GET YOUR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT, MR. BLAIR - Efraim Karsh

In his first speech welcoming George W. Bush's re-election, his closest ally British Prime Minister Tony Blair focused his words on calling for a new coordinated effort to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict and to reduce the level of worldwide poverty. Describing the need for such moves as the "single most pressing political challenge in our world today" that would help "resolving the conditions and causes on which the terrorists prey," Blair urged the president to move on these fronts with the "same energy" that he had pursued his agenda in Iraq. This appeasing streak in the British prime minister may come as a surprise to those who watched his dogged support for the Iraq war in the face of intense opposition at home and abroad. In fact, Iraq has been the exception to Blair's opportunistic conduct, which had hitherto pandered to the lowest common denominator and relied on an unprecedented level of public relations spin to make his policies amenable to the widest possible walks of British society. Few people in Britain will recall and far fewer outside the country will have ever noticed that in the wake of the 9-11 attacks Blair portrayed himself as almost a practicing Muslim in his attempts to discredit Osama bin Laden's religious message. As a person who read the Koran on a daily basis, and who kept a copy of this holy book by his bedside, Blair repeatedly told the British media, he could state with confidence that these terrorist attacks had absolutely nothing to do with Islam's peaceful and tolerant spirit. Even during the run-up to the Iraq war, Blair tried to pacify the vast cohort of domestic critics by urging President Bush to at least attempt to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before confronting Saddam Hussein, despite the lack of any linkage between the two issues. Now that Bush has been reelected, Blair quickly reiterated this call in a bid to arrest the steady decline in his domestic standing, which hit an ever low ebb following the failure to find Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and the ongoing turmoil in Iraq. Blair has again put the cart before the horses. It is not the persistence of the Arab-Israeli conflict that acts as a breeding ground of violence and terrorism. It is rather terrorism that has been the foremost impediment to the resolution of this bitter feud between Arabs and Jews: not only since Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the June 1967 Six Day war, or even the establishment of the state of Israel in May 1948. From the onset of the conflict in the early twentieth century the Arabs' primary instrument for opposing Jewish national aspirations was violence, and what determined Arab politics and diplomacy was the relative success or failure of this instrument in any given period. Nor does the historical evidence support the existence of a causal link between socio-economic deprivation and mass violence. It is not the poor and the oppressed that have led the great revolutions and carried out the worst terrorist atrocities but rather ambitious and dedicated vanguards from among the better-educated and well-to-do parts of society. As for Israeli-Palestinian relations, the more prosperous, affluent and better educated the Palestinians have become, the greater their militancy and propensity for violence. As early as July 1937, a British royal commission appointed to enquire the root causes of the mass Arab violence plaguing Palestine at the time, found an "almost mathematical relationship" between the rise in the standard of living of the country's Arab population as a result of increased Jewish immigration and the deterioration in the security situation. A few decades later the astounding social and economic progress made by the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza following their capture by Israeli (during the 1970s, these territories constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world-ahead of such "wonders" as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself) led to the emergence of an educated and radicalized middle class that dragged the silent majority to confrontation with Israel. It is no coincidence that during the 1990s support for the Oslo process, and opposition to terrorism, was strongest among the less educated parts of Palestinian society whereas the best-educated and more affluent strata demonstrated the greatest propensity for violence. Rather than seek to curb terrorism through political arrangements, let alone by pouring billions of dollars into the bottomless pit of the Palestinian Authority (which during the past decade diverted large sums of money donated for the benefit of the civilian Palestinian population to terrorist activities), Prime Minister Blair would do better to try to convince his EU peers to rally behind the U.S.-led war on terrorism in Iraq and to give Israel a freer hand to defeat the war of terror launched by Yasser Arafat in September 2000. This would not be asking too much. The road map for peace in the Middle East, to which the EU is a signatory alongside the United States, Russia, and the United Nations, specifically states that "a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only be achieved through an end to violence and terrorism, when the Palestinian people have a leadership acting decisively against terror and willing and able to build a practicing democracy." Just as the creation of free and democratic societies in Germany and Japan after World War II necessitated, above and beyond the overthrow of the ruling parties, a comprehensive purge of the existing political elites and the reeducation of the entire populace, so the Palestinians deserve a profound structural reform that will sweep the PA from power, free the territories from the stifling PLO grip, eradicate the endemic violence from Palestinian political and social life, and teach the virtues of peaceful coexistence with their Israeli neighbors. This is certain to be a difficult and protracted process, one requiring sustained international guidance and support. But if history tells us anything, it is that ignoring Palestinian culpability and blaming Israel is not a recipe for peace but for continued disaster.
Efraim Karsh is Professor of Mediterranean Studies at the University of London. A paperback edition of his book Arafat's War will be published in December by Grove Atlantic. He's a member of Benador Associates.

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GET YOUR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT, MR. BLAIR by Efraim Karsh Benador News November 16, 2004

GET YOUR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT, MR. BLAIR
by Efraim Karsh
Benador News
November 16, 2004