The difficult decision to react with inaction

A political leader, by virtue of the office, must mediate between two dichotomous personas that determine the nature of policy enacted. The first is that of the private citizen concerned with all the exigencies an ordinary citizen would be. Often the citizenry's concern takes the form of a visceral response, and they demand of their leader actions which assuage their passion, actions which, as a private citizen himself, he would condone. The second persona of the leader is that of the politician. He is not simply a private citizen, but also a public one, for his job is to act in the name of his people's best interests, not simply according to his own concerns. The difficulty lies in discerning what the peoples' best interest is; since the leader is beholden to his people's will, would not assuaging their passion be considered acting in their interest? This, however, would be a grave mistake because the position of political leader exists because the citizenry is unable to manage their affairs on their own; that is, by allowing passion to rule discord follows. This dichotomy of personas is manifest in the current Israeli political leadership and their responses to Palestinian terrorism, who are unsure whether to be private citizens in control or politicians guiding their state to its best interests.

The natural reaction after someone has blown up a myriad of one's fellow countrymen is swift revenge. Israel is one of the world's foremost military powers, defeating virtually the entire Arab world in four major wars, and has managed to survive despite the enduring hatred of a significant part of the Arab population who are committed to driving Israel into the sea. Its enemies today, the Palestinians and the Islamic fundamentalists, are so inferior to the Israelis in terms of military might, that to the Israeli citizenry it is ludicrous that the terrorists could be hurting them so badly. How can such a thing be possible if Israel truly does have one of the world's foremost militaries? It should not be hard for Americans, especially after Sept. 11, to sympathize with Israel's desire to retaliate with all their power. For Americans the war in Afghanistan, even more than eliminating the terrorists, restores our faith in our strength and security. We are a peaceful people by nature, but the terrorists initiated a war and we will end it. Can we really fault Israel for responding as it does when 20 of its people are blown up on the first night of Passover, the night when Jews celebrate the thwarting of Pharaoh's plan to eliminate them? The attacks thus bear a special poignancy for Jews, who see these terrorists as little different from Ramses II, or Adolf Hitler. Hitler managed to kill six million Jews, trying to wipe them from the face of the earth. Will Israel today let that happen even though it is so powerful? Every Israeli tank, plane and soldier represents a ward, both physical and psychological, against all those who have tried to kill Jews. Whereas some have almost succeed in the past, Israel will never let them succeed in the future.

We must, therefore, understand Arial Sharon's military response to the terrorist attacks; our President, a civilian, responded in much the same way, and Sharon is an eminent former general. Nonetheless, responding militarily to every terrorist attack is the wrong response because it ignores the political aspects of the situation. As a political leader, Sharon must identify what his nation's interest is, then narrowly tailor every action so that it promotes that interest. Any action which does not promote the national interest is a faulty one, and action without a political strategy runs the risk of incoherence. Israel needs and wants peace, so how do they achieve it? Viscerally, the people and Sharon see the tool to secure peace to be military victory. A dispassionate analysis of the situation, however, would show this to be the worst tool for doing anything but placating the people's desire for revenge.

Instead, Sharon must make the difficult decision to react to terrorist attacks with inaction. Clearly action has not worked, and has only exacerbated the conflict. Inaction, on the other hand, would mitigate the Palestinian desire to blow themselves up. They too see their actions as revenge; eliminate the cause for revenge and many of the attacks would be eliminated — note how many fewer attacks there were before Sharon came to power. Israel must couple its demands for a cease-fire with restarting of the process of giving the Palestinian people a homeland. Israel has tried to do this in the past, but the effort has failed largely due to the ineptitude of the Palestinian government, or rather lack of government. Nevertheless, of all the bad options Israel has, not making incursions into Palestinian territory is the least bad.

This option has the greatest prospect for achieving peace, whereas the military option has the worst prospect for achieving it. Regardless of whether or not inaction has worked in the past, or how much one desires revenge, it must be understood that as a political leader Sharon must formulate his strategy so as to best advance the cause of peace, not revenge. Dan Ostrow is a politics major from New York, NY. He can be reached at dtostrow@princeton.edu.