eastern Jewry, saw Israel's compromise as an opportunity to finish the job. Sentient observers worldwide sought complex psycho-sociological explanations for the new intifada, refusing to see the fairly simple reality: Israeli compromise was not accepted as a promise of mutual coexistence. The peace process of the '90s, many Palestinians and other Arabs believed, was actually proof that the long years of incessant violence had paid off. Arafat and others made sure that Israel was still viewed as a mortal enemy, but the peace process was interpreted to mean that Israel was weakened and on the ropes, ready for the final dagger to finish off the Jewish experiment in the modern Middle East.

But when the terrorist groups – abetted, funded and praised by Arafat - tried to sink the dagger into the neck of Israel at seders, in discos and in shopping centres, they were stunned to find that Israel was not on the ropes. Israel was not, as Palestinian leaders and pundits had told them, in a position of existential weakness. Israel had extended a hand of peace not due to weakness, but from a position of strength. This miscalculation by Arafat and the terrorist leadership, for whom compromise was an unknown virtue, resulted in nearly five years of flowing blood.

By last year – it took that long – even Palestinian hardliners were acknowledging that the intifada had failed – not because violence is wrong, but because it failed to dislodge the enemy. Finally, with the death of the uncompromising Arafat, the new Palestinian leadership was able to introduce the concept of coexistence into the Palestinian body politic. Friday's bombing was the first indication that coexistence was still not accepted by at least one faction.

This moment is crucial, because it is the moment when Abbas steps out from the shadow of Arafat. If the old terrorist were alive, his response to Friday's bombing would have been public condemnation in English and a more private lionization of the "martyr" in Arabic. We are about to find out whether Abbas is the new man for whom the world has longed.

This will also be the first indication whether Israelis, and overseas Zionists, were right to suspend disbelief for a few weeks in order to allow the Palestinian leadership to fulfil its obligation to peace – or whether we were, again, gullible fools taken in by false hope and empty promises.

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