Partners in a Larger Memory
By Leonard Fein
A sudden run of good, even heady news, brings a restorative breeze to this summer's oppressive humidity. It's not just the stock market, with the lottery-like transformations it generates with such evident abandon. It's also the objective fact, richly translated into subjective feeling, that violent crime is down, way down, down now to its lowest level since the Government began tracking it in 1973. More esoterically, it's the fact that a House committee has actually decided not to fund a weapons production program - for the F22 fighter-bomber - that was thought by all who knew of it to be a done deal. And there is, of course, the matter of Ehud Barak's visit to the United States, and, underlying the success of his visit, Mr. Barak's decision to employ momentum as a resource in his pursuit of peace, and the confidence that in his case, speed does not mean incaution.
This is a somewhat awkward week in which to focus on good news. We are all still number by the awful death of young John Kennedy, his wife, and his sister-in-law off Martha's Vineyard. By now, there is little more to be said of the event, save to acknowledge the words of The New York Times editorialist who wrote of "the broken place it touches in America's heart." There's the break that each of us carries, the breach that cannot heal so long as we remember - and how can we forget? -- such places as the Parkman Hospital in Dallas, the Ambassador Hotel kitchen in Los Angeles, the Lorraine Motel balcony in Memphis, places that mark events that are intertwined with the memories of our own personal defeats and sorrows. But it is good to be reminded that we are partners in a larger memory, our nation's collective memory. In the anxious hours between Saturday morning's ominous first reports and Sunday night's collapse of hope, we found ourselves talking with strangers, assuming their shared concern. Hinei mah tov u'mah na'im . . . . For a moment, we were together, and there was and is great comfort in that.
Still, as always, the world goes on. And the world that goes on just now includes a peace process utterly transformed, become something we have not witnessed before.
I do not know, nor perhaps does anyone, where Ehud Barak should be located on the dove-hawk continuum. Suddenly, that continuum no longer seems especially important. The prime minister's stated position is that he is committed to Israel's security and that that security is maximized by peace between Israel and its neighbors. That is the only stance that can carry the day with a substantial majority of Israel's citizens, and it is therefore not merely credible, coming from a former Chief of Staff of the I.D.F; it is also politically wise.
And yes, it may make the negotiations, especially with the Palestinians, more difficult than they otherwise would be, with Israel less given to the kind of accommodation than many of us have supposed would be required in order to achieve a durable peace. So be it. There will be time, notwithstanding the rush, for second-guessing once we know the details of the negotiations. For now, the central fact is that we have for the first time in memory an Israeli prime minister who enters office knowing quite precisely what he wants to achieve and with a plan to achieve it. Israel will thus be rescued from its hitherto largely passive and essentially reactive role, become at last the active setter of a peace agenda.
One ought be awed by that transformation. Going quite far back, the Israeli approach to peace has been dominated, this even under Labor governments, by the view that time was on Israel's side, that there was no special urgency to peacemaking, that Israeli initiatives would be interpreted as signs of Israel's weakness. Yet now, quite suddenly, it is plain that Israel's initiatives are signs of strength - of strength and of a very balanced assessment of an international situation that includes a serious reading of President Assad, a sober assessment of both Iraq and Iran, and apparently as well the realization that Israel would be wise to seek peace with the Palestinians while Yasir Arafat is still their active leader, before they collapse into transitional chaos as they are likely to in the post-Arafat period.
There will be forces on Israel's right and left that will oppose the trend of the negotiation. The left likes to imagine a time of open borders and joined economies, of something close to a bi-national (but this time federal) state; for sure it believes that the Israelis should leave such flash-points as Hebron, retaining only the right to visit holy places unimpeded. The right hopes that Barak is a dove only with regard to the process, that he will prove a hawk when it comes to substance. Neither, however, will have the strength to withstand an unfolding agreement.
The Prime Minister observed to those who met with him privately here that there remains a large gap between even the most moderate positions of the Israelis and the most moderate position of the Arabs. He believes, he says, that he can bridge that gap. But if he cannot, he adds - then at the least, we will know it was not for want of trying. This is all quite new, and heady; while we oughtn't get carried away by the words or the actions that surround them, it's hard to repress a sense of genuine excitement.
|
|