THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VIII, Issue # 130, July 18, 2006
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE ISRAELI-ARAB CONFLICT & PROSPECTS FOR MIDEAST PEACE:
Eradication of the Terrorists Prior to Diplomacy
By Dr. Michael Rubin
THE MIDDLE EAST & THE ISLAMIST TERROR WAR BEING WAGED AGAINST THE STATE OF ISRAEL: WHAT ARE THE
REQUIREMENTS OF AN ENDURING PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST? IS THERE A ROLE FOR DIPLOMACY IN THE MIDDLE
EAST PEACE PROCESS? TOTAL ANNIHILATION OF SUCH TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS AS HEZBOLLAH & HAMAS &
SEVERE PUNISHMENT OF THEIR STATE SPONSORS MUST PRECEDE DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS TO ARRANGE A MIDDLE EAST
PEACE
FULL STORY:
As Israeli bombs continue to drop on Lebanon and Hezbollah rockets on Israel, the West has begun to lose its resolve. On
July 14, 2006, French President Jacques Chirac condemned Israel's military action as "completely disproportionate." Russian
President Vladimir Putin called Israel's "use of full-scale force" unacceptable. While President George W. Bush stood firm in
his moral clarity, the U.S. State Department was more cautious. "It is extremely important that Israel exercise restraint in its
acts of self defense," Condoleezza Rice told reporters on July 13.
Some U.S. politicians sought to capitalize on the latest violence for political gain. Senator Hillary Clinton blamed the Bush
administration for the outburst of violence.
"We've had five and a half years of a failed experiment in
tough talk, absent diplomacy and engagement. I think it's
time to go back to what works, and what has historically
worked and what can work again."
Senator Clinton should go back and reread her history. Premature recourse to diplomacy backfires. Bill Clinton's diplomatic
efforts were well-intentioned, but they resulted, not in peace, but in a far more violent conflict. The fault for this does not lie
with Clinton, but rather with an Iranian and Arab leadership that had not abandoned violence as a mechanism to achieve
their goals.
Still, the Clinton administration trusted Arafat as a partner far longer than the evidence warranted. They were not alone.
Often in Washington, politicians become so wedded to the success of their policy initiatives, that they ignore the reality of
its failure.
The Bush administration was not as willing to accept Yasser Arafat's duplicity. While, in December, 2001, U.S. Secretary of
State Colin Powell held out hope that Arafat's call to end armed struggle against Israel was sincere, his decision to withhold
judgment was wise. As Arafat won European praise for his ceasefire, Iranian and Hezbollah officials were loading 50 tons of
weaponry onto the Karine-A, destination: Gaza. Throughout the Intifada, Arafat's diplomacy was insincere. He, like other
terrorists and rogue leaders, ran to diplomats and the United Nations when he feared retaliation, the playground equivalent
of sucker-punching a classmate when the teacher's back is turned, and then crying for intercession as the victim fights back.
Arafat and many Hamas leaders paid the price for their strategy: It was not diplomacy which ended the Intifada. Rather, the
U.S. and Israeli quarantine of Arafat and Israel's targeted assassination campaign against other terrorist leaders created
accountability and broke the back of the terrorist campaign.
It was at this point, though, that both Ariel Sharon and George Bush snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Politicians
should never reward violence and non-compliance. The Second Intifada which followed Ehud Barak's May, 2000, withdrawal
from southern Lebanon made the violence which engulfed Gaza after Sharon's unilateral disengagement predictable. Bush's
mistake was rewarding Iran's noncompliance. Just days after he reversed his policy and rewarded Iran, Iranian Supreme
Leader ridiculed U.S. weakness. On June 4, 2006, he declared:
"In Iraq, you failed. You say you have spent 300 billion
dollars to bring a government in office that obeys you.
But it did not happen. In Palestine, you made all attempts
to prevent Hamas from coming to power and again you
failed. Why don't you admit that you are weak and your
razor is blunt?"
The problem with the West's policy in the Middle East is not lack of diplomacy, but rather failure to allow retaliatory violence
and impose accountability. During the Clinton years, terrorists believed they could strike U.S. interests with near impunity. In
1996, Clinton failed to respond to Iranian planning, training, and supply for the terrorists which struck the Khobar towers; in
1998, U.S. retaliation in response to al-Qa'ida's East Africa Embassy bombings was weak-wristed; in 2000, the response to the
U.S.S. Cole bombing was nonexistent. Israel, too, suffered from the effects of erosion of its deterrence.
Not only is vengeance against terrorism sometimes necessary, but it is more likely to bring peace if it is disproportionate. The
Bush administration's response to the 9-11 terrorist attacks was not to bring down a couple buildings in Kabul or Qandahar,
nor shoot missiles at empty buildings or training camps, but rather to launch war on al-Qa'ida and bring the Taliban
government to its knees.
For the West, moral equivalency is also a handicap. True, terrorists may also argue that the way to alter Western policy is
through violence. But that is all the more reason why the West must ensure its own victory first.
When academics and commentators decry disproportionate force as an obstacle to peace, they replace analysis with platitude.
Lasting peace is seldom made between equals, but rather between strong and weak. The United States ended World War II
precisely because it was willing to use disproportionate force. In doing so, it allowed Japan to rebuild and thrive. England and
France did not pull back from Germany and allow the Nazi regime to re-arm and try again. Wars are fought until they are won.
Among Israel's neighbors, only Egypt and Jordan have accepted peace with the Jewish state. In 1977, Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat sought peace only after a disastrous attempt at war. King Hussein of Jordan also accepted peace — not formal
at first — after understanding the price of war. Negotiations between Jerusalem, Cairo, and Amman succeeded because they
accepted that violence could not achieve their aims, an epiphany still lost upon many in the Arab world and many in Iran. The
irony of the Oslo Accords was that those that fought the First Intifada were not those handed the reins of leadership. Both
U.S. and Israeli leaders enabled the Tunisia-based faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization to take control. Arafat
viewed his Chairmanship over the Palestinian Authority as an entitlement, without understanding his responsibility.
Diplomacy that preserves a status quo in which terrorists win concession through violence ensures future bloodshed.
Hezbollah is not a movement whose existence diplomats should intercede to preserve. While world leaders condemned Iranian
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial and threats to eradicate Israel from the map, they ignore that, on April 9,
2000, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared:
"The Jews invented the legend of the Nazi atrocities.... Anyone
who reads the Koran and the holy writings of the monotheistic
religions sees what they did to the prophets, and what acts of
madness and slaughter the Jews carried out throughout history....
Anyone who reads these texts cannot think of co-existence with
them, of peace with them, or about accepting their presence, not
only in Palestine of 1948, but even in a small village in Palestine,
because they are a cancer which is liable to spread again at any
moment."
Nasrallah has made his aims clear. That anyone would intercede to enable someone whose goal is genocide to continue is
irresponsible, if not hateful. Nasrallah later provided an answer to those "progressives" tempted to argue the problem to be
Israel's existence. To the Hezbollah leader, Israel is just one part of the fight. On October 22, 2002, Hassan Nasrallah told
Lebanon's Daily Star, "If they [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them world wide."
There will be a role for diplomacy in the Middle East, but it will only be successful if it commences both after the eradication
of Hezbollah and Hamas, and after their paymasters pay a terrible cost for their support. This does not mean that Israel is
without blame. Lebanese politicians may have been cowardly in their failure to exert sovereignty following Israel's May, 2000,
withdrawal from southern Lebanon. The U.S. State Department and European foreign ministries were negligent in their failure
to keep up the pressure on Hezbollah, Damascus, and Tehran following the Cedar Revolution. But there will never be peace
if Syria and Iran are allowed to use Lebanon as a proxy battlefield, safe and secure in the knowledge that they will not pay
directly. If the peace is the aim, it is imperative to punish the Syrian and Iranian leadership. Most Lebanese are victims, too.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Israeli-Arab Conflict
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
The Middle East & the Problem of Syria
The Middle East & the Problem of Iran
The Middle East & the Problem of Iraq
Page Two
Page One
The Problem of Rogue States:
Iraq as a Case History
National Strategy for Victory in Iraq
Islamism & Jihadism -- Radical Islam & Islamic Terrorism
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Michael Rubin, a Ph.D. in History (Yale University) and a specialist in Middle Eastern politics, Islamic culture and Islamist
ideology, is Editor of the Middle East Quarterly and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public
Policy Research. Dr Rubin is author of Into the Shadows: Radical Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Washington Institute
for Near East Policy, 2001) and is co-author, with Dr. Patrick Clawson, of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005). Dr. Rubin served as political advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad (2003-2004); staff
advisor on Iran and Iraq in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense (2002-2004); visiting lecturer in the Departments of
History and International Relations at Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2001-2002); visiting lecturer at the Universities of
Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan (2000-2001); Soref Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy (1999-2000); and visiting lecturer in the Department of History at Yale University (1999-2000). He has been a fellow at
the Council of Foreign Relations, the Leonard Davis Institute at Hebrew University, and the Carnegie Council on Ethics and
International Affairs.
The foregoing article by Dr Rubin was originally published in National Review Online, July 17, 2006, and can be found
on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum.
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
July 17, 2006
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