A "Start', Or Another Beginning?
Hard to say, isn't it, whether fresh initiatives to attempt to support the weak-but-determined government of Mahmoud Abbas promise the start of a new relationship that might bear fruition toward peace, or the beginning of yet another round of disappointments. It's hard to judge an erstwhile-adversary's intent, level of integrity and reliability, based on past performances which have failed abysmally on all three counts.Yet here we have Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and against the wishes of a goodly proportion of a war-weary Israeli population, agreeing to the release of 250 Palestinians judiciously languishing in Israeli jails for a variety of offences, ostensibly as a preliminary to a larger prisoner release at some undetermined future date, should the initial release prove it can sustain the promise inherent in a recently engaged "trust" initiative.
The released prisoners, who still had three to six years of sentencing time to serve, signed pledges to the effect that they would, upon release, not again engage in violent activities against the State of Israel. Israel permitted the transfer of new weapons to rearm Fatah. Israel agreed to halt its targeting of known Fatah-linked terrorists, to enable Fatah to bring these "resisters" back into its approved fold to boost its government-linked militias.
As well, leaders of terrorist factions engaged in violent strife against the State of Israel, many of whom have been responsible for countless violent attacks against the State, as well as a large number of Israeli deaths, have been given a different type of reprieve, and permitted to re-enter the Palestinian Territories without fear of detention, in a bid to re-engage with Fatah in a constructive, ultimately state-building initiative.
Hope springs eternal: "If the Israeli government and the Palestinian government can continue taking these measures, we can turn the corner and leave the negative dynamic of the last two years and return to a positive one," according to Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. There's a lot of positive energy invested in this start, this assumption that Israel's relaxing of her tensely guarded position vis-a-vis the cudgel of Palestinian extremism may bear promise.
Not all observers are as blithely optimistic in the short term, for as the director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies based in Washington states, "It changes the subject for a while, but it doesn't address the fundamental strategic challenges Abbas has," says John Alterman, "I don't see how this does any more than begin to set him in the right direction."
On the other hand, Mr. Abbas's chief of staff claims "We feel there is now some momentum in the air...There is now a window of opportunity, but it may close very quickly." Which is to say, Fatah feels pretty good about Israel's assent in these trusting initiatives, but they have no hesitation in warning that they anticipate far more in the near future - or Israel should be prepared to pay the consequences.
Truth is, for every newly-released prisoner from Israeli jails, three times that number has been newly arrested. So where, pray tell, is the initiative from the PA side, in instilling patience and forbearance into the mind-sets of those Palestinians, male and female, who still practise their determined efforts to destroy their enemies?
Hard to shut that particular valve off, once it's been primed, particularly since it starts so early in life, with primary-grade children facing indoctrination in hate and suspicion. Not to speak of the ongoing encouragement to young men and women to engage in the "struggle", to give their lives over to Allah in the honourable and celestially-favoured practise of suicide-homicide.
Take, for example, the young man Yusef Nahleh, such a mature 15 at the time of his arrest that he was shooting at a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. As with all those others who were freed, he too signed the pledge not to attack Israel. In the festivities of reuniting with his family, when he was questioned by a friend what he would now do to help build a Palestinian state, a friend supplied the answer for him: "suicide attacks".
He was not to be swayed; he had signed a pledge, after all. He pondered his own response, and out it came: "military attacks". His father pointed out to the youth, now an even more mature 17, how infelicitous it was of him to make such a statement before a U.S. journalist, writing down his every word. "You are shooting yourself in the back" observed the father. Stealth being the order of the day under such circumstances. Corrected, Yusef amended his statement to "political struggle".
On television a middle-aged woman was interviewed, one of the newly-released prisoners. A mother of seven small children, she would now, finally, be re-united with her children. Defiantly, this stoutly dedicated jihadist avowed herself to be immensely proud of what she had done. She would do it again. And encourage her children to do likewise, as they grow older. Thus speaking her priorities, her values.
Incorrigible? Blind? Wilfully and violently antagonistic? Are these then representative of the Palestinians with whom Israel binds herself in trust toward a new "start"? Let us fervently hope not.
Labels: Middle East, Political Realities, Terrorism
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, July 22, 2007
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