September 11, Crisis Resolution

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Letter to the Editor
(Newsweek)

Dennis Sandole
Prof. of Conflict Resolution and International Relations
Monday, April 1, 2002

To the Editor:

The situation in the Middle East has become obscene: Israelis and
Palestinians are killing each other with grim, increasing regularity ("Sharon vs. Arafat," NEWSWEEK, April 8). Meanwhile, the international community stands by, reprimanding Chairman Arafat for failing to control and prevent Palestinian youth from blowing themselves up along with countless Israelis, while calling on Prime Minister Sharon to show restraint in his response to horrific acts of violence.

Of course, Israel has the right to defend itself, morally from the shadow of the Holocaust and juridically from the 300-plus-year Westphalian system of international law that guarantees all states this right. If the Palestinians had a state, they, too, would have this right. But at present they do not. Instead, they are encircled, isolated and militarily occupied by Israel. Hence, when they use force to defend themselves against the occupier, often using their own bodies strapped to explosives because they lack what Israel
has and uses against them -- F-16 fighter aircraft, Apache helicopter gunships, and tanks -- they are found guilty of terrorism.

In this hegemonic, Westphalian/Holocaust framing of the conflict, only Israel's use of force has legitimacy, whereas Palestinian force does not. One wonders: Is this why many Israelis and others resist the idea of a Palestinian state?

This may be a moot point: if Sharon kills enough Palestinians, as he seems intent on doing, to get them to beg for peace on his terms, perhaps Palestinian statehood will no longer be an issue. But if he kills "too many" Palestinians, he risks incurring for Israel and Jews everywhere a moral reputation that they would prefer (and ought) not to have, plus a security problem that no amount of indigenous military prowess and U.S. assistance would be able to resolve.

In the midst of this catastrophic escalation, therefore, with, as 11
September compellingly reminds us, security implications far beyond the region, the time has surely come for an effective response by the international community: a robust, U.S.-led peacemaking force that creates an impermeable wall between the two parties, allowing General Zinni and other potential third parties a breathing space for resurrecting negotiations and a peace process between a paradoxically role-reversed David and Goliath.