Israel’s Mixed Messages
12/27/2006
NY Times Editorial
Published: December 27, 2006
The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, took some encouraging steps over the weekend to ease the frustrations Palestinians face at West Bank and Gaza checkpoints. He hoped in that way to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas, the embattled moderate who presides over the Palestinian Authority. Unfortunately, Israel’s defense minister, Amir Peretz, has undercut these moves by approving the first new West Bank settlement in more than a decade.
Israel’s space for peace diplomacy is tightly constrained. It must reckon with a Hamas-led Palestinian cabinet that denies its right to exist and rejects the very notion of a negotiated peace. Yet those facts of Mideast life do not justify authorizing a new settlement. That self-defeating move adds nothing to Israel’s security and needlessly complicates the quest for an eventual negotiated peace.
We hope Mr. Olmert or Israel’s Parliament can reverse Mr. Peretz’s damaging decision, taken in defiance of the international road map for Middle East peace, which Israel’s governing coalition has pledged to support.
Meanwhile, Mr. Olmert’s positive gestures still deserve recognition, although the hoped-for benefits to Mr. Abbas may now be lost. More than two dozen military checkpoints in the West Bank will be removed and Israel will take steps to ease the passage of goods in and out of the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip. These steps should reduce the day-to-day humiliation and economic suffering of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Palestinians.
In addition, Israel will turn over $100 million of the $500 million in Palestinian tax revenue it has withheld since Hamas came to power. This page supports freezing aid to the Hamas government. But tax revenue to which the Palestinians are legally entitled should never have been withheld.
Compared to the sweeping visions of the Oslo peace agreements, or Ariel Sharon’s bold Gaza withdrawal, Mr. Olmert’s gestures look modest. Yet in today’s unpromising circumstances, with Mr. Olmert damaged by the Lebanon war and Mr. Abbas so far unable to nudge Hamas toward moderation, they approach the limits of the possible. Unfortunately, it has become traditional in Israel to balance constructive gestures with sops to the politically potent settlers movement. The settlers’ agenda is not supported by a majority of Israelis. But no recent government has felt strong enough to resist their demands. Even when Mr. Sharon faced them down over Gaza, he compensated them with promises to expand existing West Bank settlements. Mr. Peretz has gone one regrettable step further by approving a wholly new settlement whose aim is to relocate settlers uprooted from Gaza last year.
Today, the idea of a comprehensive peace between Israelis and Palestinians seems a distant dream. Yet it represents the best long-term assurance of Israel’s survival as a secure Jewish democracy at peace with its Arab neighbors. Every new settlement planted on the West Bank creates a needless obstacle to the realization of that dream.