No television news operation has covered the Middle East in this troubled year with as much timeliness or wisdom as PBS' Frontline. Whether it was April's "Battle for the Holy Land," with its daring examination of the Palestinian suicide bombers and those Israeli intelligence operatives trying to stop them, or last month's "Muslims," Frontline has consistently made liars out of those who say television offers neither enterprise nor context when it comes to international stories.
The beat of excellence continues tonight with "Shattered Dreams of Peace," a two-hour film that takes us back to that shining moment of hope in 1993 when the Oslo Peace Accords were signed on the White House lawn - with the Nobel Peace Prize subsequently awarded to Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestinian Authority. What follows is a breakdown of what went wrong politically, diplomatically, culturally and militarily - both on the Israeli and Palestinian sides - to throw us into the tragic whirlwind of violence that now devours the region. If you really want to understand the meaning of President Bush's call for Arafat's removal this week, this is the report to see.
As "Shattered Dreams" recounts, the threads of peace started to come undone with the assassination of Rabin by a Jewish extremist in 1995. Testament to what Israel's great general and peacemaker accomplished is shown with videotape of leaders from throughout the Arab world - many of whom had never set foot in Israel - standing side by side to pay their respects at Rabin's funeral.
"I ask of you to take a good look at this picture," President Clinton is shown saying in his eulogy. "Look at the leaders from all over the Middle East and around the world who are adjoined here today for Yitzhak Rabin and for peace. Let me say to the people of Israel: Even in your hour of darkness, his spirit lives on."
The spirit did live on for a while, with the 72-year-old Peres taking over. The film stresses his ethical commitment to peace.
"I listen to politicians talking about strategy and strategy and strategy," Peres says in the film. "The real choice, profound choice, is never a strategic one, it's an ethic one. There is something above strategy and this is the moral choice - it is there where peace and war begins; it is there where the life of people are being decided."
Saeb Areket, the chief Palestinian negotiator throughout the entire era of negotiations, says, "You know, I remember Shimon Peres, a friend of mine, when I negotiated with him and I get frustrated and angry, he used to tell me: 'Saeb, negotiating and frustration for five years is cheaper than exchanging bullets between us for five minutes.' He is right."
But, at the same time among the Palestinians, Hamas is gaining power through its control of the mosques and programs offering food and education to the poor. Hamas is an Islamic fundamentalist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel through a campaign of terror based in suicide bombings.
In late 1995, Peres asks Arafat to arrest Yehia Ayash, Hamas' chief bomb maker. Peres tells Arafat where to find Ayash. When Arafat lies by saying he can't find Ayash, Israeli intelligence officials take matters into their own hands, killing Ayash by packing his mobile phone with explosives that detonate when he takes a call on Jan. 5, 1996.
The suicide bombings start in earnest, leaving 46 Israelis dead and hundreds wounded in just the first two weeks after Ayash is killed. The next six years will be written in hard lines and rivers of blood.
Arafat, who is interviewed extensively, does a lot of lying and posing in the film. But the problem is not all Arafat by a long shot.
As Hamas and Hezbollah, a radical Shiite group based in Lebanon that also opposes peace, rise in power, Israel moves to the right with the election of 47-year-old Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister in 1996. Netanyahu is not treated kindly in this report. The suggestion is clearly made that he and his conservative colleague, Ariel Sharon, have done more to provoke the Palestinians than to try and make peace with them.
Television being more about pictures than words, the image of Netanyahu looking like a frustrated and angry dictator as he is criticized in the Knesset is what some viewers will most remember about him from the film. But just in case that isn't damning enough, there's the story Netanyahu himself tells the filmmakers about a botched assassination attempt he ordered on Khaled Mash'al, a top Hamas operative.
Straight out of a le Carre novel, the attempt on Mash'al's life became an international incident when it went awry. It also played a crucial role in ramping up the hatred, violence and bloodshed on both sides, pushing it toward the realm of Greek tragedy in which we find ourselves today.
The images in "Shattered Dreams of Peace" are at times shocking. You will see naked, blood-splotched bodies lying on the pavement in the wake of suicide bombings. But the greatest shock you will feel is the remembrance of how close peace once was and how desperately far beyond the pale it now seems to be. The balm that "Shattered Dreams" offers through its incredible backstage access to the leading players, clear-eyed storytelling and analysis that goes way beyond personality journalism is the understanding of how it all went so wrong.
'Frontline'
What: "Shattered Dreams of Peace"
When: Tonight at 9
Where: MPT (Channels 22 and 67), and at 10 on WETA (Channel 26)
In brief: With more great Middle East reporting, Frontline takes us to the place where journalism meets history.