A Plan of Attack For Peace

In the remorseless logic of the Middle East, war is diplomacy by other means. This was true when Anwar Sadat launched a surprise attack on Israel in October 1973, a move that gave him the credibility and stature in the Arab world to make peace six years later with the Jewish state. It is also true today as Israel continues its assault on Hamas in Gaza, attacks that were prompted by Hamas missile strikes on Israel. The recent violence has reportedly cost more than 400 lives and left over 2,000 wounded; on Saturday, Israeli ground forces began moving in. Much of the outside world, not without justification, views the Gaza campaign as yet another atavistic explosion of Arab-Israeli violence that will, once again, set back the efforts for peace. But these strikes were not simply a reaction; they were a calculation.

Indeed, an Israeli source intimate with Olmert's thinking, speaking anonymously in order to speak freely, says the prime minister went into Gaza with a two-tiered set of objectives. The first was simply to stop the missiles Hamas was sending into Israel and to force a renewal of the ceasefire that existed until Dec. 19. Olmert's second goal, the source says, is far more ambitious—and risky: the prime minister wants to crush Hamas altogether, first by aerial attacks and then with a grinding artillery and infantry assault. The hope, however faint, is eventually to allow Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah government to reassert control in Gaza, clearing the way in the future for a return to serious peace negotiations. With Hamas out of the way, Olmert believes there is a chance that Israel and the Palestinians can put flesh on the outlines of a comprehensive peace plan he negotiated with Abbas over the past year.

Wishful thinking? Probably. After so many failed attempts, the phrase "peace process" has little meaning. Olmert's own motives in Gaza may have as much to do with domestic politics as foreign policy. Badly weakened and facing possible corruption charges, he has been grasping to rescue his tarnished legacy. But the fact that Olmert wants to negotiate, and that Abbas wants to negotiate, underscores the stubborn, maddening fact about the Israeli-Palestinian relationship: there is only one path to peace, and both sides know what it is—and yet neither side has been willing to take it. The violence, the bombings, the threats and counterthreats are all the more exhausting and senseless because they are, essentially, an elaborate delaying tactic. The broad contours of a peace were laid out eight years ago when President Bill Clinton brought the two sides together at Camp David and tried to broker a historic deal. The current Olmert "shelf plan" is remarkably similar to the Clinton parameters: a two-state solution in which Israelis and Palestinians make painful compromises on the core issues of territory, security, Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees. The 2000 talks collapsed partly because time ran out on Clinton's term and partly because neither side had the political clout to sell the deal back home. Bush, fixated on Iraq and terror, has paid little mind to the conflict until recently.

There are many difficult details to be worked out: the exact borders of a two-state compromise; the fate of Palestinian refugees; the future of Jerusalem. President Barack Obama and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, will now inherit these challenges. They cannot simply pick up where Bill Clinton left off. The strategic context in the region has changed profoundly—for the worse. George W. Bush's war on terror has diminished American credibility in the Arab world. Moreover, the leaders of those Arab states that are closest to the United States have lost legitimacy, challenged by popular opposition at home. Meanwhile a Shiite government in Baghdad, the first in half a millennium, along with the rise of Iran, has increased Shiite-Sunni tensions throughout the Middle East. (On the bright side, Iran's enhanced influence in the region means that the West has a powerful incentive to break up the alliance between Tehran and Damascus. Real progress with Syria could have a positive effect on Israeli-Palestinian talks.)

At the moment, the greatest impediment to peace is Hamas, the terrorist group that won power in Gaza through elections in 2006. The rise of a rejectionist "Hamastan" in Gaza has left Palestinians divided between Abbas's more moderate Fatah government and radical Hamas leaders who encourage violence and believe Israel itself should not exist. Hamas rose by exploiting the misery and grievances of the Palestinians. The challenge for Palestinians and Israelis who desire peace is to make Hamas irrelevant in the eyes of its supporters by offering them something more tangible than revenge.

The suspicion of many Israelis—sometimes justified—that Palestinian leaders are interested not in peace but in Israel's destruction has been another powerful obstacle. Israelis warn against becoming freiers. The word is Yiddish for "suckers," but it carries deeper psychological freight in a country that grew out of the ashes of the Holocaust and has absorbed "never again" as its mantra. The Palestinians harbor similar resentments at having repeatedly drawn the short stick of history. As many of them see it, the land of Israel is land that the world stole from them in 1948, leaving them without a home. At Camp David, Yasir Arafat refused to finalize a peace agreement with Israel, claiming that to do so would be to court assassination by his own people.