Haaretz

March 22, 2007

James Adler

Letter to the Editor: Most wars do not end with unconditional surrender, but with negotiations between the opposing sides in the middle.

Of course Israel should negotiate. Not only is a reader right that "we should not wait for Palestinians to become Zionists to agree to talk with them," and Rabin right that people have to negotiate and make peace with their enemies, not with their friends. But also, if Israel negotiated with groups regarded by Palestinians as sell-outs, or even Quislings, the agreement would assuredly fail. Only by negotiations with strong Palestinian nationalists can any agreement ever succeed.

That doesn't mean that Israel should negotiate in the middle of a rash of Hamas-caused suicide bombings. We should always be morally unambiguous, even during conflicts and even during negotiations with a group that is our enemy, and such actions are always unambiguously abominable. But that doesn't mean that Israel shouldn't negotiate with a group with whom it as a war; most wars do not end with unconditional surrender (World War II is unique and a misleading example for almost all other wars) but with negotiations between the opposing sides in the middle of the wars.

Usually negotiations are necessary pragmatic, and also moral, for the larger - not just pragmatic but also larger moral - cause of future peace and the future cessation of suffering of the innocents and soldiers alike on both sides.

The United States not only negotiated with but even formed an alliance with Joseph Stalin and his Soviet Gulag during World War II as a trade-off for a different moral good, fighting Hitler. During the Cold War, the U.S. negotiated constantly with the Soviet Union and Leonid Brezhnev and their ongoing Gulag, and made "detente" with Brezhnev despite the Berlin Wall, innocent civilians shot to death who crossed it, psychiatric torture hospitals, etc. Just as Reagan negotiated with Yuri Andropov, the KGB predecessor of Gorbachev.

It's a moral trade-off - as many unavoidably are in the messiness of life - but usually the larger morality of future peace and cessation of suffering gets served. And not to negotiate only serves the larger immorality of the protraction of conflict and suffering.

James Adler, Boston, U.S.A.