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Bush is coaxing the world toward a new order in which rogue regimes will have to divorce themselves from terror or lose power. This takes reeducation, because the world has got used to the idea that nothing can really be done about such states integrating terror into their foreign policies and racing to obtain weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq will be the most dramatic field trip in Prof. Bush's seminar of the past 15 months, having far greater impact than the extensive time in the classroom. Sharon has an even more difficult reeducation job. Many Israelis, not to mention the rest of the world, had been convinced the Palestinians wanted peace, so the objective was to pry the requisite land out of Israel for peace to break out. Now the scales have begun to tip toward the view that it is the Palestinian leadership that would rather kill and be killed than accept the state that was being handed to them on a platter. But just as September 11 was enough to discredit the old global order but not automatically justify its replacement, Yasser Arafat's unmasking also did not automatically change old habits. The land for peace paradigm has not yet given way to what might be called peace for land: the idea that peace does not depend on Israeli real estate, but on an Arab decision to live with a Jewish state. The State Department's
"road map" demonstrates how it is possible to stall in the middle
of a paradigm shift. On the one hand it pays lip service to stopping terror
and to democratization; on the other it recycles from the sludge pile
of failed Mideast peace plans named after largely forgotten diplomats
(remember William Rodgers?). Peace does not depend on what Israel has to offer, since Israel cannot offer to dismantle itself. But once peace does not depend on Israeli offers, then all "road maps" are rendered useless, unless they are merely disguises for a transformation of the Arab side. When educating someone out of long and deeply held beliefs, one has to take baby steps, or nothing sinks in. It hardly helps to keep telling students, in an exasperated tone, that they should start by forgetting everything they thought they knew. Prof. Sharon seems to understand this. In an unusually revealing speech given to the Herzliya Conference on Wednesday, he did not attack the "road map" directly, and was even reported to have accepted it "in principle." In fact, Sharon accepted Bush's June 24 vision, not the "road map," which he proceeded to redraw. "The American plan," said Sharon, "defines the parties' progress according to phases. The transition from one phase to another will not be on the basis of a pre-determined timetable" (emphasis added). Without its myriad deadlines the "road map" becomes a list of principles, and the burden of implementation shifts to where it belongs: the Palestinian side. The Bush sequence end terrorism and replace the Palestinian leadership, then negotiate, is basically correct. But add deadlines to it and you have another failed attempt to impose peace on "both sides." The Bush-Sharon plan, as opposed to the "road map," says to the Palestinians: "You want a state? Earn it." All they have to do to earn it is exchange their leadership for one that wants peace with Israel, and is willing to fight terrorism in order to get it. For decades the peace process has been built on the premise that Israel needs to gain the trust of the Palestinians, or perhaps that each side must learn to trust the other. But now, since the Palestinians launched the most-vicious conceivable war against Israel after being offered the deal everyone thought they wanted, it should be evident that it is Israel's trust that must be earned. The State Department, the Israeli Left, the rest of the Quartet, and other slow students may still be handing in papers that don't make the grade, but Profs. Bush and Sharon seem to be patient. Judging by their success as politicians, the Arab world had better get used to the idea that there will be no substitute teachers for some time. — Saul Singer is editorial-page editor of the Jerusalem Post, where this piece first appeared. It is reprinted with permission. |
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George W. Bush and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon are not ministers of education,
but they could be. The two leaders seem to be leading their nations, this
region, and to some extent the world, gently through an educational process.
