SPECIAL COMMENTARY

There Is An Alternative

Philadel hia
means imposing borders of Israel's
choosing between its population and
here is no alternative," says
the Palestinians; in Barak's colorful
the Barak government,
formulation, it sees Israel as "a villa
explaining why it plans a
located in a jungle."
return to the bargaining
table with Palestinian Authority
Barak's own analogy points to the
reason that separation cannot work; a
Chairman Yasser Arafat. "In the end,
the diplomatic way is what will win
villa in the jungle cannot survive for
out," declares Israel's Acting
long. Similarly, Israel can-
Foreign Minister Shlomo
not find true security in
Ben-Ami.
walls. Even if walls did
Similarly, an editorial in
work against the Palestinian
Hdaretz [the pro-Labor Israeli
Authority (an unlikely
newspaper] declares that a
prospect — think of south-
military power cannot deal
ern Lebanon), they do not,
with Palestinian violence; the
at all, address the threats
"realistic solution is to move
posed by Israel's many
toward coexistence, based on
other enemies — the Arab
compromises and negotiated
population within the
DANI EL PIPES
agreements." Survey research
country, the governments
Spe cial to
finds that a healthy majority
of Syria and Iraq, and Arabs
the Jew ish News
of Israelis agrees that there is
and Muslims around the
world.
no alternative to diplomacy
But there is an alternative — not
Arab Influence
an exciting or particularly attractive
one, to be sure, but one that does
Separation suffers from another flaw:
address the country's strategic prob-
like the Oslo negotiations, it falsely
lem.
assumes that Israel can take the initia-
That alternative, by the way, is not
tive to make the key decisions of war
the "unilateral separation" that the
and peace. Israelis cannot begin to
deal with the threat confronting them
Barak government has floated, and
which can be summed up as "us here
until they realize that such decisions
and them there." Unilateral separation
are made not in Jerusalem and Tel
Aviv, but in Cairo, Gaza, Amman and
Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle
Damascus. The conflict, in other
East Forum. His e-mail address is
words, will end only when Arabs
pipes@MEForum.org
accept the permanent existence of a

sovereign Jewish state in their midst;
not when Israelis decide it should be
over.
This fact clearly frustrates Israelis,
who are eager to put their century-
long conflict with Arabs behind them.
But they cannot on their own do this.
They can only try to encourage Arabs
to put it behind. They cannot force
Arabs to reach this conclusion, only
indirectly induce them to do so on
their own.
Once Israelis reconcile themselves
to these unalterable truths, their
alternative to diplomacy becomes
clear, even self-evident, and it is nei-
ther new nor exotic. It consists basi-
cally of a return to the approach of
the pre-Oslo era, when Israelis
understood two facts: (1) the great
majority of Arabs want Israel to be
militarily destroyed and (2) the only
way to change their minds is by
showing that this goal has no chance
of succeeding — in fact, pursuing it
leaves the Arabs impoverished and
weakened, without severely damag-
ing Israel.
This alternate approach, called the
policy of deterrence, dominated Israeli
thinking during the country's first 45
years, 1948-93, and it worked well.
Recognizing Israel's immutability,
for example, was what prompted
Anwar Sadat to give up military con-
frontation and fly to Jerusalem in
1977.

Battle Of Willpower

Trouble was, even as deterrence visibly
wore down the Arab will to destroy
Israel, it more subtly but no less cer-
tainly also wore down the Israeli will.
Deterrence being a slow, erratic and
passive process, not to speak of expen-
sive and indirect, it is hard to sustain
for decades. Eventually, Israelis
became impatient for a quicker and
more active approach.
That impatience brought on the
Oslo accords in 1993, in which
Israelis initiated more creative and
active steps to end the conflict. So
totally did deterrence disappear from
the Israeli vocabulary, it is today not
even considered when policy options
are discussed, leading to the wide-
spread perception that there is "no
alternative" to diplomacy.
Israelis will turn to deterrence only
when they conclude that more excit-
ing solutions have failed them. Sadder
but wiser, they will rediscover the one
policy that has stood them well: deter-
rence. The sooner that happens, the
less damage they will suffer.
The 1990s will be seen as Israel's lost
decade, the time when the fruits of ear-
lier years were squandered, when the
country's security regressed. The history
books will portray Israel at this time,
like Britain and France in the 1930s, as
a place under the sway of illusion,
where dreams of avoiding war in fact
sowed the seeds of the next conflict.

❑

From Berlin To Jerusalem

Jerusalem

mr

CNN (Cable News Net-
work) in a friend's office. We
were a block away from
Checkpoint Charlie on
Friedrichstrasse, the famous
crossing point between East
and West Berlin before the
falling of the infamous Wall
on Nov. 9, 1989. At the epi-
center of the Cold War,
STUART
glued to the hot war back
SCHOFFMAN
home.
Special to
A seven-minute walk
the Jewish News
from our friend's flat in a
trendy quarter of East Berlin
stands the magnificent Neue
Synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse,
Stuart Schoffman, an associate editor
once the largest shul in Germany. Nazi
of the Jerusalem Report and columnist
storm troopers torched it on Kristall-
for the JUF News of Chicago, can be
nacht, Nov. 9, 1938. But the local
reached via e-mail at
German police chief, Wilhelm
steart@netvision.netil
Krutzfeld, chased away the arsonists at

here were you
when you
learned of last
month's ghastly
lynching of two Israeli sol-
diers in a Palestinian police
station in Ramallah, of
Israel's retaliatory helicopter-
gunship attacks on Palestin-
ian cities, of Yasser Arafat's
declaration that Israel had
declared war on his people?
I was in Berlin, of all
ironic places, with my wife
and children, watching

gunpoint and summoned the fire
department, keeping the damage to a
minimum. The Neue Synagogue, used
by the Wermacht as a warehouse, was
badly damaged by Allied bombs in
1943. What remained of the sanctuary
was demolished in 1958 by the East
Germans, who had little interest in the
revival of Jewish life.
Today, the synagogue's three splen-
did Moorish domes have been rebuilt,
but the main sanctuary remains unre-
stored. The building's exhibits detail
the history of the synagogue and of
the Berlin Jewish community, which
numbered 160,000 in 1933. Six years
later, half that community had emi-
grated. In 1941, the Nazis deported
55,000 of those who remained to the
Riga and Warsaw ghettos, to Terezin
and Auschwitz, and to other terrible
places from which few would return.

A Haunting Scrap

My wife, kids and I wandered through
the rooms, wearing headphones, push-
ing buttons on the digital guides. Some
7,000 Berlin Jews, entire families, mid-
dle-class people like us, committed sui-
cide rather than be deported. In a dis-
play case is a note on a scrap of paper,
scrawled in pencil by a child. The Ger-
man reads: "Papa! We've been taken.
Come immediately... An entire vanished
world, in a scrap of paper.
At Grosse Hamburgerstrasse 26, a
few blocks away, stood a Jewish old-
age home that in 1942 the Gestapo
made a collection point for local Jews.
All that remains today is a monument
covered with stones. My children, 9
and 11, added two more.
On the third floor of the synagogue

JERUSALEM

on page 42

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