Palestinians Have Another Chance, Thanks to President Bush

It was with great admiration that I watched George W. Bush cutting yet another Gordian knot - this time he told the Palestinians that they have to forget"the right of return" of the 1948-1949 refugees to Israeli territories. They will have to settle their refugees in their portion of Palestine.  Moreover, that portion will not necessarily follow the 1949 armistice lines.  Life goes on and it's time for the Palestinians and their supporters to realize that fact and stop pining over lost causes.  How important was it to insist that the Palestinians deal with reality, and stop living in dreams? Very.  This has been made doubly clear after the bombing in Spain.

After all, many Palestinians rejected the Oslo agreement because they saw in it a willingness to give up the Palestinian dream of eliminating Israel. Nizar Qabbani, the Arab world's most popular poet, wrote in October, 1995 a poem comparing the loss of part of Palestine with the loss of Spain (the poem was published in Al-Hayat. Fouad Ajami translated it in his must read book - The Dream Palace of the Arabs).  He, like Edward Said, is not an Islamist - but his message is that only cowards accommodate to reality.  By the way, this is the Arab intellectual response to the fall of Saddam. 

Arafat called the Oslo agreement, the peace of the brave - Qabbani called it something very different -

The last walls of embarrassment have fallen
We were delighted
and we danced
and we blessed ourselves
for signing the peace of the cowards
Nothing frightens us anymore
Nothing shames us anymore
The veins of pride in us have fried up.

Granada has fallen for the fiftieth time
From the hands of the Arabs
History has fallen
From the hands of the Arabs.
All the folk songs of heroism have fallen.

We no longer in our hands
Have a single Andalus
They stole the walls, the wives, the children
the olives and the old
And the stones of the street.

Qabbani even claims Jesus:

They stole Jesus the son of Mary
While he was an infant still.
They stole from us the memory of the orange trees
and the apricots and the mint
And the candles in the mosques.

He despised the idea of taking care of people as a way to exercise Arab leadership. This is what he wrote about Gaza.

In our hands they left
A sardine called Gaza
And a dry bone called Jericho.
They left us a body with no bones
A hand with no fingers . . .

Oh, we dreamed of a green peace
and a white crescent
And a blue sea.
Now we find ourselves
On a dung-heap.

I heard a Palestinian reporter say on the Lehrer News Hour that no one wants Gaza.  U.S. welcomed the world's"tired and poor." Ben Gurion accepted any part of the promised land in order to have a place to settle Holocaust survivors living in DP camps but not this"dreamer." Isn't is ironic that 7,000 Israelis delighted in making parts of that dung-heap bloom.  But such prosaic achievement does not interest the Arab dreamers still pining over Granada nor those who believe Islam mandates a no holds barred Jihad to recover every inch of territory from East Timor to Andalus to Bosnia which was at one time or another under Muslim rule. 

The UN decided upon a two-state solution, but then did nothing to enforce its decision.  From 1948-1967, the U.S. too engaged in creative diplomacy.  It never told the Arab states that it was committed to the permanence of Israel as a Jewish state.  Lyndon Johnson was the first American president to talk about peace in the Arab-Israeli dispute in a manner which made clear that Israel is here to stay.  He did it after the 1967 war in which the Arab states had a third opportunity to defeat Israel on the battlefront. Oslo was supposed to give Palestinians another chance to build the state they refused to establish in 1948. The world community led by Bill Clinton pledged to finance it. For Qabbani such generosity, too, was unforgivable:

The Dowry was in dollars.
The diamond ring was in dollars.
The fee for the judge
was in dollars.

The Cake was a gift from America
and the wedding veil
the flowers, the candles
and the music of the marines
Were all made in America.

And the Wedding came to an end
And Palestine was not to be found
At the ceremony . . .

Like a wounded bird
Palestine Shouted:
This wedding is not my wedding!
This dress is not my dress!
This shame is not my shame!

Yassir Arafat assured such critics that his Jihad will continue. In 2000, the American policy makers realized that the Palestinian leadership had  found a loophole in the American position.  They would not seek the destruction of Israel as such, only its elimination as a Jewish state.  To Bill Clinton's horror, Arafat insisted that Israel was not the Jewish ancestral land and Jerusalem was not its ancient capital.

The same George W. Bush who cut the Afghani and Iraqi Gordian knots also cut the Middle Eastern ones.  He committed the U.S. to the continued existence of Israel, as a Jewish state and to the creation of a Palestinian state.  Such a solution mandates no return of refugees to Israel proper, and takes into account that 1949 is not 2004 and the 1949 armistice lines can no longer constitute realistic border line between the two states.  The consequences of repeated wars rendered them obsolete.

The Bush - Sharon agreement means that the Palestinians will have to set aside dreams and come to terms with the realities on the ground.  As Bush explained,  the Palestinian leadership will have to embark on the prosaic mission of building"a peaceful state, one in which money will actually end up helping . . . Palestinians to be able to grow their  businesses, and  . . . find wealth for their families."  Or more formally, as written in the Exchange of Letters between PM Sharon and President Bush : "The United States will join with others in the international community to foster the development of democratic political institutions and new leadership committed to those institutions, the reconstruction of civic institutions, the growth of a free and prosperous economy, and the building of capable security institutions dedicated to maintaining law and order and dismantling terrorist organizations."

Dreams die hard.  Egyptian president Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Rabin paid for killing them.  Yassir Arafat preferred to let thousands of Israelis and Palestinians pay for them.  Bush and Sharon are giving the Palestinian leadership another chance to step up to the plate.  If they cannot do so, perhaps it's time to revisit the Jordanian option.  It would be a pity since no Arabs are better tutored in democracy than those living in the territories, nor are better aware of its benefits even under difficult circumstances.  After all, as Munir Al-Mawari, a Yemenite journalist and columnist for the London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsatwrote :"The reality is that Israel is more democratic than any Arab country, and the suffering of the Palestinian citizen in Israel is much less than the suffering of the Arab citizen in his homeland and his own Arab country, whatever country that may be."   Salman Masalha, Israeli Arab intellectual and poet agrees: "Israeli Arabs Are More Free Than Anyone in the Arab World." Then, of course, Arab states reject the emergence of a democratic Palestine for the same reason they reject a democratic Iraq.  They fear it.  It would deprive them of a useful scapegoat. 

Some members of Arab elites filled with spite and false pride also reject Western calls for reform.  In a recent article) Galal Amin, a professor of economics at the American University in Cairo noted that the combined GDP of members of the Arab League is less than that of Spain and that about 40 percent of Arab adults, or 65 million persons, are illiterate, two-thirds of these women.  He then proceeded to ask: What business have you interfering in our affairs? Have we complained to you about our democracy, knowledge and women, and asked for help?"  Note how reminiscent Galal's rejection, misinterpretation and hostility towards world concern for the people of the Middle East is of Bin Laden's view of the American initiative to help allay hunger in Somalia. In his latest tape, Bin Laden (bbc.news.com) defines that initiative as an invasion. He writes:"killing them [Americans] in Somalia was after their invasion of it in Operation Restore Hope. We made them leave without hope, praise be to God."

Galal goes on:"The claim that the Greater Middle East Initiative aims, wholly or partly, to eliminate terror of the type seen on September 11, 2001 is unconvincing, for several reasons. One is that there is still doubt that the September attacks were the outcome of Arab and Islamic terror. No conclusive proof to this effect is yet available. Many writers, American and European, as well as Arab, suspect that the attacks were carried out by Americans, or with American assistance, or that Americans knew about them and kept silent." Still, there is hope. They are intellectuals such as Iraqi columnist Khaled Kishtainy  who fearlessly exposes the ideologues preying on the Arab world and it is in part for their benefit that Bush repeatedly cuts the Middle Eastern Gordian knots.  Those who thrive on the existence of the knots are livid.  Indeed, Bush may pay a heavy political price for his bravery but history is sure to appreciate his courage.