Who Wants Moderation?
The other day, Israel’s Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, when asked his opinion of the present developments within the PLO, answered: “I am not afraid of the radicalization of the entire organization. Practically speaking, it may be that Arafat’s tactics (of relative moderation) are sometimes more dangerous for us.” It’s rare indeed for an Israeli leader to acknowledge with such candor what has long been obvious to many Israel-watchers: that extremism on the part of the Arabs really suits Israel much better than does Arab moderation. As long as the Arabs adopt radical positions, the Israelis always have a ready-made excuse—” self-defense”—to take something else that they want. This excuse, with varying degrees of credibility, has been used a number of times since 1948 to add to their country bits of Arab territory which they thought should be theirs.
