Why neither side wins in the Middle East
From The Left
by Joseph Waldman
3 April 2002

The Middle East is at war, Israel versus the Palestinians, or the Arabs versus Israel, or whatever you want the semantics to be. Is this really news anymore? The post-ironic answer is "no." But when you think about it further, it's actually "yes," because things have never been quite this bad. By the time you read this article (I'm writing it on Sunday), Yasser Arafat may be dead, killed by the Israeli tanks shelling his compound in revenge for the rash of Palestinian suicide bombers last week. Even if he lives, the region has gone over the precipice.

Most liberals come down pretty squarely on one side or the other of this conflict. The majority see Israel as a noble but beleaguered ally of the United States, a veritable David against the pan-Arab Goliath, whose very existence is testimony to the relative global stability of the post-World War II era. Others view the Palestinians as the true heroes of the region, a people whose legitimate claim for a national homeland was steamrollered by Western forces deliberately working against them.

I take neither position, and say instead: to hell with both Israel and the Palestinians. This land is just not worth fighting over. Both sides are equally to blame, neither is going to yield an inch of land and there is no way on earth the fighting is every going to stop.

Let's take them apart one at a time.

It is true that Arafat is a terrorist, and no matter how hard he tries to change his image, the gun in his one hand will always supplant the olive branch in the other. If he dies now, no matter how much of a martyr's death it may be, he will have left his people in worse shape than they were when he started some thirty years ago. He will be remembered as little more than a demagogue and a failure.

The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is no better--if anything, he's worse. Sharon is a madman. Nearly every act in his long political and military career has been pointed toward bloodthirsty rage, parliamentary opportunism, and a demagogic über-nationalism, which, one might think, the Israeli people would reject. I suspect that Sharon's ascendance to the chancellorship last year had much to do with the fact that the Labour government under Barak was even more enfeebled than the previous Likud government under Netanyahu, and that the Israelis were willing to give Likud another chance. After all, people at war often feel more comfortable with a rightist government than a leftist one.

Sharon, however, was the wrong Tory for the job. He has a personal vendetta against Arafat stretching back through the years, and he has shown himself willing to subsume all signs of rationalism and moderation in pursuit of Arafat's destruction and the quashing of the Palestinian movement. What Sharon doesn't understand is that Israel can't go it alone. Its armed forces may be as sharp as ever, but there hasn't been a big war since 1973, and the Arab states' collective military might certainly now outranks Israel's. The United States has also moved away from all-out support for Israel over the last several years, especially since Sharon took office.

All of this begs the question: just what are they fighting over?

The answer: nothing. Or, rather, idiocy and blindness, one side versus the other. What we have here are two different ethnic groups--probably cousins in genealogical fact--sparring over a strip of desert land, where there's room enough for both groups to live side by side in relative repose, and yet they can't even cross the street together. Something must be at work beyond simple economic or nationalist excuses, because both Israelis and Arabs would benefit greatly from economic cooperation or regional solidarity in the geopolitical scheme, and they know it.

There's only one thing that could, and does, cause people to act so stupidly and destructively. It's religion--that irrational, vestigial security blanket that infuses both sides with such blind fury and unsolvable grievances.

If legitimate land claims were at stake, maybe I could understand the animosity. If it were merely about states' interests, I would feel a little better, but Israel is a state grounded in religious mythology, and almost all the Arab states and political factions are so insanely devoted to Muslim theology--instead of to their own, more tangible, interests--that the whole thing would be laughable if not for the body count.

Religion is something the human race should have given up a long time ago. Most of the butchery right now may be done in the name of Islam, but Judaism and Christianity are no better. Islam does not mean peace any more than Judaism or Christianity mean peace. Jews fight--as Jews--every bit as savagely as Muslims, and while Christians may pride themselves on their self-proclaimed veneer and finery, they've also got their own nearly two millennia of absolute horrors that make contemporary events look like tiddlywinks.

Religious wars are based inherently on doctrines that are unquestionable, unreasonable, and ten times more exploitative of innate human gullibility and rage than any other cause of war. No one will ever give up, because everyone is fighting for the unobtainable, and therefore they will keep fighting forever.

Neither side is or can be right, and so neither side wins. The only thing that would bring the conflict in the Middle East to an end would be to deport everyone, declare the land under international control, raze Jerusalem to the ground, and not let anybody back in--ever. At this point in the game, I suspect that might be the best thing to do.