"Pretoria Calling" - Op-Ed by Dennis Ross in NY Times, 10/20/2005

[Coastie for Truth]

THE Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, has a credibility problem that his visit with President Bush is unlikely to help: how to convince his people that violence against Israel will not lead to an independent Palestinian state. While Mr. Abbas must certainly show that he can deliver for his people, he needs help in discrediting Hamas and other terrorist groups. And one of the best sources for that help is not in Washington, Brussels or Riyadh, but in Pretoria. Indeed, South Africa's experience can provide valuable inspiration for the culture of peace that Mr. Abbas says he hopes to create.

Yasir Arafat loved to equate the Palestinian struggle for statehood with the struggle of South Africans against apartheid, but his was always a false analogy. In South Africa, less than 15 percent of the population controlled all the power and wealth and subjected the other 85 percent to a degrading, inhuman and segregated existence. For the oppressed majority, the answer was not one state for non-whites and one for whites; rather, the goal was justice and majority rule.

<snip><

Why raise the South African comparison today? Because Palestinians respect the South African model but are not learning from it. For all of Arafat's comparisons to the African National Congress, it did not have an ideology of violence: although the congress attacked the military and economic underpinnings of apartheid, it forswore attacks on civilians and generally expelled those members who violated that policy.

In contrast, no Palestine Liberation Organization member has ever been drummed out for violence against Israelis. As the price of joining the Oslo process, Arafat renounced terrorism, but he never delegitimized it; he never called those who carried out terrorist acts against Israeli enemies of the Palestinian cause.

<snip><

---Edited for brevity and the Copyright "Fair Use" standard---

Dennis Ross, envoy to the Middle East in the Clinton administration, is counselor of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of "The Missing Peace."

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Gosh, I thought this would be about this news story

Israel Considers Barring Palestinians on West Bank Roads

Israel is weighing a plan to bar Palestinians from the main roads in the West Bank with the aim of protecting Israeli motorists from roadside shootings, according to Israeli officials and a newspaper report today.
...
A senior Israeli official, who asked not to be identified because various options are still under consideration, said: "We think it is necessary to separate traffic on the roads, not all the roads, but the main roads, where Israelis are most vulnerable. It doesn't call for complete separation everywhere, and we see this as sort of a stop-gap measure."
...
The Israeli plan under consideration would mark a more formal, and perhaps permanent separation of Israeli and Palestinian traffic in the West Bank, the Israeli newspaper Maariv reported.

The newspaper said it could involve building new roads that would be used only by one side or the other, and was part of a larger plan to completely separate the two sides. In recent years, Israel has built numerous bypass roads specifically designed to connect large West Bank settlements to Israel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/international/middleeast/19cnd-mideast.html

The similarity to the old Pretoria is how the majority in the West Bank is treated. Since most of the inhabitants don't get to vote in Israeli elections, there's not much point in saying they should be counted along with the inhabitants of Israel, and then they can't be an oppressed majority. In the West Bank itself, they won't be allowed to use the best roads. Back of the bus, anyone?

[Colorado Blue]

2. I think the point of the original post is to explain exactly why

the West Bank and S.A. aren't at all the same thing. The West Bank is an active war zone. People are not being segregated or oppressed for the sake of segregation or oppression, but because a minority in their midst is intent upon the violent destruction of their neighbors.

This is now Year 5 of Intifada II and the problem of how to control violence without hurting innocent people remains as difficult as ever, especially as the militias have shown no desire to disarm and Abbas, though he is clashing with them, especially in Gaza, either lacks the power or the will to disarm them.

The formation of a Palestinian state is the stated goal of the Israeli government yet no such state can be created as long as the violence is ongoing - obviously, apart from the terror aimed at Israel, there is also violence among the Palestinians. This year, that violence claimed more Palestinian lives than the war with Israel.

It is important to understand context. Until people can figure out a way to live in peace with each other, measures to protect populations will be implemented. This would be true anyplace in the world. It is especially true in areas where terrorists are blended in with general populations - they don't wear uniforms, they aren't distinct from innocent people. So how can you defend against them without abridging everybody's civil rights? This is actually occurring even here in the States, where privacy rights and security measures are more intrusive and ubiquitous than perhaps most people realize.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. I don't understand why Israeli civilians are using these roads

if Israel intends to have the area become a Palestinian state. I can see why they would say Israeli police and military would need to use them until the Palestinian state is completely set up, but not normal Israelis. So why do they need to say Israeli motorists can use the roads, but Palestinians can't? Why don't the Israelis stop using the West Bank as a short cut? It can't be that much further if they stay inside Israel (and they wouldn't have to go through border checks either, which must be slow).