Freedom fight or terrorism? Endless violence in Mideast

Gwynne Dyer, Journalist, London

The Palestinians are clearly forgetful people, so Avi Pasner's task is probably hopeless. The Israeli government spokesman said after last Thursday's massacre of Israelis at a wedding party in Hadera that "we are going to teach the Palestinian Authority a lesson they will not forget" -- but Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been administering these lessons' to the Palestinians for over forty years now with no result.

The tit-for-tat vendetta that the Palestinians call "the intifada" and the Israelis call "terrorism" has killed just over 800 people in the past sixteen months, but it blights ten thousand lives for every one it takes. Two whole communities are forced to live in perpetual fear and anger, and the instinct for retaliation is so deeply entrenched that it's hard to believe it could ever stop.

Abed Hassouna, the youth who shot up the wedding hall, was taking revenge for last week's killing of Raed Karmi, one of the leaders of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, by a bomb planted by an Israeli government assassination squad. They were taking revenge for various killings that they believed Karmi had committed (they'd already tried to get him with a rocket fired from a helicopter a couple of months ago, but only killed the passengers in his car), and he no doubt had deaths to avenge as well.

"And so the wheel turns," as an Israeli soldier wearily said to me twenty years ago during the invasion of Lebanon. That war lasted for 18 years in one form or another, taking lives every month, before Israel pulled back to its own border. But it did end eventually, and this conflict can too.

There is an example unfolding right now of how a long and bitter struggle can end, right in the region. It is in Cyprus, where the partition took place only 28 years ago, not 54 years ago, and where there hasn't been any fighting for a long time now. But it is still a highly relevant example.

In both cases, it was Muslims versus non-Muslims in a former British colony, though in Cyprus the non-Muslims are Christian Greeks while in the Israel-Palestine area they are Jewish Israelis. In both cases the non-Muslims greatly out-number and out-gun their Muslim adversaries, who do not even control a legally recognized state. But both Muslim minorities have much more powerful friends in the region: Turkey for the Turkish- Cypriots and the adjacent Arab states for the Palestinians.

In both cases, therefore, the side with the whip-hand at the local level nevertheless acts like a threatened minority because it is outnumbered at the regional level. Israelis, with the strongest armed forces between Italy and India and nuclear weapons to boot, habitually behave as though they were one step away from the cliff's edge, and Greek-Cypriots (four-fifths of Cyprus's population) also think and act like underdogs. As for the real underdogs, Turkish-Cypriots and Palestinian Arabs, they are even less confident and less generous.

This is a formula for stalemate and, ultimately, tit-for-tat murder and massacre, which is what both places have seen for longish stretches of time. At the time, it's hard to believe that it can ever end -- but it may be ending now in Cyprus.

As the wedding guests were dying in Hadera, two old men (joint age 159) were meeting in Nicosia's abandoned airport in the front-line "dead zone" that divides the Cypriot capital and the whole island. Greek-Cypriot leader Glafkos Clerides and Turkish- Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash have known each other since they first squared off against each other in the then-British colony's courts in 1950, and they haven't much time left. Clerides will retire next year, and Denktash is seriously ill with diabetes.

It's not just two old men in a hurry who make this umpteenth round of talks about Cyprus so hopeful, however. It is the imminent prospect of Cyprus joining the European Union (final negotiations start this December) that has finally provided what may be the right incentive: The Greek-Cypriots want in because it will bring them greater prosperity, and the Turkish-Cypriots want in because it will save them from great economic misery.

Greece itself has said it will veto the EU's twelve-country expansion plans altogether if Cyprus doesn't make it. Turkey wants to join the EU, but isn't even on the short list, so it is using both stick and carrot: Promising to be reasonable if the two sides can agree on a bi-zonal solution, but threatening to annex Northern Cyprus (which it controls militarily) if Cyprus joins without a deal.

The problems are just as thorny as in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and success is not guaranteed. Where should the boundaries run? How many refugees can return? How is mutual security to be guaranteed? But there is a message here for those who are tempted by despair. When the conditions are right, a deal becomes possible.

What are the right conditions? For Cyprus, they include twenty years with virtually no shooting, a rather more equal balance of power on the ground than prevails on the Israeli-Palestinian front, a more even-handed approach by outside powers, especially the United States -- and some really big incentive for compromise. So the Israelis and Palestinians will still have to wait for a while (and some more of them will die). But it can be done there too. Sooner or later, it probably will be done.