To fight back, we have to know why we're hated

By DAVID ADAMS

© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 16, 2001

As America tries to comprehend the appalling events of last week, we all want answers. But are we asking the right questions?

After the events of Sept. 11, we are being told the world has changed forever. We are about to embark on the first war of the 21st century. Already Washington is talking of a $20-billion military budget to root out the scourge of terrorism once and for all.

But can money seriously buy a military solution? Can we wage war on terrorism the way our leaders say? Or should we also take a step back and ask ourselves why this country has aroused such hatred from abroad.

As I watched the images from New York and Washington last week, I found myself recalling a time 20 years ago when I worked as a British volunteer in the Palestinian refugee camps of the West Bank and Gaza. In conversations with Palestinians of my own age, I was frequently lectured on the wrongs committed by my own government in London and by the United States, including dates and events engraved in Arab history but that are little known or understood in the West. Among them are the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which Britain declared the Jewish right to a homeland in Palestine, and 1948, the year the state of Israel was created.

Decades later, Palestinians asked me how the West could stand idly by as hundreds of thousands of their countrymen remained confined to refugee camps in their own land, surrounded by Israeli military occupation. Hadn't the United Nations passed resolutions calling for a halt to the building of more illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip? Why did the West do nothing to make those resolutions stick, yet choose to vigorously enforce other U.N. decisions more to its liking?

What had the Palestinians done to deserve such unequal treatment?

These young men and women said they were tired of waiting for the West to act. I wondered if these were just idle words. But I could see in their faces that frustration was turning to desperation. It was a gradual process. On subsequent visits, my friends told me how Islamic fundamentalism was overtaking the Palestinian nationalist movement, especially among young university students.

Muslims weren't the only ones who became radical. First came the intifada in the 1980s. Stone-throwing Palestinians showed for the first time they were prepared to die for what they believed in.

Some hope was restored with the peace process in the 1990s. But as the United States continues to send billions of dollars in foreign aid to Israel, Palestinians complain they have received only minimal support. Meanwhile, Israel seizes more land and builds more settlements. Palestinians claim the United States' almost unconditional support for Israel is what has doomed the peace process.

A second intifada has since erupted in the West Bank and Gaza. No longer are Palestinians content with throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. Desperation has turned suicidal.

It is, of course, hard to understand how a young mind can rationalize the decision to become a suicide bomber. In the West we call it "senseless" terrorism, but we may miss the point. Terrorism, however mindless it might seem, does not appear in a vacuum. Were we to put ourselves in the shoes of those who have only known violence, poverty and repression, I fear the lines between rational and irrational might easily become blurred.

Palestinians, from all we currently know, were not behind the New York and Washington suicide attacks -- though some did cheer in the streets when it happened. Their plight is only a symbol and a symptom of a far broader and far more dangerous phenomenon of militant Islamic extremism across the Arab world and further east.

Its roots stem from centuries of foreign intervention and bungling in the Islamic world, dating back to the days of the Ottoman Empire. More recently, in the 1980s, the CIA armed and trained the Muslim resistance fighters in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation of that country. Among them was a young Saudi Arabian, Osama bin Laden.

Today, bin Laden and other Islamic militants operate an amorphous network across the globe. While the Palestinian cause is one of their motivations, they are dedicated to expelling U.S. influence from the entire region, including American troops in Saudi Arabia. While Afghanistan may be their physical base, under the protection of the Taleban, Islamic groups have established strong links in Europe, North Africa and the United States.

It is this network that the Bush administration is gearing up to go to war against. But can a high-tech U.S. war machine do battle with a radical theology?

Some military analysts believe it is a war that can and should be fought, using the highly skilled and precise aggression of U.S. Special Forces backed by sound intelligence work. They point to the 1986 air strike against Libya, which analysts say contributed to a sharp downturn in terrorist sponsorship by that government and Syria.

At the same time analysts recognize that such military actions could fuel the cycle of violence, if not combined with skilled diplomatic action to win support among moderate Arab states.

But, if that is the path we are to chose, it will not be easy.

My brother, who has spent most of his career as a journalist in the Middle East, recalls a U.N. official once telling him that U.S.-backed Israeli signals intelligence in the Middle East was second to none. "They can hear a pin drop anywhere," he said. "But the trouble is they don't always know what it means."

This is a difficult time to ask for understanding of such diabolical acts. Nothing can diminish the shock and horror of what we have all witnessed this past week. The urge for swift retaliation and retribution is natural -- and justifiable.

But before we plunge into a part of the world about which we comprehend so little, we must consider the cultural and historical tinderbox we are dealing with.

Otherwise there will be no answers or solutions. Only more misunderstanding and violence.

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