Background: What if Israel Won the War and No One Knew?

By Ha'aretz

It is the nature of undeclared wars that victory and defeat may be largely a matter of opinion. Over the nearly four years of undeclared warfare in the Holy Land, victory has been claimed often, and by both sides.

This may explain, in part, why "Israel's Intifada Victory,"

Krauthammer believes it has. "While no one was looking, something historic happened in the Middle East," he wrote earlier this month. "The Palestinian intifada is over, and the Palestinians have lost."

In an opinion piece published recently, Krauthammer said that Israel has scored a strategic victory, and that the intifada was, in fact, over. "The end of the intifada does not mean the end of terrorism," the Post columnist wrote. "There was terrorism before the intifada and there will be terrorism to come. What has happened, however, is an end to systematic, regular, debilitating, unstoppable terror -- terror as a reliable weapon."

And a growing number of the Arabs of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have voiced disenchantment with the intifada, stating that it has little aided Palestinians in achieving their national aims. One recent poll of Palestinian public opinion showed that more than 50 percent of the respondents agreed.

Does that mean that Israel has won, or that the intifada is over? The answer may be contained within the apparent contradiction of a separate finding in the same poll of Palestinians. Despite doubts over the intifada, more than 70 percent of respondents voiced continued and unqualified support for suicide bombings.

According to Ha'aretz Arab Affairs Editor Danny Rubinstein, "The moment that the Palestinians shifted the battlefield to our buses, shopping malls, and coffee shops, they lost their support across the world, in Washington, in Europe, and, especially, they lost all Israeli understanding for their cause," an element which had long underpinned Israeli sentiment in favor of the peace process, and had acted to restrain the limits of Israeli military power.

As a consequence, Palestinians have come to recognize that "Israel today can do almost anything it wants militarily in the territories. As Israelis see it, while it's true that Palestinians are suffering, they've lost their jobs, they're unable to go school, the fence damages their economy and their daily lives, however, we, the Israelis, will not be put to death, bombed in our buses and streets."

According to Krauthammer, Israel has won a strategic victory because the intifada failed in its intent "to demoralize Israel, destroy its economy, bring it to its knees, and thus force it to withdraw and surrender to Palestinian demands, just as Israel withdrew in defeat from southern Lebanon in May 2000."

But Rubinstein suggests that the reality is more complex. While many Palestinians have come to view attacks on Israeli civilians as having done great damage to their cause, large numbers also perceived suicide bombings as "quite a success," particularly because intensified use of force by Israel has fueled a backlash of anger in the West Bank and Gaza, and a concurrent thirst for revenge.

In the suicide bomber, Palestinians believed that they had found the ultimate weapon, calling it the "nuclear bomb of the disadvantaged." Palestinians who supported the bombings knew that the attacks would not destroy the state of Israel, he said. "But they knew that they could do great harm to our daily lives, and it did."

Rubinstein maintains that the true infrastructure of terrorism does not lie in the stores or manufacture of arms and explosives, rather "in the motivation of the people, in their wish to get back at us. And the wish still exists." Therefore, although Israel can reasonably claim victories in the war against terror, Rubinstein argues, "Israel has yet to find a way to end the intifada."

The current period of relative success based on hugely intensive military and intelligence efforts may continue on a temporary basis, but force alone will not make the Palestinian struggle and the desire for an independent state simply go away, he said.

If there is to be a real end to the conflict, Rubinstein concluded, "The government must find a way to reach a just agreement between the peoples. I believe that it is still possible. If it is not possible, then we are all doomed to die in this area.

"This entire conception, of fighting the intifada by launching operations, building walls, and making the Palestinians suffer more and more, is not an answer. In the long run, it will damage us even more."