2006-02-20-Political 'prophecy' from Jerusalem |
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from Jerusalem jewishsightseeing.com, February 20, 2006 |
By Ira Sharkansky
JERUSALEM--It is more than a little risky offering
prophecy from Jerusalem. This is the city that knew the likes of
Jeremiah and Isaiah, and where death was the penalty for "false
prophecy."
Let it be said in my defense that I do not aspire to
as many readers as Jeremiah and Isaiah; and against those who would
accuse me of false prophecy, I make no pretense to prophesizing in
the biblical sense of having heard the word of the Lord.
All that being said, it seems to me that we are on
the verge of the end of the Oslo process. That goes back to 1993,
when Israel and the PLO signed a series of accords after delegates
met in Oslo. It was meant to pave the way for a Palestinian state
that would live in peace alongside Israel. It began by Israel
turning over control of Jericho to the Palestinians, as a first
step.
At the time, I was spending a sabbatical at the
University of Utah. I appeared on a local television station
alongside a Palestinian colleague. I recall saying that Yassir
Arafat's future lay in his hands. If he proved reasonable, he could
end his career as the President of Palestine. If not, he might end
up as mayor of Jericho.
I was too optimistic. Arafat turned down an offer
made by Prime Minister Ehud Barak alongside President Bill Clinton
at Camp David in 2000, and encouraged or tolerated violence in order
to get a better deal. He lost big, and ended his life confined to
his headquarters building in Ramallah. He could not go beyond the
front steps without encountering Israeli troops and tanks who caused
him to go back inside.
At his death, Mahmoud Abbas took over. He sounded
better than Arafat, in being more sincere in advocating peace and
criticizing terror. Yet he would not, or could not, do even the
minimum to stop the mayhem. He did not, for example, use the 30,000
security personnel he ostensibly controlled in Gaza against the few
hundred extremists who fire their homemade rockets toward Israel.
Now Hamas has won a parliamentary election. It is
impossible to know if it won because a majority of Palestinians want
an Islamic state and accept the lines of Hamas that Israel must be
destroyed, or if they were voting against the aged and corrupt
clique under Abbas who used so much of the money donated to
Palestine as their private wealth.
Whatever the background, Hamas presents an image of
being truly on another planet. Its party covenant, created in 1988,
blames the Zionists for the French and Russian revolutions, World
Wars I and II, and for controlling the world through its banks,
media, Freemasons, Rotary, and Lions. It expresses a few
conciliatory words about Jews and Christians, on condition that we
accept the superiority of Muslim rule.
The absolute craziness of the document goes beyond
the infamous Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Hamas'
covenant was composed a century of so more recently than the
Protocols, and should have reflected something other than
intellectual regression.
Unfortunately, the party covenant is not an isolated
fragment of Palestinian thought. I recall a conversation with an
Israeli Arab student during the height of Intafada al-Aqsa. He told
me that a number of his friends thought that Israel was blowing up
its own buses in order to give it an excuse to attack Palestinians.
I thought at the time that he was saying indirectly that he
thought that as well as his "friends." My response was
that the attitude reflected how far apart the Arab and Jewish
cultures were, and the problems of communicating across such a
divide.
Likewise with Hamas. In the most recent days I have
heard a number of its spokesmen slip away from questions about the
movement's covenant. Apparently, it is something the organization
cannot or does not want to disavow.
Acting prime minister Olmert has already said that a
government with a significant representation of Hamas will be
irrelevant for Israel, and that the next Israeli government and
Knesset must concern themselves with defining the country's borders.
This means a continuation of unilateral moves began with
disengagement from Gaza. Palestinians will have some land that is
left over, but a lot less than if they could bring themselves to
bargain by giving up some demands and insisting on others. Building
barriers and defining boundaries unilaterally will cause Israel some
problems with European governments, the Russians, the United Nations
and maybe even an American administration. But Hamas intransigence
will help Israel resist unwanted pressure. It already is looking
good, insofar as Hamas is turning to Iran as its prime benefactor
and mentor. With enemies like that, we do not need too many friends.
Sharkansky is an emeritus member of the political science department at Hebrew University in Jerusalem |
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