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بقلم: إسرائيل هاريل

هاآرتز الإسرائيلية - 19/4/2007

إذا أردنا أن نعيش, يتوجب علينا أن نرفض التحرك الحالي نحو المبادرة العربية بصيغتها الحالية.

Turning defeat into victory

By Israel Harel

After the attack on the United States in 2001, it emerged that a large number of the terrorists were Saudi. Saudi Arabia urgently needed to be seen as a peace-seeker, and "the Saudi peace initiative" was one of the means chosen.

The essence of the initiative is that Israel withdraw to the 1967 borders and allow all the refugees to return to its territory. Israel did not accept these conditions, whose implementation would bring about an end to the Jewish state. The Europeans, who paid lip service to the initiative understood it was a nonstarter.

Five years have passed, and the bloody war on terror has exhausted the citizens of Israel and its leaders. And if that weren't enough, the Second Lebanon War broke out last summer - a war that, for the first time since the establishment of the state, Israel lost. It was in this context of gloomy citizens and a faltering government that the Saudi initiative was renewed. The prime minister, rudderless and grabbing on to every passing reed, announced that he was prepared to negotiate, and did not even condition his willingness on prior exclusion of the impossible clause of refugee return

After the Six-Day War, the government of Israel decided that, in exchange for peace, it would be willing to withdraw from almost all its territorial gains. The Arab countries gave their response in the Khartoum conference: no negotiations, no recognition, no peace. What was taken by force we will restore by force. In 1973, Egypt and Syria did attempt to restore by force what was taken by force. But the defeat they suffered, despite the strategic surprise, was even greater than in 1967. But after that war, Egypt ignored the Khartoum resolutions, conducted talks with Israel and got back the Sinai "to the last grain of sacred Egyptian soil," as president Anwar Sadat had demanded.

At the end of the war, the Israel Defense Forces was at Cairo's gates, but it was the Egyptians and not the Israelis who came out of the war with a sense of victory. Despite the huge victory (the IDF also stood at the gates of Damascus), a sense of national despair hung over Israel. That is how the vanquished becomes the victor and the victor becomes the vanquished.

Then came the Palestinians' turn to transform defeat into victory. Widespread Palestinian terror began after 1967, but it was only 21 years later, at the end of 1988, that the intifada broke out. The IDF overcame it, but the psychological mood was like that after the Yom Kippur War: the Arabs felt they had won and the Jews that they had lost. It is no wonder that in Oslo Israel gave in all along the way, including its agreement to bring about 40,000 armed Fatah men into the territories under its control.

What happened since then, including the flight from Lebanon, suicide terrorists, the uprooting from Gush Katif, the establishment of the unnecessary and cowardly wall, the rise of Hamas to power - what are these if not the rotted fruit of the loss of self-confidence and faith among the Jews in the justness of the state's path?

Israel's willingness to enter into talks based on the Saudi initiative as it stands erodes the remaining support the world has for its positions based on existential threats - for example, the determined opposition to the right of return in order to maintain the Jewish majority. Even the European Union understands this - especially after recent events in France, Germany and Holland.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is now at the height of his weakness, proven, among other things, by his willingness to conduct negotiations for the release of hundreds of terrorists in exchange for Gilad Shalit. Israel must not conduct negotiations out of weakness; all the more so not now, after having lost a good measure of its deterrent power last summer. If we want to live, we must reject movement toward the initiative.

 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/850283.html

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نشرنا لهذه المقالات لا يعني أنها تعبر عن وجهة نظر المركز كلياً أو جزئياً

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من حق الزائر الكريم أن ينقل وأن ينشر كل ما يعجبه من موقعنا . معزواً إلينا ، أو غير معزو .ـ