SUPPORT OUR
SPONSORS

Organic Valley

Dr. Bronner's
Magic Soaps

Botani Organic

Aloha Bay

Eden Foods

Ode Magazine

Mountain
Rose Herbs

The Green Guide

The Bloody Jordan River Now Flows
Through America

Gary Kamiya, Salon
September 18, 2001

Americans are preparing for the long, arduous and necessary task of bringing
the perpetrators of Tuesday's unspeakable horror to justice. But as we do
so, we must also ask ourselves why this happened -- and why it might happen
again. Striking back at those who have viciously attacked us is a first
step. But if we don't address the underlying reasons why we were attacked,
we will invite more hatred, and in the end more attacks. We can turn our
country into Fortress America, but no fortress can defend against zealots
willing to die. In the end our best, our only real defense will be winning
the hearts and minds of those who hate us.

Of course, some of those minds neither can nor should be won. Some people
from less fortunate nations hate America because it is the world's only
military and economic superpower. Others detest us because of our
all-conquering culture. Others see us as godless infidels simply because we
don't subscribe to their psychotic version of Islam. There is nothing we can
or should do about any of these things.

Those who carried out Tuesday's attacks were clearly driven, in large part,
by religious fanaticism. The perpetrators were Arab terrorists, linked to
the Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden and his followers are zealous
Muslims who regard America as the enemy of Islam, and therefore an entity of
essentially metaphysical evil. There is nothing we can or should do to
lessen the medieval fury of such monomania. Bin Laden's zealots' hatred for
America is an article of faith: nothing will change it.

But as we look down the long, dangerous road that lies ahead, we must
remember that there is one specific grievance that rankles in the breasts of
millions of Arab and Islamic people in the world. And until that grievance
is resolved, there is a greater possibility that one of those people will
decide to strike a terrible blow at the United States.

The critical issue is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- a conflict in
which the United States plays a reluctant central role. Until a just
resolution of that conflict is realized -- one that provides a homeland for
the Palestinian people and security for Israel -- it will be far more
difficult for America to put together a truly committed coalition to fight
terrorism, one that is not simply held together by coercion. And there is a
far greater chance that military action against Islamic states will
backfire, inflaming a significant portion of the world's population against
us and breeding thousands of terrorists where there once were dozens.

This is bin Laden's master strategy. We cannot allow it to succeed.

To ensure that it does not, America must boldly take the lead in the Middle
East. We must pressure Israel to take the concrete steps necessary to
provide justice for the Palestinian people.

The Israeli government is incapable of taking such steps. The latest
evidence came Friday, when, incredibly, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
cancelled scheduled peace talks with Palestinian Authority president Yassir
Arafat at the same time that he was launching Israel's most aggressive
military action in the last year against Palestinians. These are the actions
of a man more interested in scoring political points by letting his
adversary twist in the wind than in searching for peace. The Bush
administration, which in the aftermath of the attacks had asked Sharon to
get the peace talks moving again, was left in the usual American posture --
wringing its hands impotently.

It's time for this to change.

It is legitimate to ask whether shifting America's Mideast policy, in the
aftermath of a horrific terrorist attack, would not signal to terrorists
that they had won. The answer is no. This is not appeasement, nor a
surrender to our enemies. Moving toward a just resolution of the Middle East
crisis, one that preserves Israel's security while providing a nation for
the Palestinians, is simply the right thing to do -- as it was before Black
Tuesday, and as it will be after we hunt down and bring to justice the evil
men who made a cold-blooded decision to kill thousands of innocent people.
The difference is that after Tuesday, doing the right thing has acquired a
different urgency.

For far too long, the United States has pretended to stand on the sidelines
of a conflict in which we are not neutral, passively endorsing a situation
in which bottled-up Palestinian rage has grown and grown until it has
exploded in a terrible paroxysm of violence, bringing horror to Israelis and
Palestinians alike. And every day that the situation remains unresolved
plants the seeds of more Arab and Islamic hatred -- of Israel, and of
Israel's best friend, the United States. Tuesday's horrific attack might
have taken place even if Israel and the Palestinians were at peace. Nor
would Mideast peace assure us that no more terrorist attacks would take
place. But this we know: as long as millions of Islamic and Arab people hate
America because of its Mideast policies, we will be in danger.

The plight of the Palestinians is the single most important issue to most
Arabs. Professor Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland conducted a
poll in which citizens of five nations -- Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates -- were asked how important the
Palestinian issue was to them personally. In four nations, 60 percent said
it was the most important. In Egypt, reviled throughout the Arab world as
the state that made peace with Israel, 79 percent said it was.

For are such sentiments confined to the Middle East. In small anti-U.S.
demonstrations Sunday in Rawalpindi, Pakistan -- the Muslim nation that is
the key to our diplomatic and military efforts to apprehend bin Laden --
demonstrators chanted slogans attacking the U.S. over the Palestinian issue.

What does this have to do with America? Everything. It is difficult for
Americans, thousands of miles away from a conflict for which they feel no
responsibility, to realize how people in the Middle East -- indeed, in much
of the Third World -- view us. For many, perhaps most Arabs -- including
those in the moderate states, as well as that vast majority of the Arab
world that is well disposed to the American people -- America is virtually
indistinguishable from Israel. The bitter joke in the region is that Israel
isn't a client state of the United States -- the United States is a client
state of Israel. The refugees in the squalid camps in Gaza may not know that
Israel is the primary recipient of our foreign aid, receiving $2 billion
annually in military aid, but they know Israel could not do what it's doing
without us. The jets that fire missiles into Palestinian buildings, the
tanks and helicopter gunships that enforce Israeli control of the occupied
territories in the West Bank and Gaza, might as well have big pictures of
Uncle Sam painted on the side.

And people ask, "Why do they hate us?"

If this were a case of good vs. evil, the righteous Israelis fighting for
their survival against the evil Arabs, it would be a cause worth America
enduring the hatred of millions of people. But it is not. No one in the
world, aside from some segment of the Israeli public and, apparently, the
U.S. government, believes this. The Third World doesn't believe it. The
United Nations doesn't believe it. Our European allies don't believe it. And
most Americans don't believe it -- although in the horrifying spasm of
mindless anti-Arab sentiment that is gripping the country now, who knows if
that will continue to be true.

Let us be absolutely clear: if Israel is not a moral exemplar, neither are
the Palestinians or the Arab states. There are no heroes and villains here.
Nothing can condone the Palestinian terror attacks against Israel, any more
than anything can condone the intransigence on both sides that has led to
them. The day has long passed when anyone could seriously look at the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict as anything but a train wreck, a horrifying
collision in which every noble impulse and belief immediately runs into its
opposite.

A people persecuted for thousands of years, subject to the most horrifying
act of genocide visited upon any group in human history, finally finds a
homeland where they can be free -- only to discover that another group of
people, with equal claim to the land, was already there.

Another impoverished and oppressed group of people, driven from their
ancestral homes by an occupying force into wretched refugee camps, or left
on the margins of the society created by that occupying force, turning in
their desperation to religious fanaticism and suicidal violence.

On both sides, leaders without the courage to make peace. Decent men and
women on both sides driven to hopelessness and hatred. And endless blood.

That is the situation. But it may still be possible to find a way out of
this tragic deadlock -- if America has the courage to step in. Only the
United States has the power to broker a deal that will provide lasting peace
between Israel and Palestine. Hitherto, we have lacked the will to do so.
Perhaps Tuesday's horrific events will provide the impetus to find that
will.

Exactly what the final form of a peace settlement between Israel and the
Palestinians should or will take is impossible to say. Nor is ultimate
success assured. The hatred and mistrust is deeper than ever; perhaps a
point of no return has been reached. But the effort must be made. And the
crucial initial step is obvious, as it has been for many years: Israel must
immediately stop building new settlements in the occupied territories.

Freezing construction of new settlements is the critical step called for in
this spring's Mitchell Report on Mideast violence -- a reasonable,
even-handed document that assigned blame to both Israel and the Palestinians
and was completely ignored by all parties, most glaringly the only one that
had the power to make it happen, the United States.

Israel's construction of settlements in the occupied territories taken in
the 1967 war violates international law, including the Fourth Geneva
Convention, which, in the language of the Mitchell report, "prohibits Israel
(as an occupying power) from establishing settlements in occupied territory
pending an end to the conflict." U.S. administrations from Reagan to the
present have opposed the settlements. Their existence is the first point
brought up by Palestinians in conversations about Israel.

It is true, as the Mitchell Report acknowledges, that the Palestinians bear
their share of the blame for continuing to launch attacks against Israel.
But playing the blame game at this point is a sterile exercise, and the
stakes are Israeli and Palestinian lives. To break the cycle of violence a
bold step must be taken. A freeze -- or, better still, a freeze combined
with a dismantling of existing settlements -- would be the single most
positive step Israel could take toward restoring trust between itself and
the Palestinians. As an editorial in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz said, "A
government which seeks to argue that its goal is to reach a solution to the
conflict with the Palestinians through peaceful means, and is trying at this
stage to bring an end to the violence and terrorism, must announce an end to
construction in the settlements."

There should be no illusions that this by itself would bring peace. Although
most Israelis agree that no new settlements should be built, months of
bloody terror have eroded their trust in the Palestinians. And they are led
by Ariel Sharon, a hard-liner who knows no response to terror but
counter-terror. Sharon has refused to stop building the settlements, saying
he does not want to reward Palestinian violence and citing security
concerns. But until the Palestinians are given genuine hope, there will be
no security for Israel.

Faced with this stalemate, the Bush administration has done nothing -- not
only on the settlement issue, but on anything relating to the Middle East.
Fearing it will humiliatingly fail as the Clinton administration failed
before it, it skulks haplessly on the sidelines. The mightiest country in
the world is reduced to mumbling earnestly, "The cycle of violence must
stop," as bombs keep exploding and people keep dying.

It's time for America to start throwing its weight around -- not just with
the Islamic states like Pakistan that offer second-hand harbor to
terrorists, but with Israel. There should be no great difficulty in getting
the Israelis to do what we want: Just tell them that if they don't, we won't
give them any more money. It's remarkable how persuasive $3 billion a year
can be, the total amount of military and civilian aid we lavish on our
Mideast partner.

At the same time as we lean on the Israelis, we also must squeeze Arafat.
The Palestinian leader and those who follow him must be told that further
outbreaks of violence will abrogate the whole deal. And he must also be told
that at the end of the day (and it's going to be a very short day) the
Palestinian people are not going to get significantly more than what they
almost got at Camp David -- that tragic missed opportunity for whose
failure, as incisive articles in the New York Times and the Aug. 9 New York
Review of Books have demonstrated, Arafat, Barak, and Clinton must all
shoulder the blame.

The U.S. must give the Palestinians muscular assurance that their basic
needs as a sovereign state will be met. Those needs are summed up by Rob
Malley and Hussein Agha in the New York Review of Books: "a viable,
contiguous Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza with Arab East
Jerusalem as its capital and sovereignty over its Muslim and Christian holy
sites; meaningful sovereignty; and a just settlement of the refugee issue."

But just as the Israelis must give something up, so too must the
Palestinians. There is no other realistic path to peace. They will not get
everything they want. They must be told that they will not get universal
right of return for all those Palestinians who were displaced by the
creation of the state of Israel, or control of all of the West Bank or
Jerusalem.

Arafat is a gravely flawed leader, torn between realism and maximalist
mythology. After he failed to embrace the imperfect but viable solution
offered by Barak and Clinton at Camp David, even many liberal Israelis
concluded that he was not seriously interested in making peace. But he is a
better partner than anyone else on the horizon. And a bold American move
at this crucial moment -- with Arab leaders realizing that after Tuesday, the
rules of the game have changed forever -- could shake Arafat, and the
moderate frontline Arab states, out of their anti-American posturing and
into constructive action. Neither the PLO nor any Arab state wants a future
in which a deadlocked Israeli-Palestinian conflict breeds endless terrorism,
which in turn unleashes the full might of American military force against
the Arab world.

As for the Israelis, the deal would also guarantee that America would stand
behind their core demands. Those are, again in Malley and Agha's words, "its
continued existence as a Jewish state; genuine security; Jewish Jerusalem as
its recognized capital; respect and acknowledgment of its connection to holy
Jewish sites."

Would America be putting Israel at risk by, in effect, forcing it to blink
first? Not if America stood behind its words. If the Palestinian Authority
in the interim period towards full statehood proved unable or unwilling to
control radical rejectionists, America would stand behind Israel in its
retaking of the occupied territory previously ceded to the Palestinians. In
effect, everything would return to the previous, bloody status quo.

And if there is some risk in the deal -- so what? The situation now is
intolerable.

There is, of course, no guarantee that this plan would succeed. But it would
be a way of breaking the bloody deadlock in the region. It would offer hope.
And, crucially, it would take place in the context of a broader diplomatic
initiative to the Islamic world, a mission in which we will need every card
we can play. It would make a clear and emphatic statement to the Islamic
states -- at precisely the moment when we might be taking military action
against Islamic regimes that harbor terrorists, a move that could inspire a
new generation of terrorists with an implacable hatred of America -- that it
is a new day, that Israel is not the tail that wags the American dog.

No one can say that stepping into the Middle East quagmire will stop future
terror attacks against the United States. The world is full of angry zealots
with a laundry list of grievances. Bin Laden and his maniacal ilk might
continue to plot mayhem against us no matter what we do. But it could help,
and it is the right thing to do.

It is also the wise thing to do. Enraged politicians, pundits and citizens
are calling for America to lash out indiscriminately, to bomb states that
harbor terrorists even if innocent people are killed -- rabid reactions
epitomized by columnist Ann Coulter, who wrote, "We should invade their
countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." That way
madness lies. As we move into uncharted territory of extraordinary
difficulty, hunting down the elusive and bloodthirsty foes responsible for
history's worst act of terrorism, we must ensure our efforts do not ignite a
conflagration of anti-American hatred throughout the Arab world. To do this
we must convince that world that we are genuinely interested in brokering a
fair and comprehensive peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

There will be those who point to the televised images of Palestinians
celebrating the attacks as proof that these people hate us too much to ever
be partners in peace. Such a reaction is understandable, but it is wrong. No
one can condone celebrating the murder of innocent people. But hopeless,
desperate people are driven to do ugly things. In their hearts, the
Palestinians, like the Israelis, like Americans, like all the people of the
world, want the same things. Peace. A country. A decent life. The little
girls in Nablus lighting candles in memory of those who died in New York
City are the real face of the Palestinian people. Our goal must be to act in
such a way that some day, if an earthquake rocks Tel Aviv, those little
girls will light candles for its victims, too.

On Tuesday, America turned into Israel. The sudden, obscene horror. The
nightmarish images. The anguish of families torn apart, of cherished lives
suddenly snuffed out.

On Tuesday, America also turned into Palestine. The same horror. The same
images. The same anguish.

Today, the Jordan river runs through the center of every city in America.
Palestinians and Israelis have waded through that river of blood and tears
for decades: On Tuesday, we received our terrible baptism. Like the human
beings who live in Jerusalem and Ramallah, we know we are not safe, not any
more. We must finally accept that what happens in Ramallah and Jerusalem on
Monday will happen in New York and Washington, or San Francisco and Chicago,
on Tuesday.

If America succeeds in unifying the world against terrorism, while helping
bring peace to the world's most dangerous and intractable conflict and
draining the venom from old hatreds, the unthinkable tragedy that has
befallen us might yield a lasting good.

Gary Kamiya is Salon's executive editor.