On the Middle East

At the Israel-Lebanon border last week, two Israeli soldiers were brought home for burial in exchange for Israel’s release of five Hezbollah prisoners, including the unspeakable terrorist Samir Kuntar who, in 1979, crushed the skull of a 4-year-old girl before whom he had just murdered her father.

The mourning of the hundreds of Israelis who were there to accept the coffins stood in sharp contrast to the celebration and dancing in the streets of Lebanon, where Kuntar and his fellow unspeakables were greeted with a red carpet and kisses and honored as heroes.

In a tiny country where almost every citizen is required to serve in the Defense Force, every soldier is a member of the family and every death is taken personally, and despite the indisputable strategic downside of handing terrorists back to their countries in exchange for the release of kidnapped Israelis — too many of whom are dead by the time the deal is struck — it’s never been possible to say no.

Still in captivity, though, is Gilad Shalit, the young soldier kidnapped by Hamas. Though he is believed to still be alive, there really doesn’t seem to be any release in the works for him, even though the Egyptians have been trying as mediators to bring it about; but when you are dealing with Hamas you might as well be dealing with quicksilver.

And of course there’s the larger problem of Hamas itself and the way it chooses to interact with Israel. Which is to say, not at all, really.

There are some signs of progress toward a peaceful resolution with the Palestinian Authority, headed by Abbas, but that cannot include all of the lands under the Palestinian Authority unless and until control of Gaza is no longer with Hamas.
And the problem with agreeing to talk to Hamas, right off the bat, is deciding which Hamas to talk to. The head honcho lives in Syria, but the street activists are in Gaza.

So, when you sit down for a cup of chai with some Hamas folks, for whom will they be authorized to speak? Who is in charge?

And would Abbas and the West Bank folks even want a separate negotiation with Hamas? After all, they were basically thrown from power in a Hamas coup in Gaza.

Anyway, let’s say you offer to explore ways of arriving at a peaceful solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Let’s say you will talk about all kinds of things if they will accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. You will not get an unequivocal answer, so right there you have an insurmountable problem.

But perhaps they can be persuaded to quit lobbing missiles into Israel in exchange for economic aid. Perhaps if we could stop the violence and begin a kind of Marshall Plan for the whole of Gaza and the West Bank, if we could help establish a thriving economy there, bring quality to life there, even Hamas might be persuaded to give peace a chance.

A seldom-mentioned part of the problem, too, is that you have to get past the reality that the Palestinian predicament is a useful foil for all kinds of other actors in the region, like Hezbollah, or Fatah in Pakistan, who will sabotage, or at least impede, any such effort.

Right now, the bad guys are in the driver’s seat. The Israelis would accept a peaceful resolution in a heartbeat, but it will take more than promises for them to open a road here, take down a barrier there, close a settlement over there, for their experience is that every time they let down their guard they get slaughtered in their own streets.

Can you imagine how Americans would behave if they experienced something like 9/11 several times a year?

Lucy got Charlie Brown to try for the kick every time, but the Israelis are done with the game.

Maybe the solution will ultimately come from the outside. Imagine, for example, that (now that we seem to be talking to them) our diplomacy gets us into a working relationship with Iran. Imagine that Iran is persuaded to call off the Syria/Hamas/Hezbollah dogs in exchange for, say, energy technology.

Ah, yes, a dream. Maybe just a dream, but maybe even possible.

An Israeli leader said, approximately, “When the Palestinians come to love life more than they hate us we will finally have a chance for peace.”

Originally published June 20, 2008