A visitor from the distant days of 1993 to the political landscape of the Middle East today might scratch his head and wonder: whatever happened to the New Middle East - that glorious vision of economic and cultural integration in which decades old enmities would be buried, borders eliminated and prosperity, a palliative, gurgled down the throats of the belligerents like warm milk?
Surveying the same landscape several years further into the past, he might ponder the fate of the Zinni mission, the Tenet Plan, the Mitchell Report and myriad other European and United Nations efforts to ostensibly bridge the gulf between Arabs and Jews. He might consider the Road Map, a document still brandished as the canonical solution to the problems of the Middle East, yet producing nothing of enduring value.
Rarely would he find anyone declaring that all of these efforts were based on a false assumption of Arab and Palestinian peaceful intent or acknowledging that "peace" is simply a chimera offered by Palestinian spokesmen to bamboozle an all-too-gullible international audience.
Far too often over the past thirteen years, these would-be peacemakers have ignorantly glossed over the essential differences between Israel and its adversaries: that the former is a vibrant, if fractured democracy, responsive to peaceful proposals to end conflict, while the latter are, in the main, backward dictatorships, governed by ruthless men for whom perpetuation of conflict is the sin qua non for their own grasp on power. They have placed their faith in the intentions of terrorists for whom an agreement is nothing more than a moment to bide time before the next assault and whose quest, at least since the late 1960s, has been to obtain international sanction for the killing of Jews.
Anyone who doubted this reality was jolted into sudden awareness with the ascension of the world's first democratically elected terrorist regime. Hamas has done the world quite a favor in its forthright revelation of its program of annihilation: no recognition of Israel; no acceptance of any plan of accommodation; no serious interest in statehood and no disavowal of terrorism as a legitimate tactic to be employed against a neighboring state. Say what you want about Hamas - they certainly know how to stick to principle.
But why then such astonishment and surprise about political developments among the Palestinians? The only real difference between the Fatah and its counterpart in Hamas is that the former hid its agenda behind words of peace while the latter honestly propounds it. Fatah, after all, founded and still funds the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the third most significant perpetrator of terrorist atrocities against Israeli citizens. Under Yasser Arafat, it spent eleven years instituting an educational system that primarily promoted jihad against Israel and enjoyed years of siphoning off the West's largess - funneling most of it back into secret European bank accounts controlled by its top brass.
Apologists have claimed that Hamas's supposedly good works in social welfare indicate the possibility of its transformation into a peaceful movement. But apologizing for any social organization that condones the murder of innocent men, women and children, and brazenly boasts of its goals of annihilation is much like saying that arsenic won't kill you when offered in a peach flavor. The world should accept that Hamas is nothing more than a death cult, swilling in hatred, whose blood lust will inevitably turn in on itself.
So, perhaps there is indeed a New Middle East, but not the one envisioned at Oslo. No SUVs, microwave ovens, luxury hotels or casinos in this utopia. Rather, extortion, exploitation, vigilantism and venality are the hallmarks of the new Arab kleptocracy and the bitter legacy that Yasser Arafat, the PLO and Hamas will have bequeathed to the Palestinian people.
In the face of such realities Israel sits, not in the relatively benign position of August 1993 when peace seemed remote, yet Israel's strategic advantages substantial; its position today is far more analogous to May 1967, in the days immediately prior to the Six Day War, when the presidents of Iraq, Syria and Egypt would all call for Israel's elimination, mass their armies on Israel's borders, win widespread support for their action throughout the Arab dictatorships and delight as the rest of the world watched in silence.
The situation may in fact be far more perilous than those days. For now Israel is not simply faced with armies on its borders - a situation with which it could deal with a modicum of strategic depth and a sophisticated air force. It has a terrorist insurgency burrowed deeply into its own backyard, with Hamas regulars reinforced by the unpredictable foreign mercenaries of Al-Qaeda and Hizbullah. It has ceded vital territory without winning a single advantage - allowing the terrorists' shoulder-launched missiles to come within range of Ben-Gurion Airport. The IDF last month revealed that the new front line communities outside the Gaza Strip are several miles inside Israel proper, encompassing many communities and townships that were previously never at risk of attack. As rockets fall daily on these new targets, the staggering foolishness of the Gaza Disengagement becomes more readily apparent.
Not only this, but now comes the Kadima party, which, no surprise, calls for the cession of even more territory in an effort to unilaterally establish Israel's borders. This portends a tragic uprooting of homes of tens of thousands of Israeli citizens, which will not only rent a deep and irreparable moral gash in its society, but will expose the Israeli heartland to relentless assault. No one seems prepared to acknowledge that Israel's security these days is guaranteed not by a fence, which is incomplete and easily breached, but by the constant presence of the IDF in the major Palestinian cities. No one seems to understand that the Israeli army's intelligence gathering, crucial to the apprehension of terrorists, is useless without the power of immediate interdiction. That vital advantage will automatically be lost once Israel vacates large areas of the West Bank.
The tragic folly of Oslo was an incapacity to understand the fundamental recidivism of the terrorist mentality. French and German statesmen may well have worked out their historical differences 60 years ago and together forged a new Europe. But terrorists don't think like statesmen. Representing nothing but their own twisted world view, their jackets and ties at state dinners only dress up hearts that are full of malevolence and minds that lust for power, conquest and the spoils of war. The ready manipulation of naive peacemakers, coupled with the stumbles and mistakes of the Israeli leaders themselves, advances their cause; while dreamers continue to fantasize about a future that has no connection to reality.
Surveying the same landscape several years further into the past, he might ponder the fate of the Zinni mission, the Tenet Plan, the Mitchell Report and myriad other European and United Nations efforts to ostensibly bridge the gulf between Arabs and Jews. He might consider the Road Map, a document still brandished as the canonical solution to the problems of the Middle East, yet producing nothing of enduring value.
Rarely would he find anyone declaring that all of these efforts were based on a false assumption of Arab and Palestinian peaceful intent or acknowledging that "peace" is simply a chimera offered by Palestinian spokesmen to bamboozle an all-too-gullible international audience.
Far too often over the past thirteen years, these would-be peacemakers have ignorantly glossed over the essential differences between Israel and its adversaries: that the former is a vibrant, if fractured democracy, responsive to peaceful proposals to end conflict, while the latter are, in the main, backward dictatorships, governed by ruthless men for whom perpetuation of conflict is the sin qua non for their own grasp on power. They have placed their faith in the intentions of terrorists for whom an agreement is nothing more than a moment to bide time before the next assault and whose quest, at least since the late 1960s, has been to obtain international sanction for the killing of Jews.
Anyone who doubted this reality was jolted into sudden awareness with the ascension of the world's first democratically elected terrorist regime. Hamas has done the world quite a favor in its forthright revelation of its program of annihilation: no recognition of Israel; no acceptance of any plan of accommodation; no serious interest in statehood and no disavowal of terrorism as a legitimate tactic to be employed against a neighboring state. Say what you want about Hamas - they certainly know how to stick to principle.
But why then such astonishment and surprise about political developments among the Palestinians? The only real difference between the Fatah and its counterpart in Hamas is that the former hid its agenda behind words of peace while the latter honestly propounds it. Fatah, after all, founded and still funds the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the third most significant perpetrator of terrorist atrocities against Israeli citizens. Under Yasser Arafat, it spent eleven years instituting an educational system that primarily promoted jihad against Israel and enjoyed years of siphoning off the West's largess - funneling most of it back into secret European bank accounts controlled by its top brass.
Apologists have claimed that Hamas's supposedly good works in social welfare indicate the possibility of its transformation into a peaceful movement. But apologizing for any social organization that condones the murder of innocent men, women and children, and brazenly boasts of its goals of annihilation is much like saying that arsenic won't kill you when offered in a peach flavor. The world should accept that Hamas is nothing more than a death cult, swilling in hatred, whose blood lust will inevitably turn in on itself.
So, perhaps there is indeed a New Middle East, but not the one envisioned at Oslo. No SUVs, microwave ovens, luxury hotels or casinos in this utopia. Rather, extortion, exploitation, vigilantism and venality are the hallmarks of the new Arab kleptocracy and the bitter legacy that Yasser Arafat, the PLO and Hamas will have bequeathed to the Palestinian people.
In the face of such realities Israel sits, not in the relatively benign position of August 1993 when peace seemed remote, yet Israel's strategic advantages substantial; its position today is far more analogous to May 1967, in the days immediately prior to the Six Day War, when the presidents of Iraq, Syria and Egypt would all call for Israel's elimination, mass their armies on Israel's borders, win widespread support for their action throughout the Arab dictatorships and delight as the rest of the world watched in silence.
The situation may in fact be far more perilous than those days. For now Israel is not simply faced with armies on its borders - a situation with which it could deal with a modicum of strategic depth and a sophisticated air force. It has a terrorist insurgency burrowed deeply into its own backyard, with Hamas regulars reinforced by the unpredictable foreign mercenaries of Al-Qaeda and Hizbullah. It has ceded vital territory without winning a single advantage - allowing the terrorists' shoulder-launched missiles to come within range of Ben-Gurion Airport. The IDF last month revealed that the new front line communities outside the Gaza Strip are several miles inside Israel proper, encompassing many communities and townships that were previously never at risk of attack. As rockets fall daily on these new targets, the staggering foolishness of the Gaza Disengagement becomes more readily apparent.
Not only this, but now comes the Kadima party, which, no surprise, calls for the cession of even more territory in an effort to unilaterally establish Israel's borders. This portends a tragic uprooting of homes of tens of thousands of Israeli citizens, which will not only rent a deep and irreparable moral gash in its society, but will expose the Israeli heartland to relentless assault. No one seems prepared to acknowledge that Israel's security these days is guaranteed not by a fence, which is incomplete and easily breached, but by the constant presence of the IDF in the major Palestinian cities. No one seems to understand that the Israeli army's intelligence gathering, crucial to the apprehension of terrorists, is useless without the power of immediate interdiction. That vital advantage will automatically be lost once Israel vacates large areas of the West Bank.
The tragic folly of Oslo was an incapacity to understand the fundamental recidivism of the terrorist mentality. French and German statesmen may well have worked out their historical differences 60 years ago and together forged a new Europe. But terrorists don't think like statesmen. Representing nothing but their own twisted world view, their jackets and ties at state dinners only dress up hearts that are full of malevolence and minds that lust for power, conquest and the spoils of war. The ready manipulation of naive peacemakers, coupled with the stumbles and mistakes of the Israeli leaders themselves, advances their cause; while dreamers continue to fantasize about a future that has no connection to reality.