Two op-eds today make the point – in different ways – that the peace process, the holy grail of diplomacy, is a chimera.
David Brooks writes in The confidence war:
By trial and error, Israel is learning to keep an even keel. For while Hamas and the extremists are dogmatic about ends, they are pragmatic about timing and means. On several occasions, Israelis have managed to temporarily suppress violence. The assassinations of Abdel Aziz Rantisi and Ahmed Yassin in 2004 temporarily suppressed Hamas suicide bombings. The destruction of Hezbollah’s command and control structure in Beirut’s Dahiya district in 2006 seems to have shocked the leadership and reduced terror activity in the north.
In this game, violence doesn’t necessarily beget violence. It sometimes prevents it. The difference between successful Israeli actions and unsuccessful ones is not in the amount of destruction they achieve, but in the psychological messages they send. The attacks on Hamas terror leaders in 2004 demonstrated Israeli prowess. They demonstrated superior intelligence capability and suggested that Israel is always one step ahead. These sorts of accomplishments sapped Hamas’s confidence and created a cycle of recrimination, leading to uncertainty and more risk-averse behavior.
Brooks, misses a point here. The killings of *Yassin* (thanks Snoopy) and Rantisi reduced Hamas’s ability to commit terror by removing two of its more effective leaders. But still these sentiments seem about right. Brooks writes that Israel must keep its aims limited, declare victory and get out. I think that killing (or capturing) Haniyeh and other well known leaders of Hamas is probably a necessity too.
Anne Applebaum writes in Fighting to the end:
For the trouble with all of these peace efforts, peace conferences, peace initiatives and peace proposals is that none of them recognizes the most obvious fact about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: It’s not a peace process; it’s a war. At the moment, at least, both parties are still convinced that their central aims will be better obtained through weapons and military tactics than through negotiations of any kind. To be more explicit, Hamas and its followers believe that the continuing firing of rockets into southern Israel will, sooner or later, result in the dissolution of the Jewish state. The Israelis — both on the “peacenik” left and the more bellicose right — believe that the only way to prevent Hamas from firing rockets is to fight back. Intervention — whether by well-meaning Europeans, U.N. delegations, Russian envoys (or even Condoleezza Rice, who has wisely stayed home, so far) — can postpone the conflict but cannot halt the violence, at least not until one side or the other surrenders.
I’d quibble with some of her implications here. Israel believes that fighting back is necessary, not out of choice but experience. And if there is to be peace, it is Hamas (and Fatah) who must finally surrender. The fundamental problem with the peace process is trying to satisfy one side (Palestinians specifically, Arabs generally) who don’t accept the right of the other to exist.
Both Brooks and Applebaum seem more or less consistent with Barry Rubin’s The Gaza War: Is it All So Hard to Understand?*
Peace will come when the Arabs accept Israel’s right to exist. Engaging in a “peace process” may make others feel useful, but it probably causes more harm than it helps.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
