Reuel Marc Gerecht, Wall Street Journal section of The Jerusalem Post, 2002.04.09 p. 16
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| Pâ•qidꞋ Yi•rᵊmᵊyâhꞋ u |
Martyrdom – Is•ti•shâdꞋ – is an old and esteemed idea in Islam…
We in the West would do well to reflect on the death-wish believers of Iran's revolution while we debate what the Israelis ought to do to protect themselves from young Palestinian kamikazes. Devoid of a serious understanding of the religious component in Palestinian politics, American policy in the region will inevitably run aground on secular illusions. [emphasis added]
Make no mistake: The Palestinian suicide bombers' motivations are rooted in a nihilist, amoral understanding of the Muslim's duty to wage ji•hâdꞋ. We have not yet seen Christian-Palestinians, of whom there are many, suicidally attacking the Israelis – even though many Christian Palestinians have embraced the most militant forms of Palestinian nationalism. Their sense of oppression has so far been insufficient to convert Christian Palestinians' traditional understandings of right and wrong into a white-hot faith that can see suicide and slaughter as acts of homage to God. The Christian hereafter, whatever it may be, does not appear to beckon its terror-prone faithful with the same intensity as does the Muslim afterlife for its militant believers…
The [G.W. Bush] administration's approach follows the appeasement logic of the Clinton and first Bush administration. That is, Israeli concessions will eventually slake the Palestinian recourse to terrorism. The administration appears to believe – the State Department certainly does – that Israel’s military response to terrorism actually provokes further terrorism (the "cycle of violence"). [emphasis added]
Following this reasoning, the Bush administration's policy can ultimately lead only one way: Israel must unilaterally withdraw from all the land that it gained in the 1967 war, including all of East Jerusalem. It is probable that the White House has not even thought through the implications of its new policy of "engagement." Pragmatically oriented, American officials are always fond of "managing the problem," which when translated into foreign affairs usually means muddling through…
With the threat of more suicide bombers, Yasser Arafat could thus dictate his terms to the Israelis. And with such a success, again, why would the Palestinian suicide bombers stop? If they blew their way into East Jerusalem, why not West? What is it that the Bush administration sees in the pro-martyr Palestinians that makes them more reasonable than [Khiz'b-Allah], which has eagerly continued its war against the Jewish state after Israel's withdraw from Lebanon in May 2000? [emphasis added] …
Secretary of State Colin Powell's upcoming trip to the Middle East is bound to fail embarrassingly, as did his first sojourn into the peace process in 2001, because the mission makes no sense. His "engagement" is premised on a political culture among the Palestinians which simply does not exist. [emphasis added]
So what will work? Again an Iranian parallel is illuminating. By late 1987, the carnage of the Iran-Iraq war had burned out the martyrdom syndrome among young Iranian men. Boys who'd once believed with seemingly invincible conviction jang jang ta pirnzi (War! War until Victory!) were left lost and shell-shocked. Within a short time, they loathed the leaders who'd once so inspired them.
Unfortunately, it is only war – not the well-intended but meaningless Tenet and Mitchell plans – that can now burn out Is•ti•shâdꞋ among the Palestinians. The sooner the Bush administration realizes this, the sooner the suicide bombers will cease. If the administration tries to "negotiate" with this syndrome, it will only fuel the fire and make America, not just Israel, look weak. As Osama bin Ladin should have taught us, weakness in the Middle East never goes unpunished." [emphasis added]
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