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 ppearing
in the
op-ed pages of the New York Times on Sunday, Palestinian
Authority President Yassir Arafat announced (fanfare, please) "the
Palestinian vision."
This vision
incorporates "an independent and viable Palestinian state on
the territories occupied by Israel in 1967." No word, of course,
on how those territories came to be so occupied. (Hint: Threat of
impending attack forced Israel to seize them.) It incorporates the
Palestinian state as "an equal neighbor alongside Israel with
peace and security for both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples."
No word, of course, on the fact that the people have been living
"alongside" each other for decades, with little peace
and no security. As Arafat puts it, the Palestinians "seek
true independence and full sovereignty" and "the right
to control our own destiny and to take our place among free nations."
No word, of course, about the unprecedented offer made by former
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000 that would have all but
realized the thus-described vision of Arafat and the Palestinians.
Palestinians, Arafat tells us, "are ready to end the conflict."
But nary a word about the continuing terrorist attacks against Israelis.
After describing
to us in breathless terms the oppression and desperation of the
Palestinian people, Arafat condemns terrorism: "[N]o degree
of oppression and no level of desperation can ever justify the killing
of innocent civilians. I condemn the killing of innocent civilians."
Except he does not end there: "I condemn the killing of innocent
civilians, whether they are Israeli, American or Palestinian; whether
they are killed by Palestinian extremists, Israeli settlers, or
by the Israeli government."
Missing from
the description of terrorism condemned by Arafat is one critical
word: "intentional." Arafat defines terrorism as any killing
of innocent people — thus equating the Palestinian suicide
bomber who blew up a bat-mitzvah ceremony and the Israeli military's
attempts to kill those who plan such attacks; equating the suicide
bombers of September 11 and the American military operation in Afghanistan
aimed at preventing future such attacks. Most of us can recognize
a moral difference between those categories, and it lays in the
intention of the act: Do we intend to kill innocent civilians —
as many as possible — or do we do our best to avoid killing
innocent civilians?
Arafat, of
course, must not hint at this distinction. For his claims to "the
power of justice" rest on identifying Israeli violence with
Palestinian violence. They rest on creating the impression of a
moral equivalence between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But
it is a nonexistent equivalence.
In the wake
of the tragic suicide bombing at a bat mitzvah last month, former
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made this point well:
[Palestinian
sympathizers] make this false symmetry saying, "Ah, well,
Palestinian civilians are being killed, Afghan civilians are being
killed. But that's the whole difference. They are unintentionally
being killed by America and by Israel. [On the other side,] they're
deliberately massacred here in the most innocent circumstances.
A philosophy
professor of mine once said that philosophy is the art of making
distinctions. Pacifism, for example, fails in being unable to differentiate
between the violence of the U.S. military in Afghanistan and that
of the September 11 hijackers. And Arafat fails in being unable
to distinguish accident from terrorism. Unable — or unwilling
— to distinguish between actions worthy of sorrow and actions
worthy of censure and condemnation.
Arafat does
offer one small hint for the future of a successful Mideast peace
process. "There are those," he wrote, "who claim
that I am not a partner in peace. In response, I say Israel's peace
partner is, and always has been, the Palestinian people." Perhaps
Israel would be best served by recognizing, as Arafat himself apparently
does, that he is not "a partner in peace" and making their
appeal — an appeal rooted in democracy, liberty, equality —
directly to the Palestinian people.
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