The untimely demise of Yassir Arafat (it should have happened
years earlier) has precipitated an event that looks for all the
world like a real election. The current favorite of both odds
makers and policy makers is Mahmoud Abbas, for whom the word
“moderate” has become more than adjective, it is adhesive. Indeed
the first fifteen words in today’s report on the region by Reuters
are: ‘The moderate frontrunner in the race for Palestinian
president called Israel the Zionist Enemy Tuesday….” A more
oxymoronic opening can scarcely be imagined, unless perhaps this:
“The motherly performer Madonna said in today’s PTA meeting that
the sequel to her sex book would be racier…”
This news comes on the heels of Mr. Abbas’s recent promise that
all Palestinian refugees will eventually return to Israel. It is
not merely that the chances of that happening are nil, it is not
merely that this runs counter to the range of the possible as
envisioned by any peace plan imaginable, it is not merely that this
is tantamount to a declaration of war on the State of Israel, it is
that this is a wholesale rejection of the idea of a Jewish state
existing in the Middle East. Put simply, this is not a return to
pre-1967, it is a return to pre-1948.
Nobody knows for sure how many Palestinians decided to evacuate
after Israel declared independence and the Arab countries declared
war, but there are many millions today who claim to be their
descendants. Irresponsible demagogues keep firing them up with this
vision of not only having their own state alongside Israel but also
gaining majority status within Israel proper. Getting these folks
to separate from this irredentist vision has been like pulling
teeth.
It had been hoped that Mr. Abbas would be sufficiently the
realist to edify his people into reasonableness. Apparently we
bourgeois Westerners have once again been exposed in all of our
charming but pernicious naïveté. Mr. Abbas insists on
saturating us with pronouncements that are, in a word, immoderate.
Mahmoud has been going from bad to worse.
Alexandre Dumas said, “All generalizations are dangerous,
including this one.” The obvious question is: was it
père or fils? I don’t know the answer to
that one, but I think we are prepared today to add a corollary: the
rule that all things are good in moderation applies also to
moderation itself. Here we were ready to give Mr. Abbas the not
inconsiderable benefit of the considerable doubt, to accept his
moderate credentials with what Shakespeare called “credent soul,”
and we get this? My grandpa (père’s père) was right
when he told me as a kid, “I’m not the type that if you spit in my
face I’ll think that it’s raining.”
Seems like moderation has about run its course. It’s time for a
healthy dose of hard-nosed realism. I don’t know whether Abbas
believes this swill or whether he is holding his nose and pandering
to the electorate, the bottom line is about the same. It means that
Palestinian sheep need to wear wolf’s clothing, and we can’t sleep
if we can’t count sheep. Add to them the wolves wearing wolf’s
clothing and there isn’t even any wool to pull over our eyes. This
tune is getting very familiar; it conjures up unpleasant memories
of Robert MacFarlane and that most chimerical of shams — the
moderates in the Iranian government. Remember those boys? Good
grief!
Perhaps the day will come that the Palestinians will move into
the 20th century, which will be a helpful step in the direction of
joining the rest of us in the 21st. But clearly today is not yet
that day. Nor is the path of progress clearly delineated. If
anything, the youth seem to be more radicalized and hostile than
their parents were ever prepared to display. By all accounts,
classrooms and textbooks have not been oriented toward promoting a
neighborly or brotherly sensibility towards Israel or Jews.
Is there no hope? Foreclosing hope is not only sad, it is often
not wise. The Soviet Union, before its collapse, was not replete
with harbingers of a better day at hand. Still, let us not project
phantasms and mirages unto a screen that currently holds a horizon
of intransigence. If Fate can see further than our limited vision,
fine, but for now we must operate within the constraints of our
eyeshot.
Mr. Abbas, we don’t need another dancing queen. Either speak out
of one side of your mouth and speak real words of truth, words of
hope, words of peace, or we shall yet again be forced to despair of
the process. Then we would have to say: à bas,
Abbas!
