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M.J. Rosenberg is Director of Policy Analysis for , a long time Capitol Hill staffer and former editor of AIPAC's Near East Report.
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By M.J. Rosenberg
June 23, 2006
If there is one trait that distinguishes great leaders from those who miss the mark, it is the ability to change course when a particular policy has failed. Franklin D. Roosevelt, consistently ranked by historians as one of America's three most successful Presidents (with Washington and Lincoln), put it like this: "Take a method and try it. If it fails, try another. But by all means, try something."
A corollary to FDR's view was the adage often cited by Albert Einstein which held that "insanity can be defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
One wonders, then, what either of these men would make of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as it is playing out today. Actually, one does not have to wonder. One can say with certitude that either would recommend a course correction and, even more likely, would encourage both sides -- not to mention the United States -- to consider a drastic overhaul of policies that produce little but suffering.
Start with the Palestinians and the Kassam rocket fire which terrorists keep directing at Sderot, a mile from Gaza. Hundreds of these primitive rockets have been fired at Sderot since the Israelis withdrew from Gaza a year ago. They inflict terror, particularly among children. But, fortunately, these rockets almost never hit their targets, and not a single Israeli has been killed in these attacks in a year. On the other hand, as we have seen repeatedly over the past few weeks, Palestinians -- including innocent kids -- are dying as a result of Israel's retaliatory strikes.
How then is the Palestinian cause advanced by these attacks? It is Palestinians, after all, who are suffering the most as a result of actions the terrorists initiate.
Additionally, by what conceivable logic does it make sense for Palestinians to attack Israel proper from land which Israel previously occupied, and from which it has now withdrawn. For decades, Palestinians demanded that Israel get out of Gaza, just as they demand that Israel get out of the West Bank.
Israel is now out.
Using the returned territory as a launching pad for attacks on Israel, terrorists send Israelis the message that Israel's return to the '67 lines would be a prelude to Palestinian assaults on Israel itself, launched from sites closer to Israel's population centers. If most Israelis come to believe this, chances that Israel will ever withdraw to lines that will allow the establishment of a viable Palestinian state will disappear.
This is not to say that President Abbas and his followers are behind the attacks, or even that Hamas is directly responsible.
At the same time, neither Abbas' Fatah nor the Hamas-run Palestinian Authority is doing much, if anything, to stop the attacks which are being launched from territory under PA control. Israel has every right to hold them responsible; they are, after all, the controlling authority in Gaza.
And, yet, at the same time, the Israelis seem to be making little effort to actually deal with the Palestinians. This is nothing new. Throughout Mahmoud Abbas' first year as President of the Palestinian Authority, he repeatedly and consistently sought to negotiate with Israel. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon gave him the brush-off over and over again, only agreeing to cursory talks when President Bush insisted.
Sharon insisted that Gaza withdrawal be unilateral, completely unilateral, despite Abbas' repeated requests that it be coordinated with him and the insistence by many Israelis (including key figures on the right) that withdrawal without negotiations would impose no conditions on the Palestinians. Today, with Kassams falling on Sderot, no one can cite violations of the Israeli-Palestinian agreement on Gaza withdrawal because no such document exists.
Unilateralism has its place -- there may have been no alternative to it -- but coordinating Israeli moves with the Palestinians would have helped prevent the situation both sides are in now. There is no way coordination would have hurt and, at the very least, it would have allowed Abbas to claim some credit for the Israeli withdrawal. Instead it was Hamas that successfully convinced Palestinian voters that their attacks had forced Israel out.
Not much has changed since. Both Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Mahmoud Abbas were in Petra, Jordan yesterday for a conference honoring Nobel Prize winners. It is hard to imagine a better venue for some serious talk about ending the violence.
But the Israeli side said that it was not ready for much more than a "meet and greet." Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres said that talks now would be premature. "Negotiations must be prepared carefully. If there will be a meeting and nothing will come out of it, it will simply create disappointment," he said.
That may well be true but any disappointment produced by premature negotiations pales next to the horrors of the rocket attacks and the counter-attacks.
Besides, negotiations are not a reward that one side presents to the other for good behavior. They are the method that must be employed to produce the good behavior. If they fail, they fail, but why not try. The good news is that Olmert did announce that serious talks will take place in the next few weeks.
You have to wonder why it seems so difficult for either side to take actions that are clearly in their own respective interests.
Writer Robert Rosenberg (no relation), who sends out an excellent (and free) daily essay from Israel called Today's Situation, comes close to an explanation in a column this week:
Speaking about the Palestinian failure to stop the Kassam attacks, he writes, "Even if a new hudna is announced, it is not clear that the PA government, whether Hamas or national unity, will have the political strength to use force to stop small rogue groups of Palestinian gangs from firing off Kassams on their own. The PA under Fatah didn't, the Hamas announced when it took office it wouldn't -- and even if the new "national consensus" document wins Islamic Jihad approval of the article that says Palestinians will cease attacks inside the 1967 Green Line borders (still not likely), there are plenty of angry Palestinians with a grudge and a rocket in the refugee camps of Gaza.
"It's sort of like the Israeli politicians' problem with the wildcat settlers of the 'illegal outposts.' They clearly obstruct Israeli interests, staining Israel's already strained reputation for being a law-abiding country, but despite promises made to the Americans, including in the road map that Israel says the Palestinians don't abide by, there has been no concerted effort to remove the outposts or arrest the settlers in them who quite openly harass army, police and Palestinians."
Bottom line: neither Israelis or Palestinians exhibit much courage when it comes to dealing with their respective fanatics.
This problem should not afflict the United States, and yet it continues to drag its feet about re-engaging. Isolating Hamas is the right thing to do but that, in itself, hardly amounts to a policy. The United States should be looking for ways to empower Abbas so that he can be an effective counterforce to Hamas.
And it should look for people in the current government who are willing to recognize Israel and end the violence. The Prisoners Document is far from perfect but Israelis and Americans should both be working to encourage that effort, or others like it. Instead, we seem to have left the playing field entirely.
In short, Palestinians, Israelis and Americans are all sticking to a script that experience shows is bound to fail. What will it take to get them to turn the page? One shudders at all the horrific possibilities.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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