When the fighting stops

From the time of Israel's creation, the context in which the Mideast conflict has played out is this: A very large number of Arabs have felt, though they might have put it differently, that Arabs had been in retreat since their repulse by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732, and that the setting up of a Jewish state in their midst by the Great Powers after the Second World War, following broken promises about how Arab sovereignty would be advanced following the First World War, was the crowning and intolerable humiliation. Israel's existence was a goad, a hair shirt, to the Arabs, and to almost all Muslims (and would become a convenient red herring with which to distract the Arab masses from the corrupt and oppressive governments riveted on the backs of most of them).

The Israelis were led for most of their first 60 years as a nation by fugitives, or children of fugitives, from the most terrible pogroms and atrocities in all the tortured history of the Jews. They had seen their families passively (except in Warsaw) await the coming and the savagery of the Nazis, and go as victims and not warriors to the gas chambers. Many people of this background often saw almost any concessions to "the Arab" as a first step backward toward the death camps, a perception frequently reinforced by the infelicities of Islamic oratory, clerical and secular, to this day.

Behind a façade of reasonableness, Yasser Arafat never had any interest in peace. He ignored every clause of the Oslo Agreement. Every concession by Israel brought him closer to Arab domination of the Holy Land, to the peace of victory, not of compromise. Durable peace would demote him from his status as co-leader, with the current Israeli premier, at the world's greatest flashpoint, to head of a dusty little postage stamp of a Third World country, despised by the principal Arab powers and pretty much as Pontius Pilate had described it, when he arrived for one of history's most controversial proconsulships: "A land of sand, camels and Jehovah." The Middle East was always going to pose horribly intractable problems.

Ehud Barak gave Arafat everything he asked at the re-run Camp David talks in 2000, under the aegis of Bill Clinton, except that trump card of bad-faith Arab negotiations: the right of return of all the Arabs who had supposedly been chased out of Israel when that state was established, which, if conceded, would drown the Jewish state in hostile Arabs. Arafat responded to Barak's war of good will by unleashing the Second Intifada.

This was the end of what had been Israel's pacifist left, as Arafat finally showed his hand as an opponent of any peace acceptable to Israel.

Israel dumped the placatory Barak for Ariel Sharon in 2001. Sharon crushed the Second Intifada with immense skill, and scored a double win by exposing the anti-Semitic hypocrisy of most of the world media, which had leapt like salmon to amplify what Israel quickly exposed as the canard of the "Jenin massacre."

Sharon also proved agile at making peace, stopping West Bank settlement construction apart from additions within recognized areas of existing buildings for natural growth of incumbent families. He also fenced off the West Bank from pre-1967 Israel, with some adjustments, killed most of the Hamas leadership, almost eliminated terrorism in Israel and discredited Arafat, who providentially died in 2004.

Since then, there has been progress on the Arab side. West Bank Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has been much more constructive and reliable than Arafat. The West Bank Premier, Salam Fayyad, is the first Palestinian leader in history who is not a terrorism alumnus. He is an economist and has called for the right of return to be to the West Bank, a solution that would end their crisis with Israel and lift the West Bank population. The Sharon Plan of encouraging swift economic growth in the West Bank while strangling Gaza until Hamas acknowledges Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state is producing the desired end — uplifting prosperity in the one and grinding self-inflicted poverty in the other.

The Arab powers are now so concerned by Iran's sponsorship of Hamas and Hezbollah, some are ready to settle with Israel. Indeed, because of the Chamberlainesque blundering of Barack Obama in his dealings with Iran, Israel may have conferred upon it the wildly unforeseen role of protector of their ancient Arab foes, as air interdictor of Iran's nuclear military program.

I predict Israel, by preparing to do it itself, will compel the United States, joined symbolically by some other countries, to begin periodic very precisely targeted bombing of Iranian nuclear military sites, as necessary until Tehran comes to its senses. The West Bank government will be recognized as an independent state. Gaza will join it when the voters there turf Hamas out, with live ammunition and fixed bayonets if necessary (as is the frequent local custom). Israel will then thicken its Mediterranean "waist" from nine miles to 25 miles and repay Palestine with a deeper Gaza and a territorial connection at a crossroads where, with tunnels and overpasses, there will be full interflow between the extended West Bank and Gaza, and between central and southern Israel. There will be an economic common market and a generous international aid package for the Palestinians, as they accept the right of return to their own territories, the camps are emptied out and the displaced return to Palestine.

Central Jerusalem will be shared but not divided. From Orient House (PLO headquarters) to the east can be Jerusalem, capital of Palestine, and it can come up to the Arab Quarter of the Old City. Jerusalem, Israel, will be recognized by the world as that country's capital. Palestinians will continue to operate the Dome of the Rock, and un-uniformed Israeli soldiers will secure the top of the Western Wall, to protect worshippers and tourists below. An agreed coalition of Christian entities chaired by the Holy See will administer the Christian and Armenian Quarters, and the holy places in both countries.

A little imagination from Washington would be helpful. The other "Road Map" entities, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations, are risibly hopeless and discreditably motivated. Hillary Clinton on George Mitchell's shoulders is no pantomime Henry Kissinger, but "peace" (could be) "at hand" nonetheless.

Shalom, salaam and, by the same token(ism), fiat voluntas tuam.

National Post
[email protected]