Rabbi Jonathan Blass
The events of the past weeks may be seen as a test of strength and nothing more.
Yasser Arafat embarked upon the Oslo peace process on the premise that it would lead to an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. The election of Benjamin Netanyahu upset that assumption.
Netanyahu's decision to open an exit to the Western Wall tunnel without first receiving permission from the Palestinian Authority highlighted his commitment to exclusive Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem. His insistence on renegotiating the Hebron redeployment indicated that Shimon Peres' Oslo II agreement with Arafat binds the present government in principle rather than in reality.
It is "nice" to think that negotiations are being conducted without the threat of violence. But Arafat's ability to influence events is based only on violence. Pressed, he turned to the one lever available to him, one that served him well in the past: encouraging a wave of terror that killed 15 Israeli soldiers and policemen.
Countering with overwhelming force and standing firm in Washington, Netanyahu blocked Arafat's last remaining option to re-establish the status-quo ante and cancel the effects of the Israeli elections. He forced Arafat to recognize the tunnel as a fait accompli and agree to adjustments in the Hebron redeployment.
These are moves and countermoves in a power game; but the moral dimension raises grave doubts about peace with Arafat as Israel's "partner."
Palestinian policemen -- armed with tens of thousands of automatic rifles supplied by an Israeli government -- opened deadly fire on Israeli soldiers and civilians. Or let's put it like this: The victims were shot with weapons provided to the killers, former terrorists, by the state of Israel.
The amorality of that is so horrific as to be difficult even to acknowledge.
Terror is a crime, and appeasement of terror makes the appeaser an accomplice. The Oslo agreement to arm international terrorists responsible for the slaughter of thousands of innocents was wrong in an absolute, moral sense.
Pretending sophistication, Israel's Labor government dismissed all ethical protests, arguing that "one can make peace only with enemies," and "we can't choose our neighbors."
But where else in the world has a peace agreement been based not on disarmament, but on its reverse, on the arming of a terrorist group?
In the Rabin government's zeal to prove its sophistication -- construed as freedom from "archaic" ideological or moral constraints -- it allowed all considerations, even those of common sense, to fall by the wayside.
There's just one problem. Sins like murder don't wash away. Nor can they be "sweetened" by "all the perfumes of Arabia."
In his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln attributed American suffering in the Civil War to the sin of slavery. A moralist, Lincoln understood that certain crimes exact concrete, historical retribution.
In September, the entire nation paid tragically for the sin of the Rabin-Peres government that supplied Kalashnikov assault rifles to murderers. That government was forewarned by intelligence experts, by opposition leaders and by hunger strikers, who (to no avail) pleaded: "Don't give them rifles."
His predecessors' policies having been rejected by the electorate, Netanyahu has returned the nation to its traditional moral stance: opposing the appeasement of terror, for ethical as well as for practical reasons. An end to appeasement is a giant first step forward toward moral regeneration.
But is coexistence with terrorists possible?
The logical conclusion of the return to morality is that Arafat himself should be brought to trial for his role in the recent murder of Israeli soldiers as well as for previous atrocities.
If Israel has requested, since Oslo, the extradition of individual terrorist murderers, certainly the man who masterminded mass terror should not be immune to prosecution.
Unrealistic? At this time, certainly.
But why?
In Bosnia, Serb leaders accused of war crimes were not allowed even to participate in the recent national elections. The world rightly insisted on minimal moral standards.
Why are Arafat's crimes against civilians, many of whom are children, more easily dismissed? Because these victims are Israelis?
Through the natural course of events, if not before, the nation will learn that the sin of terror cannot be glossed over, that murder corrupts the society that excuses its perpetrators (Numbers 35:33).
Arafat will be called to answer for the blood he has shed.
Ultimately real peace, in which Israelis are not forced to look constantly over their shoulders to see if their "partners" are readying their rifles, depends on it.
The writer is rabbi of the West Bank Jewish settlement of Neveh Tzuf.