It is our firm conviction that when do-goodie governments interfere in the national affairs of other states, even with the best of motives and the most noble of intentions, the actual results are likely to be greater harm.
The so-called peace-process in the Middle East is a classic example. Who could criticise successive US administrations, both Democrat and Republican, for trying to persuade, cajole, arm-twist, and plead with the Palestinians and the Israelis to reach a negotiated, long-lasting peace settlement. No-one in his right mind.
Not so fast. What if the efforts and actions of the international community actually made the situation much more precarious, and the made the prospects for peace much less likely? Impossible, you say. What if leaving the Palestinians and the Israelis to discover their own solutions under the aegis of a balance of terror were far more helpful and productive in reaching mutual agreement? Fantastical, you reply.
There are those very close to the actual situation who argue this in all seriousness--and their case is weighty and persuasive, if not compelling. Miranda Devine, in the Sydney Morning Herald reports on evidence and arguments presented by Khaled Abu Toameh, a correspondent for The Jerusalem Post.
An Israeli citizen and Arab Muslim, one of 1.4 million Arabs in Israel, Toameh first worked for the Palestine Liberation Organisation newspaper Al-Fajr, where he said editors waited for instructions from Yasser Arafat about how big his picture should be and what should be on the front page. Wanting to be a ''real journalist'', he went on to work for foreign news organisations, such as BBC and CNN, where his high-level contacts on both sides and courageous independence provided invaluable insight.
He says the principles of the Oslo accords - the 1993 negotiations between Arafat and Israel's Yitzhak Rabin, brokered by Bill Clinton - setting out the two-state solution architecture were ''wonderful'' but impractical, and set the stage for the second intifada.
After Oslo, American money poured into the corrupt coffers of the PLO, whose chiefs built themselves huge beach villas while the Palestinian people grew disillusioned. Arafat's rule was ''not much different than other Arab dictatorships, though not as bad as Saddam [Hussein]''.
The PLO took people flooding out of Israeli jails and made them generals and colonels, despite not finishing high school. Car thieves were now interrogators. ''The longer in an Israeli jail, the higher the rank.''
How's that for an unintended consequence? American aid money to the Palestinians so corrupted the PLO, that Hamas and its supporters were radicalized into wanting nothing more to do with the West, the PLO, and Israel. The PLO became so repugnant to the Palestinians, anything was preferable. Hamas was astutely able to present itself as the "anything". Hamas's success in Palestine is an indirect consequence of American well-meant interference.
He said the process radicalised Palestinians and empowered Hamas, the Islamic fundamentalist group backed by Iran and Syria, declared a terrorist organisation by the US, and whose charter is to destroy the Jewish state. It won democratic Palestinian parliamentary elections in January 2006. The result was a surprise to Washington, but not to Toameh, who wrote the election-eve ''scoop'' for The Wall Street Journal.
He said it was obvious the Palestinian people wanted "regime change" and joked that even Ariel Sharon would have won the election. He knew Christians who voted for Hamas. He would have voted for Hamas, not because he believes in suicide bombers, but to get rid of the PLO. ''No party could be as corrupt as Fatah'', the PLO's political party. Hamas shrewdly won Palestinian hearts and minds by building schools, hospitals and charities. Its leaders lived frugally, while the PLO's drove around in motorcades.
I used to visit the home of the Hamas founder and there were no secretaries, no limousines. When you interview Fatah you have to go through 10 secretaries. It has an effect on Palestinians." The election was "not just a Hamas coup. I saw Palestinians chase [the PLO] away."
Fatah refused to accept the result, and so a virtual civil war developed between it and Hamas, with 2000 Palestinians killed in the "Battle of Gaza" in the summer of 2007. When the smoke cleared, Fatah had taken over the West Bank, while Hamas retained Gaza.
Israel is confronted with the real-politik of the West Bank and Gaza. The PLO is discredited and corrupted; it lacks political legitimacy. The PLO has far more political legitimacy, but lacks legitimacy with Israel and the US. The upshot--a real-politik engagement between Israel and Hamas. This is something which peace negotiations brokered by outsiders could never produce. But it offers real potential--gradual, slow, but meaningful potential.
Toameh says, wryly, a two-party state already exists - on the Palestinian side. It is disarray that he says must be useful to Israeli leaders. Arafat's successor as PLO chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, has had his chance, Toameh says. Sixty per cent of Palestinians voted for him in 2005. "He came to power and did nothing for a year. He's weak, he didn't fight against corruption and under him the number of Palestinians killed were more than were killed by Israel."
Hamas, on the other hand, is popular in mosques and kindergartens, in the fabric of Palestinian society. "Sadly, I see young Palestinians becoming more radical than previous generations", under the influence of Hamas and global jihad. Yet a truce of sorts exists between Israel and Hamas, with ''secret understandings'' and ''signs of pragmatism''.
This stable status quo is the result of relentless Israeli pressure on Hamas
History shows us many things--but one thing clearly stands out. Peaceful solutions that arise from the bottom up are always more genuinely long lasting than artificial solutions derived from external pressure and badgering. But to arrive at internally engineered solutions, one has to be pragmatic, patient, and non-dogmatic. Alamo-like, internally derived lines-in-sand can be effective for a time as part of an evolution to a deeper and broader solution. Externally imposed "lines in sand" almost never work as a basis for long-lasting peace.
Young people in Israel today are more pragmatic than their elders, prepared to give territory for peace. ''Just leave us Tel Aviv, the airport and the beach,'' he jokes, is their attitude. "There are people in Israel saying we can't make peace but . . . we are prepared to talk to the devil. You can't make peace with Hamas but you can do arrangements. I'd rather deal with an enemy who is strong and can deliver.''
But the proximity talks now threaten this state of relative calm. They are "forcing talk on explosive issues, forcing them to sit and talk about these issues . . . When [the talks fail] we might have a third intifada . . . Peace should be from the bottom up.'
In his second term, Bush had learned from bitter experience that the most constructive contribution the US could make to a lasting Arab-Israeli settlement was for the US to apply benign neglect to the region. And he did. But this was too much for the Progressives, who want "peace in our time". And the likely consequence of their interference? More instability and a prolonging of the conflict.
It is a key US foreign policy goal to achieve a "two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict", as the US Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, said on Sunday. The goal is "a comprehensive peace in the Middle East". For the next four months, Mitchell will shuttle backward and forward between Ramallah and West Jerusalem, but Toameh says Abbas cannot deliver peace. He is afraid of his own people. The Palestinian internal conflict needs resolving first.
Until then, leaving well enough alone is a diplomatic maxim that might save more pain.
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