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The press and the diplomatic world pay attention only on the intermittent occasions when Palestinians succeed in killing large numbers of Israeli civilians with a single bomb, which has not happened since last month. But those who are responsible for protecting the lives of Israelis must respond to the Palestinian attempts to kill Israelis which happen every day. There are roughly ten times as many attempts stopped by Israel as there are successful suicide attacks. On the other hand few people appreciate how great is the burden and insult imposed on the Palestinians by the Israeli military programs to stop the murder of Israelis. Many Palestinians are forced to stay in their homes for days at a time, with only short curfew breaks to shop. They can't move from city to city, or into Israel to work. Their economy is in tatters. And inevitably the Israeli military operations, although almost always conducted with great care to avoid civilian casualties, kill and wound innocent Palestinians. But the Palestinians have the power to end the Israeli military operations by stopping their own attempts to kill Israelis. As soon as the continual flow of attempts to murder Israelis stops, Israel will be able to pull its forces back. The Palestinians don't need to prevent every fanatic or desperate person from trying to take revenge against Israel. Israelis can tell the difference between random individual attacks and organized efforts to murder Israelis. The great bulk of the attacks come from well-established terrorist organizations over which the Palestinian Authority has a great deal of control. Just as Israel has enough information to block most murder efforts it has enough information to know if the terrorist organizations have stopped trying to kill Israelis. Despite all the obfuscation at the political level, there is no real mystery about what is happening and who is responsible. While Israel is suffering from the indirect results of the Palestinian terror campaign, there's no doubt that the Palestinians are suffering more. But there is no need to balance the harm done to the Palestinians with the harm done to Israelis, because the Palestinians have the choice about ending both harms. Nor is there any doubt that the Israeli military actions in the cities where Palestinians live — Jenin, Ramallah, Nablus, etc. — prevent the murder of Israeli civilians. More important than the overall evidence of the sharply reduced death toll while the operations are taking place — down from over a hundred in March to less than 50 from April through June — is the detailed record of specific murder attempts that are stopped. The need for the Israeli military actions is tested on a daily basis. They are justified only if they succeed in capturing people who are engaged in terrorist operations, or in finding illegal weapons and explosive factories, or in getting information that stops attacks on Israeli civilians. Outside the world of diplomatic negotiations and governmental statements, the reality is that Palestinians are regularly trying to kill Israeli civilians and that most of the attempts are unsuccessful because of Israeli military actions in the cities. Asking Israel to reduce these actions is asking them to allow the Palestinians to kill more Israeli women and children. Of course there is wide disagreement about how much justice is on the side of the Palestinians, and about how the conflict should be resolved. But even those who think that most of the justice is ultimately on the Palestinian side have to agree that Israel cannot let Palestinians murder Israeli civilians until Israel gives the Palestinians what they think they are entitled to. Questions about the reality of saving lives are independent of questions about holding out hope to the Palestinians, or building trust, or exchanging diplomatic gestures. Diplomacy has to go on, because in the long run the best way to save lives is to end the conflict. But recent history has made it clear that the conflict will not end soon, and there is plenty of room for diplomacy and diplomatic gestures without touching the practical reality of preventing murder. There is no room for negotiation about practical life-saving measures. The Palestinians have no need or right to make demands that Israel remove its troops from their cities; they can get the troops out by themselves anytime they want. All they have to do is to stop sending people to blow up Israeli schools and buses. The Israeli reservists in Jenin and Ramallah will be happy to go back to their jobs and their homes as soon as they are no longer needed to protect the lives of their children. — Max Singer, a senior fellow at the BESA Institute of Bar Ilan, is the author of The REAL World Order: Zomes of Peace/Zones of Turmoil (with Aaron Wildavsky). |
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ccording to
a famous apocryphal story, when Count Metternich was told that the Russian
ambassador had just died, the count is supposed to have said "I wonder
what he meant by that," thus confusing reality with diplomacy. A
similar confusion concerns Israel's military actions in the West Bank
which are often treated as if they were coins in a diplomatic bargaining
process, which Israel should pay to get the PLO to negotiate. But Israel's
actions against terrorism are not diplomacy but part of life's reality.
If you are building a shelter to protect your family you don't leave holes
in the roof to deliver a message to someone.
