No Equivalence

Editorial - The Wall Street Journal 
March 14, 2002 

Bush's men should know better than to liken soldiers to 
suicide bombers.

General Anthony Zinni is returning to the Middle East today
in search of a cease-fire. On Tuesday the U.S. sponsored a 
United Nations Security Council resolution supporting a Palestinian 
state. And State Department spokesman Richard Boucher has called 
for Israel to "exercise the utmost restraint and discipline 
to avoid further harm to civilians"--as if the difference
between Palestinian suicide bombers and Israel's measured response 
isn't abundantly clear. Even President Bush said yesterday 
that Israel's recent military actions are "not helpful."

The reason for the Administration's sudden re-engagement on 
the issue is no secret. Vice President Dick Cheney is in the 
region trying to build support for regime change in Iraq, 
and the deteriorating Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains 
a sore spot in our relations with the Arab world.

The trouble is, this activity comes just as Israel has started 
to win some important victories in its war on terror. And worse, 
it threatens to undermine the moral case for our own war--a case
President Bush couldn't have put any better than he did Monday, 
declaring: "There can be no peace in a world where differences 
and grievances become an excuse to target the innocent for 
murder."

A couple of years ago, perhaps, it was still possible to 
argue that Palestinian violence was the work of a few Islamic 
extremists, and that punishing Yasser Arafat only made it harder 
for him to rein them in. But in the summer of 2000 Israel offered 
Mr. Arafat a state, and Mr. Arafat launched a war. The lion's 
share of recent attacks have been carried out not by Hamas or 
Islamic Jihad, but by the military wing of Mr. Arafat's own
Fatah movement. And after Saturday night's deadly suicide 
bombing at the Moment cafe in Jerusalem, Mr. Arafat's state 
radio praised the bomber as a "heroic martyr."

In short, the targeting of innocents is Mr. Arafat's explicit 
strategy to address the "grievance" of Israeli occupation. 
Israel, on the other hand, has pursued a policy of carefully 
targeting militants, and has been risking its soldiers over 
the past week to arrest suspects and confiscate weapons in
Palestinian towns and refugee camps. Some non-combatants 
have been killed, but there is no moral equivalence here--
certainly not the kind implied by U.S. proposals for monitors 
to keep peace between the two sides, or by Colin Powell's 
declaration last week that "if you declare war on the 
Palestinians and think you can solve the problem by seeing 
how many Palestinians can be killed, I don't know if that 
leads us anywhere."

The message all this sends Mr. Arafat is unmistakable: 
Ratchet up suicidal bombings of Israeli civilians, induce a 
military response, and the U.S. will heavily pressure Israel 
for concessions.

The Saudi peace "plan," meanwhile, seems to be going nowhere 
fast. Some prominent Arab state will eventually have to take 
the lead in "normalizing" relations with Israel. But if Crown 
Prince Abdullah were serious, he might have presented it to 
Ariel Sharon as Israel's elected leader, not to a New York 
Times columnist. He might also have presented it two years 
ago, when it could have made a difference, instead of urging 
Mr. Arafat to reject the hugely concessionary offer made by 
former Israeli Prime Minister Barak at Camp David. Now there's 
even talk among the Arab League of removing any reference 
to "normalization" at all. Without that, it amounts to 
nothing but a demand for unconditional surrender.

We understand the Bush Administration's concerns as it makes 
the case in foreign capitals for an expansion of the war on 
terror. But the White House should understand that both 
strategic and moral consistency means sometimes telling 
people what they don't want to hear. To wit: The U.S. has
already spent more than a decade sponsoring talks for Israel 
to return to something like the 1967 borders, and the 
Palestinian grievance over Israeli occupation must be 
addressed by a return to the negotiating table, not violence
aimed explicitly at innocent civilians.

The definition of such violence is terrorism. It is the very 
kind of anti-civilian terror as an instrument of politics that 
President Bush so eloquently condemned on Monday. Until such 
time as the Arab world is ready to seek solutions by civilized 
means, the U.S. has no moral alternative to standing firmly 
behind Prime Minister Sharon's war against such terror.