Stardate 20030909.1323

(On Screen): Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz stated that the government of Israel should exile Arafat, before the end of the year. Since his HQ was trashed in the spring of 2002, Arafat has been "trapped" in that area. It's not that he's being kept confined there, but rather that he knows full well that if he leaves, he won't be permitted to return. He can travel to Gaza if he wants, and he can travel to Cairo, but wherever he goes, he won't be coming back. So he remains in the ruins of his HQ, living in a building which was partially destroyed.

The Israeli government hoped, I think, that he would eventually decide to travel. It would be politically easier for them to have him leave and not let him return than to forcibly exile him, but he hasn't taken the bait. Now Mofaz thinks they really should force him out.

A few days later, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said the same thing. In response, Condi Rice said that "no good would be served" by forcing Arafat into exile. I don't agree. I think that a lot would be gained, both in the short term and in the long run. Having him be dead would be even better, but it isn't politically possible for Israel to send troops in to take Arafat away, for a private execution.

Which is unfortunately, because with Arafat in exile, it becomes something that can be used against Israel by its enemies. But if he was out of the country, it would be far more difficult for him to continue to pull the strings of power in the Palestinian Authority, and of necessity he'd have to give more power to others, or have it taken from him anyway.

"President" Arafat was "elected" in a process which was far from honest, and in any case his election was seven years ago. If he were actually anything like a leader of a democracy, he'd have submitted himself to new elections long since. He's promised to do so a couple of times, but there always ended up being some reason or other why the elections had to be cancelled. Usually he found some way to blame the Israelis, but the truth is that he doesn't want another election because he doesn't think there needs to be one.

He's a dictator, who has been trying to get a nation to be dictator of. And he has never given up his ambition of taking back all of Palestine, right up to water's edge.

He'd like to take it sooner, if he could, but in the long run the only thing he really needs is for there to be a diplomatic solution which fully implements the "right of return". Douglas Davis writes:

The reason the Palestinians have not run with the ball is that they are convinced that they have far more to gain by playing for time. On present trends, say the demographers, Palestinians will outnumber Jews in the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River — Israel, the West Bank and Gaza — by 2020. At that point, Israel will cease to exist as a democratic and Jewish state.

Why accept a truncated two-state solution in the West Bank and Gaza when the one-state solution down the road will deliver Israel, too? Not by suicide bombers or conventional military means, but by the simple expedient of eroding Israel’s Jewish majority. All the Palestinians have to do is breed for victory: make love, not war, and transform their womenfolk into what Arafat calls his ‘biological bombs’.

That's why the "right of return" has always been the key point in the negotiations. In some kinds of negotiations there is common ground in the middle, where each side can make compromises and thus meet halfway. But on some issues there is no common ground, and before there can be an agreement one side has to concede the issue entirely.

The "right of return" is now and has always been that kind of issue. It's the one concession Israel can never make, and will never make. But that's because the "right of return" is an indicator of something deeper, and both sides know it. On this rests the entire question of Israel's long term existence. The Palestinians can only give up the "right of return" if they come to accept that they will never actually reoccupy the territory of Israel.

Daniel Pipes writes a retrospective of the Oslo accords, ten years on, and asks the rhetorical question, What went wrong?

Many things, but most important was that the deal rested on a faulty Israeli premise that Palestinians had given up their hope of destroying the Jewish state. This led to the expectation that if Israel offered sufficient financial and political incentives, the Palestinians would formally recognize the Jewish state and close down the conflict.

Israelis therefore pushed themselves to make an array of concessions, in the futile hope that flexibility, restraint and generosity would win Palestinian goodwill. In fact, these steps made matters worse by sending signals of apparent demoralization and weakness. Each concession further reduced Palestinian awe of Israeli might, made Israel seem more vulnerable and incited irredentist dreams of annihilating it.

Thu