Peace Now leader here

No withdrawals without security

By Deborah Moon

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“Israel cannot afford another withdrawal unless there is a guarantee that someone on the other side of the border can promise that this land will not be a launching pad for missiles,” Americans for Peace Now founder Mark Rosenblum told Portlanders March 7.

“The precondition for anything else happening is to rebuild Palestinian security forces,” said Rosenblum, speaking at a March 7 gathering hosted by the Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies at Portland State University. The talk was his last of four in Portland in early March.

He also spoke at Havurah Shalom, to the Oregon Chapter of American Jewish Committee and at a fund-raiser for Americans for Peace Now.

His PSU talk on “The American Role in Israeli Palestinian Relations” focused primarily on security needs.

Rosenblum, who is also the director of the Queens College Jewish Studies Program, explained that the Palestinian Authority’s first leader, Yasir Arafat, created 12 competing security forces. Through corruption and power grabs by clans, mafias, families and warlords over the past seven years, those forces have become ineffective, conflicting authorities, he said.

“Americans are trying to broker peace with decent human beings who have very limited capacity to take over and control areas Israel might withdraw from,” said Rosenblum, adding he doesn’t think Abu Mazzan (Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas), has the capacity to “market peace” or “deliver security.”

Rosenblum said Americans must be committed to helping Palestinians rebuild their security forces and be prepared “to stay and protect the good Palestinians from the bad Hamas, who are waiting to do in the West Bank what they did in Gaza.”

Under PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the PA has created a new police academy in Jericho to train “a younger generation not tied to the warlords.” Rosenblum praised Fayyad as the most principled Palestinian leader and an economist who has brought transparency to the Palestinian budget.

The best signal that peace is possible in the region is the fact that President Bush has sent three generals to help rebuild the security force, said Rosenblum. One general is helping the Palestinians rebuild a security force loyal to the PA rather than to clans and warlords, another is monitoring the effectiveness of those forces in the two West Bank towns where they have been deployed and a third is sitting at the negotiating table with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators.

Rosenblum credited the moderation of Bush’s black-and-white foreign policy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, under whom “grayish reality crept in.”

The best indicator of whether the Bush administration’s new drive for peace is “political spin or political spine” will be to see how the three generals are “deployed to work on security enhancements.” Rosenblum said if they operate while sitting in the Pentagon, it’s political spin, but if they have “monitors on the ground,” that will show the policy has a spine.

“Judge Bush’s new diplomacy with monitors on the ground; judge the Palestinians for how well they’re doing rebuilding their security forces,” he said.

Rosenblum said that with the new generation of missiles Hamas is beginning to deploy from Gaza, “Israel is a sitting duck if they continue (improving) at the same pace. …By the end of this year they will be able to hit the outskirts of Tel Aviv.”

Deciding how to deal with Hamas—whether to militarily reoccupy Gaza to halt the rocket attacks or to seek a cease-fire during which Hamas will stockpile even more sophisticated rockets—is like choosing between the plague and cholera, he said.

Two other efforts that could further the move toward peace also are reliant on security said Rosenblum.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is looking for areas in Gaza and the West Bank to use the $18 billion pledged from around the world to rebuild a Palestinian infrastructure. Blair is attempting to identify projects in secure spaces to use the capital.

And while the security barrier and the some 500 checkpoints in the West Bank have been effective in reducing violence, they are also disruptive of Palestinian life and should ultimately be dismantled, said Rosenblum.

“Economic mobility, lack of rage and anger at checkpoints will be impacted in dramatic ways (in West Bank cities Israel can pull out of),” said Rosenblum, “but the puzzle falls into place only if security exists.”

“All roads lead back to security,” he emphasized.