The Peace FAQ:

War & Violence

Frequently Asked Questions:

• Why does Israel often react so strongly to apparently isolated Arab violence?
• But there is no ongoing Arab-Israeli war, is there?

Why does Israel often react so strongly to apparently isolated Arab violence?

• "As far as I am aware, the overview of the conflict from the PLO's...beginning of its war of national liberation against Israel in 1965 to the present has not been approximated in the literature on the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is important that the character and duration of this long war be understood. Much of the governmental, popular and media reaction to the Israeli action in this conflict has reflected a failure to recognize that the conflict is not a series of violent episodes, to be judged individually, but a continuous war that varies in intensity but never stops."

  - from Law And Morality In Israel's War With The PLO, by William V. O'Brien, Professor of Government at Georgetown University
  

But there is no ongoing Arab-Israeli war, is there?

• It is crucial to remember that Israel is not at peace with the Arab world, notwithstanding its [peace negotiations]. At best -- thanks to Israel's brilliant performance in various Arab wars of aggression -- it has foreclosed, for the time being at least, the Arabs' military option. As a result, Israel's Arab enemies have been obliged to pursue their objective of the destruction of the Jewish State through other means. To a considerable extent, the vehicle of choice has been a relentless campaign of "ideological warfare" in which Israel and its people are systematically portrayed as the real enemies of peace.

  - Frank J. Gaffney, Center for Security Policy Director, U.S. Senate Caucus Room, 16 March 1994

• The Half-Century War
  A.M. ROSENTHAL
  ON MY MIND
  The New York Times
  September 9, 1997

  The "peace process" between Arabs and Israelis has been going on not for the four years since Oslo but for the half-century since the founding of Israel. Almost all the while it has been the Israelis who have been offering peace and the Arabs who have been answering with acts of war.

  But every time an Arab bomb goes off in an Israeli marketplace or bus the world reacts as if it were the first. How terrible; active "talks" must resume, Israel must make more concessions.

  All the Arab bombs that exploded through the decades, all the Arab armies that invaded Israel again and again, all the anti-Jew hate propaganda that has befouled the Mideast for decades, the years of Arab attempts to strangle Israel economically, all are mentioned barely or not at all, as if history had no meaning. It does.

  To change history in the Mideast, America must first acknowledge the reality of the half-century Arab war against Israel and the overriding importance of demonstrating its end. Otherwise the visit of Secretary of State Albright will at best be another short pause before the Arabs resume their strategy of violence against the nation and people of Israel.

  When the UN recognized the Israeli state, the Jews had accepted -- and the Arabs had rejected -- a partition plan that would have given Palestinians an independent nation.

  The Israelis had offered peace within their dangerously narrowed confines.

  But Arab armies attacked and Jordan annexed what the world calls the West Bank and Jewish history calls Judea and Samaria. The Jordanians took over the cherished center of Jerusalem, banned all Jews not killed or driven out.

  Israelis still dreamt peace. They did not attempt to take the West Bank until 1967, when Arab nations were stupid enough to attack again, and lost it all to Israel, and more.

  But when one, just one, Arab leader was willing to make peace in 1977, Israel returned the huge Sinai to Egypt.

  For this Anwar el-Sadat received the bullets of Egyptian military assassins. Israel received Egypt's idea of peace -- nastiness and insult.

  Yet for most of the years since, Israelis, official and private, kept holding out peace offers -- this new boundary line or that, the sharing of water and electric power, a joint economic rose garden.

  From Arabs came more acts of war -- shelling, direct or by proxy from Lebanon, world economic boycott, ceaseless vilification at the UN Unable to defeat the army of Israel, Arabs struck with hundreds of acts of terrorism at the blood and bone of Israeli civilians.

  In 1993 Yitzhak Rabin decided to reverse himself, return most of the West Bank and create the foundations of a Palestinian state for Yasir Arafat. Terrorism did not end, not then and not after Benjamin Netanyahu was elected.

  Mr. Netanyahu accepted what was written in Oslo, including the return of Hebron, which Labor did not dare carry out. But he would not accept Palestinian demands not agreed to at Oslo -- the end of Jewish building in Jerusalem, the return of all the West Bank and a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem. Terrorism went on.

  Meanwhile, Iranians and Iraqis slaughtered each other, Syria occupied Lebanon, Iraq started the gulf war, and Arab despots and fundamentalists murdered their brethren. None of these wars and atrocities had a thing to do with Israel. But the myth continued that if only Israelis would make enough concessions to Palestinians peace would come to the Mideast.

  Perhaps the "peace talks" can be jacked up if the U.S. tries hard enough. But any new start-up would have to be conditional on security for Israel, this time proven in advance by Mr. Arafat's disarming terrorists, blocking their funds, arresting their leaders.

  I doubt he has any intention of doing that, certainly not to make it stick. The picture of him kissing the Hamas leader was meant to show that Mr. Arafat and the major terrorist group stood as one. It certainly convinced me.

  My own belief is that no lasting peace between Israel and Palestinians will come about until enough Arab governments are based on something better than bigotry and despotism.

  Arab governments that cannot make peace with their people and their Arab neighbors are not likely to make peace with Israel, for a half-century their target to defile, their dream to destroy.

• RELATED SECTIONS:

  Islam, Arabs, Jihad, The War of Independence, The Six-Day War, The Yom Kippur War, Peace, Democracy, Terrorism, Intifada, World War II, Incitement, Refugees, Lebanon, Sabra and Shatila, Qana, Deir Yassin, Expansionism

• WWW RESOURCES:

• BOOKS & PRINTED MATERIAL:
  • The Fifteen Century War: Islam's Violent Heritage, by Morgan Norval [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel's Wars, by Yaacov Lozowick [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Battleground: Fact & Fantasy in Palestine, by Samuel Katz [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, by Michael B. Oren [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • The Siege: The Saga of Israel and Zionism, by Conor Cruise O'Brien [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, by Martin Gilbert [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • War Footing: 10 Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World, by Frank J. Gaffney Jr. [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways, by Alan M. Dershowitz, Henry Louis Gates [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Legitimacy and Force: State Papers and Current Perspectives : Political and Moral Dimensions, by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Triumph of Disorder: Islamic Fundamentalism, the New Face of War, by Morgan Norval [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • The Jewish Wars: Reflections by One of the Belligerents, by Edward Alexander [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948, by Anita Shapira [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Warrior: An Autobiography, by Ariel Sharon, David Chanoff [VIEW BOOK HERE]