End of Hostilities

These are difficult times for those of us who fall into neither of the two distinct camps that have dominated the debate over the Israeli-Hezbollah war on talk radio and segments of the blogosphere.

The first camp supports the Israeli incursion to the hilt. It supports not only the Israeli incursion into Lebanon but any and all Israeli attacks on Arabs. These are the people who opposed the Oslo process, believe that Israel’s peace with Egypt is next to worthless, and railed against the Gaza withdrawal. This camp, far larger in the United States than in Israel, welcomes events which seem to demonstrate that Israel needs to live behind an iron wall and that peace with Arabs is a fantasy.

The second camp consists of those who view Israel as the source of all the problems in the Middle East. The Jews’ original sin was, of course, establishing a state in the first place. Ever since, Israel has recklessly used violence to advance the goal of a Greater Israel. Even when Israel pulls out of territory, it does so for nefarious reasons. As for Lebanon, Israel’s actions are war crimes and are, needless to say, utterly unjustified....

But here’s the problem. People seem to be confusing Hezbollah with the Palestinians, or at least pretending to.

The rightwing American Jewish crowd does that because it wants to convey the idea that the Palestinians are, like Hezbollah, terrorists whose goal is simply to kill Jews. Just as Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with Hezbollah, it can’t negotiate with the Palestinians either.

The anti-Israel crowd takes a mirror image approach. The Palestinians are a legitimate resistance movement that is fighting to end an occupation. So too then is Hezbollah, a liberation movement fighting for its land.

Both arguments are wrong....

One Senate aide put it to me like this. “If I were Israeli, I’d cut a deal with the Palestinians now. I’d tell them that in return for the release of Shalit and an end of the Kassam attacks, Israel will stop attacking Gaza and start serious talks with Abbas about a long-term end of hostilities. That would cut the legs out from under Hezbollah. It would allow Israel to devote all its energy to eliminating the threat from the north. The last thing Israel needs is for Palestinian Sunnis and Lebanese Shiites to form a common front. It should split them before it happens and cut a deal now. The Egyptians are working to produce a Palestinian popular front that would deal with Israel. Israel needs to be encouraging that.”

That makes sense. The world sympathizes with Israel’s determination to eradicate Hezbollah. Even the Arab League has tempered its criticism of Israel.

Why not exploit the moment? What harm would it do?
No harm, except to destroy the arguments of the extremists on both sides who insist that Hezbollah and the Palestinians are identical which means, in the case of Jewish hawks, that they both should be destroyed and, in the case of Hezbollah apologists, that Israel should simply sit back and allow the country to be supplanted by a Muslim Arab state.

There is another way. Support Israel in its war with Hezbollah while striving for a workable cease-fire, and support the vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians who understand that the establishment of a West Bank-Gaza Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel is the sine qua non for any kind of Middle East stability.

[via TPM Cafe, HT: Streak's Blog]