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The Only Ray of Hope
Hirsh Goodman

It should be patently obvious to those responsible that neither side has the military might to end this conflict to their advantage

THIS IS WHAT'S SO SAD ABOUT THE CURRENT conflict between Israel and the Palestinians: Neither side has a true military option, yet both sides have opted to fight what they know is a war that can't be won.

The Palestinians, no matter how many suicide bombers they field, how many times they fire on Gilo or even if they use their newly developed rockets against Israeli population centers in the heart of the country, do not pose an existential threat to Israel. They can demoralize the country and cause it grievous economic harm, but they cannot conquer it.

Conversely Israel, with all its military might and its freedom to reconquer virtually at will those areas of the West Bank and Gaza returned to Palestinian sovereignty, does not have the power to silence the Palestinians. It can hope to curb terror and attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers in the occupied territories, but it cannot achieve total security. Constrained by international public opinion and the country's own value system, the military has gone about as far as it can in trying to bring the Palestinians to end the conflict. It has encircled cities, imposed curfews, carried out targeted killing of known terrorists (and in one case a radical politician, Abu Ali Mustafa of the Popular Front), confined Yasser Arafat to Ramallah, destroyed virtually every vestige of Palestinian sovereignty, and bombed almost every possible target of value in the Palestinian territories � some of them several times over. Yet Palestinian quiescence has not been achieved.

On the contrary, the very clear pattern that has emerged over the months is that each action brings a stronger counter-action. At first it was Palestinian small arms fire aimed at soldiers, then settlers, then Jerusalem suburbs. Then came suicide bombers, mortars and light rockets. Now it will be more suicide bombers, attacks inside Israel and an attempt to bring Hizballah into the conflict. Israel will respond by encircling a few more cities, destroying the Dahaniya airport for the fourth time and bombing the Palestinian Broadcasting Authority's building for the second. Ten will be killed here; eight killed there, more suffering, more hatred � a fool's path to nowhere.

There have been at least a dozen cease-fires declared these past 15 months, most of them by Arafat after some major terrorist attack in Israel, in the hope of staving off Israeli retaliation. Most have not lasted for more than a few days. Even Arafat's dramatic televised speech to his nation in December, after terrorist outrages in Jerusalem and Haifa, in which he demanded that all lay down their arms, has proven worthless. He does not have the political power to deal seriously with his radicals, not does he want to. As the interception of the Karine A carrying 50 tons of arms from Iran to the PA demonstrated, for Arafat a cease-fire is a tactical break, not the beginning of the end to conflict.

Israel has also made its mistakes. While Arafat was not able to bring total quiet, he had started to act, carrying out unpopular arrests and, in one case, having his forces kill six Palestinians to do so. But then Israel went and assassinated Raed Karmi, a senior Tanzim leader from Tul Karm. That led to a terrorist attack by a Tanzim operative from Tul Karm on a Haderah banquet hall where a bat mitzvah was being held, killing six people and injuring 35 more. That led to yet another Israeli encirclement of Tul Karm, imposing a curfew on the town. And so it goes.

That neither side has the military might to end this conflict to their advantage should be so patently obvious to those responsible for policy in the two camps that they would stop this senseless death dance, as of now. For both Arafat and Sharon, however, diplomacy is neither a current option nor a realistic choice. Arafat did not go to war in September 2000, after turning down Barak's offer of half of Jerusalem and 94 percent of the West Bank, to land up with the 40 percent or so of the West Bank that Sharon reportedly is prepared to give up (but would not be able to, under present political circumstances in Israel).

Given the inability of incumbent leadership on both sides to change the current destructive dynamic, perhaps the people on both sides can. The only ray of hope on the very dark horizon has been the embryonic grass-roots contacts between the sides that seem to be slowly re-emerging after a protracted hiatus.

Even people who had worked together for many years in second track talks had stopped talking. There was too much anger. That these contacts are now slowly being renewed may not be earth-shattering news in itself, but at least it is the first positive sign in many a dark month.

One can be skeptical about the ability of NGOs, other do-gooders and grass-roots leadership to significantly effect change. Given the lack of realistic alternate options open to us at this stage, however, one could do worse than hope that, perhaps, what has worked in so many other parts of this world may work for us. What is there to lose?