Make the wall the border
Bruce Anderson says that if Israel does not reach an accommodation with the Palestinians, it could suffer a dreadful fate Generals are often accused of preparing to fight the last war. The Israelis could now be accused of preparing to defend themselves against the Holocaust. In so doing, they are in danger of causing another one.
After the 1967 war, the Israelis were determined to use victory to enhance security. That was understandable. At its narrowest point, pre-1967 Israel was only 12 miles wide. One tank thrust from the West Bank could have cut the country in two. The Arabs had an endless supply of hapless conscripts and, in those days, Russian arms. Their political systems placed no constraint on casualties. They could afford to fight endless lost wars. One defeat would have destroyed Israel.
If the Israelis had required the demilitarisation of the West Bank plus the right to fly war planes across its airspace, they could have made a powerful moral case, and none of that would have prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state. But the Israelis went further. They planted settlers, in large numbers.
Within Israel there has always been a section of opinion which insists that the West Bank consists of Judaea and Samaria, two historic Jewish provinces which ought to be part of greater Israel. Though this has never been official government policy, Palestinians could be forgiven for thinking that it was the covert goal of several recent premiers: Begin, Shamir, Netanyahu and Sharon. It has often appeared as if Israel was determined to alter the facts on the ground by creating so many settlements that it would be impossible to withdraw from the West Bank. Especially in the new suburbs around Jerusalem, there is already a sense of permanence.
It is easy to be irritated by the Palestinians. Their spokesmen have never learnt how to win friends and influence people. Abba Eban said that Arafat never lost an opportunity to lose an opportunity. That could serve as his epitaph. It would also he a good title for a short history of the Palestinian cause.
Yet there are excuses. People who have been treated badly rarely behave well. The Palestinians cannot be blamed for regarding themselves as the most undeserving victims of the second world war, though they had not even been belligerents. It was as if the West had decided to allow the Israelis to punish them for Germany's crimes. Hence decades of a choking sense of injustice, with spokesmen so lacerated by grievance that they could hardly be coherent. Hence, too, decades of intolerable behaviour: Palestinian-sponsored terrorism, Palestinian spokesmen and clerics who, deciding that they were being treated like Nazis. decided to talk like Nazis.
But however self-destructive the Palestinians often became, this does not absolve Israel and the West from responsibility for their plight. Nor does it prevent them undermining Western interests in the region. Throughout the Middle East, Palestine is a sore tooth: a potent source of political instability. The Palestinian question is making it almost impossible for Western spokesmen to receive a hearing. As soon as they talk about democracy, freedom and human rights, there is the inevitable riposte — 'what about Palestine?' — and the rest of the argument is buried under charges of hypocrisy and double standards.
A few years ago, there seemed to be some hope of an improvement. Despite his support for Israel, George Bush was also happy to speak about the need for a Palestinian state. As he is a man who tends to mean what he says and say what he means, this seemed promising, especially when he talked in terms of a road map to peace. Since then, however, there have been two unhelpful developments. The Israelis have started to build a wall, which looks as if it is intended to be a further attempt to alter the facts on the ground and to consolidate Israel's position on the West Bank. At the same time, President Bush has made well nigh impossible demands on the Palestinian leadership.
Hardly surprisingly, he had come to despise Arafat as a shifty figure terminally mired in terrorism. But this does not make it reasonable to insist that any future Palestinian leader should not only recognise pre-1967 Israel but should also acknowledge Israel's right to keep some of the territories captured in 1967.
It might be possible to find a Palestinian leader who was willing to sign a peace treaty on such terms. As soon as he did so, he would lose all his political influence in Palestine, and would become an instant target for assassination. There are large numbers of Palestinians with a strong wish for peace, even if they are too cautious to express it in public. But no Palestinian leader who was willing to go under the yoke of submission to Israel could survive.
Many Israelis view the prospect of political chaos in Palestine with indifference. That is where they are in danger of bringing about their own destruction. These days, the threat to Israel does not come from a conventional war. It will arise from weapons of mass destruction which fall into the hands of fundamentalist terrorists. If there is no progress towards a just peace in Palestine, it will be harder for America to secure the transformation of the Islamic world, and increasingly likely that, as the century went on, Israel would be surrounded by hostile, failed states. These would do nothing to impede the fundamentalists, while technological developments will make it easier for terrorists to acquire WMD. If Israel does not come to an accommodation with the Palestinians, it could suffer a dreadful fate.
Yet there is one paradoxical route to progress: a sensible use of the Israelis' wall. Good fences make good neighbours. If the Israelis built the wall along the line of the 1967 boundary plus the east Jerusalem suburbs, while evacuating all other settlements, they would not only be improving their own security. They would also be creating a viable Palestinian state. Israel would be declaring UDI from occupied Palestine. The new Palestinian leaders who would emerge would not have had to sign a humiliating peace with Israel. They could insist to their people that they had not accepted the boundaries imposed by Israel, and that they would continue to exert pressure in international forums. In the short run, however, Palestinians should devote their energies to better roads, clean water and decent schools.
While this was happening, the Israelis could warn the Palestinian leadership of the dangers of turning their country into a terrorist enclave. If that were to happen, Israel would regard it as an act of aggression by a state which would, in consequence, feel all the weight of inter-state weaponry and warfare.
Tension and threat might seem a frail basis for a lasting peace. But there would at least be a Palestinian state, whose people could use their energies productively. It would also be less likely that Israel's neighbours would slide into chaos. Though the Israelis would continue to live in a dangerous neighbourhood, there would be a lesser risk that the Promised Land would turn into a mass grave.
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