A number of elements of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s foreign policy address last week at the University of Louisville warrant particular attention and praise. He unambiguously characterized Palestinian terror as terror, ending a frustrating and painful period during which the State Department contortedly sought to distinguish between Osama bin Laden-like “people trying to destroy societies” and Palestinian “political issues that need to be resolved.”
Powell straightforwardly called upon Palestinian leadership to “end violence, stop incitement and prepare their people for the hard compromises ahead” and upon all Arabs to “make unmistakably clear…their acceptance of Israel.” And he made a refreshing appeal for “all of us [to] face up to some fundamental truths,” which he then enumerated. Indeed, true peace can never be achieved unless it is founded on reality and truth.
However, Powell still omitted four fundamental truths. Unless these truths are also acknowledged and addressed, the future path of negotiations is likely to again lead us into a rocky, prickly ravine.
*Omitted Fundamental Truth No. 1: Yasser Arafat is not the man. The Palestinian president had his historic chance to make peace with Israel and he blew it. While all had hopes that he would be another Anwar Sadat or Nelson Mandela, he has shown himself over the past year to be an unrepentant terrorist, drawing upon violence when it suits his political agenda. He sowed terror in Jordan in 1970, in Lebanon in 1980 and now in Israel over the past 14 months, despite his “solemn” word, witnessed by the president of the United States. He is not committed to peaceful dialogue. His word is meaningless. Israelis will not trust anything he signs his name to.
Arafat has also shown that he and his leadership cannot tolerate even the talk of compromise. Nor are they prepared to declare an end to the conflict and a resolution of all outstanding claims, as Israel required in return for its own maximal offers. In a recent interview, then-Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami wistfully described the negotiations at Taba, Egypt, where Israel’s offer was at 100 percent of the territory: “You had to be blind and deaf not to understand that it was all going down the tubes. But despite everything, they didn’t budge…I remember looking at them and thinking to myself that I don’t see any sense of tragedy on their faces. I don’t see the pain of a missed opportunity in their eyes.”
*Omitted Fundamental Truth No. 2: Israel must assume that violence can erupt again. Even if diplomatic negotiations are renewed with new Palestinian leadership, Israel cannot go in with the blind hope and faith that guided it at Oslo. Then, the euphoria of the moment seduced Israeli leaders away from adequate consideration of and provision for the possibility of the talks’ failure. Israel cannot make the same mistake again. It took risks for peace, as the United States encouraged it to do, and it has now paid dearly. Israel must assume now that no matter how many guarantees and promises it receives, the Palestinians may use violence again at any time as a political weapon. This fundamental truth will surely shape Israel’s stance.
*Omitted Fundamental Truth No. 3: Terrorism must be fought with an attitude of “absolute zero” tolerance. The wanton murder of hundreds of innocent men, women and children is absolute evil. So are the perpetrators, planners and patrons. The only way to eradicate the culture of terrorism is with absolute zero ambiguity that such acts are acts of terror. Absolute zero mercy for even would-be terrorists and those who support them even marginally. Absolute zero yielding to terrorism, even by private citizens who should continue going about their lives — while alert to possible further attacks as they were before. And absolute zero reward for terrorism. Anyone considering embarking on the path of terror must know in advance the utter futility, even counter-productivity, of his effort. The only way to stop terrorism is to totally eliminate the hope of any possible daylight, any possible gain.
Thus, the past year of violence and terrorism must be rewarded with absolute zero political gain. Hence my concern that talk of Palestinian statehood has become more pronounced precisely at this moment. Hence my further concern about the current pressure on Israel by the European Union and, more quietly, by the State Department to forgo the seven days of total quiet before moving into the next phases of the Mitchell Plan, essentially yielding to ongoing terrorism.
*Omitted Fundamental Truth No. 4: Peace will not reign in the Middle East until the oligarchic, despotic regimes that dominate the region cease to. Although the Middle East is mostly desert, it seems to contain plenty of fertile soil for the cultivation of the malignant seeds of terrorism and violence. Unless we believe that such phenomena are rooted in Islam, we must necessarily look at the political environment and ask why it is so. We must then address the symptoms, certainly, but, more important, the root causes.
As I see it, the world’s “stable flow of cheap oil” habit has caused the corruption of the political structure of the Middle East. Despite the huge inflow of revenue over decades, the oil-producing countries have failed to develop their economies, and large portions of their people live in illiteracy, poverty and, in many cases, oppression. Hatred of others is used to divert their attention from their misery and their own despotic leaders.
Oil has been used by the Arab world as a lever against the United States for more than half a century. As Daniel Yergin writes in his Pulitzer-winning book, “The Prize,” King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia told President Harry Truman in the late 1940s that American support of a Jewish state would be a deathblow to American interests in the Arab world.
And oil has also led America to suppress it own core values, as it has had to coddle a string of non-democratic, repressive leaders in the region, including active condoners, if not sponsors, of violence and terrorism, like the Assads of Syria. And now, for the second time in 10 years, the United States has had to mobilize and activate a massive military force at enormous cost and risk in order to defend its oil interests. (Make no mistake. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait for its oil. And now, bin Laden, by his own previously issued statements, attacked the United States over its troops in Saudi Arabia and its treatment of Iraq.)
It has come time for America to fully comprehend the fundamental truths about the real cost of its cheap-oil policy in terms of money, lives and faithfulness to its values. Supporting expansion of “political openness and tolerance” in the Middle East, in the words of Powell, is a laudatory objective that may address the symptoms. But the fundamental truth is that, unless the core issue, U.S. energy policy, is revisited and the non-democratic regimes that it sustains are eliminated, it will be hard to achieve the goal of true peace in the Middle East.