Election shows desire for peace

Carlos Alberto Montaner

American strategists believe that the consolidation of a democratic state by Palestinians will contribute to the stability of the entire region and that, in due course, that climate of peace will lead to a radical reduction of the levels of anti-Americanism.

They also believe that the result of the recent elections, after the death of Yasser Arafat, demonstrates the desire for peace felt by the whole of Palestinian society. The bullies and terrorists from Hamas or Islamic Jihad simply do not represent a majority that is totally exhausted after half a century of violence, disasters and, above all, provisionality -- that devastating feeling that life never settles down.

It is difficult not to coincide with this analysis, but we do so with qualifications.

The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians does not seem to be responsible for the confrontations in that part of the world. The war between Iraq and Iran and Iraq's ensuing invasion of Kuwait had nothing to do with Israel's existence or Israel's discords with the Palestinians.

No former idiots

Something similar occurs with the invasion and occupation of Lebanon by Syria, the civil war in Sudan or Moammar Gadhafi's lunatic behavior. Those were violent events in which hundreds of thousands of Muslims lost their lives; almost all were Arabs, liquidated by other Arabs.

Nor can anti-Americanism be rationally deduced from an allegedly unfair alliance forged between Washington and Jerusalem. There is no doubt that the United States maintains very close relations with Israel, but the same is true of U.S. relations with Egypt and Jordan, two of the nations that receive the largest sums of aid from the Americans.

Further, while it's true that the United States and Israel cooperate on military matters and are good diplomatic allies, it is also true that, in the past 20 years, the large economic sacrifices and great loss of life suffered by U.S. forces have been made in the defense of people of the Islamic religion: Somalia, Bosnia, Kuwait and Iraq.

Also, in what other nation on the planet does the Islamic minority enjoy the level of integration, freedom and respect enjoyed by the five million Muslims who live in the United States?

Anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are attitudes based not on an objective analysis of facts but on hallucinatory beliefs contained in conspiracy theories of history that are based almost always on the paranoid suspicion that a small group of villains pulls strings throughout the world to seize all wealth and bring misfortune to their victims.

Once that powerful imbecility adheres to the brains of those who propound it, there is no antidote capable of eradicating it. Just as there is no such thing as a former idiot, there are no former anti-Semites or former anti-Americans. The disease in incurable.

Nevertheless, the fair and proper attitude is to endeavor to create the democratic Palestinian state that today seems to emerge from the Middle East, even if it does not bring peace to that part of the world and even if the anti-American fever is not reduced.

Why? Because after so many decades of suffering and privation, those poor people should have the right to reattempt the political opportunity they wasted in 1948, when the United Nations assigned to them a substantial area of the old British mandate to create a state parallel to the Israelis and they chose to play the card of war against the young Hebrew nation. From that original, bloody error derived all the subsequent ills.

What Palestinians expect

Of course, it is no longer possible to return to the borders of 1948 or 1973, and the greatest proof of maturity the Palestinians could give is to accept that and understand that there are exigencies that would render unviable any accord between the parties.

For example, it is not possible to bring back to Israel the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were displaced during those years, as it is not possible to readmit to the Czech Republic the millions of Germans who were expelled from that country after World War II.

Nor is it reasonable to ask once again for the partition of Jerusalem. Ramallah must be the permanent capital of the future Palestinian state, and the decision of the new leaders must be to turn that city into a vibrant and modern center where people can live and raise their children with dignity. That's what Palestinians expect. No less, no more.

February 15, 2005

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