Moreover, while Israel treads water, Arafat comes up with ostensibly "new ideas" which he claims will end what the West persists in calling "the cycle of violence." He has been clamoring for international monitors to come to the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem. Arafat wants to internationalize the conflict and let the UN serve as his own "Wall" against potentially more serious Israeli reactions to PA provocations. Europe is eager, but the U.S. has thus far supported Israel in her opposition to Arafat's demand. Israel looks at the dismal failure of the UN force in Lebanon from 1978 to the present to be anything more than a shield for Hezbollah guerillas. As Michael Rubin, a visiting fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy points out, "monitors in the West Bank and Gaza can never prevent attacks, since neither Hamas, nor Islamic Jihad, nor Arafat's multiple militias, allow observers to tail along on ambushes and suicide bombings." But how long will Israel be able to hold the fort even on monitors? Already, in Israel itself, thousands of left wing demonstrators, led by opposition Member of Parliament Yossi Sarid and former Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, have rallied on Rabin Square in Tel Aviv under the slogan "We demand negotiations now, we demand international observers."

By its very agreement to the Mitchell Plan, Israel implicitly endorses the notion that the PA war is merely a bump on the road to peace and that renewed "negotiations" can end hostilities. This is ludicrous. As journalist Michael Gove pointed out in a fine article in the London Times (published the very day of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon): "It is not just that Arafat's territory harbors terrorists. It is terrorist. Militarily, culturally, spiritually. Just as much as any totalitarian regime from our dark continent's 20th century." While the prevailing myth is that violence is evil and talks a quintessential good, in fact, Gove writes, "the more 'successful' talks are, the greater the legitimation for further violence and the talks that Israel continues to hold with the Palestinian Authority will only confer further legitimacy on the terrorist state."

In keeping up the pretense that there is a peace process out there that Israel can rescue by "standing firm but still," Israel makes it inevitable that irresistible pressures will build to make it move "forward" according to Arafat's strategic plan of "stages": Israel makes additional withdrawals and recognizes a Palestinian state (the "painful compromises" to which Sharon refers) while the Arabs maintain the "right of return" and their right and duty to fight until it is fully implemented, i.e. the Jewish state ceases to exist.

There is other serious fallout from Israeli inaction. Israel's supporters abroad--and there remain strong pockets in the evangelical and Jewish community--at first keep faith ("Sharon must have a plan") but eventually grow uncomprehending, frustrated, and alienated. Those in this country whose understanding for Israel would grow in the wake of our own direct experience of terror can only be confused as Israel zigs and zags, alternatively scolding and embracing terrorists.

There is only one action that Israel can take to seize the initiative, and it is a mark of Israel's moral disintegration that only one Knesset member, Michael Kleiner of the Herut Party, has clearly, forcefully, and continually articulated it: re-take the areas that have been turned over to the PA (Israeli military commanders have said this could be done in three days of fighting) and expel the surviving militias and political leaders. And no, George Will to the contrary, it will avail nothing to then retreat behind A Wall. Israel will have to resume control of these areas.

Are there dangers to replacing paralysis with vigorous action? Undoubtedly. But whatever the dangers, they are nothing compared with the certainty of disaster should Israel continue its present passive slide into oblivion.

Rael Jean Isaac is editor of Outpost.

Outpost               - 6 -               September-October 2001