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(New Republic/Washington Institute for Near East Policy) Robert Satloff - Ariel Sharon has already accomplished more than enough to earn a place among Israel's giants. Sharon came to office in February 2001 while Israel was engulfed in a wave of Palestinian terror following the collapse of the Camp David peace negotiations the previous summer. At the time, conventional wisdom had it that Sharon had himself provoked the Palestinian outburst when, as opposition leader, he had visited the area of the Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount. In fact, as mountains of evidence now show, that uprising reflected the well-organized planning of Yasser Arafat. Sharon's first great achievement was to defeat the uprising, with new military strategies (retaking territory inside the Palestinian Authority, isolating Arafat, targeting terrorists and their political leaders), but also with skillful diplomacy (reaching a meeting of the minds with the new American president, George W. Bush). The cumulative impact of Israel's counterterrorist strategy raised the price of terrorism so high that many Palestinians began to yearn for the normalcy of life before the uprising. And Israel's relentless attacks against terrorist groups forced so many terrorist leaders to spend their waking hours moving from hideout to hideout that actual operations were left in chaos and disarray. By the time Sharon came to power, after Arafat had rejected Barak's generous peace offer and launched the violent uprising, he was convinced that the strategy of bilateral peacemaking had run its course - that Israel could no longer tie its fate to finding a responsible Arab partner. Israel, he concluded, would have to act on its own to determine its future. So was born the policy of unilateralism. To be sure, unilateralism is a risky and controversial policy. In the eyes of some Arabs, it reflects Israeli weakness, not strength. Moreover, the fact that Israel left Gaza without demanding any commitment to peace or security from the Palestinians is a precedent that could come to haunt Israel in the future. In recent years Israelis of all political inclinations have begun to wonder whether they would be stuck forever waiting for a Palestinian leader with whom they could deal. (An example: The Palestinian legislative election later this month pits the terrorist organization Hamas against the Fatah list, which is headed by a man serving five life sentences for his role in the murder of Israelis. Evidently, a dozen years after Oslo, killing Israelis remains the prime source of bona fides for Palestinian political aspirants.) Which pieces of this remarkable legacy will survive Sharon? My guess is that the shift in military thinking that enabled Israel to shrink the threat of terrorism is now an integral part of defense planning. Similarly, the shift from bilateralism to unilateralism is likely to last too, because it reflects both the deepest mood of the Israeli people and the sad realities of Palestinian politics.
2006-01-06 00:00:00
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