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Dangerous Revisionism

ur

hen the Camp David talks collapsed a
year ago, after Palestinian Authority
leader Yasser Arafat rejected an excep-
tionally sweeping offer from Israel, it
was clear who had wanted peace and who had not.
When the latest Palestinian intifada was launched
10 months ago against Israel, it was clear who had
chosen violence and who was attacking whom.
But a revisionist view may be gaining force in
this country and in Europe. In this view, Arafat
deserves credit as a peace seeker; the evidence is
that he allowed talks — ultimately fruitless — to
go on at the Red Sea resort of Taba in February,
five months into the violence. And Israel and the
United States are faulted for being insuf-
ficiently flexible and underprepared for
substantive talks that the Palestinians
allegedly wanted.
This revisionist view, which has been assiduously
promoted by a newly effective Palestinian public
relations operation and incomprehensibly parroted
in a front-page New York Times article July 26,
would be ludicrous if it weren't so damnably dan-
gerous.
To the extent that this view is allowed to be part
of the framework of official national policy, in
America and in Europe, it will doom any efforts to
bring an effective halt to the Palestinian-inspired
violence or to create conditions under which some
sort of longer-range peace can be established and
maintained.
At the core of the new view is the notion that
Israel, personified by then-Prime Minister Ehud
Barak, and America, in the person of then-President
Bill Clinton, made crucial mistakes in the run-up to
the Camp David meeting and compounded them by
being discourteous to Arafat when he was in the
Maryland mountain retreat. The revisionists hold
that — even though Arafat never made a single
counterproposal on key issues like control of
Jerusalem or the "right" of Palestinians to return to
their families' former villages in Israel — he was
honestly seeking to conclude a long-range deal.

Dry Bones

Others Buy In

The European buy-in to this view was
evident in the hasty, ill-considered res-
olution taken by the leading industrial
nations, the G-8, to urge the use of
international monitors on the West
Bank and in Gaza. Arafat has long
wanted that sort of presence, and the
G-8 action simply rewards his turn to
violence by treating him as the injured
party.
At the same time, the Bush
Administration seems to be slipping
back into the policies of "moral equiva-
lence," which require an
" even-handedness" that says
Israeli strikes at terrorist lead-
ers are as bad as suicide
bombers striking teenagers. Clinton
was clear about Arafat's failure to seize
the opportunity of Camp David; his
successor acts as if that meeting and the
massive Israeli offer never happened.
At some point — this year, next year,
a few years from now — the violence
will subside and it may be possible to
talk about a more peaceful future.
Those talks can have no chance of suc-
cess if the Palestinians, the Israelis,
America and the rest of the world are
not clear about why the talks failed last
year and how brutally and deliberately
Arafat chose a path of violence.
Pretending that course of action was
forced on him only makes an eventual
resolution more difficult.
The revisionists who now explain
the collapse of the peace process in terms of
mutual mistakes may have some evidence of small
failures on all sides. But the explanation simply
blurs the plain fact that Arafat and his henchmen
inexcusably started hurling stones at Western Wall
worshippers, firing assault rifles and mortars at

Jewish settlers, and sending suicide bombers to
Israeli cities.
The alternative to a failed negotiation can be
another negotiation or continuing a relatively sta-
ble status quo or it can be violence. We all know
who chose that last, worst option. ❑

ridiculed and branded the aggressor by many of its
neighbors throughout its fragile existence. But some-
how it has found the resolve and resources to stay the
course, thanks in part to unceasing support in the
diaspora, especially from Jews in the United States.
So with Israel's economy, morale and
tourist industry ebbing in the violence of
the latest intifada (Palestinian uprising),
the Jewish News is proud to again be a
sponsor of a Jewish Federation of Metropolitan
Detroit-organized adult unity mission to Israel.
Dates of this second mission of 5761 are Sept.
9-14, just before Rosh Hashanah. To register, call
the Federation: (248) 642-4260, ext. 141. The

pre-holiday period provides a fitting backdrop for
reaffirming who we are as a people and why Israel
is so precious to us.
Please consider joining the mission. Your presence
does makes a difference to Israelis, many of whom
are literally caught in an emotional, if not combat-
ive, crossfire. Just being there in these troubled times
is an appreciated show of support. Just ask those
who went on the unity mission early in the year.
If you can't join this mission, please take a
moment to wish mission-goers a nsiyah tovah, a
good journey. Concurrently, remember the danger
ever lurking for our brethren in Israel as they strug-
gle to sustain a vibrant homeland for world Jewry.

EDITO RIAL

So VAX' M
LOOK so
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WitvG•

Make It Your Mission

ould the Jewish people survive without a
homeland in Eretz Yisrael, the land of
Israel?
Although the diaspora is deeply rooted,
let's not forget that it derives much of its vigor from
what binds it — the State of Israel.
Yes, we're bound as a people by our his-
tory and heritage. But we're also bound by
the enduring firmament spread over the
biblical land of our forebears.
Created as a state in the hope-filled aftermath of our
darkest times, the Holocaust, Israel has found peace to
be elusive in the Arab-dominated Mideast. The tiny
sliver of a nation we so love has been attacked,

C

EDIT ORIAL

❑

8/3
2001

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