Israel's Arab neighbors: Time to disengage?

By Gwynne Dyer

"Palestinians can expect a comparable status to that of the inhabitants of Puerto Rico or of the Principality of Andorra."

-- Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu

"It is important that people should understand that Andorra is not some kind of territory. It is a country."

-- Meritxell Mateu, Andorran ambassador to France

LONDON (JP): Netanyahu may be ignorant about Andorra, but his intention is clear: Palestinians must remain forever subject to Israel's will. And Netanyahu's current term of office only expires in the year 2000 -- so what are Israel's Arab neighbors to do?

Six months after the Likud party narrowly won power from the Labor government that negotiated the 1993 Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians, it's clear that there will be no further progress on any of the issues still to be addressed under the Oslo accords.

Netanyahu's government wants peace, of course -- but a peace in which Israel makes no concessions, gives up no land, and maintains a perpetual colonial authority over the two million Palestinians living in the occupied territories. Indeed, far from concealing that attitude, it positively flaunts it.

Just this week, Netanyahu faced the cameras beside Ron Nachman, mayor of Ariel, and boasted that particular Jewish settlement, home to around one-tenth of the 145,000 Jewish settlers on the West Bank, would double in size during his term in office.

Netanyahu's cabinet colleague Ariel Sharon said earlier this month that he plans to build two whole new cities in the West Bank, adding another 100,000 Jewish settlers to the region. And after months of stalling and weeks of intense negotiations, Netanyahu still cannot bring himself to pull Israeli troops out of most of the West Bank city of Hebron, although it was specifically agreed by the Labor government before last spring's election.

It is time for Israel's neighbors to bite the bullet -- not only about the nature of this government, but about the changed character of Israel itself.

Netanyahu won the last election narrowly, but he won it fair and square. The key elements of the population that boosted the right wing into power were the 'Oriental' Jews, the ultra- Orthodox, the settler population, and recent Russian immigrants.

Apart from the Russians, all these groups have far higher birth rates than Labor's supporters. (The 20 members of the Israeli parliament who represent the various religious parties have an average of six children each.) In future elections, these intransigent and sometimes fanatical groups will play an ever larger role, so there is little chance of the old order returning.

The right-wing Israeli academic Mordechai Nisan triumphantly summed up the change: "The emergence of a Jewish Israel -- distinct from the socialist, secular, European-style, Mediterranean-flavored, American-mimicking, bi-national, democratic one -- was the most vibrant and important result of the election."

Netanyahu's own rather Americanized style conceals the reality. For almost 50 years, Arab intellectuals have been saying that they wouldn't mind so much if Israel could only be a real Middle Eastern country rather than an arrogant western intrusion into the region. Well, they have finally got their wish. The new 'Jewish Israel' is as devout, as emotional, as irrational as you could possibly want.

So what are Israel's neighbors to do? The Palestinians, of course, have no choice: they are condemned to perpetual colonial status until and unless a renewed intifada eventually wears down Israel's resolve. But what are Egypt, Jordan and Syria to do? President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan are deeply compromised by peace agreements that were made with an Israel that effectively no longer exists.

As Palestinian frustration mounts, the next round of killing in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip may be much worse than the backlash in September after the Israeli government unilaterally opened a new tunnel entrance under Temple Mount "which expresses our sovereignty over Jerusalem," as Netanyahu put it. Seventy people were killed that time; next time, it may be hundreds -- and if Mubarak and Hussein want to survive, they had better take their distance from Israel before that happens.

President Hafiz Assad of Syria must be profoundly grateful that he didn't also sign a peace treaty with Israel. The return of the Golan Heights which was his price for peace would have been phased over a long period, and the Likud government would certainly now be reneging on that commitment, too.

That would have placed Assad in a truly desperate position, especially as he has no viable military option. Israel enjoys absolute military superiority over all its Arab neighbors combined, without even counting its large stock of nuclear weapons.

And Yasser Arafat? He will be lucky to survive at all. The Palestinian fundamentalists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad achieved their goal of wrecking the peace by deploying the suicide bombers who ensured Netanyahu's election, but their success will not be complete until they have eliminated Arafat as well.

Israel's neighbors face the nearly impossible task of hanging on for four long years, in the hope (but only a faint hope) that Israelis may then elect a government that is genuinely interested in pursuing the peace process again. To hang on, they must above all survive the anger at home against their failed peace policy.

That means the Arab leaders must cut their contacts with Israel to the bare legal minimum: no more going to summits because the Americans ask them to, no more reciprocal visits with Netanyahu, nothing that suggests they accept or approve of his actions. Otherwise, they will be gone long before Netanyahu goes.