Our New "Peace Partner"

What a feeling of euphoria today, Saddam Hussein has apparently vanished into thin air and the International Community has decided to bring peace to Israel and her 30-year-old-new neighbour, called "the Palestinians". Even our "best friend" George W. Bush, which according to some is "the best friend we ever had in the US" has decided to nail the problem once and for all. New time, new "peace move", he has made history by being the first US President who speaks of an "independent" and "viable Palestinian state". Who said Bush is ignorant and does not understand the world? He is perfectly in tune with Europe (old and new).

In a move that would make his ex-president of a father proud, Bush - the son - decided to call his own "peace" conference in Aqaba at the end of June. With Arafat rightly being sidelined by Israel and the US, Bush has finally found a leader "not compromised with terror". Or should I say a "reformed" Holocaust denier and financier of many terrorist acts against Jews around the world. Presenting Abu Mazen, reborn into his original "likeable" name: Mahmoud Abbas. This is not schizophrenia, it is an Arab tradition to have two names, one for the good guy and one for the bad guy.

Mazen came to Aqaba with one message: "We renounce violence and the armed intifada is over." In 1974, as in 1993, Arafat came with the same message... We all know the results. But let me give this new "peace partner" the benefit of the doubt. After all if a "good-willed" society can give birth to evil, maybe one can assume that a terrorist-based society can give birth to good. After all, teshuva (repentance) is a tenet of Judaism. So, for the moment, I shall call him Abbas and drop his nom de guerre, Abu Mazen.

So Abbas went out of his way to "compromise" at Aqaba, although he could not "compromise" enough to accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish State. Maybe Abbas is like his "predecessor", Arafat, who was willing to have a two-state solution: a state of Palestine living peacefully side by side with a state full of Palestinians. Who knows what goes through the mind of an Arab leader? Apparently, Jews cannot possibly know, as the world keeps on reminding us; we "do not understand Arab peaceful intentions".

After this brilliant show at Aqaba, we should have all hoped for a "new peaceful Middle East", as journalists across the world would have us believe. Abbas went back to his camp to implement this new stage-by-stage solution called the Road Map. For the next-to-nothing he gave, he came back home to be called "a traitor" by the many terrorist groups, so he decided to tell them the truth: "Everything I gave and said was cleared by Arafat first."

Arafat? I thought he was supposed to be replaced? Let´s not belittle him, there may just be a simple explanation - Arafat has become his advisor.

Abbas also stated that "he" accepted the Road Map and "he" is committed to it, "unlike" Ariel Sharon, who has roughly fourteen objections. Whilst Ariel Sharon, with all his "objections" was uprooting settlers from the Land of Israel, to please the new Centurion, W. Bush, Abbas had to start disarming the terrorist organizations (according to the plan he, not Sharon, wholeheartedly approved). Let´s not be too brutal, Abbas’ method was to sit down and talk it over with them. When they refused to disarm, he proposed to buy their arms at four times their worth. If I were a cynic, which I´m not, I would say that he proposed for Western money to pay four times the price of their arms to allow the them to sell one gun and buy four. This little exercise never worked either, so he came up with a brilliant idea - a hudna.*

Now, this is just great. The Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Fatah can now enjoy the summer and get a well-deserved holiday of three months to compensate for their hard work of blowing up Jews. But don´t you go and think that they are doing nothing with their free time; they are setting up youth camps across the territories controlled by the PLO and they are training them... for martyrdom. This hudna could not come at a better time; a few days earlier, terrorists were getting targeted every day. Now, they can reorganize, retrain and recruit a new generation of homicide bombers.

Mahmoud Abbas may be a "weak man", like US Ambassador Kurtzer said, but he has found the answer to every difficult question: the threat of resignation. Every time he has to deliver, Mr. Abbas gives a theatrical resignation. Every time he does it, he knows that Bush will ask Sharon to make life a bit "easier" for him. In other words, Abbas says "hold me back... I am leaving... hold me back..." He must have learnt it from Shimon Peres. The last time Abbas failed to destroy the terrorists’ infrastructure, he threatened to resign and, like clockwork, Bush phoned Sharon to ask him to "free more terrorists". No joke. Abbas apparently has a huge problem with the terrorists currently in the territories and his life would be easier if he had more. I wonder if Bush would advise an alcoholic to drink more in order to get better.

This "fragile" cease-fire, according to Abbas, was the result of extremely painful negotiations and Israel should do everything to help him keep it. The Hamas agreed, then Islamic Jihad agreed, then the Fatah reluctantly signed up to this. Wait a minute, I thought if there was one party for whom Abbas was speaking in Aqaba, it was his own party, Fatah. If he wasn´t talking for Fatah and the PLO, in whose name was he speaking? His own? Anyway, last in, first out. Fatah could not keep it up more than 24 hours. The need to blow up Jews seems to be too strong to resist. Since the hudna, which officially no one broke, Abbas’ own party has blow up a family in their own home, knifed a bystander, shot citizen and soldier alike and recently kidnaped a taxi driver. To our "best friend" administration in the US, these are "enemies of peace", but the top Fatah guy is "a man worthy of trust" to conduct the Road Map to a "successful" conclusion.

This entire circus would be amusing if it did not cost so many lives; however, it does. Abbas and Abu Mazen are one and the same; Arafat is still in control; the terrorists will not get disarmed; and, in the meanwhile, Centurion W. Bush keeps the pressure on for Israel to evacuate Jews from the Land of Israel.

You may ask why I sometimes refer to W. Bush as "Centurion"? That is because I am afraid that Israel seems to have, today, the same relationship with the US that it had with Rome 2000 years ago. And if we don´t want to finish the same way, maybe it is time to stop this international circus once and for all and let the world know that 2000 years of kicking Jews around is truly over.

The world may take time to forget an old habit, but it is no reason for us not to make a start in reminding them.

Yoram Halberstam is Software Architect and an Internet Service Provider in the United Kingdom.

* Hudna describes a ´cease-fire´; an Arabic word that refers more accurately to a tactical truce. Its origin and meaning are deeply rooted in the Islamic tradition. In the year 628 AD, when surmising that his forces were too weak to overcome the rival Kuraysh tribes, the Prophet Mohammed concluded a ten-year truce accord with the Kuraysh. This agreement became known as the Hudaybiyya Accord, after the place where it was signed. Yet, less than two years later, having consolidated their power, the Muslim forces attacked the Kuraysh tribes and defeated them, allowing Mohammed to conquer the city of Mecca. Since that time, the term hudna has been understood by Muslims as a tactical cease-fire that is intended only to allow a shift in the balance of power. Once the balance of power has shifted, and the groundwork has been laid for a Muslim victory, the truce can then be broken. (Source: Israel Embassy (Washington DC) http://www.israelemb.org/articals/2003/June/2003062700.htm)

the term hudna has been understood by Muslims as a tactical cease-fire that is intended only to allow a shift in the balance of power.

Sounds like the "operational pause", that worked so well during OIF.

If so, then we hit them with one out of their own playbook.

Sux to be in front of a Brad, don't it?

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