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June 22, 2005
Peace for Israel via Diplomacy? When?
It amazes me that there are still people out there who believe that Israel and the United States can deal with the Palestinians as though they were doing so with a civilized nation. The Palestinians themselves are demonstrating that they are incapable of maintaining any kind of stable govenment nor of controlling the activities of their terrorist organizations, who attack Israel whether there are peace negotiations on the table or not, whether Israel gives concessions or not.
On the one hand, there's the Palestinian Authority(P.A.), representing the PLO and led by Arafat successor Mahmoud Abbas. That body retains the same quagmire of massive corruption that it did under Arafat and exhibits a total lack of control over the plethora of terrorist organizations based among the Palestinians.
On the other hand, there's Hamas, the premier Palestinian terrorist organization cum political party that has built its constituency in large part by vowing to end the corruption in the P.A. They have been growing increasingly popular among the Palestinian voters and threaten to become popular enough to one day become the P.A.
Hamas and their cronies in the al aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Fatah, etc continue their terrorism against Israel as Abbas purportedly tries to hold the peace talks with Ariel Sharon and the Bush Administration together, effectively sabotaging those negotiations a)because Sharon, and rightly so, refuses to make any concessions without including the cessation of hostilities in the package, and b)because Abbas' credibility as the leader of his people is greatly diminished due to his admitted inability to curtail the activities of either the terrorist groups or the corruption in his own organization. He may not even be there for long, Hamas might become the party in power. Hamas isn't interested in peace, their goal isn't the Palestinian state envisioned by Roadmap advocates: They want the whole potato knish. They would like nothing more than a bloodbath in which they murder every Jew in Israel(fat chance), according to their charter.
And they are recognized by a significant percentage of Palestinians as a viable political party!
An article in the Jerusalem Post about the summit meeting just wrapped up between Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas, titled Palestinians deem summit a failure, says
....Palestinian leaders expressed frustration over Israel's insistance on linking major concessions to the cessation of violence.
WTF! Are they saying that Israel should just accept the butchery of its citizens as just a run of the mill, day to day, inevitable, "not to worry, old man" cost of doing business with the Palestinians? There's the problem right there, the Israelis are not dealing with those of a modern human mentality that can be reasoned with, they are dealing with evil people who see nothing wrong with killing the innocent and embrace doing so with as much emotion as they might experience over going to the bathroom.
If I wasn't totally convinced before, I am now. The only way there will ever be peace between Israel and the Palestinian people will be after Israel has exercised an extreme military option. You cannot negotiate peace with any success when the other side doesn't want it. When the other side is dominated by bloodthirsty people who couldn't care less what they agree to nor what treaties they sign(it is acceptable practice, according to their beliefs, to lie, as long as you are lying to infidels) and who have no compunction about killing themselves in order to murder your people.
Sure, there are many Palestinians, some of whom I have met, who want peace and friendship with Israel and who despise both corruption and terrorism, but they seem to be a considerable minority to judge from the actions of their community. I truly believe that when members of a given community become a danger to those of other communities, the community in question is engendered with a responsibility to clean its own house or be held accountable for the actions of its bad seed.
Sharon is absolutely right in insisting that peace on the Palestinians' side of the equation be part and parcel of any agreements he signs off on.
You can't install the software of peace when there are too many broken links on the site.
Israel has offered, and ceded, a lot more concessions to the Palestinians than they've received in return, even releasing convicted terrorists from prison. The Israelis have set a date for razing Jewish homes in Gaza, displacing something like 7500 residents, sparking internal political turmoil as intense and disruptive as the Iraqi debate is in the United States. Most of what the Israelis get in return for concessions are further demands.
In a column in Jewish World Review, Richard Chesnoff writes
....There's growing talk that the Bush Administration, impatient over lack of viable movement toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, may soon trash longstanding American policy and authorize limited U.S. diplomatic contact with Abbas' chief rival and Israel's worst enemy: the Islamic terrorist organization known as Hamas.
Talk about potential disasters!
No kidding! I refer you again to the website about Hamas.
This extremely dangerous diplomatic turn may be precipitated in part by growing fear in the administration that Yasser Arafat's heir doesn't have the stuff needed to make peace happen and by frustration with Sharon's internal political woes.
It's also hard for both President Bush and Secretary of State Rice to ignore hard facts on the West Bank/Gaza ground. Abbas' PLO continues to lose popularity while Hamas gains. During recent Palestinian municipal elections, the group campaigned on a clean government platform and won nearly half the municipal councils at stake!
So, what's wrong with talking to Hamas? A lot. As Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy recently put it, "Hamas is more than just a party with which we disagree, it is a terrorist organization responsible for the murder of hundreds of Israelis, Americans and citizens of many other countries."
I don't concur with the basis for Mr. Chesnoff's speculations, but the premises he offers are indeed food for thought. What I don't see happening is the Bush Administration opening up polite diplomatic dialogue with a terrorist organization. Terrorists are our enemy and their only ambition is our destruction. Once again, Hamas Charter. Pay particular attention to the two lines that say,
There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.
How, or even why for that matter, does one attempt to negotiate with people who uphold such a covenant?
No, I don't see Condie Rice sitting down with somebody like Hasan Yusuf to pursue "meaningful" diplomatic negotiations.
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So we have these two sides to the Palestinian political structure, one that can establish control among neither its members nor its constituents, that being the P.A., and one that is dedicated to murdering as many innocent people as possible in the name of God, both vying for control of a Palestinian state. The Party of Murder is gaining, the Party of Confusion is losing.
Yeah, I know, I'm not even a little bit PC, I tend, in fact, to be downright blunt, so:
Being completely realistic, there are only two possible conclusions where the question of peace between Israel and their Palestinian neighbors are concerned.
1. Peace talks underscoring bloody violence forever, or
2. That extreme military option I mentioned above.
Posted by Seth at June 22, 2005 08:12 PM
