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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/18277/full/18277/palestinian-rage-how-does-it-differ-from-pan-arab-anger/ <br /><br /> <b>Palestinian rage: How does it differ from pan-Arab anger?</b> <br /> Friday, August 16, 2002 | by <p>Larry Derfner </p> <br /><br /><p>The consensus about the intifada among Israelis, diaspora Jews, and American conservatives—that it's caused by Arab hatred and rejection of Israel—is nothing but a lousy excuse. An excuse to say that Israel is wholly blameless in this affair and there's nothing we can do except plod on, dying and killing. It's an excuse to block out any doubt and go on with this bleak worldview that does, at least, offer the comfort of certainty.<br /><br /> So let's introduce a little doubt.<br /><br /> If all this terror is caused by Arab hatred and rejection of Israel, how do we explain Egypt? Egypt's armed forces haven't fired a single shot at us in more than 25 years. Does Egypt hate us any less than the Palestinians do? Are its newspapers and bookstores and general public discourse any less loaded with anti-Semitism? Does it have any less abhorrence for the idea of a Zionist state across its border?<br /><br /> Egypt is the biggest, strongest country in the Arab world, an incomparably greater threat to Israel than the Palestinians ever could be. Its society is rampant with Islamic and Arab nationalist militancy, and hatred of all things Jewish. Yet even though "the Egyptian street" erupts in war cries, the Egyptian leader resists.<br /><br /> If Arab hatred and rejection of Israel is the reason for Palestinian violence, why has Egypt been so thoroughly nonviolent toward us for so long?<br /><br /> The same question could be asked about Jordan. That country hasn't touched us in 35 years. In fact, most Jordanians are themselves Palestinians. Do they hate us or reject us any less than do the Palestinians of the West Bank or Gaza? So why hasn't Jordan joined the intifada?<br /><br /> Remarkably, we can even raise this issue regard-ing Syria. Except when Israel went galumphing through Lebanon in the early 1980s, Syria hasn't messed with us since the Yom Kippur War. And we've even got a piece of their land! The Golan Heights belong to Syria, remember. Even Benjamin Netanyahu offered to give it back to them. Yet Syria, home of the "rejectionist front," shies away from confronting us.<br /><br /> This leaves, among Arab nations on Israel's borders, Lebanon. Here we have to place an asterisk. Hezbollah is without question fighting Israel. But another unquestionable fact is that since the Israel Defense Force pulled out of southern Lebanon more than two years ago, Hezbollah has fought us with only a small fraction of its previous intensity.<br /><br /> Why doesn't it genuinely try to shoot down the Israel air force spy planes flying over the Lebanese border toward Beirut? Why doesn't it fire its thousands of long-range missiles at Haifa? Why don't its guerrillas come pouring over the border? Doesn't Hezbollah hate us as much as the Palestinians do, if not more?<br /><br /> Israel shares borders with five hostile Arab nations. It has formal peace with two of them—Egypt and Jordan. It has de facto non-belligerency with a third, Syria. With a fourth, Lebanon, it has a limited border clash. Only with the fifth and smallest neighboring Arab entity, the Palestinians, does Israel find itself in an agonizing war with no end in sight.<br /><br /> What's special about the Palestinians? Not their hatred of us, not their rejection, not their fearlessness and certainly not their strength. What's special is that of all the Arab nations on our borders, the Palestinians are the only one whose rightful country has been usurped by Israel.<br /><br /> Every other neighboring Arab nation can tend to its own affairs without any Israelis around, but the Palestinians have 220,000 Israeli settlers and many thousands of Israeli soldiers staring them in the face, lording it over them.<br /><br /> This is the way it's been since 1967. Even in the "good old days" of the Oslo accord, when the "peace camp" was running this country, the settlers kept taking more and more Palestinian land. Palestinians still had to pass through IDF and border police checkpoints on their way through the West Bank, and the more candid Israeli soldiers, not to mention human rights organizations, can describe the frequent brutalities and humiliations that went on there.<br /><br /> The right-wing canard that "98 percent of Palestinians live[d] under Palestinian Authority rule" was true only while they remained inside the boundaries of their cities or villages. As soon as they ventured out—as soon as, say, a Palestinian living in Ramallah went to visit his brother in Bethlehem—they came under Israeli rule, and it wasn't always friendly, or even neutral.<br /><br /> It's true the Palestinians turned down a good-faith Israeli offer of land-for-peace at Camp David to launch the intifada, which puts most of the blame for the current bloodshed on them. But not all the blame. For 3-1/2 years, between the bus bombings of 1996 and the outbreak of the intifada, the Palestinian Authority effectively put down Hamas and provided Israelis with pretty good security.<br /><br /> In the first nine months of 2000, until the fighting began, not one single Israeli civilian lost his life to a Palestinian terrorist. But in return for delivering 3-1/2 years of a decent approximation of peace, the Palestinians didn't get much more land—only 13 percent more of the West Bank in that fairly quiet period.<br /><br /> Meanwhile, Israeli settlements and bypass roads kept eating away at what Palestinians and the rest of the world thought was supposed to become their state. So while the Palestinians are guilty of starting the intifada, we Israelis can't say we were innocent of any prior provocation.<br /><br /> It's also true that the Palestinians killed the chance for peace with their demand for the right of return and for exclusive Islamic rule over the Temple Mount. They're going to have to drop these demands if the fighting is ever to end.<br /><br /> But why can't the Palestinians ever change?<br /><br /> Egypt provoked the Six-Day War, then joined the Arab world in the "three no's of Khartoum," and later joined Syria to attack Israeli forces on Yom Kippur, killing 2,600 of our soldiers. Who would have thought that four years later Egypt's leader would be cheered wildly on the streets of Jerusalem and that a quarter-century of peace would ensue? A cold peace, even freezing. The important thing is that no one gets hurt.<br /><br /> The Egyptians would love to be rid of Israel. So would the Jordanians, Syrians and Lebanese. But they don't dare try it because they're afraid of Israel's superior power. As long as we leave them alone, the Arabs, with the minor exception of Hezbollah, don't do anything more than mutter.<br /><br /> And if we leave the Palestinians alone—if we get our settlers and soldiers out of the West Bank and Gaza—there's no inherent reason why they shouldn't eventually come around and join the rest of our neighbors to hate us and reject us, but leave us in peace.</p> <p> </p>

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