The New Republic

In Israel, "Operation Noah's Ark," the January 3 capture of a ship
carrying weapons bound for Palestine, was an epiphany. For many
erstwhile doves, it shattered the illusion--still alive despite
more than a year of intifada-- that they could negotiate a
demilitarized Palestinian state next door.The rest of the world treated the news with a yawn. Italy's la
Repubblica restricted its discussion of the ship to a sidebar
within a front-page article about Yasir Arafat's confinement to
Ramallah, entitled "THE SAD DAYS OF ARAFAT-- PRESIDENT IN PRISON."
Germany's Berliner Zeitung mentioned the ship under a headline
about the Palestinian Authority's (PA) arrest of six extremists.
London's Observer buried the story altogether. In much of the
international press, Arafat's denial of responsibility--his solemn
word that he knew nothing about a 4,000-ton ship purchased by one
of his operatives and manned by members of his navy--has been
treated as a credible counterweight to Israeli claims. Not even the
televised admission by the ship's captain that the weapons were
loaded near the Iranian coast, overseen by a Hezbollah agent, and
bound for the PA--a textbook example of President Bush's definition
of what transforms a local conflict into global-reach
terrorism--convinced foreign observers that Israel had uncovered a
Palestinian-Iranian-Hezbollah triangle. Few governments considered
it disturbing that Arafat was using his pledged crackdown on
terrorism as a cover to acquire weapons of terror aimed at
civilians--dozens of Katyushas that could be used in attacks on
Israeli towns and more than 2,000 kilos of high-grade explosives,
especially c-4, more powerful than any explosive used in the car
bombs and suicide assaults so far. Even the State
Department--desperate to preserve what was once a peace process and
is now barely a cease-fire process--reacted to the Palestinian
captain's confirmation of Israel's accusations with the bland
assertion that it was awaiting more conclusive proof.

In Israel, by contrast, the operation--conducted more than 300 miles
off the Israeli coast--was treated as an epic. Israelis consumed
every detail, from how the ship was tracked after its purchase last
October, to its eight-minute bloodless takeover. In its first
edition after the news broke, the newspaper Maariv devoted 17 news
pages to the story; commentators recalled the Entebbe rescue and
the bombing of the Iraqi reactor at Osirak. "JUST LIKE THE MOVIES,"
exulted the headline of Israel's largest daily, Yediot Aharonot. One
left-wing columnist complained that the newspapers resembled
"victory albums"--a relapse into post-Six Day War arrogance. Yet
Israelis weren't gloating; we were relieved: Despite our flight
from Lebanon and our stalemated war against terrorism, we were
still smart and daring enough to protect ourselves.

And the operation didn't only have a profound emotional impact on
Israeli society; it had an enormous political impact as well. After
the suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa last month, Prime
Minister Sharon increased his demands on Arafat not only to impose
seven days of quiet, but also to uproot Hamas and Islamic Jihad's
terrorist infrastructure, and collect the vast quantity of illegal
Palestinian weapons that violate the Oslo accords. Recently,
though, Shimon Peres had begun to erode those demands, implying that
a reduction in violence alone was sufficient for resuming political
talks. And a weary Israeli public seemed prepared to go along.
Indeed, though the Israeli press has amply reported that Arafat
loyalists--mostly Tanzim militiamen and members of Force 17,
Arafat's personal guard--have initiated about half of the terrorist
attacks of the last year, many Israelis continued to cling to a
distinction between Arafat and Hamas.

No more. "Operation Noah's Ark" has quickly returned Israel's focus
to infrastructure. Defense Minister and newly elected Labor Party
leader Benjamin Ben-Eliezer has warned that the relative lull in
violence conceals a steady expansion of the terrorist
infrastructure. Even the left-wing newspaper Ha'aretz has been
forced to concede that "Arafat is preparing for a huge escalation,
including the ability to equip hundreds of suicide attackers with
explosives and to attack Israeli cities with rockets." And most
Israelis now realize that to demand that Arafat dismantle
Palestine's terrorist infrastructure is absurd: As this incident
proved, the biggest terrorist infrastructure in the PA is the PA
itself. And so the Oslo process has moved from ambitious
negotiations over ending the conflict to pathetic negotiations over
resuming negotiations to now, finally, the realization that there is
no point in negotiating at all.

In delegitimizing Arafat, Sharon has the crucial backing of the
army's general staff. Once a key bastion of Oslo support, the
general staff's attitude has gradually shifted from skepticism over
Arafat's intentions to public contempt. Following the seizure,
Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz overstepped his authority and declared
that it was time for the government to reevaluate its relations
with Arafat--implying that Israel should label him not merely
irrelevant, but an outright enemy. "This smuggle attempt emphasizes
and points directly at the Palestinian Authority intention to
continue a strategy of terror and violence increasing and
escalating over time," Mofaz said last week. Though he has rebuked
Mofaz for political statements in the past, this time Ben- Eliezer
refused to join the left-wing Knesset members who justifiably
criticized the chief of staff for trying to publicly influence the
government's agenda. And were it not for pressure within Labor,
Ben-Eliezer would probably endorse Mofaz's position himself.

But the new mood goes deeper than mere loathing of Arafat. For the
first time since Oslo, you don't have to be right-wing to question
the wisdom of a Palestinian state segmented between the West Bank
and Gaza, with Israel wedged in between. The arms seizure has
negated the most basic assumption of the Oslo process: that a
Palestinian state would be demilitarized and devoid of terrorist
intent. Now demilitarization no longer seems feasible. And
mainstream Israeli newspapers have published maps that could have
been lifted from the settlers' anti-Oslo pamphlets of the
mid-1990s, showing Israel's population centers within Katyusha
range of Gaza and the West Bank--maps that show most of Israel as
the equivalent of the Northern border town of Kiryat Shemona, the
symbol of Israeli vulnerability to constant attack. In my
conversations about the ship with friends across the political
spectrum, one question recurs: If this is what the Palestinians
attempt now, with Israel in control of the borders and the seas,
how will we enforce demilitarization in a sovereign Palestine?
Barely anyone anymore even tries to provide an answer.

By Yossi Klein Halevi

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