Posted on 5/30/2003, 4:03:42 PM by F_Cohen
Road Map To Peace On Maple Street
By Lowell Phillips
Toogood Reports
Weekender, June 01, 2003
Say you're living in an area where you're forced to deal with a couple of feuding neighbors. It has gone on longer than you can remember, and there is no sign of a ceasefire. One house is headed by a domineering religious fanatic, with a demonstrated propensity for violence. He cares nothing about his wife and children, judging by their battered and bruised appearance. He's a known criminal, with the bodies of his victims strewn along the entire path of his life, though for some inexplicable reason the local authorities just like the guy, regardless of what he does. He has a mission in life, to possess the property of the family next-door. And it doesn't matter who suffers in the process.
No, he has no claim to it. The current occupants, by contrast, can demonstrate that their claim extends further back than anyone cares to check. His own loud noises proclaiming a birthright are easily refuted. There is no indication that he is at all related to his avowed lineage. Moreover, the family history in itself isn't that at all, but rather an array of unrelated squatters that passed through over the years. Not only is the stated "right" to the neighbor's property preposterous, he has no proof of ownership for the lot he currently sits on. But you have heard it so often that you're either beginning to believe it, or you just want him to shut up, so you nod in agreement. A feeling of "just give him what he wants" washes over you.
Now the other family isn't bad at all. Unlike their tormentors, who have ruined the property they occupy and abused its occupants, they've done well, and they have flourished. These are generally well-educated people who hold the same beliefs and respect for others that you do. But the constant threat on their property and safety has caused them to take unpleasant steps. They have surrounded their home with guard dogs and barbwire fences. And worst of all, as you ride your bike down the street you can see the stickers in the window showing that they have joined the National Rifle Association. But the attacks continue and they have been warned not to take the law into their own hands, leaving them perpetually at risk.
All you know is you have "had it up to here!" You're tired of looking at it, and hearing about it. You're tired of the poisonous atmosphere permeating the neighborhood, and damn irritated at the occasional stray bullet that comes through your window. You have appealed to the forgiving nature of the beleaguered family and managed to persuade them, time and again, to pull back their property line and sacrifice their safety. But the effects have been to embolden their attackers and increase the suffering. Irrespective, you and the community association have decided that it is best to tell them to teardown the fence, deactivate the alarm and give their tormentors a key to the house.
Will this work? Well, no one seems to have the will or desire to deal with the thug down the street. And it doesn't come out of your hide, now does it?
What should you call this new plan? Let's see.
Got it! We can call it a "road map" to peace on Maple Street.
That feels better!
It may appear that I'm being flippant. But that's not it at all. This describes the ongoing difficulties between Israel and those we accept as "Palestinian" in a nutshell. As is mandatory, I refer to the latter party by that name, though no such people ever existed before 1948. And whether it is called a "road map", "Oslo" or simply the "peace process" it boils down to again giving in to the aggression of Yasser Arafat and his radicalized subjects.
Considering the force with which the road map initiative is being pushed, it seems as if some sinister plot from deep within the United Nations has forced a 180 in the Bush administration's stance on dealing with terrorists. Perhaps a mass body-snatch has taken place, and agents of the French government now occupy the White House. Either way the principled stance held not long ago has quickly given way to another attempt at appeasement.
It's difficult to believe that the same administration, which just weeks ago defied the UN, the EU, the Russians, the Arab League and others to do the right thing in Iraq, is now working in concert with them to reward unremitting aggression. President Bush's call for "a new and different Palestinian leadership" during his Rose Garden speech last June, as an essential first step toward peace, is well on its way to becoming a hollow memory.
The current Palestinian leadership is neither new nor different. Despite this, momentum is gaining for the implementation of the road map, and the creation of a Palestinian state, the first-ever Palestinian state, by 2005. Toward that end, the White House has announced that President Bush will attend a meeting in Egypt with President Hosni Mubarak, the leaders of Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the newly installed Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen (or Mahmoud Abbas if you prefer). This will be followed immediately by a summit staring Mr. Bush, Mazen, and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The confirmation of Abbas was more than significant; it was pivotal and has been widely applauded. He is consistently touted as "moderate". Washington Post columnist and steadfast supporter of Israel, Charles Krauthammer, proclaimed, "Abu Mazen, represents hope." Present Bush said he is "a man I can work with... and will work with him for the sake of peace." And Sec. of State Colin Powell added, "We will be investing our time and energy with Prime Minister Abbas."
All the praise might cause one to forget that, while Ariel Sharon was elected democratically, Mazen was handpicked by Yasser Arafat, and remains "Prime Minister" by Arafat's good graces.
Considerable hot air has billowed demanding that Mazen be given "real power", but no one rationally claims that he has received it. Arafat remains in charge and demonstrated that once again on Tuesday when, at his word, a meeting between Sharon and Mazen was postponed. The Associated Press (not an outlet predisposed to condemn the lovable PA dictator) reported that "a senior Palestinian official" said, "Arafat wanted to send a message that he - not Abbas - is in charge of negotiations with Israel." The State Department claimed the postponement was for "technical reasons".
The article went on to report, "Israel has refused to deal with Arafat, charging that he is involved in terrorism."
This is akin to printing, "Some have charged that dogs lick themselves." If Arafat isn't involved in terrorism than neither is Osama bin Laden, and the word "terrorism" has no meaning.
But let's whimsically imagine that Abu Mazen or Mahmoud Abbas, whatever his name is, has control of the Palestinian Authority, with its multiple security forces and militias, and that he is, indeed, a Prime Minister as the title is defined in a democracy. Let's go farther and imagine that Yasser Arafat is now fertilizer. A lovely thought indeed.
There would be little difference beyond better PR. And President Bush's demand that the Palestinian people "elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror" would be no closer to realization.
The truth of who and what Abu Mazen is has been lost in a flurry of warm and fuzzy adjectives. Mazen is every bit as "compromised by terror" as Arafat. In fact, terrorism is his life's work.
Much has been made of his alleged rejection of violence, saying that terrorism was "inhumane" and that "killing is not our hobby." But omitted by the press, the Bush administration and the rest of "the Quartet" (The United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia) sponsoring the road map, was a clarification given in March of this year. Commenting on a meeting in Cairo between the PLO, Islamic Jihad, Hamas and others, Mazen said an agreement was reached to halt terrorist operations "for one year", but he refused to give up "the armed struggle" and said "The Intifada must continue."
Had the retraction of these conciliatory words never taken place, they would still have been meaningless considering the source. Mazen is a charter member of the PLO and a cofounder and deputy commander of the Fatah military wing. As treasurer of the PLO, he financed one of the most infamous terrorist attacks in history, during the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Known terrorist Muhammad Dahlan is among his closest friends, whose handiwork includes a school bus bombing in Kfar Darom.
Far from being someone inclined to coexist with Israel, he is a staunch believer in the "right of return"; the realization of this notion would mean the demographic destruction of Israel.
His scholarly works include The Other Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and the Zionist Movement, where he rejected the idea that 6 million Jews had died in the Holocaust. He places the number in the hundreds of thousands. And those deaths he attributes to a Zionist plot designed to provoke the Nazis and garner sympathy for the creation of a Jewish state.
Even if the Bush administration is convinced that Mazen is a born-again man of peace, it is folly to think that Arafat has been sidelined. He remains firmly in control with the support of the administration's "partners" in the vaunted Quartet. Calls by Sec. Powell for European leaders to cutoff contact with Mr. Arafat were flatly rejected. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin soon thereafter met with Arafat. As did European Union defense chief Javier Solana. British Prime Minister Tony Blair maintains his close relationship. And affection for the PLO chairman in the United Nations is perpetual.
The summit and the road map remain on schedule nonetheless. Amid the hopeful rhetoric, Israel is being asked by the White House to make "goodwill gestures" toward the Palestinians that included the release of prisoners and the easing of military pressure. Reuters quoted a senior U.S. official suggesting, "Israel should ease the military clampdown on Palestinians to encourage them to rein in militants behind the violence." The comment suggests that the clampdown is the reason for the violence, which is preposterous. The clampdown exists because of the violence, and the violence continues because the PA refuses to stop it. Using this logic, we must conclude that crime occurs in this country because the police are trying to catch criminals.
And asking for the release of prisoners to gain favor with the Palestinians would be scarcely different from trying to curry favor with Pakistan by releasing the al-Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
Such attempts have been made before, always with the same results. During the series of suicide bombings in Mid-May, Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner commented,
"We loosened our defense lately and made good-will gestures toward the Palestinians, but this was our gruesome reward. Terrorist organizations took advantage of the situation to unleash this lethal frenzy on us..."
But those attacks were weeks ago, and the gore has been thoroughly mopped up. The Israelis are good at that, thanks to all the opportunities they're getting to practice.
The White house can continue to pressure the tiny Jewish state, and compel Ariel Sharon to utter words of appeasement once thought unthinkable from him. They can kid themselves into thinking that Abu Mazen/Mahmoud Abbas is something other than what he is and believe that peace can be made with the Palestinians while their culture, such as it is, remains inextricably linked to terror.
I'm not all that inclined to believe that the Bush administration, and President Bush in particular, has suddenly abandoned their principled stance against terrorism. What I do believe is that the road map is a payoff to Tony Blair and our Arab allies for their backing in Operation Iraqi Freedom. But however important this support was in deposing Saddam Hussein, it was not important enough to sweep away the moral underpinnings of our war on terrorism. And it certainly wasn't important enough to dismiss the lessons from history showing that appeasement is an invitation to catastrophe.
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