What Israelis are talking about

Jerusalem, Israel

Israelis are truth seekers, not because they are better than other peoples but because the circumstances of their lives have imposed upon them a certain respect for brutal facts. And the most brutal fact is that the Palestinians, their neighbors, still live with the illusion, shared with some other Arabs and with Iran, that Israel is an epiphenomenon that will somehow come undone. Not by itself but by the force of Palestinian resistance against it. (Are the Palestinians still convinced that their fellow believers will also sacrifice themselves for Al Quds?) If one looks hard at this pretension it is actually laughable. Still, the fertile Arab imagination of endless humiliation and endless revenge--a trope which, if we judge from the sanguinary riots against the Danish cartoons in the world of Islam, Palestinians share with many Muslims--is nonetheless a peril to Israel. This peril is not about life and death for the state but about the ongoing anxiety over the shedding of Jewish blood which Palestinians generally believe is natural and justified. For many Palestinians, and perhaps even most, the murder of Jews is a routine, and should be. For the Israelis, it cannot be so. It was, finally, during Ariel Sharon's late tenure as prime minister, that this anxiety began to lift--but not, of course, before the bloodletting was stopped in its regular flow. Israel's military and security agencies, which once fought successful wars against tanks and fighter jets, now have learned how to combat terror, an ancient and ugly art, magnified in body count during the last decades by the "God is great" folk. But there are no final victories over terror, at least in this neighborhood. Like waiting for the coming of the messiah, it is steady work, but very dangerous.

And it is not an abstraction. All Israeli policy hinges on the recognition that one daren't let down one's guard. Yet there are still choices. Arriving in Israel yesterday morning, I found the newspapers and conversations with a driver and in cafés riveted on what the country's attitude to Mahmoud Abbas should be now that Hamas--the Muslim Brotherhood of Palestine, but even more extreme--has been empowered by a democratic vote in an undemocratic society. Unless Abbas quits he would be still be president. But the presidency of the Palestinian Authority isn't much of an office. The PA presidency is not formally anything like the office in the United States or, say, in France. He was powerless--or without will--even when Hamas was not in power.

It is true that Abbas was not a terrorist like Yasir Arafat (although he was a Holocaust denier). He did not wear a military uniform or a gun or, for that matter, a kaffiyeh. But, at the same time, he did not stop terrorists from Islamic Jihad, from Hamas, or from the gangs that emerged from his own political party, Fatah. In asserting that, with Hamas forming a government because of its overwhelming legislative majority, Abbas was irrelevant, Tzipi Livni, the present Israeli foreign minister, was asking: If he was useless or powerless even to advance negotiations before, what possible influence can he have when a party that runs what there is of Palestine does not actually want talks at all? It is a powerful question.

But Kadima, the party of Ariel Sharon which has morphed into the party of Ehud Olmert and Israel's genuine center, is not quite united in asking it. Olmert, for example, restated her query without really altering it, saying for himself that he hoped Abbas wouldn't resign. If he doesn't resign, it will bolster the illusion that he still has authority and that he exercises it in the cause of compromise and peace. But Shimon Peres, who has borne many on the nation's left to Kadima and who cannot bear to think that he is not living in a peaceful and new Middle East, spoke heartily of Abbas's centrality in the peace process, more or less what he used to intone about Arafat till just before the rais' passing. This is an ignominious precedent.

It probably doesn't really matter one way or another whether Abbas remains ensconced in Arafat's old quarters at the Muqata in Ramallah. For the time being, Palestine will be run from Gaza. And even if Abbas can come and go, the leaders of Hamas can't. Of course, Israel will not permit fanatics who want its extinction to go to and fro in the West Bank and Gaza. It is whether to have relations with them and what kind that is now on the agenda of the powers.

Predictably, as the editorial in last week's issue of TNR pointed out, from Moscow came the declaration that "[t]he Russian Foreign Ministry has never regarded Hamas as a terrorist organization." (An invitation to the Kremlin preceded this.) And something quite close to that from the French. Israelis see this as a moment of truth in the struggle against Islamofascist terrorism. Even Israel's left is not ready to exculpate Hamas from its murderous habits. Not even it was convinced by the PA's new prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, when he told The Washington Post that Hamas was ready for some kind of "peace in stages." Oops, he was misunderstood. By the next day, Haniyeh was retracing and retracting: "I only said that when Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, including Jerusalem, and releases all the prisoners and detainees, then we would be able to talk about a long-term hudna (truce)." You deliver first and then we'll talk about what comes after a long respite. And what comes after that?

Of course, the European Union and those governments that are edging their way to dealing with Hamas have not been candid with their publics. The first issue they prefer to address is the financial straits of the PA and its more emotional, more heartrending "humanitarian" consequences. (The humanitarian crisis among the Palestinians is always at the top of Europe's list and of the United Nations' list, too. Why not Darfur for a change? Or some place else in immiserated Africa?) My friend James Wolfensohn, envoy of the Quartet (the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations) that is sponsor of the spotty traces of the "road map," has been sounding the alarms for the Palestinian exchequer, and squeezed some $143 million out of the Europeans that, if God is truly great, will not go into the pockets of the official kleptocracy. Khaled Abu Toameh, a fearless Arab reporter for The Jerusalem Post, noted in Monday's paper that "Farhat As'ad, a Hamas representative in the West Bank, said the EU's decision to transfer funds to the PA marked the beginning of 'climbing down from the high tree' after threats to cut off financial aid to the Palestinians in the wake of Hamas' victory." He is probably right. Given Hamas's deeds on buses and in cafés, in malls and at hotels, what will we make of the West's war with the terrorists if it supports them once they win a vote? Maybe it's that Hamas simply targets Israeli civilians, which must be much less evil than targeting passengers on the London underground.

Why has Europe become the paymaster of the Palestinian movement? There's little sense, after all, that the Palestinians are motivated by some vision of a just society. Quite to the contrary: There is great evidence that "free" Palestine would be a place of torment for all who really seek liberty and justice and equality. Try to imagine what rule by Hamas will look like. Think about Iran, its exuberant patron and ally, with a promise of a quarter of a billion dollars pronto. For the Palestinians, that's big money. Europe hints that if you don't want Tehran to be writing the checks to Hamas, let us do it. Yet that's what Europe has been doing for two generations and more, without influence or sway. The Europeans have been and still are suckers.

But why hasn't the Arab Middle East taken on the role of banker to the Palestinians? Awash with oil revenues of $473 billion last year, an estimated $500 billion or more this year, $300 billion in excess liquidity, stock mania on all of the securities exchanges in the region, the Arabs will not help pay for the quotidian needs of the Palestinians. Yes, some small millions are euchred out of them for ordinary budgets. But what they will subsidize on a grand scale are the families of martyrs and the murderous operations of their sons. Come to think of it, these are not huge sums in this region either.

There's talk, too, in Israel about the government of the United Arab Emirates' takeover through Dubai Ports World (DPW) of six American ports. Maybe not as much talk here as there is in the United States. But an article by Michael Freund, also in The Jerusalem Post, has stirred some surprise. The country seems to have already absorbed the sheer stupidity of handing port operations to a government company of a state that has, let's say it gently, a mixed record on terrorism. It also turns out that the company is an enthusiastic participant in the Arab boycott of any piece of commerce that has even a component originating in Israel. It is illegal for U.S. companies to participate in this boycott. Alas for President Bush, the boycott is enforced in Dubai by the Ports, Customs, and Free Zone Corporation, the holding company that owns DPW. Free Zone, indeed.

Gideon Rose, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, boring coffee-table magazine for a portion of the elites, has written a gloss of what received opinion says about the ports deal for Monday's Financial Times: The company has an excellent record (how does he know?); its executives include Americans; the arrangement has cleared many procedural obstacles, etc, etc. The objections, says Rose, can be explained only by the racism of the objectors: "'Port management' sounds like something important ... and many think it cannot be left to 'wogs'." This is a scurrilous attack on those who have raised serious questions about the deal. I suppose Dubai's enforcement of the boycott of Israel isn't racist. Perhaps the managing editor of Foreign Affairs thinks it would be keen for the United States to ignore the fact that the deal he so admires rewards a company whose practices run counter to American law.

Martin Peretz is editor-in-chief of TNR.