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U.S. diplomatic efforts and Arab restraint have effectively contained the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within the borders of Israel and the occupied territories. The international isolation changes the calculus for both the Israeli government and the Palestinians. Both sides may move slowly toward the negotiating table, as their only alternative is long-term violence.
Israeli tanks rolled into a Palestinian town near Bethlehem Aug. 28 in an attempt, Israeli officials said, to halt Palestinian gunfire on a nearby Jewish settlement. At least one Palestinian was killed and 11 wounded, the Associated Press reported.
The pre-dawn incursion into Beit Jalla was the latest in a series of violent events marking an increase in tensions in the Middle East. On Aug. 27, senior Palestinian leader Abu Ali Mustafa was assassinated in a targeted missile attack. A day earlier Israeli warplanes destroyed Palestinian offices in Gaza City and in the West Bank. Those attacks followed the killing of three Israeli soldiers by Palestinian militants from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
While Palestinian militants and Israeli security forces continue to trade attacks, U.S. diplomatic efforts and Arab restraint have contained the conflict within the borders of Israel and the occupied territories.
The absence of potential foreign intervention changes the calculus for both the Israeli government and the Palestinians. But with the decision now between negotiating an end to the intifada or allowing violence to escalate, both sides may move slowly toward the table.
Israel saw its very existence at stake when it was surrounded by belligerent forces in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973. But the situation today is far different. Egypt and Jordan, with U.S. encouragement, have opted to stay out of the conflict.
Unlike in previous wars, Egypt cannot look to the Soviet Union to keep the United States from entering the fray, or to rearm Egypt in the event of a defeat.
Egypt now receives much of its trade and $2 billion in aid annually from the United States. Moreover, Washington has sweetened the pot during the past month with offers to provide Egypt with 100 M1A1 tanks and a computerized mission-planning system for the Egyptian air force.
Jordan also depends on Washington, which recently sent the commander of the U.S. Central Command to Amman to discuss security cooperation.
Jordan’s military, barely adequate to maintain internal security, is unprepared for a war with Israel. More important, it is unprepared for the flood of Palestinian refugees such a conflict would generate.
With these two countries taken out of the equation, Syria is not prepared to face Israel alone. Its arms are outdated and deteriorating, and its military is focused on securing Syrian control of Lebanon. Though Damascus retains good relations with Moscow, Russian aid is limited and slow in arriving.
Clearly, the Palestinians cannot count on an Arab Legion coming to their rescue. There will be no liberation. The Palestinian Authority could settle into another grinding intifada, but this time they have something to lose: the political and territorial gains they’ve made since the Oslo peace accords.
And given Israel’s decapitation strategy, Palestinian leaders also face the possibility of their own demise.
This strategy was highlighted again Aug. 27 when Israeli gunships fired pinpoint missile strikes to kill Mustafa, secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, PFLP.
Mustafa was working in his office, near Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s headquaters, in the West Bank town of Ramallah when Israel launched the attack. The PFLP — a Palestinian splinter group — opposes peace with Israel and is backed by Syria.
A war of attrition, with no hope of rescue, and a better-armed and more organized Israeli military spells defeat for the Palestinian Authority. This leaves negotiation toward a cease-fire as the Palestinian’s last remaining option.
For Israel, its neighbors’ abstention from joining the conflict means its existence is not at stake. The Israeli leadership does not feel pressured either to reoccupy Palestinian territories or to launch pre-emptive strikes against Palestinian allies.
For the time being, Israel can afford to grind away slowly at the Palestinians, such as through targeted assassinations, and wait for them to break.
But Israel cannot tolerate this conflict forever. Its businesses and investments are slowly being damaged.
Washington has clearly expressed its interest in the stability of neighboring states and will not support the actions necessary for an outright Israeli victory against the Palestinians. Though it can wait longer than the Palestinians, Israel is also being pressed slowly to the negotiating table.
Overall, isolation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has left both sides with a choice between endemic violence and grudging negotiation. As neither is in a position to win decisively, their only alternative is to move toward negotiations.
Two wild cards remain, however, that could destabilize the situation.
Though Syria is not prepared to go to war alone against Israel, it fears a pre-emptive Israeli attack and so has turned to Iraq for defensive support. This is a dangerous gambit, as Baghdad has reason to generate a military crisis with Israel.
The United States is monitoring Syria and Iraq more intensely, and Israel on Aug. 24 asked Washington to assure Syria that it does not intend to open a new front in its conflict with the Palestinians.
But the question remains whether the United States could or would launch a pre-emptive strike to keep Iraq out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Sharon also still has advisers who argue that the problem for Israel is not one for today but in the future. As nothing guarantees that Israel’s neighbors will be forever passive, and the Palestinian population grows faster than Israel’s, avoiding a conflict today may only postpone it.
The United States must see whether it can convince Sharon that pursuing such a solution to the Palestinian problem would be unacceptable to even Israel’s staunchest ally.
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