It has become clearer and clearer that the Bush administration drew completely the wrong conclusions from Sept. 11. Instead of seeking to address the root causes of Muslim rage, it wrapped itself in the patriotic mantle of "zero tolerance for terrorism." This played well to a wounded and shocked nation seeking moral certainties (and revenge). But it is hopelessly inadequate as a road map to the moral and historical complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- indeed, to most armed conflicts in which terrorism plays a significant role.

One can condemn the suicide attacks on Israeli civilians while acknowledging the fact that not all terrorism is created equal: while some acts of terror are anomic, nihilist violence, others can be a (singularly brutal) component of war. Most people would place the terrorism of the African National Congress against South Africa's racist white regime, for example, in a different category from the state terrorism of Pol Pot during Cambodia's Year Zero. Few supporters of Israel regard Israel's existence as morally undermined by the acts of terror against the British and the Palestinians, like the blowing up of the King David Hotel or the massacre at Deir Yassin, that helped bring it into being: The end justified the means. Similarly, few Americans shed many tears over the hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese civilians we killed in so-called "strategic" bombing during World War II -- bombing which often had little military purpose other than to inflict maximum death on as many civilians as possible, so as to weaken the enemy's will to fight.

The truth, as Anthony H. Cordesman, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, argued in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, is that "the situation has essentially become asymmetric warfare rather than Palestinian terrorism and Israeli counterterrorism. Each side has escalated the violence using the methods available to it. For the Palestinians, this is suicide bombing and smuggled arms. For Israel, it is tanks and attack helicopters."

Viewed in this context, the answer to stopping the violence is not merely to condemn terrorism, but to address the issues that have led to this war. Israeli rage at Arafat is understandable. The corrupt and power-drunk Palestinian leader has indeed winked at terrorism, if not actively ordered it. But even if Arafat demanded that it stop, he would be unable to enforce that demand -- unless a real political solution, such as that offered by the Arab peace plan, was at hand. Without a political agreement, not merely a cease-fire leaving the unacceptable status quo in place, the militants in Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the Tanzim and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades would see no reason to lay down their arms -- and the Palestinian Authority no reason to try to force them to.

To understand why the militants have no motivation to observe a cease-fire without a political dimension, one has to understand the deterioration of the Palestinian situation since Oslo in 1993. The Oslo Accords did not bring peace to either side, but to the Palestinians they brought disaster. Israel still retains de facto control of the occupied territories, even though the incompetent P.A. supposedly runs part of them. Israel still uses the lion's share of the water in those territories, which are cut into isolated cantons crisscrossed with security roads and fortress-like settlements. It continues to strangle the economies in the West Bank and the hellish Gaza Strip with endless closures, preventing Palestinians from seeking their serf-like work in Israel, where they are paid far less than Israelis. Above all, it has continued to pour settlers and settlements into the West Bank, creating "facts on the ground" intended to prevent Israel from ever abandoning the Biblical lands of Judea and Samaria.

If Israel had undertaken all of these restrictive policies simply out of legitimate security concerns, while undertaking good-faith negotiations on the political issues, one might conceivably accept their validity. But that is not the case. Sharon, the man who led the settlement-building policy intended to prevent Israel from ever withdrawing from the occupied territories, has never seriously attempted to make a realistic peace with the Palestinians, one that involves relinquishing the territories occupied after the 1967 war. As the Israeli journalist Doron Rosenblum wrote in Ha'aretz, "even if we take the Arafatian wickedness and stupdity into account, we will find that during this past year there was not even one single opportunity for dialogue, for calm, for minimal creativity in the direction of some sort of agreement or understanding that was not intentionally scotched by Sharon, and this when he did not initiate an intentional provocation."

But many Israelis -- including even Benny Morris, one of the so-called "new historians" who helped puncture many of Israel's most cherished myths -- no longer believe that the Palestinians want peace. Arafat's rejection of Ehud Barak's Camp David offer caused the scales to fall from their eyes: If the Palestinians could turn down an offer that included more than 90 percent of the West Bank and control of most of East Jerusalem, they must not be interested in peace but in an endless struggle to destroy Israel itself. Many American supporters of Israel share this view.

Such a reaction is understandable, but in my view misguided. It assumes a kind of primordial hatred of Israelis by Palestinians, or hatred of Jews by Palestinians, that neither the historical record nor the contemporary situation, bleak as it is, bears out. As the noted Israeli journalist and historian Tom Segev commented, it is naive to expect a 100-year-old conflict to be ended with one roll of the dice. Mistrusts are too deep, lack of mutual understanding too strong. But those can be overcome -- in time, and with good-faith efforts. In his forthcoming book, "War Without End," the British journalist Anton LaGuardia noted that one of the things that led Arafat to walk away was simply a desire for Israelis to apologize -- to acknowledge their responsibility. On such seemingly trivial matters the attempts at reconciliation between two suffering peoples with tragic histories can founder. But hope is not dead yet, nor hatred too strong.

Yes, there are some Palestinians who reject Israel's right to exist and desire not peaceful coexistence with Israel but existence without either Israel or Jews. But reading the words of Palestinians -- from shopkeepers to intellectuals -- one gets the sense that most do not feel this way. They are deeply angry and bitter at Israel and Israelis, it is true, but that anger has not yet frozen into permanent, self-destructive hatred. Yes, they cling to wraithlike dreams of fields and olive trees and sunlit orchards that vanished 54 years ago in the fire of war and terror -- as what person who lost his native realm would not? The same dream, based not on actual memories but on ancient history, led to the founding of Israel -- but it is still possible for them to step out of the shadows of memory, to forgive and move on. What most Palestinians want is a measure of justice, embodied in a real state, not a Bantustan; acknowledgment by Israel of its share of responsibility for their tragic plight; and a chance for a better life.

Those are things that even now Israel could still be persuaded to give them -- if it was assured that the sacrifice and the admission would truly bring peace. But as the semi-war continues, the rejectionists and anti-Semites and deadly fundamentalists are gaining in power on the Arab side -- just as racist, anti-Arab hyper-nationalists and religious fanatics are gaining on the Israeli side. If the U.S., the only country that has the power to stop this madness, refuses to step in, the cycle of violence will grow to the point where the pessimists are proven right -- and then not only that region will suffer, the whole world will be in danger. Time is on no one's side.

The solution is clear. The U.S. must step in immediately to broker a peace plan along the lines provided by the Saudi initiative. Israel would completely withdraw to its pre-'67 borders. On the most contentious issues -- the right of return and Jerusalem -- the U.S. should propose splitting the difference, giving the Palestinians slightly more than they got at Camp David on Jerusalem and its all-important Temple Mount area, but holding the line on the refugees. The Palestinians would get East Jerusalem as their capital; Israelis would have access to the Western Wall. In exchange, the Palestinians would give up their demand for unlimited right of return: Refugees would be resettled elsewhere and paid compensation, as in Barak's proposal. The Arab states have clearly signaled that they are prepared to compromise on the right of return, and with their support Arafat would have the authority to make this momentous and needed break with Palestinian mythology.

To give Israel assurance that giving up the occupied territories and East Jerusalem would bring peace, an international peacekeeping force should be deployed. Any attacks on Israel would be met with an immediate and devastating international military response.

Sharon, of course, would reject this plan unless he was forced to accept it -- so the U.S. must force him to accept it, threatening to withhold the $3 billion a year it provides Israel if necessary.

Time is running out. Supporters of Israel and of the Palestinians alike -- and those of us who wish both sides well -- must urge the Bush administration to act. The alternative is unthinkable.

Recent Stories