Point-counterpoint on the Middle East

Editor’s note: Richard Miller is a political consultant to Talk Radio News Service. He co-authored this commentary.

Ellen Ratner’s view

I have just returned from a week in Israel and the West Bank. During that time, I had the opportunity to talk with both Israelis and Palestinians. These were mostly average folks, people with views that were “off the tour” from what either the Israeli government or the Palestinian Authority would want me to see and believe. As an American and as a Jew, I saw plenty, and came back with a set of beliefs all my own. Now I would like to share these with you.

For starters, here’s an alarming proposition you’re not going to hear amid news stories of homicide bombers and Israeli counterstrikes: The average Palestinian wants exactly the same things we do. Security, a decent job, a good education for their children and the opportunity for a better life. Moreover, the average Palestinian – and that is what any conversation about the future must be about, not the extremists who have dominated the press coverage – is not a suicide bomber, is not a bin Laden lover and does not wish America ill. For all you Arab bashers out there, the bad news (no less true for being trite) is that people are people.

We must put aside the madmen on both sides. Yes, that means Israel, too. After all, who assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Itzchak Rabin? It wasn’t Arafat’s people – it was a Jewish extremist. And who walked into a mosque and machine gunned 35 people a few years ago? It wasn’t al-Qaida, but a Jewish guy named Baruch Goldstein. Certainly our own media gives us no shortage of Palestinian crazies. They go by the name of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade. If we listen to the worst-willed people of either side, there’ll never be peace. Your children and your children’s children will be treated to the same homicidal headlines that greet us practically every morning.

Unfortunately, unless something is done, it’s not going to get any better. One of the saddest anecdotes I heard was that told by an Israeli friend. In the “good old days,” they used to rate restaurants by how good the food was. Today, they rate them by how good the security is.

In quiet, honest moments, people from both sides of the 1967 border will surprisingly confess the same truth – things have gotten so bad that neither side can solve this alone. Perhaps, in this sense, an Oslo-type arrangement is dead. The psychic scars visible in expressions of Arab, Christian and Jew make for the grimmest spectacle. Palestinians, when being candid, will admit that they don’t know what to do.

Here’s what to do – this is what must be done for the sake of the most ancient prayer of all, “to pray for the peace of Jerusalem”:

1. Israeli settlements beyond the Green Line (the 1967 border) must be dismantled. The Israeli army can’t defend these indefensible pockets of transplants and will secretly admit that they don’t want to. To maintain these settlements convinces Palestinians that the Israelis are not serious about a two-state solution, something which is currently – as it should be – official United States policy. Israel is no stranger to disbanding settlements in the cause of a higher good, as they proved when they returned the Sinai to Egypt.

2. Internationalize Jerusalem. This city is the touchstone for three great faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Giving any one of them exclusive control is a recipe for perpetual war. Right now, Islamic extremists use the fact of Israel’s administration to enrage the “Arab Street” that somehow their holy places are being desecrated. It’s not true, but no matter – Israeli control of the city just isn’t worth the price. A competent, international body should be created to oversee Jerusalem, and thereby remove one of the most powerful reasons Islamic extremists employ to recruit, fund raise and keep the pot boiling.

3. Put international peacekeepers along the Green Line, and assume they’ll be there for at least a generation – or longer. This is necessary because of the psychic damage done by both sides to each other. It is probably the case that a generation must pass before trust will return – perhaps the generation of Sharon and Arafat. One thing is for sure – you’re not going to get new blood by spilling old blood.

This conflict can be settled. The Israelis can have a secure state. The Palestinians can have their own, viable state. But it’s going to take some adults to make it happen.

Richard Miller’s view

Ellen has written an almost convincing new screenplay – a sort of Middle Eastern version of the “Field of Dreams” – “Build it, and peace will come.” The heart of her proposal rests, as it so often does with those unable to face bitter truths about world affairs, with a reliance on the so-called international community. Let them administer Jerusalem. Let them militarize the Green Line and take responsibility for separating the Palestinians and the Israelis. Just add 20 or 40 years, and poof! As Neville Chamberlain promised a gullible British public as he stepped off the plane from Munich, waving a piece of paper with Herr Hitler’s signature on it, “Peace in our time!”

Right.

If only. First, I want to address the issues about which we agree – the settlements should be dismantled. But not while Palestinians killers are boarding school buses and murdering 20 people with the snap of a fuse. She’s right about the settlements – they are indefensible, both militarily and politically. She’s also correct in pointing out that Israel dismantled such settlements in the Sinai. What she forgot to mention was that the dismantling occurred after Israel had a peace treaty with Egypt.

Just who is this “international community” to whom Ellen would entrust the fate of Israelis and Palestinians? Perhaps they are the grandchildren of Vichy France. Perhaps they are the German descendants of Hitler’s willing executioners. Perhaps this community is to be found in the European Union, the birthplace of appeasement and anti-Semitism – not to mention centuries of colonial oppression of Arab lands.

If she’s talking about putting American boys and girls on that duty, let her come out and say it. I for one do not want our people in harm’s way in that rat’s nest. Here’s a hoot – why not have the United Nations do it? With empires of terror like Syria, Sudan and Libya on the Human Rights Commission, that should make for some interesting reading. The bottom line, as Bush is discovering on Iraq (I think he already knew) is that there is no such thing as “the international community.” There are only countries which are for us and countries which are against us.

Many Israelis are the descendants of a once-trusting people. They trusted the Poles, the Germans, the Dutch and the French to perform the duty that any government owes its citizens – to protect them. But when German tanks rolled in, the only thing that went “poof!” were a bunch of Jewish civilians. Marshal Petain drank a good Lafite Rothschild while thousands of his gendarmes rounded up Jewish schoolchildren for Auschwitz. If I were Israeli, I wouldn’t put much trust in the “international community” either. (As Henry Kissinger once scoffed about the concept of Europe, “show me an address.”)

Here’s my solution for peace. If Palestinians want to be a state in the family of nations, let them exercise the first rule of sovereignty: control law and order within their borders. Stop the suiciders, throw Hamas and Islamic Jihad out, and then resurrect the deal (or perhaps something better) that Yasser Arafat walked away from in 2000.

But it won’t happen. The reason is simple enough: The Palestinians might want peace, but not with any live Israelis. Arafat has succeeded in raising a new generation of Hitler Youth, who are trained from the get-go to kill, hate Jews and Americans. I do agree with Ellen that it may take a generation or two. But in the meantime, you wouldn’t want your son or daughter to have to stand there and play traffic cop to donkeys, children and automobiles loaded with explosives.

The problem, you see, is not to be found in borders or treaties, or the whining of our hypocritical European “allies.” It is rather to be found in the minds of men. Minds that are nurtured on fantasies of a new holocaust for the Jews; minds that are told (and actually believe) that Jews kill children and use their blood for religious purposes, or that some group of Jewish geezers got together a hundred years ago and planned the takeover of the world. (Yep, they’re showing that one on Egyptian television right now, in 41 parts.)

Most of this lunacy the Arabs inherited naturally from their former colonial masters, the Europeans. And the Arabs are sustained in these “beliefs” every time the sons of Vichy or the daughters of the SS take to the streets in Paris and Berlin for their 15 minutes against Israel.

No, dear Ellen. First prove to the Israelis that you can change minds. Then maybe we’ll have the peace we all long for.