What kind of peace is this? Twice as many Israelis have lost their lives as in the year before the famous handshake in Washington.
What kind of peace prize is this? The Nobel Prize will be shared by a man who virtually invented international terrorism, has spent most of his life calling for Israel's destruction and now fails to control the killers harbored in Gaza and Jericho, for which he took responsibility. The Nobel committee has bestowed its prize on many more pacifists than generals and militant revolutionaries. And when it has honored men with a violent past, like Yassir Arafat, it has been in the expectation that they would become a force for reconciliation. But Arafat betrays the hopes of the Nobel committee and also of those many Arabs and Israelis who want an end to the bloodshed.
What has he done? Instead of cracking down on Hamas and trying to disarm the violent militants of that group, he has tried to appease them by drawing them into Palestinian politics. It is a futile exercise. Even more troubling is the Palestine Liberation Organization's support for a Hamas demand that Israel unconditionally release all terrorists from its prisons, including those convicted of murders.
This raises a legitimate question: If Arafat cannot control his territories, then how can the Israelis make further concessions in the name of a nonexistent peace? Alternatively, if he can control his territories but is unwilling to fight the enemies of peace, then how can the Israelis have any trust in him at all? As Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has said, "Arafat cannot have peace with Israel and peace with Hamas."
Arafat's performance is disturbing. It suggests to Israelis that even now he will not work to dispel Arab hatred because that might be the one thing capable of cementing his regime. But Arab hatred has to be dissipated if there is to be any lasting peace. The great conundrum of the region is that the Palestinians and Israelis live cheek by jowl. Unlike in South Africa, where the conflict ended in a marriage, in the Middle East, the antagonists are seeking a divorce that, as Israeli journalist Ehud Ya'ari noted, "is a divorce where you wake up each morning in the bed of your former wife."
Gaza, next door, has become fertile ground for Hamas -- its headquarters, the place where it plans, trains and arms its members. In effect, Gaza is becoming what Southern Lebanon was when the PLO controlled it in the 1970s and early 1980s: a staging base for terrorist operations against Israel. The Palestinian police operate as liberators rather than as professionals dedicated to maintaining order. They have refused to foil terrorist attacks or capture fugitives and have been ordered by Arafat to avoid confrontation with Hamas. Detention of dozens, even hundreds, of Hamas political leaders is pure farce since the detainees rarely have knowledge of terrorist attacks, which are carried out by Hamas's militant wings.
The militants move about Gaza without hindrance. Arafat has rejected joint Israeli-Palestinian police operations to weed them out. The authority of the police has been limited. Arafat's own police chief, Gen. Nasr Yousef, has complained publicly that his men can arrest terrorists the moment he receives orders from the political level -- but no orders have come. The mastermind of the kidnapping of the Israeli soldier has been living in Gaza, and known Hamas terrorists have been allowed to disappear there. Infiltration into Israel from Gaza is exceeded only by that from Jericho.
These are not the circumstances to encourage Israelis to turn over other Palestinian towns in the West Bank to the PLO, as called for in the September 1993 agreement. On the present evidence, such towns would become nothing more than new havens for terrorists -- without Israeli security forces being allowed to engage in hot pursuit. As the worse-case scenario becomes more real for Israelis, they will instinctively shift from negotiations to a security based on their own strength of arms.
A genuine end to the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Holy Land would be worthy of all the prizes we can think of. But Arafat must decide whether he will be identified with the Nobel Peace Prize or with that other product associated with the Nobel name - - explosives.
