From the Middle East, the hits keep on comin'

Chad Strawderman Arizona Daily Wildcat

So the Jews and the Palestinians are at war again, I thought. Sort of.

So here's the scoop:

A suicide bomber destroyed an entertainment spot in Tel Aviv in order to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to build more permanent housing settlements in the primarily Palestinian portions of Jerusalem. The bomber and four women were killed. Reaction on both sides was immediate: Netanyahu, looking frazzled and angry, implied dire consequences for the peace process, while representatives of the Palestinian Authority, the interim Palestinian government, replied with grimly smug statements about the inevitability of violence stemming from "frustration" over "aggressive" Israeli actions.

Let's be clear on some points here. Israel exists as a state for a reason: For centuries, Jews were persecuted for no better reason than their religion. Pogroms, ghettoes, holocausts, discrimination- you name the abomination, someone would stick it to the Jews. World War II proved that if nothing else did (Up until recently, they were spared Bill Walton). In a sweeping move of global guilt, the state of Israel was created to give the Jews a homeland, and a chance to escape the oppressions that had been in vogue since the Romans sacked Jerusalem in the first century. International shame over displacing the Palestinians who have lived in the area for some time was alleviated by the series of wars that neighboring Arab nations launched against Israel in the years after the state's inception. Twenty-five years of terrorism didn't help sway public opinion the Palestine Liberation Organization's way, either.

Now, the healing process that sought to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which really began with the Oslo Accords, is unraveling under pressure from Palestinian militants and Israeli arch conservatives.

To be fair, Netanyahu is caught between Scylla and Charybdis: He's catching international pressure to bring peace to the region by easing up on the Palestinians, while the coalition that put him in power is pushing in exactly the opposite direction. Making the matter just a little muddier, the Palestinian Authority still hasn't removed the wording from the PLO's charter about destroying the state of Israel.

Also, a friend of mine reminded me that Jerusalem, under Jordanian-Palestinian control was not exactly a haven of religious toleration, Jews and Christians were forbidden entry. Nor should it be forgotten that Yasser Arafat does not hesitate to throw a fit every time the peace process fails to go his way, or that he has a bad tendency to hang with his old posse, including leaders of Hamas.

And, just to see through the glass a little more darkly, no one should forget the one driving concern of statecraft: survival. For Israel, territory equals security (and, in the case of the Yom Kippur War, overextension). The Palestinians believe that they can have no security without their own state; every move against that future state must be viewed as a de facto act of aggression.

There is no way, however, to step around the fact that both sides are willfully on a collision course to disaster. The Palestinian Authority seems barely able to restrain itself from returning to its former incarnation, the PLO; the Israeli government seems to still be living out the Yom Kippur War.

Heartfelt congratulations to the Palestinian Authority, on giving up the moral high ground by implicitly condoning the riots, terrorist bombings, and borderline anti-Semitic dialogue that has marked the peace process for the last two years. You look more like Dennis Rodman than David Robinson.

And congratulations Israel. By electing a man who represents a milder version of the political opinions that justified killing Yitzhak Rabin, you made the path to peace in the region more treacherous than Lambeau Field in mid-January. By bombarding him and his coalition with extremism, you've made peace as likely as Allen Iverson passing the ball.

Cliche sports analogies to the side, what everyone in this mess has forgotten is that peace is more user-friendly than violence. The peace process whose inception actually ranked with Michael Jordan's retirement as one of the stories of 1993 is dying, and no one seems interested in medical treatment beyond minor first aid.

Chris Badeaux is the Wildcat Opinions Editor and does not believe that the current Middle East crises are spoken of in the Book of Revelation. His column, 'Cynic on Parade,' appears every other Monday.

By Chris Badeaux (columnist)
Arizona Daily Wildcat
March 31, 1997