Peace is not merchandise
By Meron Benvenisti
Haaretz, January 29, 2004
Israel is facing a sensational peace offensive: Syria hints of flexibility about the line of withdrawal on the Golan Heights; Saudi Arabia renews a peace initiative, this time without mention of `the right of return'; Moammar Gadhafi presents unexpectedly moderate positions; Egypt sticks to its efforts to achieve a hudna (cease-fire).
There's no doubt that a window of opportunity has been opened through which the hostility of the Arab world can be examined to determine whether it is permanent or whether the "existential threat" is a concept meant to blur the fact that the absence of peace serves Israeli interests better than the achievement of peace.
Presumably, this concentrated assault would yield a serious, considered Israeli response, but instead the reaction has been minor, scornful, patronizing and cynical: "We do not have to respond to each caprice on the part of the Arab states," was one response. Another simply absolves Israel of the need to respond: "It's all aimed at pleasing the Americans, and has nothing to do with us."
A few feeble statements about being ready to examine the initiatives "without any preconditions" were meant to fend off the criticism that could be anticipated by the lack of Israeli interest in the initiatives - and those "examinations" were quickly silenced and forgotten. Neither the Golan settlers, on the one side, nor the Israeli peace bloc, on the other, got very excited, let alone the peace professionals, who continue to market their virtual "permanent agreement" formulas and thus draw attention away from the truly important developments.
It would be easy to blame the Sharon government, the rightist-nationalist government of paralysis, but those familiar with the history of the eternal search for the elusive peace know very well it's nothing new: Since 1948, Arab hostility has served Israel's interests and the price of achieving peace - in territory, refugee return and the return of property - has been considered steeper than the cost of peace's absence, including the loss of Israeli lives, both soldiers and civilians.
The effect on Israeli society of the absence of peace is never taken into account. On the contrary, the absence of peace is perceived as a cohesive factor, without which society would completely break apart into fragments that otherwise could not be stuck together. The fashion of peace, which reached its peak of chic in the mid-1990s, has never been so out of favor, at such a low point.
The third millennium has brought an innovation: giving up the idea of peace has been turned into something in which to take pride, and to use as a whip on the backs of treasonous leftist elites. "Peace" is perceived as the slogan of a self-satisfied left, the interest of a secular-Ashkenazi sect. Once, the absence of peace served its particular needs, but now it is argued, violence has become an obstacle to fulfilling that sect's new "global" needs. Therefore, peace has become a necessity.
For many, the struggle for peace has been turned into a means of diverting energy from the real battle to narrow the widening socioeconomic gaps. Peace Now, for many, is a social class and not a political-ideological grouping. Many declare: We're for peace but hate those who represent it.
Palestinian terror provided the ultimate ratification for "there's nobody to talk to" so "there won't be peace in our generation." Now pessimism can be turned into ideology and anchored in the brutality of neoconservative America, the "bastion of democracy defending Western civilization against the Islamic-Arab barbarism."
Israel is at the forefront of the campaign against Islamic terror. Who is going to take seriously peace feelers from a Syrian president known for his support for terror, when the feelers are only a response to American pressure? And what good we would get from a peace deal with Syria, which would cost the surrender of the prospering Golan?
"Peace" is not the kind of merchandise that can be marketed nowadays. On the contrary, every one wants to hear thundering rhetoric about the "clash of civilizations," wars against "the axis of evil" and "it's us against them." Up until recently, Israel tried to market itself as peace-seeking, unwilling to give up on a single opportunity to reach that goal. Now Israel is deep inside the apocalyptic atmosphere of Armaggedon - "the last battle" between good and bad - according to the gospel of President George W. Bush.
An Arab peace offensive doesn't stand a chance in that kind of atmosphere. It passes and disappears, and with it disappears another chance to move toward normalization of Israeli society - which since its founding has lived in emergency conditions, its existence threatened - a chance to correct some of its values and repair its distorted self-image. And that's a chicken-and-egg issue: Are the continuation of the conflict and the lack of peace preventing normalization, or are the lack of normality and the distortions in Israeli society, resulting from the lack of peace, now preventing a solution to the conflict and a proper response to the peace feelers?
