Israel's Time of Deja Vu
By now one has a strong sense of déjà vu every time a new truce between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is announced. Who remembers or can count how many such truces there have been in the past? Some lasted for weeks and others only for hours, but all collapsed in the end. Why assume that this time will be different?
Indeed, it probably won't be. It doesn't take much to break a Palestinian-Israeli cease-fire: A shot fired here, a person killed there, a bomb or rocket in reaction — and we are already back to square one.
Still, under the present circumstances there's no reason not to try again. Neither side has a better alternative. Despite all its firepower and technology, Israel has been unable, even while killing hundreds of Palestinian fighters, to put an end to rocket attacks from Gaza. Nothing short of the military reoccupation of the Gaza Strip, which would be extremely costly both militarily and politically, could accomplish this — and such an accomplishment would dissipate on the day the reoccupying force left.
The Palestinians, too, have been getting nowhere. More precisely, they have been going backwards. Life in the Gaza Strip today is worse than at any time since the area became a separate entity in 1948. Life in the West Bank is not quite as bad, but it's bad enough to make the years before the Oslo agreement seem like a golden age. And until there's at least a semblance of peace and quiet, which would enable Israel to relax its military grip, and a Hamas or pseudo-Hamas government to obtain international recognition and funds, nothing will get any better.
A truce, then, is a logical step for both Israel and the Palestinians, who together will quickly have to extend it from Gaza to the West Bank if it is to have any chance of holding for even a few days. Any new cycle of violence in the West Bank, where Israel has military advantages that it doesn't have in Gaza, will inevitably spill into the latter as the Palestinians seek to retaliate from a position of relative strength.
And even with the West Bank included, a truce poses major risks for both sides. For Israel, the main danger is that the Palestinians in Gaza, now that their border with Egypt is not patrolled by Israeli forces, will go on smuggling arms with impunity, acquiring weapons that will make the next round of fighting — if and when it takes place — more like the battle with Hezbollah in Lebanon last summer. For the Palestinians, the danger is that the truce will be nothing more than that. Political negotiations will not ensue, and although the Palestinians' quality of life will improve, they will still be living under Israel's thumb while exacting no price for it.
If not countered, these risks will sooner or later spell the end of this truce too, even if both sides do their best to observe it. Either Israel, confronted with the makings of a Palestinian army in Gaza equipped with long-range rockets, anti-tank-and-aircraft missiles, heavy mortars, and so forth, will have to launch a preventive strike before the buildup goes too far, or else the Palestinians, frustrated by the lack of political progress, will once more resort to terror in order to demonstrate that Israel cannot simply sit back and enjoy the status quo.
Is there a way to prevent this from happening? Perhaps not. A lot depends on the international community, whose record in arranging and enforcing conflict-ending agreements is not, unfortunately, a shining one.
But one is always free to imagine, however wishfully. And one can imagine something like this:
(1) In return for committing itself to observing a strict cease-fire with Israel for a specified number of years — 10 would seem a reasonable minimum, though more would be desirable — and to accepting international inspection of its border with Egypt and its acquisition of weaponry, a Hamas-governed Palestinian Authority would be recognized by Europe and America and given commensurate aid, with the understanding that such support would be immediately revoked should the truce with Israel be breached.
(2) In return for agreeing to observe the ceasefire for the same number of years, and for undertaking a phased withdrawal of its army and settlements from all of the West Bank apart from those parts of it lying within the Israeli security fence, Israel would be guaranteed both international supervision of West Bank demilitarization and European and American acquiescence in its retention of the in-fence areas pending an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty. In the absence of such a treaty, these areas would continue to be regarded as Israel's.
Such an arrangement would have clear benefits for both sides. Hamas would be able to free 90% of the West Bank from Israeli settlements and control and to claim victory in having obtained international legitimacy and assistance without being made to recognize Israel, with which its truce or hudna would be fully consistent with its interpretation of Islamic law. Israel, on the other hand, would achieve the same objectives it had originally hoped to achieve by means of the Sharon-Olmert "unilateral disengagement" plan, which has been in the freezer since last summer's war in Lebanon — namely, ridding itself of the demographic threat of a large West Bank Palestinian population while retaining the largest and most important of its settlements.
A peace agreement, it wouldn't be. An invitation to resumption of armed conflict some time in the future, it definitely might be. But it could turn a short-term truce into a long-term armistice, not unlike that which prevailed between Israel and its Arab neighbors between 1948 and 1967, in a way that would enable both sides to fulfill many of their goals without relinquishing any of them. It's worth thinking about.
Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.
