Leon Wieseltier: After Peace
Fri, 15 Aug 2003

Two more suicide bombings. Of course, as with all the bombings, an excuse was readily provided by the perpetrators, in that it was revenge for an attack on one of their number. Never mind that in the days before the attack Israeli security services had around a dozen potential suicide bombings warnings, and the ones yesterday were just the ones the got by. And of course, Mahmoud Abbas was quick to blame Israel for bringing it upon itself and destroying peace, as if the murder of a murderer means anything but self-defense. Funniest of all, Islamic Jihad said that Israel’s attack signaled to them an end of their political process with Israel (maybe it’s not funny), as if Israel would ever do anything but fight them. Worst of all, the one thing that the Palestinians had to do to get a state – eliminate the terrorist groups committed to Israel’s destruction – is the one thing Mahmoud Abbas says he won’t do, for fear of the consequences. So much for leadership.

I thought I’d send a piece by famed liberal writer and thinker Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic. Since it was published last March, at the very height of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed, it reminds us how it was then. It has a number of important reflections, things to remember as the current peace initiative totter. Above all, the message is this: Israelis have long ago decided that Palestinians are just as deserving of statehood as they are. And so it offered them that in 2000: a state on 95% West Bank, 100% of the Gaza Strip, dismantlement of most settlements and shared sovereignty over Jerusalem. Arafat’s decision to “leave Palestine in his cabin at Camp David” was a great tragedy, the price for which all Israelis and Palestinians are still paying. As Palestinians cheer terrorist massacres and their most famous poet speaks of the “eloquence of blood,” many conclude that, for them, concepts of honor take precedence over compromise, revenge over forgiveness, group identity before sympathy for the suffering of the other. For this reason, it’s been said that Israelis want peace and Palestinians want victory. What they must do is abandon the “costly illusion that they are attaining something by war that they could not have attained by peace.” And hopefully it will be soon, before last spring becomes this winter.

Read "After Peace," by Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic.