After the Vote
Before Israel’s Likud Party vote on PM Sharon’s plan for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and small parts of the West Bank, President Bush updated American thinking on Israel.
Before Israel’s Likud Party vote on PM Sharon’s plan for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and small parts of the West Bank, President Bush updated American thinking on Israel.
The President called Israeli towns east of the 1949 armistice line facts to be accommodated, not obstacles to be removed. He called the armistice line an armistice line, not a border dividing two countries, or even a country and a putative one. He reaffirmed Israel’s right to the promise of UN Resolution 242: “secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.” He acknowledged the impossibility of negotiating with the present Palestinian leadership and the right of Israel to take unilateral steps to secure itself, explicitly the fence and implicitly the targeting of killers hiding among the Palestinian public. He told the Palestinians a hard truth: their present terrorist and terrorist-supporting leadership has led them to poverty, misery, death and destruction. Under this leadership, nothing is possible. Under other leadership, some things are possible. In no case is everything possible. Refugees can’t always go home again and their failure to start a new life in a new place is not a problem that Israel will fix at the expense of its national home.
In their eminent good sense, these positions reflect American understandings, American priorities, American policies and America’s determination to help a democratic ally withstand the onslaught of terrorism and political pressure. It is in America’s interest to ensure that on one – particularly the Europeans and the Arabs, but Israelis too – thinks that any of those positions will change with the defeat the referendum.
The Quartet is due to meet in New York on May 6. They were planning to discuss whether and how Gaza withdrawal could be integrated into the Road Map. They may need a new agenda, but only temporarily. Unilateral Israeli action of one sort or another is still very much in the cards because every government has a right unilaterally to protect its people from terrorist attack. The Palestinians don’t get to decide whether and how Israel does that any more than al-Qaeda gets to decide how we do it. The defeat of the referendum by those Likud voters who want to give the Palestinians LESS, is unlikely to produce an Israeli government inclined to give them MORE.
On the other hand, as long as the Palestinians thought the U.S. would not “let” Israel take actions that would limit future Palestinian choices or potential borders, they had every incentive to continue to commit terrorism even as they pretended to negotiate. The Palestinians have sent the Quartet a letter asking that group to “walk back” Mr. Bush’s statements. But for the Quartet to have any credibility, it has to take account of reality. The American quarter of the Quartet should stand fast in its determination that the Palestinians have to conform to civilized norms or face the inevitable consequences of unilateral Israeli behavior, referendum or not.