Rethinking Israeli withdrawal and championing free societies
Nicholas Guyatt's editorial from March 11, "Participants in the Slaughter," offers the standard, unconvincing argument for a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza without the promise of Arab reciprocation in the form of peace.
Not only is a total Israeli withdrawal from all of the territories not mandated by the relevant UN Security Council Resolutions, 242 and 338, but what Guyatt proposes is in fact inimical to the spirit of the resolutions in their demands for a termination of all states of belligerency and the holding of negotiations between the parties to establish a just and durable peace in the Middle East.
While an Israeli move, such as the one that Guyatt advocates, is unlikely to result in the establishment of peaceful relations between the Israelis and Palestinians, it is more than likely to embolden radical Arab forces in the region, just as Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000 may have been a factor in instigating the most recent intifada and its maximalist territorial demands.
Israel's relinquishing of territory should be contingent upon Palestinian fulfillment of its security obligations towards Israel enshrined in the Oslo Accords, such as the prevention of terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, by both Islamic groups and factions associated with Arafat's Fatah movement, and the imprisonment of known militants. Although Guyatt condemns Israel's most recent incursions into Palestinian refugee camps, he fails to mention that such a move was necessitated by Arafat's failure to arrest terror suspects knowingly sheltered within them.
Rather than viewing the Israeli occupation as the "most serious danger" to Israel's future, pro-Israel supporters would be better off ignoring Guyatt's plea, and instead, in their capacity as defenders of the region's only true democracy, identify the greatest threat to the security of Israel and the civilized world — namely the suppression of freedom and democratic ideals that is practiced daily by tyrannical regimes throughout the Arab world, including the Palestinian Authority.
Like Guyatt, self-described pro-Palestinian groups on campus such as the Princeton Committee on Palestine have demonstrated that they are capable of writing editorials or holding rallies to decry the "Israeli occupation" and "Israeli aggression." But for what? The real challenge, which they cannot afford to ignore forever, is whether they are similarly capable of rallying behind a vision of a democratic, free Palestinian society. Sam Spector '03
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