Philadelphia — The Palestinian campaign of terrorism continues, with 22 persons murdered in Tel Aviv this past weekend. Every day, on average, without counting minor incidents involving rocks and firebombs, the Palestinians launch more than ten attacks on Israelis.
Which makes this a particularly apt moment to review my assessment of a year ago, that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s tough response is the right one and that it will cause the Palestinians to give up on violence.
To begin with, while the violence continues, it has diminished during 2002. The year’s first quarter saw 50 percent more attacks than the fourth quarter and well over twice as many fatalities.
More significant, however, are the many signs pointing to a realization among Palestinians that adopting violence has been a monstrous mistake. What the Associated Press calls a “slowly swelling chorus of Palestinian leaders and opinion-makers” is expressing disillusion with the poverty, anarchy, detention, injury and death brought by 27 months of violence.
Mahmoud Abbas, the number two Palestinian leader after Yasser Arafat, has conceded that “it was a mistake to use arms … and to carry out attacks inside Israel.”
Abdel Razzak al-Yahya, the so-called interior minister, has denounced suicide bombings against Israel as “murders for no reason” and demanded an end to “all forms of Palestinian violence” and its replacement with civil resistance. Bethlehem mayor Hanna Nasser has found that use of arms did no good and now insists the Palestinian struggle “has to be a peaceful one.”
More developments
Other developments confirm this sense of dismay and willingness to rethink:
• A sense of despair: “It’s over,” a man in Ramallah said of the violence. “We didn’t achieve anything.” A Gazan is so numbed by the downward spiral, he uttered the unmentionable: “To be honest, I think reoccupation [by Israel] would be better” than the current situation.
• Regret for missed diplomatic opportunities: “Didn’t we dance for joy at the failure of Camp David?” asked Nabil Amer, formerly one of Arafat’s chief aides. “After two years of bloodshed, we are now calling for what we rejected.”
• Less support for terrorism: Asked by a Palestinian pollster if the Palestinian Authority should, once it reaches an agreement with Israel, arrest those setting off to engage in violence within Israel, 86 percent of Palestinians polled in December 2001 said no, 76 percent in May 2002 said no, and 40 percent in November 2002. That’s still very high, but the trend is clear.
• Fear of retribution: On occasion, suicide bombers have turned themselves in, or were turned in by their parents, out of fear that the family house would be destroyed in retaliation.
• Blaming Arafat: When the violence began, Palestinians held Israel responsible for their many woes. But as time went by, said the well-known pollster Khalil Shikaki, they turned “very strongly” against Arafat and the P.A. One conspiracy theory holds that Arafat initiated the violence less to defeat Israel than to deflect growing discontent over the P.A.’s failures.
• Emigration: Fed up with their self-inflicted misery, some 10,000 Palestinians a month left the West Bank and Gaza during 2002, while many more tried to flee. At one point, more than 40,000 would-be emigrants were camped near Jericho, hoping to enter Jordan.
Perhaps the most affecting sign of a change came last month. A self-described “heartbroken” Palestinian father took the occasion of the death of his son, a leading terrorist, to launch an unprecedented appeal to Israelis “to open a new page with the Palestinian people and to achieve peace based on mutual respect and justice.”
Israelis are beginning to note the change. Ephraim Halevy, former head of the Mossad, has commented on “the buds of Palestinian recognition” of the mistake in turning to violence. The chief of Israel’s Ground Forces Command, Yiftah Ron-Tal, went further and in November predicted within months “a decisive victory” for Israel.
The Bush administration should take two steps to speed this process along: permit Israel to respond as it sees best, and stop bestowing undeserved gifts on the Palestinians (the latest of which are promises of a state in 2003).
The sooner Palestinians realize how counterproductive violence is, the sooner they will end it.
Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of “Militant Islam Reaches America” (Norton, 2002).
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