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Shattered Peace
Ashraf Amra/AP
A broken ceasefire with Israel, a rain of rockets from Gaza, a bitter split between Fatah and Hamas—is the peace process beyond hope?
President-elect Obama has said that an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is a top foreign policy priority. But the habitually deplorable state of Arab-Israeli relations has deteriorated to the point where even the most talented of special envoys may be unable to stop the downward spiral, much less broker a treaty.
Last week, Hamas, the militant Palestinian organization that controls Gaza, announced it was ending its six-month cease-fire with Israel, because, it claimed, Israel had failed to lift its blockade or fulfill other pledges. Israel, for its part, accused Hamas of bad faith, justifying its missiles attacks and the blockade of food and supply shipments into Gaza on grounds that the cross-border rocket attacks on southern Israeli communities never really stopped.
Shortly before Hamas’s declaration, some 50 rockets were fired into Israel, and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that Israel would not shy away from a broader offensive if such attacks continued. They did, with another volley launched from Gaza on Dec. 23 that prompted Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to make a rare appeal on Arab tv to stop the rockets or face Israeli retaliation. On Friday, Israel made good on that threat, conducting a massive daylight air strike on Gaza.
Palestinians say that Hamas and Fatah despise each other almost as much as they hate the Israeli settlers who harass and attack them.
Now, any steps to repair the shattered peace process will depend largely on the outcome of national elections in February, which the rightwing Likud, opposed to all peace proposals now on the table, seems poised to win. But even if the ruling Kadima or other more pragmatic forces triumph in February, success ultimately depends on having a serious negotiating partner on the Palestinian side. And prospects for that are even grimmer.
To understand the political gridlock that makes the outbreak of peace unlikely any time soon, consider a recent ostensibly apolitical event in Palestine: the Palestinian national soccer team’s first professional game on home turf. In late October, some 8,000 exuberant fans chanting “God is Great” and “Football is nobler than war,” packed the newly built stadium near Ramallah to watch Palestine play Jordan.
Until the day before the game, however, Palestinians were uncertain it would even take place. Twelve of the Palestinian team's 26 members, including its captain, Saeb Jundiyeh, live in Gaza, which has been sealed off by Israel ever since Hamas wrested power from the ruling Fatah-backed Palestinian Authority in June of 2007. Because of the intra-Palestinian feud, the 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza need Israeli permits and the blessing of both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to travel back and forth.
Israel eventually gave two-day passes to most of the Gaza players, but not to team captain Jundiyeh, whom they deem a security threat. He was devastated by the news. "I've waited all my life for this first match on Palestinian land,” he told a reporter in Gaza. “I'm the captain and I can't play."
As for neighboring Jordan, whose population is estimated to be more than 70 percent Palestinian, seven of the 11 players on its national team are Palestinian and these Jordanian players knelt and kissed the new Astroturf just as the Palestinian team had done moments earlier. Jordan is one of the few Arab countries for whom the plight of the Palestinians is more than a symbolic cause. Qatar, for instance, which limits the number of Palestinians permitted to live in the oil-rich sheikhdom, nevertheless made a significant donation to the stadium’s $4 million renovation. The gesture ensured that posters of the emir were prominently displayed on stadium walls alongside those of late Yasir Arafat, “father” of the still unborn Palestinian state, and his successor, President Mahmoud Abbas.
The stadium itself is adjacent to the despised concrete barrier—26 feet high in some places— that Israel has built to keep out suicide bombers. (Sophocles Sophocleous, a Cypriot whose company, Greenfields, supplied the football field’s artificial grass, said that Israeli security concerns had also limited the size of the stadium itself and even the height of its night-lights.) It is also within sight of Israeli settlements. According to estimates from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), some 450,000 Israelis now live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem alongside 2.4 million Palestinians, many of them in settlements the UN considers illegal and Washington calls more diplomatically “an obstacle to peace."
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Judith Miller is an author and a Pulitzer Prize-winning former investigative reporter for the New York Times. She is now an adjunct fellow at Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor to its magazine, City Journal, and a Fox News commentator.
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Judith Miller is an author and a Pulitzer Prize-winning former investigative reporter for the New York Times. She is now an adjunct fellow at Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor to its magazine, City Journal, and a Fox News commentator.
We believe ANYTHING this woman writes !?! I'm sorry but her creditability has been completely lost. She was a publicist for the Iraq war effort. I can not believe anything she reports, even if it's true, because of her earlier efforts. I would suggest the Daily Beast never use her again.
Isreal doens't want peace. It wants and gets a slow expansion of territory -- all done with our oney. And Judy Miller-words can not describe what a low maggot she is.
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judy miller has disgraced herself for the bush people. she should not be barred from this site however. if we believe in free speech we can tolerate comments, even stupid or ignorant ones. my suggestion to those who despise her is not to read or comment on her articles. nothing will get the attention of the editors faster than the lack of response to her.
Forgiveness is a river seldom crossed, and like Darsan54, I find it difficult to believe anything JM says. Having been to jail we share a common malady, but somewhere in the mix she has got to pony up an apology to the American public.
There's a lot of classified material regarding the mortal effects Of Valery Wilson being outed for which JM is not directly responsible, but when asked if her allegiance for the American Public was broad enough to redefine her journalistic oath she failed.
Journalist are the first line of defense to my right to know against a rogue regime, and when they obviously breach that trust the divide widens and its precipice steeper, compelling me to ask why should I even try again?
Considering we ask for apologies from people setting policy for less, and obliquely she's tethered to the links of questionable information trumpeting the cause for war, an apology is the least she can do to gain a little credibility.
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Whatever happened to the sensibilities you promised, Ms. Brown? One more article from this horrible woman, and I - and my cloase friends and immediate family - will never visit your website EVER again, and this expensive website will go the way Talk had; bankrupt. I do not have to remind you how painful that is.
Why is this so-called reporter still allowed to write any vaguely credible news organization?
What can I say that hasn't already been said? The mainstream media bias in favor of Israel is usually more subtle than this, lying by omission rather than doing it outright. Judith, Hamas didn't end the cease-fire. It expired. And Israel never really did lift the blockade in a meaningful way. Not because Hamas never stopped firing rockets, but because other Palestinian militants never stopped. It would be as if I made a deal with Bob that we wouldn't fight. Then Nick comes over and hits me, so I hit both Nick and Bob (and everyone else in the area too).
I have to pile on. Judith Miller has not only lost all credibility as a journalist, but her information is all inaccurate. Perhaps Miller should write for a pro-Israeli blog, one that does not care about accuracy. Hey, Daily Beast, dump her, or lose credibility along with her.
What's needed are bold, imaginative initiatives.
Lowering a huge cloud of pot smoke over the Middle East, for example, would cause peace to break out all over the region. You could try lifting the cloud in three weeks, and then, if any fighting breaks out, lower another cloud of pot smoke.
Repeat until there is a permanent peace.
A pox on both their houses. Neither side can surrender violence and hatred. At this point, my only concern is that the lakes of shit in Palestine don't overflow their banks and contaminate the Mediterranean.
On substance, nothing new here beyond the sports angle. Better Palestinian unity around their national team tha in reaction to the murder of Israeli athletes, as at Munich.
On authorship, I'd much rather hear from someone like Sari Nusseibeh directly--or Avrum Burg, or Shlomo Avineri--than through the distorted filter of the ignominious Ms Miller. Or Eliot Spitzer. Give those folks a rest, and the rest of us a break. What's next--Scooter Libby, David Addington, Karl Rove? How about writers we can believe in--and believe?--The Wise Bard
I agree with the others here that publishing anything by this disgraceful woman is a bad mistake...I will never read anything she writes, and if The Daily Beast gives her a forum to write, I will stop visiting!
She has NEVER apologized for being one of the chief apologists for an occupation of Iraq that has resulted in the deaths and dismemberments of hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed a country!
Not to mention the harm that has been done to the US financially, morally and physically!
GO AWAY JUDITH...no one cares what you say or think anymore!!!
Having Judith Miller writing about international politics and Conrad Black about legal matters here at the Beast is a bit like inviting Robert Mugabe to pen a screed about wise and just rulers of countries...c'mon guys, you can do better then this!
Judith Miller writing about the Middle East is like E-Coli writing about feces.
Judith Miller. Haha.
I cannot trust this woman and so I would not spend any time reading her........I just logged in to say that.....I'm sure she can get a job working as a spin doctor or in PR......Leave this site alone......I read the dailybeast because I trust it.....Get her OFF!!!!!!
Ms Miller - Didn't you write about Saddam's WMDs? Ummm, I thought so. How did that turn out for you?
Zensteev. In this case Bob has the authority to make Nick stop and doesnt use it. i.e. Nick is a proxy for Bob.
Got cold chills when I saw her face with her name again. Please remove her because nothing she says forever more is credible. Why does the Daily Beast and Judy think she can pop back into our lives without a thorough explanation of her behavior and product in the run-up to the war?
Does everyone think we are so deranged or stupid out here that we have forgotten already? Wrong! Take her away!
What a pathetic bunch of losers submitting these comments - I would guess everyone of you vehemently condemns the Patriot Act and the many steps the Bush Admin has employed to curtail our First Amendment and other civil rights but you are only too quick to condemn Miller's freedom to write and the Daily Beast's freedom to publish her.
Yes, she deserved to be roundly criticized for having allowed herself to be used by the Administration in the way she was but that doesn't mean she loses her right to publish, write and speak. If you don't like her, don't read her but don't deny her or the DB the right to publish and be read.
Independently of the foregoing, I thought this was a very interesting article - containing information and news I have not seen elsewhere - and I would have been the poorer and less informed had the article not been made available to its reading public by the DB.
I wonder who sent her this press release?
This article might be interesting if the author had an ounce of credibility.
What is with Judith Miller and wars? If you want one so bad, Ms. Miller, go sign up to go to Afghanistan,,PLEASE!
You want young men to be killed so badly. What is wrong with you?
Thank you.
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