Israelis contemplate life after Yasser Arafat: The government says its intention is to force Arafat to act against Palestinian militants by demonstrating that Israel has the power to remove him from power and destroy his nascent state. The Israelis are offering a choice: Guarantee our security, or we'll guarantee your collapse. This arrangement has long been at the core of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, but never have the alternatives been presented so starkly.
Of course, the problem is, what would happen once he's gone. Initially, at least, I'd be willing to bet that Hamas and Islamic Jihad would go insane and make Israel wish for the good old days with just one or two suicide bombers a week. (The scenario with the guys in suits is the most ludicrous thing I've seen in ages. WHAT guys in suits? Where have they been? If they're that pragmatic and possibly effective, why haven't they conspired to push Arafat out of the way? What chance would such a "pragmatic" leadership have against the fury of the bombers, and the popularity of making Israel pay and pay and pay?) And Israel does itself no favors by bombing police stations next to schools; they make themselves out to be as bad, if not worse, than the terrorists. At least the terrorists aren't part of any government; there's no state that can be said to be thinking, "Hey, bombing kids in school ... there's a plan!"
The other problem is that there's nobody -- anywhere -- seriously interested in making peace. The US has acted as a partisan broker, accepted as such by the Palestinians ... well, I don't know why, really. Until recently, we had no core interest at issue in that mess. Even now, our only interest is maintaining access to the Israeli intelligence network ... and that has to be fraying badly, given the situation. Given demonstrated partisanship, I really don't know why the Palestinians ever agreed to let the US act as broker, except that we were big enough to force the issue.
In any event, now that Israel's decided that they should get rid of Arafat because he's ineffective -- and of course, he is -- they'll have to contend with what comes after.
It will be interesting to see if the continuing bloodbath pushes the Shrub to eventually back away from the situation completely, as he (rather sensibly) wanted to do in the first place, way back in The Days Before.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
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Archives before February 5, 2001
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12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!