The poverty of unilateralism

Leader
Tuesday June 13, 2006
The Guardian

Ehud Olmert is visiting London at yet another critical juncture for the Middle East. Violence has escalated sharply in the last few days, with the horrific death of an entire family of Palestinians picnicking innocently on a Gaza beach, the "targeted assassination" of Hamas fighters attempting to fire rockets into Israel and, with grim predictability, a declared end to the Islamist movement's 16-month ceasefire. As the new Israeli prime minister was holding talks with Tony Blair in Downing Street yesterday the optimism that briefly surrounded his election victory at the end of March seemed utterly and bleakly without foundation.

Mr Blair was right to withhold the endorsement Mr Olmert wanted of his plans to unilaterally withdraw from "most of" the West Bank, following the pullout from the Gaza Strip engineered by his predecessor, Ariel Sharon, last summer. He was right too to insist that, however difficult it is, Israel must strive to reach a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians. The conflict between these two peoples, now more than a century old, is the world's most intractable, and the hatred it sustains echoes across the globe. It is madness to think it can be resolved by the more powerful side simply drawing a line on a map. That would likely follow the "security barrier" Israel built - partly beyond the pre-1967 ceasefire line - to keep out suicide bombers, though Palestinians see it (understandably enough in the light of bitter experience) as just another land grab.

Unilateralism may indeed work for a while, and any withdrawal is better than none, but the mayhem on the Israel-Gaza border shows why it cannot provide a long-term solution. Israel, it is true, no longer directly rules over a million Palestinians. But it controls the entry and exit points to what is in effect a vast and hopeless prison, and still rules the West Bank, the rest of what remains of Palestine. So it is hardly surprising that desperate men with guns and home-made rockets use them against an enemy armed with F-16s, Apache helicopters and long-range artillery - 6,000 shells fired between last September's final Israeli pullback and Friday's beach carnage - even if their unequal struggle rebounds, as it invariably does, on their own long-suffering people.

This volatile situation is complicated by deep disarray amongst the Palestinians. The Hamas victory in January's elections, a classic protest vote, put into power a movement that neither recognises Israel nor advocates a two-state solution. Hamas has failed to deliver since it took office and is being challenged by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and Yasser Arafat's successor, and by his call for a referendum canvassing support for a negotiated agreement with Israel. Since such an agreement is the only way forward, people of goodwill should be rooting for Mr Abbas. That includes Mr Blair, other EU leaders, President Bush and anyone else who can help.

Palestinian disarray results from cumulative past failures, including the slow death of the Oslo process without a peace agreement. That has resulted, in part, from Israel's bad habit of illegally building settlements on Arab land, so that the creation of a viable Palestinian state that is more than a collection of disconnected Bantustans is in serious doubt. That is why it was alarming to hear, even as Mr Olmert was pledging to withdrew from "most" of the West Bank, that plots of land have gone on sale to build new homes near the large settlement of Ariel, one of the "blocs" Israel insists on retaining, even though it is deep in Palestinian territory. Israel and its supporters often argue that after nearly 40 years of occupation, many of the facts that have been created on the ground are irreversible - although that wasn't the case when it evacuated and dismantled outposts in Sinai or Gaza. The only thing that is truly irreversible is death. And there has been far too much of that already.

Link;
Guardian Unlimited

Wars are ended by negotiations.

Wars aren't ended by more killing -- endless killing on both sides. She was speaking of wars in general and the Iraq (invasion/occupation -- called war by some) conflict in particular.

So far all efforts at negotiated settlement (in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict) have been sabotaged by both sides in one way or the other.

The Guardian's editorial above is excellent and covers all bases.