In citing polls listing the Arab-Israeli conflict as the most important issue facing the Arabic world, Gary Kamiya only proves that he's as much of a dupe as the people who participated in the poll.
The fact is, Israel could announce tomorrow that it is handing all of its territory over to the Palestinians and moving to Uganda, and it still wouldn't change the fact that the overwhelming majority of Arabs are poor, have no democratic representation and lack basic human rights. I'm sure that all Arab and Muslim leaders -- from brutal secularists such as Saddam Hussein and Bashar Assad to repressive theocrats such as the Saudi royal family and the Ayatollah Ali Khomenei -- love to hear about their people's obsession with the plight of the Palestinians, since it deflects attention from their own illegitimate dictatorships.
If the United States really wants to bring the Arab world onto our side, we should help give the people not what they say they want, but what they really need -- democracy and human rights. This would truly be a win-win-win situation. First of all, we would be helping to improve the lives of Arabs everywhere. Second, democracy would represent the ultimate defeat for the Osama bin Ladens of the world. Contrary to popular belief, what most motivates bin Laden is not hatred of Israel, but rather hatred of the Saudi royal family for allowing U.S. troops on holy Arabian soil during the Gulf War. How much angrier would he be to see not just U.S. troops on the Arabian peninsula, but U.S.-style democracy and capitalism? And an Arabic state with representative government would be far less susceptible to the lure of Islamic fundamentalism. Indeed, the most successful fundamentalist movements, from Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza to Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Islamists in Turkey, have been those that provided the types of basic social services the ineffectual governments of those countries utterly failed to deliver.
Finally, democratic Arab states would be far more attractive peace partners for Israel. It is no coincidence that the two Arab countries to make peace with Israel had leaders whose position was strengthened by their legitimacy (even if that legitimacy was never ratified by an election). Sadat was wildly popular after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and Jordan's King Hussein was a beloved figure (and had remained neutral during the Gulf War). A peace treaty struck with a democratic Palestine would be far more likely to last than one imposed by fiat or economic blackmail by the United States, as Kamiya recommends.
I don't pretend that democratizing the Arab world would be an easy task -- the region's stranglehold on oil alone guarantees that -- or that it can happen overnight. But can't we at least make it a long-term goal? Colin Powell is said to be itching to complete the "unfinished business" of the Gulf War: taking out Saddam. But what about the other unfinished business? At a time of supreme American influence in the Middle East, we restored an undemocratic, oil-soaked emirate in Kuwait and failed to press any reforms on the calcified Saudi royal family. I agree that the Palestinian people have gotten a raw deal. But let's not pretend that the Israelis are their only tormentors. The Arab states who now claim to want them to have a homeland weren't in such a rush to give them one when they controlled the West Bank and Gaza from 1948-67. And although he is not yet an official Middle Eastern head of state, Yasser Arafat has proven that he can be as corrupt and authoritarian as the best of them. The shah of Iran is reported to have said, "I shall behave like the king of Sweden when my subjects behave like Swedes." The statement was meant to be ironic; those backward Iranians would clearly never be as politically sophisticated as the Swedes. Yet in recent years, not only have Iranians displayed a zeal for democracy, they have expressed that zeal by electing moderates such as Mohammed Khatami. Democracy is not incompatible with Islam, and the sooner we come to that realization, the better off it will be for all of us.
--Greg Horowitz
Gary Kamiya's article postulating that the only way to fight international terror is to get Israel to make peace with the Palestinians demonstrates the danger of the left getting lost in its own muddle. It is completely clueless on two counts. First, Israel already sued for peace along the lines that Kamiya advocates, and second, such a peace, even if accepted by the Palestinian leadership, would surely be rejected by the radical Muslims who form the core of the terror network that has presented itself so clearly as the democratic West's prime enemy. The question is not whether the Israeli negotiating team made this or that mistake. The question is whether, even if Barak had negotiated according to Kamiya's book, he could have reached an agreement with the Arafat leadership. Many of us on the Israeli left have reluctantly, sadly and with much egg on our face reached the conclusion that, no, he would not have and could not have. Sometimes the world doesn't work as we would like it to.
The question before the left in Israel since last year, and now before the left in the U.S. and Europe is: What role should the supporters of peace, human rights and individual liberties be playing in the conflict before us? We must address that question as war bares its teeth in our faces, and not try to pretend that it will go away if we throw it a dog biscuit.
--Haim Watzman, Jerusalem
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