Defining delinquency down
Recently Natan Sharansky asked Does democracy end tyranny?. His answer
The recent election of Hamas is the fruit of a policy that focused on the form of democracy (elections) rather than its substance (building and protecting a free society). Rather than push for quick elections, the democratic world must use its considerable moral, political and economic leverage to help build free societies in the Middle East. We should tie trade privileges to economic freedoms, encourage foreign diplomats to meet openly with dissidents and link aid to the protection of dissents (as Bush did when he helped force the release of Egyptian democracy advocate Saad Eddin Ibrahim).
In other words there need to be substantive changes in the Palestinian political culture before the final step of an election. Of course that’s a shortcut that George Bush has taken only to have it blow up in his face. And there are quite a few who are crowing over this and telling Bush what to do.
The problem is that these critics have no credibility. Perhaps there is an analog between democracy and peace. Especially in the Middle East. Many advocates of peace in the Middle East wish to substitute pieces of paper and Israeli actions for any real process. Accountability that is lacking in Palestinian governance of its own people is also lacking in its handling of relations with Israel.
But these critics say that Bush pushed ahead too fast with democracy now he must submit to the will of the Palestinians. In What’s Achievable in the Mideast Jim Hoagland writes
The immediate American role should be to provide the push and the assurances needed to get Israel to duplicate Ariel Sharon’s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip and yield more than 90 percent of the West Bank, while compensating the Palestinians with land swaps for the few housing areas close to Jerusalem not evacuated.
The arrangement of de facto frontiers for a two-state solution would resemble what are known in Israel as the Clinton parameters, which emerged from Israeli-Palestinian talks at Camp David under President Bill Clinton in 2000 and then in Taba, Egypt, in January 2001.
Sorry this is wrong. The Palestinian rejected the (overly) generous terms of the Clinton paramters. The continued perfidy of the Palestinians must be acknowledged. There needs to be an acknowledgement that having passed up on something there is a price to be paid. Israel will not be secure if these past 5+ years of war give the Palestinians the same deal they would have gotten by foregoing violence. It will just reinforce the effectiveness of violence.
But if Hoagland is at least realistic about the promise of peace between a Hamas led Palestinian Authority, the editors of the Washington Post are not. In an ambitiously titled The Case for Democracy
They are powerful forces in the Middle East that, until their recent participation in elections, pursued their goals by terrorism. Democratic participation has caused Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and at least some of Iraq’s Sunni and Shiite groups to scale back violence at least temporarily. Over time, it is more likely than exclusion and suppression to moderate their political aims.
This is precisely wrong. It shows that the editors of the Post have learned nothing since 1993.
Barry Rubin beats back such unfounded pollyannish thinking with Sticks beat Carrots
Yasir Arafat: If Arafat was only offered help and concessions, it was argued, he would moderate and end the long-running conflict. Not only did the U.S. government save Arafat from destruction by Israel in 1982 Beirut, it persuaded Tunisia to let him move his headquarters there. In 1988 he was offered a dialogue on terms that he broke. Given more chances, Arafat did more biting of the hands that fed him. Given billions of dollars in aid, the Palestinian movement misspent the money through corruption or using it to support terrorist operations rather than to help its own people. Incitement continued while few efforts were made to stop terrorism. Offering Arafat an independent state and $22 billion in refugee compensation in 2000 led to a five-year-long war of terrorism and a crisis that is still going on.
The result was not only the loss of many lives and the deepening of a conflict. Most of the Arab world still claims the United States has never done anything to help the Palestinians. And this is the example cited by some as the “successful” model for Western policy toward Hamas!
This is made worse by the fact that the editors of the Post consistently refused to hold Arafat accountable for most of the failures of the Oslo process.
Consider the following editorial (yes I know that Meg Greenfeld died and was replaced by Fred Hiatt. but these view reflect common thinking at the time; just as the current Post editorial reflects some common hopes) from 1996 after Arafat and the PLC “revoked” the Palestinian National Charter
Mr Arafat Delivers (Apr 26, 1996)YASSER ARAFAT has made a fair start on his promise to undo the sections of the Palestinian charter threatening Israel and legitimizing violence against it. He got the body representing the whole far-flung Palestinian people to agree to amend a charter written in the noxious bravura rhetoric of the 1960s.
True, his council could not bring itself to speak the words it was undertaking to rewrite — the latter a demanding task that was bumped to a subcommittee, which was given six months. But it was a considerable political feat for Mr. Arafat to deliver a Palestinian movement whose majority, though it sees no alternative to peace, still entertains deep suspicions of Israel and whose minority is consumed by total distrust.
The fact that council couldn’t bring itself to explicitly reject the charter spoke volumes about the Palestinian readiness to make peace. If Arafat couldn’t even arrange for is parliament to say that Israel had a right to exist how could he be expected to fight terror or reverse the awful antisemitic propaganda that bombarded the Palestian body politic since 1993? The answer is he couldn’t or (more likely) wouldn’t.
Yet Israel gave him territory, money and arms and, in return, got war. It wasn’t the lack of land or freedom. It was the lack of commitment to peace. To argue now that Israeli must deal with Hamas to modeate Hamas is deluding oneself.
In contrast consider Operation Bibi (June 2, 1996) from a few weeks later
Israel has its continuing obligations to the United States: first of all, to keep its policy under the umbrella of the remarkable public and official consensus that has ensured broad American support for the Jewish state since its founding. An Israeli government that breached that consensus would be taking risks that an Israeli public might well find unbearable, as happened when Yitzhak Shamir took on George Bush in 1992. Currently that consensus implies support for American peace diplomacy and for the substantial strategic benefits it is intended to deliver to Washington.
Arafat failes to live up one of his obligations and the Post’s editors take it as a great success. But the moment Netanyahu was elected the Post was already arguing that he had an obligation to continue the the peace process on America terms.
It is this sort of imbalance - demanding concrete concessions from Israel, while outright failures to observe the treaty by the PA are treated as great successes - that has emboldened the Palestinians. They know that many value the sacredness of maintaining a peace process (even fictionally) at all costs regardless of violations. So they violated its terms with impunity.
Peace - in the form of territory, authority over their own people and international legitimacy - should be a final step for the Palestinians; just like electoral legitimacy. By pushing for peace before its time those who - like the Post - ignored the Palestinian encouragement of terror against Israel must share the blame for the Hamas victory. Palestinian terrorist was to be objected to, but never viewed as an impediment. It was to be “understood” and Israel was expected to tolerate it.
Well ignoring Palestinian non-compliance didn’t work with Arafat and it won’t work with Hamas. Those who are encouraging Israel and the West not to cut off the PA, are only encouraging (and excusing) terror.
Those who have defined Palestinian deliquency down in the past are prepared to do so again.
Technorati tags: Hamas, Palestinian Authority, Natan Sharansky, Barry Rubin.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.
