It’s always tempting to look for salvation in disaster, but in this case it’s sheer fantasy.
The Palestinian ruin was a long time in coming. No other national movement has had the indulgence granted the Palestinians over the last half-century, and the results can be seen in the bravado and the senseless violence, in the inability of a people to come to terms with their condition and their needs. ...
The life of a Palestinian is one of squalor and misery, yet his leaders play the international game as though they were powers. ...The political maxim that people get the leaders they deserve must be reckoned too cruel to apply to the Palestinians. Before Hamas, for four decades, the vainglorious Yasir Arafat refused to tell his people the basic truths of their political life. Amid the debacles, he remained eerily joyous; he circled the globe, offering his people the false sense that they could be spared the consequences of terrible decisions. ...
But it was too much to ask of Mr. Arafat to return to his people with a decent and generous compromise, to bid farewell to the legend that the Palestinians could have it all “from the river to the sea.” It was safer for him to stay with the political myths of his people than to settle down for the more difficult work of statehood and political rescue.
For their part, the Arab states have only compounded the Palestinian misery. The Arab cavalry was always on the way, the Arab treasure was always a day away, and there was thus no need for the Palestinians to pay tribute to necessity. ...
It has long been a cherished legend of the Palestinians, and a proud claim, that they would not kill their own, that there would be no fratricide in their world. The cruelty we now see — in both Gaza and the West Bank — bears witness that the Palestinians have run through the consolations that had been there for them in a history of adversity. ...
There is no magic wand with which this Palestinian world could be healed and taught the virtues of realism and sobriety. No international peacekeeping force can bring order to the deadly streets and alleyways of Gaza. A population armed to the teeth and long in the throes of disorder can’t be pacified by outsiders.
For decades, Arab society granted the Palestinians everything and nothing at the same time. The Arab states built worlds of their own, had their own priorities, dreaded and loathed the Palestinians as outsiders and agitators, but left them to the illusion that Palestine was an all-consuming Arab concern.
Now the Palestinians should know better. The center of Arab politics has shifted from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, a great political windfall has come to the lands of the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula, vast new wealth due to the recent rises in oil prices, while misery overwhelms the Palestinians. No Arabs wait for Palestine anymore; they have left the Palestinians to the ruin of their own history. ...
An Arab debt is owed the Palestinians — the gift of truth and candor as well as material help.
In the 1990s, Yitzhak Rabin, the soldier who had led its army into acquisition of the West Bank and Gaza in the Six-Day War of 1967, told his people that it was time to partition the land and to accept Palestinian sovereignty. It was an unsentimental peace, to “get Gaza out of Tel Aviv,” as Mr. Rabin put it, but it was peace nonetheless. ...
All this is stilled. Palestinian society has now gone where no “peace processors” or romantic poets dare tread.
What to do with this piece, which has been sitting, saved but not posted, on my computer for several days now?
This is one of the strongest, and least sentimental (and least "PC") pieces on the situation of the Palestinians I have ever read. I anticipate it will attract major fire in coming days. Despite Ajami's ethnic and religious background, I have little doubt it will be attacked as racist, or essentialist, or both--if it has not already.
I suspect this piece comes mighty close to the views of many pro-Israel peaceniks, of whom I consider myself one. I do not want a Greater Israel. By and large, I do not support forcibly-imposed Jewish settlements in or near Palestinian population centers or on Palestinian agricultural land (although I think some negotiated adjustments to the pre-1967 lines, particularly in and around Jerusalem, may be justified, and I have no objection, in principle, to Jews living as peaceable residents in a sovereign Palestinian state, as Arabs live as citizens within green-line Israel). I do not want Israeli Jews to rule over other peoples who desire to pursue their own national independence and identity, and are willing to respect and live at peace with Israel. I hate the Occupation. I hate the misery it has caused, and continues to cause, to the Palestinian people. I hate what it has done to Israeli politics, society and culture. I long for a partner willing to take responsibility for a peaceful, self-governing Palestine living at peace with Israel.
There are things Israel could have done, and can do now, to improve the prospects for peace. Israel has made mistakes over the past forty years (and before). Israelis, non-Israeli Jews, and of course many others have criticized Israeli policies over the years. Some Israelis, including a number of senior Israeli leaders over the years, have taken serious political risks to work in a spirit of compromise toward a possible peace.
What do we see on the other side? Has a Palestinian leadership, or a Palestinian polity, emerged with a comparable commitment and willingness to compromise to achieve a workable peace? Have they been willing to "pull the trigger", not on an AK-47 or explosive vest, but on a peace treaty (akin to the Taba understandings or the Geneva Accords) meeting the reasonable, politically realistic requirements (but not the maximalist desires) of each side?
Abba Eban famously proclaimed that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. My guess is that that quotation drives Palestinians up a wall (or a separation fence). But it, like the more fully developed analysis provided by Ajami, captures an impression widespread among many of those desiring a secure (but not expansionist) Israel living in peace with its Arab neighbors.
It may already be too late for the "two state" solution. But maybe not. This is probably the last chance, the last opportunity, for a breakthrough toward Jewish and Arab states living in relative peace in historic Palestine/Eretz Israel. Compromise is unavoidable, and realism a necessity. Can the West Bank leadership grasp the nettle, at long last?
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