A War of Two Worlds

One of the most peculiar aspects of the year-long Palestinian uprising is the decimation of the Israeli left it has caused. Both the Israeli and the international press abound with interviews in which ex-leftists denounce their own naivete and compete in attempts to ridicule their once-cherished notion of a “New Middle East.” As a direct result of this development, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a highly controversial politician, is enjoying approval ratings that would make most self-respecting despots blush.

The basic argument made by the new Israeli “left-right” has been the same since the beginning of the recent intifada: Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former President Bill Clinton made Palestinian Authority (PA) Chair Yassir Arafat the most generous offer possible, but Arafat nevertheless turned it down. They offered him control over most of Arab East Jerusalem and over 90 percent of the West Bank and Gaza. But Arafat was not willing to settle for all of this. Instead, just when the two sides were on the verge of a historic compromise, he opted for war. Coupled with the Palestinian leader’s past record (for example, his failure to crack down on the Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants in 1995 and 1996, which led to the replacement of the dovish Peres government with the hawkish Netanyahu one), the inevitable conclusion is that whenever Arafat smells peace , he feels the urge to loose his militants. If he had really been interested in peace, he would have continued to negotiate instead of letting all hell break loose just when a resolution was within reach.

The events of Sept. 11 have only added more weight to this argument. They have allowed Israeli government officials to depict Israel as the founder of the club of victims of terror, a club that America has now joined.

However, recent accounts published in the New York Review of Books and in The New York Times suggest that this argument obscures and conceals the role of Barak’s political weakness and Clinton’s exaggerated sense of urgency in the failure of the talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. It also blurs the fact that not all violence is terror, that at least some of what the Palestinians are doing can be understood as a legitimate struggle for independence.

But much more importantly, what this argument obscures and conceals is that any kind of peace plan must be understood in terms of its effects on the actual lives of the two populations involved, rather than in terms of the psychology of their leaders.

Since the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993, Israel has enjoyed periods of considerable economic prosperity. Foreign investment increased, startups mushroomed, roads were built and repaved and surround-sound theaters popped up everywhere. Growth rates and standard of living figures began approaching those in western Europe. A long break in large-scale suicide attacks beginning in the middle of 1996 allowed many Israelis to believe that they were safe going to the gym after work, visiting Internet cafes and reading about other people’s problems in the newspapers.

The picture was not as bright in the West Bank and Gaza. Several factors combined to assure that poor living conditions would persist there: Palestinians remained largely dependent on Israeli markets for work, Israel imposed strict limitations on access to these markets and foreign investors (both Western and from the Arab world) were too hesitant in opening their coffers in order to allow for the creation of a local economic infrastructure.

Of course, not all of these conditions can be blamed entirely on Israel. The imposition of blockades was due in part to the Palestinian Authority’s repeated failures to deliver on its commitments to contain belligerent Islamic elements. The fact that investors did not wish to become involved in the erection of hotels and industrial parks in Palestinian-controlled territory is partly attributable to the incredible level of corruption and lack of transparency in the PA’s administrative and bureaucratic systems.

But the question of attributing responsibility does not change the bottom line. After seven years of peace making, Tel Aviv and Gaza might as well have been on different planets. Residents of the former are better fed, dressed and paid than ever before. Inhabitants of the latter remained crowded, uneducated and impoverished. It is this chasm that has sustained and fueled the recent uprising. It is this gorge that makes it almost impossible to end it.

Pseudo-logical speculations about Arafat’s tactics do not carry much explanatory power in this context. Leaving all principled arguments concerning the right of self-determination aside (and there are quite a few to be made), Israelis failed to recognize their own vital interest in making the fruits of peace tangible on the other side of the green line. Sadly, as is often the case, one failure led to another. After more then a year of violent conflict, everyday life has become unbearable for Israelis as well. Many of them feel under siege, unable to safely use public transportation, go to a movie, or sleep if their children choose to go out with friends.

Israel is now a nation in a state of regression, its citizens engulfed in either depression, anxiety, nationalistic fervor or some combination of all three. Palestinian militants, encouraged or at least not checked by the PA, have made sure that most Israelis completely forget that peace ever had any positive bearing on their lives. To paraphrase a famous jurist, the life of peace has never been logic; it has been experience. In other words, a peace process can only be understood and evaluated in terms of its payoff. Without internalizing this simple insight, both sides seem destined to remain locked in their macabre dance for the foreseeable future.

Nir Eisikovits is a Ph. D. student at Boston University. He is an attorney and a citizen of Israel.