Peace Prize Goes To the Undeserving

When, after days of speculation, the call from Oslo finally came, the recipients of this year's Nobel Peace Prize greeted the honor humbly.

The life of a young, kidnapped Israeli solider hung in the balance. The Middle East peace process was in jeopardy. A celebration would have been unseemly.

Instead, the winners--Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and Palestine Liberation Organization Chair Yasser Arafat--spoke soberly of the work that remains to be done if peace is to last. They acknowledged, somberly, the victims on both sides who have died in wars and terrorist attacks. They dedicated their honor to the memory of those victims.

"The prize is not for me," said Arafat, the terrorist-turned-media darling. "It is for my people who suffered a lot, people who have been able to achieve the peace of the brave, for our martyrs, for our prisoners, for our children, for the future."

A few miles away, in Jerusalem, a statement by Rabin echoed Arafat's words. "The prize is for the future more than it is a reward for the efforts of peace that have been made up until now," the prime minister said.

Later that same day, after the kidnapped soldier and an Israeli commando were killed in a failed hostage rescue attempt, Rabin grew even more solemn. "I would say that I would be happy to give back the Nobel Peace Prize to bring back to life both of the soldiers who fell," he said. A moving, if symbolic offer.

Sadly, the dead soldiers won't be coming back to life. Within days of Rabin's statement, dozens more Israelis had died in terrorist attacks. Likely, many more will die before any semblance of peace truly settles over the battle-scarred region.

All that doesn't change the fact that Rabin, Peres and Arafat will share what is perhaps the world's most prestigious honor for a task that isn't even half completed. In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel specified that the peace prize bearing his name should be awarded to the person who, in the preceding year, "shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations."

Nobel's words were vague. Still, it seems to us that good intentions should not be the stuff of Nobel prizes, especially given the fact that everything achieved in the last year could disintegrate as hastily as it was accomplished. At this embryonic stage in the peace process, Rabin Peres and Arafat simply don't deserve the prize.

Indeed, in the case of Arafat, the honor is particularly egregious--a slap in the face to the hundreds of innocent civilians who have been brutally murdered at his direction over the past several decades. One doesn't celebrate a murderer simply because he promises not to kill again. This fact was not lost on one member of the prize committee, who resigned rather than award the prize to Arafat.

Humility on the part of the winners may play well on television, but it isn't enough. Rabin and Peres should decline the honor, rather than share it with Arafat and so disgrace the memory of his victims. In any case, if they are truly committed to the cause of peace, they should wait until they've actually accomplished something, before accepting a prize for it.