By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent
Reforming Palestinian culture and implementing a successful version of a “road map” to peace may take a while, according to one renowned professor. Offering an unflinching look into what is, by his account, a violent and antiquated Palestinian culture in the West Bank and Gaza, Dr. Jonathan Adelman, professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver, cautioned the Jewish community against becoming confident about an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan in the near term.
Adelman, who spoke at Temple Beth Am in early April, participated in the Arab-Israeli talks in Barcelona in 1991, served as dissertation advisor to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and has lectured around the world for the U.S. State Department.
In his remarks he illustrated how the Palestinians are fighting an uphill battle toward societal change due, in part, to a doomed leadership and failed political dreams.
“Can the Palestinian Authority really reform?” Adelman asked. “To properly answer our question, [it] will require a radical break with Palestinian history, with Palestinian mythology and with Palestinian notions of who they are. They have to admit that the Jews are here to stay. Then they have to admit to themselves that the path they’ve been on for the past 80 years has been wrong.”
Adelman believes that it would be a radical departure for the Palestinians and the region as a whole to embark on this new path of entrepreneurship and an economy with a middle class. Those concepts today are virtually unknown.
“You need the kind of economic structure that would support a more modern, more democratic, more progressive state,” Adelman said. “They don’t have those things right now. This is the problem we are talking about when we talk about the road map. The road map is a great idea, but how do we implement it step by step, seeing the kinds of changes that need to occur on the Palestinian street.”
Adelman said certain conditions must be met before positive change can begin.
“The roadmap must be a road map that measures performance,” said Adelman.
Only after these profound psychological shifts in ideology, Adelman said, will the Palestinians be able to begin the equally daunting task of restructuring their educational system and their economy, which is in a complete shambles.
“They will have to build new institutions,” Adelman said. “They will have to close summer camps for suicide bombers, repress terrorist institutions and, at the end of the day, it’s not the Israelis that they have to please, it is the investment bankers in New York, in Abu Dhabi, in Riyadh and in Tokyo.”
Adelman characterized the plight of the Palestinians by invoking the increasingly familiar Abba Eban quote in which the esteemed Israeli diplomat and politician lamented that the Palestinians “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
“They have to go through a major shock and realize that Arab countries are not on their side,” said Gil Elan, former director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a co-sponsor of the event and current director of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, a think-tank for Middle East issues and policies.
“They also have to give up the dream of Jerusalem,” he added. “Three times they were offered a state with a capital and they turned it down. They won’t be offered another one until they make some changes.”
Elan expressed some hope for the implementation of the Bush administration’s road map to a Middle East peace but agreed with Adelman that the Palestinians must be willing to make concessions.
“It does lay down a plan for the changes to happen,” said Elan. “Yes, they will have a state but not on the borders they want and not with everything they want. They’ve got to be realistic.”
To become realistic, said Adelman, would mean for Palestinian society to face the need to stop the young thugs who rule the streets with weapons and an exploding birth rate.
Though birth rates worldwide have decreased, Adelman said, the Gaza strip has the highest rate in the world.“The average Palestinian woman is having seven and a half children. Why? Because Yasser Arafat has said that victory will come in the belly of the Arab woman,” he said.
Adelman also cited a recent article in Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz that says it may be more difficult than anticipated to find a new generation of moderate Palestinian leaders who are willing to step in and effect change.
“Abbu Mazen [was] rethinking whether he wants to be the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority because he took a tour of Gaza and he found out that the real authority in Gaza are the guns on the street and the real authority are the 14- and 16-year-old bully boys,” Adelman said.
The core issue, according to Adelman, is when civilizations rise and fall, those that are falling go through excruciating processes of anger, fear, terror and denial.
“They hit rock bottom and then they reach a consensus: change has to happen,” Adelman said, but international intervention that has provided $4 or $5 billion worth of aid in the last 10 years has not allowed it.