A Jewish-American Peace Activist

Rabin May Lack the Courage to Make Peace

By Rachelle Marshall

To many Westerners the Middle East, with its desert landscapes and exotic customs, is a land of mystery. But nothing about the Middle East is as baffling as Israel's current policy toward peace negotiations with its neighbors. Analysts are churning out reams of commentary on that policy, but who can say what it actually is?

The agreement signed in Cairo by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat on May 4 allows Palestinians to participate with Israel in policing and administering Gaza and the city of Jericho, and calls for future negotiation of a final peace settlement. Palestinian leaders, with little bargaining power, accepted these minimal terms but only as a first step toward achieving an independent state on the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel, for its part, granted a degree of autonomy to the Palestinians but was able to postpone for up to two years negotiations on the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Jewish settlements. Both Arafat and Rabin face strong opposition to the agreement from hard-liners within their own constituencies.

Rabin is aware that his re-election as prime minister depends on whether Israeli voters see net gains from the agreement in terms of their own security. This means that in order to justify the agreement to his own citizens he must secure the Palestinians' cooperation in making it work.

Why, then, does he defend the peace process with one breath and undercut it in the next? If he hopes to come to terms with Arafat, why does he call him "a master of survival and a builder of nothing"? How can he condemn the occupation one day by saying, "The blood that was spilled is because of our control of a foreign nation," and the next threaten to suspend the peace talks unless there's an end to the Palestinian attacks on Israelis? If, as prime minister, Rabin favors reconciliation with the Palestinians, why, as minister of defense' does he order the army to behave as if nothing had changed—to shoot Palestinian protestors with live ammunition, impose repeated curfews on Palestinian towns, demolish entire blocks of homes in the search for suspects, and send undercover agents disguised as Arabs to carry out execution-style killings of young Palestinians?

Why, if Rabin wants peace with Syria, does he launch an air attack on a training camp close to Syria's border, and call the attack, which killed upward of 45 sleeping teenage boys, "a signal to Syria"? Such acts seem calculated to stiffen opposition to the peace agreement and provoke continued violence.

Mark Heller, a senior researcher at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv and a longtime peace advocate, describes the Rabin government as "hobbled by its own ambivalence." Like the cat that stands in the open doorway on a freezing night unwilling to stay in or go out, Rabin lacks the courage to follow through on the peace process he helped set in motion, and as a result may doom it to fail. Polls show that 63 percent of Israelis now oppose negotiations that could lead to expanded self-rule for the Palestinians, and Palestinian support for the current peace agreement has shrunk to less than 40 percent. The reason seems clear; mutual trust is the vital glue of any agreement, and Rabin's contradictory messages are eroding trust on both sides.

The withdrawal of Israeli troops from parts of Gaza and Jericho should have been an occasion for convincing Israelis and Palestinians that the ongoing peace process would lessen tensions between both sides. Instead, celebrations of the withdrawal were marred by the iron-fist tactics of the army, retaliation by Palestinians, and ultimatums by Israeli officials. On May 8, for instance, the army suddenly set up roadblocks around Jericho and declared it a closed area "for no apparent reason," according to The New York Times. Three days later, as Palestinian police entered Gaza for the first time, Israeli authorities shut off electricity to 66,000 people in the Gaza refugee camp, claiming the residents hadn't paid their bills. Two weeks later, Israel sealed off Gaza entirely after Palestinians killed two Israeli soldiers.

The army sealed off Jericho again on May 24 after Palestinian police arrested and disarmed three Jewish settlers who had entered the town carrying guns. Despite the fact that Palestinians were supposedly granted self-rule in Jericho, Israeli officials ordered that the guns be returned and insisted that settlers had a right to be armed in Palestinian-control led territory. (The ruling could prove dangerous—Jerusalem's Israeli deputy mayor, Schmuel Meir, has urged that a medal be awarded to anyone who assassinates Arafat, and settlers' organizations have planned massive protest demonstrations in Jericho if Arafat tries to enter the city.) Israel again reminded Palestinians of the limited scope of the self-rule agreement in late May, when Arafat declared a return to force of pre1967 laws in Gaza and Jericho. A government spokesman immediately dismissed Arafat's action, saying that "any legislation needs the approval of Israel."

Arafat had earlier come under attack after a speech in a Johannesburg mosque in which he called for a "jihad" to liberate Jerusalem. Although Arafat insisted he meant "peaceful struggle," not holy war, Rabin accused him of creating a "crisis of confidence," and threatened to break off peace talks. There is a question as to who is showing bad faith when it comes to claiming sovereignty over Jerusalem. In defiance of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, Rabin and other Israeli leaders continue to pledge that an undivided Jerusalem will be the eternal capital of Israel.

Yet, for hundreds of years before Israel became a state, Jerusalem was a predominately Arab city. After 1948 East Jerusalem remained the center of Palestinian life, the seat of Arab culture and the location of modern Palestinian institutions. Since Israel's capture of East Jerusalem in 1967, successive Israeli governments have sought to change the population balance by building thousands of housing units for Jews and forbidding new Palestinian construction.

Rabin has accelerated the process so that by the time Jerusalem comes up for discussion it will be largely a Jewish city. Meanwhile, Israel not only has closed Jerusalem to all Palestinians from the occupied territories, it has ordered Palestinian authorities to move their administrative offices for Jericho and Gaza out of the city. Mayor Ehud Olmert also wants the government to shut down PLO headquarters, known as Orient House, an act that could make it politically impossible for the PLO to continue the peace talks.

The most puzzling show of bad faith on Israel's part, in terms of Rabin's avowed eagerness to see the peace agreement work, is the repeated charge by government officials that the Palestinian police are unable to control violence in Gaza—a sign that Palestinians are unready for self-government. In response, Freih Abu Middein, a member of the Palestine National Authority (PNA), points out that the Israeli army was unable to prevent violence in Gaza during its 27-year occupation, Palestinian police must also cope with the fact that some 20,000 guns poured into the territories during Israeli rule. Arafat additionally points out that Israel would not allow the Palestinians to employ enough police. He estimates that given the size of the population there should be at least 24,000. "But the Israelis say only 6,000!" he complained to an interviewer for Vanity Fair's May issue. "They want us to do all the security work they do now, only with a token force ... they are acting against their own interest as well as ours."

What gives the constant Israeli criticism an even crueler edge is the fact that the Palestinians have had virtually no money to operate with. Despite promises of help from abroad, they have had no funds to pay police and civil servants, or for public services, or even to provide telephones and lights for the PNA office. In response to frequent Israeli assertions that the Palestinians are being "tested," another PNA member, Saeb Erekat, commented, "We were born without a penny, and we are told that our ability to cope will test our ability to govern ourselves. In a sense this is right—if we can run Gaza and Jericho without cash, we are miracle workers." Erekat's remark has a certain irony for Americans. The U.S. promised the Palestinians $5 million in start-up funds once they signed a peace agreement. That sum is less than a thousandth of what we give to Israel year after year, yet for more than six weeks after the signing in Cairo, not a penny of it had been delivered.

If the Palestinians face seemingly insurmountable obstacles, they at least know what they want—a state and a recognized national identity of their own. But what do Israelis want? It depends on whose voice is speaking.

All Israelis want the assurance of security, but after that their views differ radically. A small but eloquent minority has long advocated peaceful co-existence with the Palestinians in two separate states. Many, like Shimon Peres, envision a future in which Israel and the Palestinians are partners in leading the Middle East to modernization and greater prosperity. Israel, in this relationship, would be the senior partner.

Another minority, but one that is armed to the teeth, look upon the Palestinians as alien intruders in a land that God gave to the Jews. Extremists among them regard Baruch Goldstein, perpetrator of the massacre in Hebron last February, as a hero. The more moderate members of this group include retired General Rafael Eitan, now leader of the Tsomet party in the Knesset, who once referred to Palestinians as "cockroaches" and recently urged that Israel send a force into Gaza "and kill all Hamas personnel."

But it is not only policy toward the Palestinians that divides Israelis. Like Jews everywhere, some Israelis take their religion casually or not at all, some regard it only as a set of moral teachings and traditional rituals, and some believe that they and only they have a direct line to God. Because it is a Jewish state, religious differences in Israel create dangerous fault lines that government policy-makers must adapt to if they are to remain in power.

Rabin's acceptance of the role of peacemaker at one moment and his ruthless warmaking the next undoubtedly reflect the contradictions that have been inherent in Israeli society since the country's inception. A day after the June 2 Israeli bombing raid over Lebanon, near the Syrian border, there was speculation that Rabin ordered the raid to counter charges by Israeli hard-liners that in agreeing to negotiate peace with Syria he was endangering Israel's security. But responding to conflicting pulls is not leadership, any more than the slaughter of Lebanese teenagers will increase Israel's security,

The future Middle East depends on whether Israel and its neighbors can find a way to live together in peace. As the most powerful participant in the current talks, Israel needs a leader who is strongly committed to this objective and courageous enough to take the risks necessary to achieve it. Rabin, for all his decisiveness when it comes to commando raids and air attacks, is proving faint-hearted in pursuing the one goal that could assure Israel's survival. AAmericans, and especially American Jews, who hailed his election and cheered him for signing the Declaration of Principles, should now demand that he and his government follow through on the promises made in that ceremony.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of the International Jewish Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.