Musings Of An Indie WriterScreeds
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Asymmetries
January 19, 2004
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, one of the most cruelly slandered men of our time, has announced that he will review and, if necessary, revise the route for Israel's security fence against Palestinian terrorists, which is now under construction. The fence does not follow the "Green Line," the formal boundary between the areas of Israeli authority and Palestinian local autonomy, and has been challenged in Israeli and international courts on that basis.
The most interesting development in this connection is the statement of Palestinian prime minister -- wait a minute, Palestine isn't yet a state, so how can it have a prime minister? -- Ahmed Qureia: "I would have no problem with the wall if it was built on the Green Line. But it's not being built there."
Numerous sources have told us that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians condemn the fence and see it as comparable to South African apartheid. Those same sources have told us that a healthy preponderance of Palestinians support the suicide bombing campaign and the efforts of Hamas, Hezbollah, et al to eliminate the state of Israel entirely. If both these things be true, Prime Minister (?) Qureia has taken a risky step. Your Curmudgeon would advise him to be very careful going through doors and such.
The combination of legal challenges, exhortations from Washington, and the urgings of his conscience has prompted Prime Minister Sharon to revisit the fence's planned path. Whether he will indeed alter it remains to be seen, but it's clear that his intentions are not yet immutable. Given his record, if he alters it, we may be certain that he will not do so to the detriment of Israelis' security. At least, not knowingly.
Compare Sharon's willingness to admit that he might have been wrong to the behavior of nearly every Middle Eastern satrap, all of whom have condemned Israel unconditionally for decades. Compare it to the behavior of Yasser Arafat, revered "guardian" of the Palestinians' "interests," who, when Ehud Barak offered him precisely what he'd demanded during the 2000 peace talks, withdrew and declared a second Intifada instead. Compare it to the behavior of the contemptible Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, who has recently declared the Camp David Accords to be null and void, and has entered negotiations with Iran for an alliance against Israel and Iraq.
This last is especially poignant. Mubarak assumed power when Islamic terrorists murdered his predecessor, Anwar Sadat, co-architect of the Accords. He has never allowed it to be challenged. Sadat was the only potentate of a Muslim-majority state who has ever concluded a peace agreement with Israel.
Consider this as well: Israel, a tiny country with a modest GNP, will spend at least $1.5 billion building the 220-mile security fence, and an unknown additional amount to maintain it, patrol it, and operate its checkpoints. The long-term costs will probably dwarf what it would cost to annihilate the Palestinians militarily, or drive them willy-nilly into Jordan and pen them there. Nor could anyone make a credible case that the Palestinians, who've slaughtered a thousand Israeli civilians, preponderantly women and children, in just the past three years, deserve any better. Though "international opinion" would be outraged by either act, and Washington would be thunderous in overt condemnation, the probability is high that Israel would suffer no consequences worse than temporary economic embargo by some of the states of Europe -- and the problem of Palestinian irredentism would be solved for all time.
Failing the detonation of a nuclear weapon or the release of a war virus on their soil, the Israelis would never even conceive of such a thing. No people anywhere in the world has a higher respect for the sanctity of life than the Jews. It's a longstanding tenet of their religion, repeatedly reinforced by millennia of unbelievable torment.
No Middle Eastern Muslim has more rights, or more economic opportunity, than a Muslim in Israel. Of course! Why else would the Palestinians be so aggrieved over a wall that would de facto recognize their domain as an independent state?
A wall is a symmetrical artifact. It works in both directions. It would prevent random incursions into Israel by the Palestinians, but it would also inhibit Israeli sorties into the Palestinian areas, whatever the reasons. In building the wall, Israel is surrendering a great part of its ability to deter Palestinian aggression with the threat of a military counterstrike.
Just about nothing else about the situation is symmetrical. The attitudes of the proximate participants certainly aren't. Nor are the postures of the other states of the world. They seem, to borrow a phrase from Joseph Schumpeter, to have the sentence of death for Israel in their pockets, determined to pass it, come what may.
Throughout the history of Jewish thought, a single formulation has centered and conditioned all others: Hillel's dictum that "What is hateful to you, do not do unto another." Other cultures have had versions of this, of course. The Jews have lived it assiduously, extending its ethic even unto those who openly call for their destruction. One might say with some justice that this fundamental principle of ethical symmetry is the first requirement of the Judaic faith. As Hillel said, "The rest is commentary -- go and study it." And they have.
Their would-be destroyers have not, preferring the bloody command of Muhammad to "slay the infidel wherever you find him." If there's an argument for granting continued indulgence to them, your Curmudgeon can't find it.
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