A note from Rabbi Lerner after Suicide Murders in Rishon LeTziyon:[back to home]I am once again sickened by these horrible acts of murder. They are not justified by anything Israel does or could do. These innocent Israeli civilians deserve to live in peace.
And so do the Palestinian people. Hamas claims credit, not hiding its desire to destroy the Palestinian Authority by inciting Ariel Sharon to more attacks on Palestinian civilians. Sharon happily complies: because he too desires to rid the West Bank of those in the Palestinian camp who talk of peace, knowing as he does that they are an obstacle to his plan for permanent Israeli control of the West Bank. If Hamas would take over, all the pressure on him to end the Occupation would quickly dissipate. So the terrorists and Sharon have a comfortable alliance--both determined to destroy Arafat and the P.A.
What could Arafat do? He does not have the power to stop the Hamas killers. But he is not powerless. There is only one weapon he has that he has never tried: make a 180 degree turn, renounce all forms of violent struggle, disarm, and follow the strategy of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. If he did that, though no one would believe this man with blood on his hands at first, if the Palestinian movement began to organize massive non-violent civil disobedience, responded to Israeli violence with non-violent discipline, allowed tens of thousands of people to be arrested, and even jailed those who refused this non-violent discipline, then within seven years the Palestinian people would completely win their struggle.
Meanwhile, Ariel Sharon's claim that he had dismantled the infrastructure of terror has been belied by the Rishon Le-Tziyon attack. We at the TIKKUN COMMUNITY have been saying that the brutalization of the Palestinian people, far from creating more safety for Israel, only creates new generations of people so angry they are willing to give their lives to protest the Occupation. The Occupation brings insecurity and death to Israelis--but they are "too tough" to show that they get the lesson, so they continue to respond with yet more brutalization of the Palestinian people, which in turn will lead to more terror. Just as the Palestinians could stop this pattern by enforcing non-violence, the Israelis could stop it by ending the Occupation and providing reparations for the Palestinian refugees.
Yet neither side is capable of breaking the destructive pattern. The only hope is that the international community will forcibly intervene and stop this cycle of violence. But they can't as long as the U.S. is heading in another direction. The U.S. has made clear that its goal is to use the so-called war on terrorism to overthrow the Iraqi regime. The Israel/Palestinian issue has become a pesky distraction. Arab elites need to be able to tell their masses that they have not sold out their Arab brothers in Palestine, but neither do they want to use their oil resources as an instrument to push for a change in US policy. So, they have concocted with Bush another stalling device--an international conference which, according to the White House, will have less authority than the Madrid conference 10 years ago. But that Madrid conference also failed, and for the same reason that any similarly conceived conference would now: as long as Israel gets to say "no," it will never agree to leaving the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. So, Israel will just stay and talk and talik and talk--as long as the Occupation continues, they can talk for the next twenty years and nothing will change. Meanwhile, the US and the Arab states will play this charade by "demanding" that Arafat or the Palestinian Authority be allowed to participate--as if that was somehow a major breakthrough. The Palestinian people will see through all of this and, unfortunately, continue their campaign through acts of terror. And Israel will use that terrro as proof that it has given too much just by agreeing to be part of this kind of conference.
There is an alternative. The US should help create an international force to intervene and militarily separate and protect both sides from each other. If Palestinians feel safe from Israeli attacks, they will be more easily convinced to follow the non-violent path which we support. The US should offer Israel a mutual defense pact promising direct US military involvement should Israel ever be attacked by the airplanes and tanks of a hostile state, and it should offer the same to the Palestinians once they get a state. Finally, the UN should convene an international conference totally different from the charade being proposed by Bush--namely, one which IMPOSES a settlement on both sides, including an end to the Occupation, leaving the settlements (and helping resettle the settlers inside pre-67 borders of Israel), reparations for the Palestinian refugees (and also for Jews who fled from Arab lands), recognition of Israel by all Arab states, and an end to terror (enforced not only by Israel but by a Palestinian state).
Page last updated May 7th, 2002