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David Horovitz: Donďż˝t Open the Champagne Yet
David Horovitz

When enemies ideologically committed to your destruction announce a halt to years of premeditatedly killing your civilians, it is wise to carefully examine what they are saying before beginning the victory celebrations. In the case of the intifada "cease-fire," when that halt is limited to 90 days, when not all of the murderers sign on, when those that do issue a series of unacceptable demands as their preconditions for abiding by the truce, and when they refer to it in Arabic as a "hudna" -- invoking historical precedents in which Muslim fighters suspended military activity solely to regain strength and subsequently vanquish their adversaries -- it would be foolish, indeed, to assume that the conflict is genuinely at an end.

And yet a mere four days after this unreliable truce was declared by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and most but not all of Yasser Arafatďż˝s loyalists, the Israeli armyďż˝s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaďż˝alon, was proclaiming victory in this round of confrontation, declaring that "we now need to announce that we have won."

Yaďż˝alon is not normally perceived as naive, however, and whether or not early July marks the end of this period of blood-letting or just another of the many false dawns, there is a legitimate, albeit partial, basis to his claim of victory: The people of Israel have demonstrated that they will not succumb to relentless, nationwide terrorism.

The very nature of the terror campaign always belied the contention, shamefully accepted by so much of the international community, that the Palestinian goal was "merely" to violently liberate the disputed West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. In striking all over Israel, the bombers and gunmen were not guilty of some unfathomable strategic error. They were, rather, bent on terrorizing all Israelis -- in the not unreasonable expectation of forcing us initially to cower despairingly in our homes, in turn prompting mass emigration and ultimately destroying us.

But as the death toll rose and economy collapsed, we Israelis did not cower. We did not emigrate en masse. And we did not fall into the trap of exaggerated military response that would have prompted unacceptable outside military intervention. Many thousands of our families have been permanently scarred, but we are still here. And when we reluctantly upped the military ante and recaptured West Bank cities we had previously relinquished, prepared for a forceful return to Gaza as well, and began targeting the public leaders of the murderous campaign against us, our killers flinched. Is it coincidence that the cease-fire was announced just a few weeks after Israel narrowly failed to assassinate Hamasďż˝s Abd al-Aziz Rantisi? It is, quite evidently, one thing for the Hamas leaders to send off other peopleďż˝s impressionable sons to their deaths, and quite another when their own lives are at stake.

Now the challenge is to try and turn this initial victory into something of lasting value. On a public level, history was made in early July when Ariel Sharon invited Mahmoud Abbas to shake hands for the cameras at the Prime Ministerďż˝s Office in Jerusalem. Arafat never received that invitation, not even from Yitzhak Rabin in the early optimistic days of the Oslo process. And where Arafat would have haggled over every word, there was no need for arduous negotiations between Sharon and Abbas over the contents of the short speeches of goodwill each man delivered there to his respective watching public. What a contrast this made to the embittered Arafatďż˝s public performance that same day, emerging from the Muqataďż˝ah to spit his characteristic venom about the Israeli "plot" of resuming non-Muslim visits to the Temple Mount. Abbas needs to watch his back.

And Sharon needs to watch his. Our democracy failed us in 1995, and it is being sorely tested again now, as the prime minister attempts, with mixed results so far, to assert the rule of law on the contested hilltops of the West Bank, in order to facilitate the vision of separation he has so admirably unveiled. Rabbis blinded to the true interests of their people are again skewing Jewish law to claim that God is on their side. Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated barely a month after he had signed the Oslo B Accord -- ceding control to Arafat of Palestinian cities in the West Bank. For the right-wing extremes, Sharonďż˝s betrayal is far more profound: a prime minister from their camp steering a path to Palestinian sovereignty on parts of divinely bestowed, Biblical Israel, in the course of which many Jews will be physically removed from their homes.

Beyond the moderated Palestinian rhetoric, we now look to Mahmoud Abbas for practical action against Hamas, and a hitherto absent recognition of Jewish Israel. To focus on TV incitement, for instance: Palestinian TV is still incessantly broadcasting clips and programs that delegitimize and demonize Israel, as it has done for years. One piece of "educational" programming, in which a camera pans over a map from Metullah to Eilat accompanied by text stating that every nation has a heart and the heart of the Arab nation is Palestine, is still screened about once a week, says Itamar Marcus, the director of Palestinian Media Watch. A powerful video dramatization, in which Israeli bullets shoot down a Palestinian mother as she waits to welcome home the loving daughter who is bringing her candies and flowers, runs four or five times a week, Marcus says. There can be no serious expectation of reconciliation, no confidence that Abbas truly represents a fresh mindset, so long as the Palestinian leadership pours this kind of vicious propaganda into its peopleďż˝s hearts.

In our resilience in the face of intolerable violence, in our very survival, we have won a battle. But only when Abbas musters the fragile authority of his position to dismantle Hamas, change the anti-Israel tone in Palestinian classrooms and on TV broadcasts, and enable the Islamic moderates who insist they are the true face of their faith to hold public sway in the mosques -- only then will we be able to talk seriously about having won the war.