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One thing that reporters in the Middle East enjoy is irony. So that’s the angle Ethan Bronner takes about Jenin in A West Bank Ruin, Reborn as a Peace Beacon.

But a quiet revolution is stirring here in this city, once a byword for the extremes of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. In 2002, in response to a wave of suicide bombers from Jenin, Israeli tanks leveled entire neighborhoods.

From that rubble, now newly trained and equipped Palestinian security officials have restored order. Israeli soldiers have pulled back from bases and are in close touch with their Palestinian colleagues. Civilians are planning economic cooperation — an industrial zone to provide thousands of jobs, mostly to Palestinians, and another involving organic produce grown by Palestinians and marketed in Europe by Israelis. Ministers from both governments have been visiting regularly, often joined by top international officials. Israeli Arabs are playing a key role.

The aim is to stand conventional wisdom on its head. Instead of a shaky negotiated peace treaty imposing coexistence from the top down, a bottom-up set of relationships that lock the two societies together should, proponents argue, lead to a real two-state solution.

There are some positive aspects to this report and some negative ones. On the negative side, Bronner writes “Israeli tanks leveled entire neighborhoods.” Well did that really happen?

A JCPA issue brief gives the actual scope:

Still, the level of destruction was limited. Out of 1,896 buildings in the Jenin refugee camp, 130 buildings were destroyed — or less than 10 percent (Israel Defense Forces — Central Command). According to Fatah activist Mousa Kadoura, the area affected was the size of a large football field (Washington Times, May 1, 2002). Moreover, because of the large amounts of Palestinian explosives in the camp, it is difficult to discern what component of this destruction was caused by Israeli forces and what part was a result of Palestinian detonation.

But remember unlike Bronner’s language that suggests the destruction haphazard or disproportionate, Israel was fighting an armed enemy. Less than 10% shows restraint; “whole neighborhood” suggests a massive scale.

It’s good to know that there’s a place where there’s some level of cooperation going on and the Palestinians are taking control of their lives someplace. And Bronner hits on an important reason for that limited success may be due to the bottom approach being taken here. Unfortunately, the rest of his reporting shows that he doesn’t understand the reason why. When Bronner tries to explain why cooperation is occurring in the Jenin area, he gives these reasons:

Jenin, officials on all sides say, offers many advantages for a pilot project, an idea arrived at by American and European officials in February when they sought ways to build peace on the ground.

First, they said, Hamas, the main Palestinian militant opposition in the West Bank, is relatively weak in Jenin. Second, after the evacuation of four Israeli settlements in the region in 2005, the area is essentially free of settlers, a major source of friction elsewhere. Third, the barrier that Israel has been building causes little friction in this area because it is right on the boundary between Israel and the West Bank, not over it so there is little territorial dispute.

There is also a fourth reason. Gilboa, the Israeli region that abuts Jenin, is an unusual and unusually well-suited neighbor. Small and rural with 30,000 people, it is 40 percent Arab and 60 percent Jewish and the inhabitants have worked assiduously to create their own kind of model — of Arab-Jewish coexistence in Israel.

Do you notice what’s missing? Well how about Operation Defensive Shield that destroyed most of the terrorist infrastructure that existed in Jenin? Somehow acknowledging that killing terrorists helps bring peace seems to be beyond his understanding. But of course it’s important to mention that there are no more “settlers” there.

Then there’s this:

There are other concerns. The Palestinians have asked to base their newly trained battalion for Jenin in an abandoned Israeli settlement, a good spot in terms of location and infrastructure. But Israeli officials are worried about how it will play in Israel and have so far said no.

Israeli security officials say their Palestinian colleagues are good at law and order but not at stopping terrorist groups. They say that Islamic Jihad used to be strong here and is no longer because Israel spent years destroying its infrastructure and killing its militants, setting the stage for the Palestinian security takeover. But if they relax their vigilance, the Israelis say, the situation will deteriorate. Early on Wednesday morning, for example, Israeli soldiers and security men raided a home in Jenin and detonated a 30-pound pipe bomb.

The Palestinians complain that they are often urged to arrest someone just because he wears a beard. They add that as long as they are seen as puppets of the Israelis, the project is doomed. The key is for Palestinian security officials to be seen as agents of state building. Then the population will cooperate. This requires the kind of discretion that the Israeli Army has not been known for.

Notice how the Israeli claim that decimating Islamic Jihad played a role in the improvements is qualified by “they say.” The claims about settlers and the security fence are not qualified.

Also problematic is the idea that the Palestinians ought not to be seen as “puppets.” Well maybe that’s important in terms of their constituents, but if they don’t take responsibility to fight terror they’ll have no credibility among the Israelis. Why Israel’s concerns are given a short shrift here is a puzzle.

And the dig at the IDF is uncalled for. Again, if the IDF hadn’t unsubtly destroyed the terrorist infrastructure in Jenin, this experiment could not be taking place.

Finally we have Tony Blair:

“The intifada turned them into enemies in one day,” Mr. Blair said in an interview. “Now we are trying to recreate a sense of mutual confidence after seven years. It is a very slow process. But what is happening in Gilboa and Jenin is exactly the direction we would like to go.”

Blair here, presents the intifada as an independent force that just turned Jews and Arabs into enemies; the intifada, to Blair, just spontaneously generated causing destructive enmity between the two parties seeking peace.

Blair (and Bronner by quoting him uncritically) shows the same cluelessness that the late Scott Shuger described in a different context seven years ago at the start of the intifada:

The headline the Washington Post put over its lead Ramallah story was similarly misguided: “Grief, Anger Spurred Frenzied Crowd to Kill.” With its emphasis on external, even understandable, forces, this is classic responsibility-avoiding language. Note that there are no individuals in either the Times sentence or the Post headline. Even when presented with irrefutable evidence of personal culpability, all too often the papers still try to fuzz it over. Take that unbelievable picture of the guy with the bloody hands. The Los Angeles Times supplied a caption to the photo that managed not to refer to the blood at all. And in fact, neither the Los Angeles Times’ nor the New York Times’ lead story even mentioned the guy with the bloody hands.

The lynching of the soldiers didn’t just happen. It was the result of an orchestrated campaign of violence unleashed by Yasser Arafat a month earlier. The intifada didnt just happen, it was planned and executed by Yasser Arafat. The problem with the top down approach wasn’t in the details; it was in the fundamentally bad faith of the top of the Palestinians leadership. If the project in Jenin works, it will be because, at least in part it has circumvented the Palestinian leadership.

So while the idea of this little piece of peace working out is mildly encouraging, Bronner’s failures to acknowledge the success of the IDF and the perfidy of Arafat and the Palestinan leadership detract from the story.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.