FULL ARTICLES

“WE MUST MAKE CERTAIN THAT ARAFAT BE STRIPPED OF ANY EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY”

Barak: Road map won't work if Arafat has power
Ha'aretz

Former prime minister Ehud Barak said Tuesday that the road map can only be implemented successfully if Arafat is removed from a position where he can influence the dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians. "We must make certain that Arafat be stripped of any executive authority," Barak said on Israel Television. "If he has any bit of control or authority, there will be no agreement between Israel and the Palestinians." Barak described the European vision of the plan as "very dangerous to Israel," and said, "We must insist that what is implemented be as close as possible to the Bush vision."

 

ABBAS SAYS ARAFAT IS STILL IN CHARGE

New Palestinian PM says Arafat is still in charge
Reuters
May 21, 2003

New Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas said President Yasser Arafat remained in charge despite a U.S. and Israeli refusal to deal with him, and said his stamp of approval should precede any political action.

"Arafat is at the top of the (Palestinian) Authority. He's the man to whom we refer, regardless of the American or Israeli view of him," Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, said in an interview with Egypt's semi-official al Mussawar weekly.

"For us, Abu Ammar is the president elected by the Palestinian people and he is the chairman of the whole Palestinian Authority. We do not do anything without his approval," Abbas said, referring to Arafat by his nom de guerre.

After a power struggle with Arafat, Abbas came to power last month amid intense U.S. pressure for Palestinian reforms. Washington accuses Arafat of doing too little to rein in militants.

"I will not allow any serious differences between Arafat and me," Abbas told al Mussawar's editor-in-chief Makram Mohamed Ahmed in Gaza. "There may be day-to-day differences... But there will be no serious problems that lead to 'divorce'."

Abbas reiterated his backing and respect for Arafat, who symbolizes the struggle for independence for most Palestinians and Arabs. The prime minister said he would not travel abroad until the president was also allowed full freedom of movement.

"I cannot imagine how can there be different treatments for me and for Abu Ammar," he said, referring to Israeli restrictions on Arafat's ability to travel.

Earlier this month, Abbas held talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the highest-level Israeli-Palestinian meeting in more than two years.

Abbas said they discussed the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan but Palestinian and Israeli views were far apart. While the Palestinians have accepted the initiative, Israel has raised several reservations.

"We as Palestinians are determined to accept the road map as we received it. But Sharon insists on accepting the 'principles' of the road map," Abbas said. "The two stances are totally different."

 

PALESTINIAN FM: PA WILL NOT DISARM TERRORIST GROUPS

Palestinian FM: PA will not disarm terrorist groups
By Khaled Abu Toameh
The Jerusalem Post
May 20, 2003

The Palestinian Authority will not disarm Palestinian terrorist groups until the "Israeli occupation forces stop the killing and the oppression" in the territories and until Israel accepts the 'roadmap' plan to Palestinian statehood unconditionally, Palestinian Minister for Foreign Affairs Nabil Sha'ath said Tuesday.

"The Palestinian government will not initiate any conversation with the militant factions until Israel declares its unconditioned approval of the 'roadmap'", Sha'ath told reporters in Cairo after meeting Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Sha'ath also met in Cairo with Gen. Omar Suleiman, head of Egyptian Intelligence, who is trying to arrange a meeting in the Egyptian capital between different Palestinian factions to discuss the possibility of suspending terrorist attacks inside Israel.

"How can we ask the Palestinian resistance factions to lay down their weapons while Israeli tanks are raiding [northern Gaza Strip town] Beit Hanoun and killing its residents for five days now?" the Palestinian minister asked.

Sha'ath said he discussed the Israeli threats to expel Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat following the recent spate of suicide bombings with Mubarak. "President Arafat's life is in danger," he added.

He urged Mubarak to launch an urgent campaign with the help of other Arab countries to save Arafat's life, pointing out that the Egyptian president had already contacted Israel and the US to warn them against taking any action against the PA chairman.

Sha'ath said he delivered a written message from Arafat to Mubarak briefing him on the latest developments in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and accusing Israel of seeking to sabotage the road map plan.

Meanwhile, a senior Palestinian cabinet minister on Tuesday told The Jerusalem Post that the new Palestinian cabinet still doesn't have a plan to disarm militias. "Talk about a security plan to fight Hamas and Islamic Jihad is untrue," the minister said.

He noted, however, that Minister for Security Affairs Mohammed Dahlan has been holding secret talks in the Gaza Strip with representatives of some Palestinian factions to prepare for another round of talks in Cairo over a cease-fire. The minister said Hamas and Islamic agreed in principle to attend the talks.

 

ROAD MAP TO DISASTER

Road map to disaster
By Elyakim Haetzni
May 1, 2003

PROLOGUE

In brief, we may state without exaggeration that we are facing a Road Map to Disaster, a document whose consequences are no less severe than those of the British White Paper of 1939. [The British White Paper prevented Jews from entering Israel prior to 1948 when Israel became a state. In effect, the British White Paper prevented the saving of six million European Jews who had no place to go except to the ovens of Nazi Germany.]

The Oslo Agreements were child's play compared to this Road Map. Methodological criticism of the Oslo Accords pointed to a basic flaw: Israel's haste to establish the Palestinian Authority and accord the Palestinians authority, territory, weapons and funds, while leaving the chief points of disagreement – borders, refugees, Jerusalem, settlements and sovereignty – to be resolved later. This enabled the Palestinians to exploit their achievements in an attempt to force their own preferred solution to the deferred issues to be resolved.

Sharon apparently failed to learn a lesson from the Oslo Accords, having repeated this tactical error under far more serious circumstances: This time, he is paying the Palestinians an advance in the form of a sovereign state. From that point on, they can fight to achieve their perceived objectives as a bona fide state, a member of the United Nations, equipped with all tools, authority and individual support entailed thereby.

After two and a half years of the present Intifada that he declared and opened, Yasser Arafat can credit himself with having achieved all his war objectives: A Palestinian state within immediate reach, international involvement and supervision, introduction of the United Nations and Europe into the area, military involvement by Jordan and Egypt, elimination of Jewish settlements and release of Israel's effective hold on most parts of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. It is chilling indeed to realize that we have paid for this total political victory with over a thousand Jews murdered and many thousands more wounded since the Oslo Accords were drafted. It is all the more frustrating to think that Arafat thus emerges as the unquestionable winner, despite Israel's clear military victory.

FULL ARTICLE

INTRODUCTION

All the following citations are derived directly from the Third (and to the best of our knowledge the most recent) Draft of the Road Map, formulated by the four powers known as "the Quartet" (the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia), whose publication had been postponed at Israel's request pending the January 28 elections and the formation of a new Cabinet.

The following are the main points of this document, whose full name is: A Performance-Based Road Map to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

1. Establishment of a Palestinian State

As is evident from the Road Map's title and text, the key objective is establishment of "an independent and viable Palestinian state with sovereignty" and "a maximum extent of geographical continuity" (the Road Map makes no mention of Sharon's conditions, e.g. that this state be demilitarized, that it not be granted authority to control borders or airspace or contract international agreements, etc.).

The Palestinian State will be established in two phases:

A. "The option of establishing a Palestinian state with temporary borders" following general elections in 2003. The Road Map states explicitly that "the members of the Quartet Committee will push towards an international recognition of the Palestinian state, including the possibility of membership in the United Nations."

B. A Palestinian state with permanent boundaries, to be established "after solution of issues concerning borders, Jerusalem, refugees and settlements" in 2005 (disregarding the Israeli Prime Minister's well-known stipulation that the process extend over at least ten years).

2. Internationalization of the Conflict

A. Two International Conferences.
B. The Quartet.

The First International Conference will convene in 2003 after the Palestinian elections to "launch a process that leads to the establishment of a Palestinian state with temporary borders."

The Second International Conference will convene in 2004 "to ratify the agreement reached on the state with temporary borders and to launch a process "that leads to a final solution..." [and a permanent Palestinian state].

All Governments of Israel, right-wing and left-wing alike, have avoided international conferences like the plague. The reasons for their decision, so obvious that even a child could understand them, remain unchanged during Sharon's term of office. In fact, the situation may well have worsened, considering the extensive international support expressed for the Arabs, along with overt hostility towards Israel and even Jews as a whole.

The Quartet is the chief instrument applied to wrest freedom of sovereign behavior from Israel and grant it to the Palestinians. The following are a few of its functions and authorities:

C. Convening International Conferences (although it may "consult" with the parties involved). In other words, International Conferences will be forced on Israel against its will.

D. Deciding, based on "the collective ruling of the Quartet Committee whether the conditions are appropriate for progress taking into consideration the performance of all parties." This means that transition to the Palestinian state phase will be determined by foreign elements, contravening Sharon's stipulation that any such activity be dependent on Israeli assessment of elimination of terror, confiscation of weapons, cessation of incitement and the like. In brief, we have been denied the right to conflict management.

E. Establishing a means of monitoring implementation of the Road Map by Israel and the Palestinians. We recall that Sharon avoided any substantive military activity for a year and a half just to keep international observers out of the area. Now, he has consented to institutionalized international supervision that will essentially undermine our sovereignty in managing the conflict from the outset, even before a Palestinian state is established.

F. The Quartet will ensure that both sides "perform their commitments in a parallel manner." This proviso contravenes Sharon's insistence that any measure taken by Israel must be preceded by the Palestinian side's having carried out its commitments to the fullest. For example, the Palestinian undertaking to eliminate terror will be rendered parallel to Israel's commitments regarding settlements (see below). The very apposition of these two issues is outrageous. Moreover, it is obvious that the Palestinians will perceive themselves as exempt from the obligation to halt terror simply because construction is taking place or some prefabricated structure or other has been set up on the Israeli side, including eastern Jerusalem. Adjudication of such disputes will be vested in the Quartet, that will hear these claims of Israeli violations. The Quartet's involvement thus largely vitiates Israeli sovereignty.

G. The Quartet plays a decisive role in other respects as well:

* Intervening "whenever the need arises" in direct negotiations between the parties, thereby nullifying another principle that Israel held sacred for decades: Direct negotiations.
* Determining "a realistic timetable" for progress.
* Offering "effective and practical support" at each stage of transition towards Palestinian rule, i.e. intervention in all spheres of activity – finances, administration, security and the like. Such intervention is already taking place.
* Intervening in the achievement of a "final solution," including all that concerns Jerusalem, refugees and settlements.
* International efforts to facilitate reform and stability of the Palestinian institutions and the Palestinian economy," i.e. intervention in all spheres of activity.

3. Settlements

A. The Road Map insists that "the Israeli government dismantles immediately all settlement enclaves that were erected since March 2001" or: "the Israeli government dismantles all settlement outposts that were erected since March 2001." According to both these versions, dismantling of outposts and the settlement freeze described below are not contingent on prior cessation of terror but are to be carried out, as indicated, "in parallel," with no differentiation between "legal" and "illegal" outposts.

B. "The Israeli government freezes all settlement activities ... (including the natural growth of settlements)" or: "the Israeli government freezes all settlement activities ... along with giving priority to the projects that threaten the continuity of Palestinian residential regions, including the regions around Jerusalem," all to be carried out in 2003.

C. Demanding "a maximum extent of geographical [or: territorial] continuity, including additional steps on the issue of settlements" for establishment of a state with temporary borders (the intention is transparent: Uprooting of settlements that interfere with "geographical continuity," namely the Judean Hills settlements). This too is to be carried out before establishment of the provisional state, i.e. by the end of 2003.

D. Discussion of the fate of the remaining settlements will take place before establishment of a Palestinian state with permanent borders, i.e. by the end of 2005.

4. Jerusalem

A. "The Israeli government will reopen the Palestinian Chamber of Commerce and other Palestinian closed institutions in East Jerusalem," meaning that Orient House, among other institutions, will be functioning once again.

B. Discussions regarding the permanent situation aim at providing "a realistic... and just solution to the issue of refugees and negotiable decision on the status of Jerusalem that takes into consideration the political and religious concerns of both parties." This accords the Arabs in Jerusalem political status equivalent to that of Israel, thereby mandating a priori division of the city. The expression "just solution" regarding the refugees does not augur well either.

5. "Security"

"The implementation of the U.S. plan starts for reconstruction, training and resumption of the plan of security coordination in cooperation with an external supervision council that includes the U.S., Egypt, Jordan (The EU demands adding the phrase: 'with support from the Quartet Committee or with support from the EU')." It is especially ominous to note Sharon's consent to involvement of Egyptian and Jordanian military elements!

6. Other Elements

A. The Saudi Initiative

"The plan takes into special consideration the Saudi Initiative which was ratified by the Arab Summit in Beirut." This initiative explicitly calls for full withdrawal to the 1967 borders (including Jerusalem) and the return of refugees according to UN Resolution 194, a point stipulated unequivocally at the Beirut Summit. Sharon's attempts to have it deleted were unsuccessful.

B. "Terminating the Occupation"

This terminology demonstrates that mention of the Saudi Initiative is not a mere literary device, as corroborated towards the end of the Road Map: "... the parties reach an agreement on the permanent and comprehensive status that end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in 2005 through an agreed upon settlement reached through negotiations between the parties and based on the UN Security Council Resolution... that end occupation which started in 1967."

C. The Golan Heights

"to achieve a comprehensive peace on all tracks, including the Syrian-Israeli and the Lebanese-Israeli tracks."

"A second international conference ... [that will] support the progress towards a comprehensive settlement in the Middle East between Israel and Lebanon and between Israel and Syria as soon as possible."

D. "Deliberate Malfeasance"

The Israeli government will not undertake any acts that undermine the confidence, including deportation, and attacks against civilians... confiscation or demolition of homes and Palestinian properties as punitive measure or facilitating Israeli construction and demolishing civil institutions and the Palestinian infrastructure. All Israeli official institutions end instigation (or: incitement) against Palestinians."

To achieve balance, Israel, too, is accused of incitement: Israeli construction is considered to "undermine confidence." This is no mere theoretical matter, as indicated in the Bedein Report (published in the Hebrew weekly Besheva): "When I asked a U.S. Embassy spokesperson whether renovation of the Hurva Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City would be considered illegal construction, the response I received in the name of United States Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer was that indeed, any construction in the Old City of Jerusalem would be deemed 'illegal' according to U.S. foreign policy."

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth carried the following item on January 21, 2003: Powell Responds to Sharon: "We helped set up the Quartet and support it completely," said U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday in response to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's derisive reaction.

Speaking in New York, Powell said that "once elections have been held in Israel, we will cooperate with the Quartet in its efforts to achieve an agreement in the Middle East. We are committed to the Quartet and the Road Map, on which we've been working very hard."

Powell also "reminded" Sharon of President George W. Bush's vision: "His goal is to establish a Palestinian state in the region."

The Bush Plan, that is now tightening like a noose around Sharon's neck, was put forward as a cooperative effort by both heads of state. Since Israel was established, it has always been a dependent of the United States "and not always well fed at that. From now on, we've been abandoned to the vagaries of the United Nations, the Europeans and Russia, all with the active participation of the Sharon Government and its Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who stated in an interview with Dan Margalit on Israel Television's Channel One (October 15, 2002): "The Government announced that it accepts Bush's vision of two states for two peoples," adding that "A third party has now joined - the Quartet."

Sharon, interviewed by Margalit the next day, indicated that "acceptance of the Bush Plan is a strategic decision. The plan is essentially a joint Israeli-American plan."

Foreign Minister Peres presented the President of Mauritania with "the Quartet's plan, including ... establishment of a Palestinian state with temporary borders ... The Quartet is now working on drawing up a detailed Road Map, an idea that Israel accepts in principle..." (Yedioth Ahronoth, October 9, 2002).

Strange as it may sound, the Road Map that everyone is so worried about is essentially based on ideas that Prime Minister Sharon himself had raised in Washington previously, ideas that also helped shape Bush's speech regarding a solution in the Middle East. For example, the three-phase plan stipulated in the new Road Map, is originally Arik Sharon's. The Road Map, now a concrete document in the Pentagon's possession, also obligates Israel to take certain steps ... (Alex Fishman, Yedioth Ahronoth, October 18, 2002)

Teams of Egyptian and Jordanian intelligence experts will soon arrive in Jericho to train the new Palestinian security system teams. Training of workers will be part of the planned reforms in Palestinian security" (Yedioth Ahronoth, August 21, 2002).

FULL ARTICLE

THE “ROAD MAP” WON'T LEAD TO PEACE IF IT BYPASSES THE CAUSES OF WAR

The "road map" won't lead to peace if it bypasses the causes of war
By Abraham D. Sofaer
Commentary Magazine
May 2003

Immediately after the 1991 Gulf War, the first Bush administration convened in Madrid an international conference on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. This was an event that political leaders all over the world had been pursuing as if it were the holy grail of international diplomacy. It set in motion a decade of "peacemaking" that included the treaty between Israel and Jordan but whose most visible fruit was the Oslo accords of 1993.

In recent months, three years into the bloody Palestinian assault on Israel that the Oslo peace process became, the same dynamic has once again been in play, as international diplomats and government officials have scrambled to take advantage of the anticipated defeat of Saddam Hussein by pushing forward their preferred solutions. President Bush himself predicted in late February that "success in Iraq could... begin a new stage of Middle Eastern peace," while England and other European nations, keen to demonstrate their good faith to the Arab world, have gone much farther. In the very first week of the war, the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, complaining about an alleged double standard when it came to "injustice against the Palestinians," equated U.N. resolutions concerning Saddam Hussein's threats to international peace with those condemning Israel on a range of less significant matters.

A more evenhanded view underlies the latest diplomatic initiative to address the Israel-Palestinian dispute. This is the famous "road map" prepared by the "quartet" of the United States, the European Union, the U.N. and Russia. The road map, released earlier this week, proposes a two-state solution to the conflict, to be reached in three phases.

In Phase I, the Palestinians are to "declare" an end to violence and terrorism; undertake "visible" efforts to prevent attacks on Israelis, consolidate all security forces under an "empowered" interior minister, and restructure Palestinian institutions through numerous, detailed measures. Israel, for its part, is to call for an end to violence against Palestinians; cooperate in rebuilding a viable Palestinian security force; cease all actions "undermining trust," including deportations, demolition of homes and destruction of Palestinian infrastructure; take measures to improve the humanitarian situation; and "immediately" dismantle "settlement outposts erected since March 2001" and freeze all other settlement activity, including "natural growth."

All this is to happen by next month. Then comes Phase II, which foresees the "option" of creating a Palestinian state, with provisional borders, attributes of sovereignty and maximum territorial continuity; the completion date for this phase is the end of 2003. Phase III, which is to result in a final agreement between the parties settling all outstanding issues, is to be completed by the end of 2005.

The road map was given a major boost on March 14 when President Bush affirmed his support for it and promised to publish it as soon as the Palestinians appointed a new prime minister with "real authority." British Prime Minister Tony Blair promptly signaled his readiness to put pressure on Israel to move the process forward whether Palestinian violence ceases or not. Meanwhile, both Israel and the Palestinian Authority have claimed to accept the road map "in principle" – a standard Middle East negotiating ploy – although both sides have major differences with it. In particular, Ariel Sharon's government has insisted that Palestinians must end all attacks before Israel is required to take any steps on the proposed "road."

MANY SUBSTANTIVE OBJECTIONS CAN AND SHOULD BE RAISED

Quite apart from its wildly optimistic timetable, many substantive objections can and should be raised to the road map. Still, it may be stipulated that the plan's aim – a two-state solution – is a reasonable one, accepted by the present Israeli government. But the mere recitation of a valid aim, even when coupled with a scheme for negotiations and escalating concessions, will hardly suffice to realize the peace envisioned by the road map's authors. The problem is that this road map, like many plans for Middle East peace, expects to bring an end to Palestinian violence against Israel without addressing the reasons why the Palestinians have deliberately and repeatedly chosen that path.

Dennis Ross, the former U.S. negotiator for the Middle East, recently admitted that ever since the last Gulf War, he and other U.S. negotiators failed to take seriously the Palestinian Authority's steadfast refusal to end violence. (As Mr. Ross put it in State Department doublespeak: "The prudential issues of compliance were neglected and politicized by the Americans in favor of keeping the peace process afloat.") Instead, in the face of the continuing violence, the U.S. kept pressing Israel to make further concessions, thereby convincing Palestinians that they could go on cheating and killing and still procure the benefits for which they had been negotiating. In the end, it seemed reasonable to suppose that they might even force Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza as it had been forced to withdraw from southern Lebanon in the summer of 2000.

But Palestinian violence is a much more serious and difficult problem than even Dennis Ross now admits. It is the product of an environment that fosters, shelters, encourages and rewards acts aimed at nullifying Israel's very existence. And that environment is itself the creation not only of the Palestinians, or of the Arabs, but also of the international community – including the U.S. To change this situation requires changing not just the actions and attitudes of Palestinians but the policies and practices of others, again including the U.S. No recognition of these facts, let alone any acknowledgment of the need to do something about them, has been made part of the road map – which is again why it shares the basic flaw of every Middle East peace plan that has preceded it.

The policies and practices I have in mind can be broken down into categories, of which the first has to do with terrorism.

The United States portrays itself, properly, as leading the world-wide effort to combat terrorism. Some longstanding American policies, however, have contributed to terrorism, and especially to terrorism against Israel. Although steps have been taken to rectify matters in the wake of September 11, terrorists and supporters of terrorism continue to be abetted by the U.S. in their determination to control the destiny of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Consider, first, the longstanding strategy of Arab states and the Palestine Liberation Organization to keep as many Palestinians as possible living under horrible conditions in refugee camps, close to Israel. The camps, first set up after the 1948 war that followed the establishment of the state of Israel, are administered by an arm of the United Nations, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA now spends more than $400 million a year to assist a population that has swollen over the past half century to some 4.5 million, relatively few of whom are refugees by any accepted definition of the term. The whole system could not have been better designed both to endanger Israel's security and to damage its moral reputation.

In the late 1980s, when I was running the legal adviser's office in the State Department, my colleague Nicholas Rostow and I proposed to Secretary George Shultz that the U.S. move toward ending its financial support of UNRWA programs that perpetuated the exploitation of refugees as tools of the radical Palestinian cause. The "building" – as the department is called by insiders – rose up in opposition. Our diplomats acknowledged that the camps were awful places that bred hatred and terrorism. But, they claimed, it was too late to do anything about it, and anyway the camps would disappear once peace was achieved. They declined to consider the possibility that the camps were helping to prevent peace from being achieved.

What would an alternative look like? It would include plans for building permanent homes for Palestinian refugees within Palestinian territories on the West Bank or in nearby states. As the scholar Scott B. Lasensky has recently suggested, incentive programs could also be put in place to encourage refugees to relocate and neighboring Arab states to accept them. Such resettlement could commence immediately; as long as it does not, we will be continuing to aid in solidifying the sentiments that lead to terrorism.

THE PALESTINIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IS AN ABOMINATION

Second, the Palestinian educational system is an abomination; it, too, is largely funded by the U.N., with the substantial support of American taxpayers. In their schools, Palestinian children are taught mendacious versions of their own history as well as of Jewish culture, history and beliefs. Generations have been fed on propaganda that denies the legitimacy of the state of Israel while simultaneously glorifying intolerance, fanaticism and "martyrdom."

Very little that is actually useful – engineering, computer technology, science, finance – is taught in these schools. In the private, religiously funded schools, things are still worse. There, in the words of Itamar Marcus, "children have been taught to hate, and to die for Allah. Their childhood has been destroyed by indoctrination to hate and kill Jews as well as Americans and Westerners in general."

The U.N. and the U.S. have allowed these terrible practices to continue for years. Although efforts have been made recently to restrict the flow of funds to some schools, little if anything has been done to halt the teachings themselves. How can Palestinians realistically be expected to accept Israel as long as they continue to convey to their children that Israel is unacceptable, and that terrorism against it is a noble undertaking?

Third, our policies have worked to prevent Israel from defending itself against terrorism. Nowhere is this clearer than in our relations with the highest level of Palestinian political power. The Palestinian Authority has advocated, planned, financed and rewarded terrorism against Israel and Jews. And yet, during the Oslo years and for many months during the current intifada, the State Department persistently called on Jerusalem to go on turning over to the authority the sums collected by Israel for its use. Only Israel's refusal to go along prevented us from enabling the Palestinian Authority to increase the level of violence and thus forestalling the very negotiations we wanted to see resumed.

Aside from government funding, the Palestinian Authority and other terrorist groups also receive massive financial support from a network of private companies, humanitarian fronts and wealthy individuals, some of them with American addresses. This is consistent with the pattern used by al Qaeda in financing the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Recent indictments of individuals like Sami al-Arian of Florida State University and of the leaders of "charities" like the Global Relief Foundation of Illinois, the Benevolence International Foundation of Chicago and the Holy Land Foundation in Texas will help limit the flow of such funds. But much more needs to be done to curb the resources of terrorists – a subject about which the authors of the road map, aside from their vague and general call for action against terrorism, are silent.

Terrorists have also benefited from unreasonable efforts to restrict Israeli responses to their operations. The U.S., for example, has known for many years that in addition to those associated with the PLO, at least three major terrorist groups operate in Israel: Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Until recently, however, the State Department has joined in castigating Israel for capturing or killing leaders and members of these groups. The State Department was wrong to do so. It is neither an "assassination" nor a "nonjudicial execution" to target an individual who has killed and intends to continue to kill one's citizens if that individual cannot safely be apprehended. Such conduct is part of every state's legitimate right of self-defense.

After 9/11, the U.S. recognized the need for an active defense against terror. We killed many terrorists in Afghanistan, and we continue to hunt down al Qaeda operatives and leaders. Where possible, they are arrested and held as prisoners; where necessary, they are killed. We have also undertaken to assist several states in similar defensive operations--even while criticizing Israel for exercising its sovereign right in this regard. Are we to deny to Israel the flexibility in protecting itself and its citizens that we demand in protecting ourselves?

Besides criticizing Israel, our government and others also repeatedly accuse it of using excessive force and improper methods. There are indeed occasions when such criticism is warranted: Destroying the homes of suicide bombers, which can leave entire families homeless and has sometimes resulted in the death or injury of noncombatant neighbors, is a form of collective punishment that is not defensible. But Israel is clearly permitted by the laws of war to destroy homes used by terrorists when necessary to attack or capture them, or to protect Israeli soldiers or civilians from attack, or in any other military operation. Although one would hardly know it from the routine condemnations that issue from the international community, most of the destruction that occurs is in fact for these proper reasons.

OUTRIGHT FABRICATIONS

Not only are most criticisms of Israeli antiterror operations baseless, some are outright fabrications, as in the case of the alleged "massacre" of "thousands" of Palestinian Arab civilians in Jenin in the spring of 2002. This charge was endorsed by the U.N. envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, without even conducting an investigation. As was subsequently demonstrated, a total of 52 Palestinians died in Jenin, most of them fighters.

Israel has demonstrated its readiness to drop improper practices, including deportations, and now leads the world in developing and using nonlethal military methods. It has also apologized for mistakes and punished its own soldiers as the law requires. Such conduct is inconceivable from the Palestinian Authority. That is precisely why the U.S. government needs to protect its own credibility by declining to join those who make a habit of censuring lawful Israeli actions.

Our government has also consistently failed to come to grips with the extent and seriousness of Palestinian terror itself. The annual State Department report, "Patterns of Global Terrorism," listed only nine terrorist attacks in Israel in 2001. In fact, there were 97. Among the 88 incidents omitted from the list were Hamas bombings in Haifa and Netanya in which 20 were killed and 140 wounded, as well as other devastating bombings by Islamic Jihad and Yasser Arafat's Fatah. This simple refusal to acknowledge reality underlies, in turn, the continuing demand by our government that Israel restore the PA's security forces – the same forces that we paid to build up in the 1990s, only to see them placed at the service of terrorism.

In addition to subsidizing refugee camps that breed terrorism as well as an educational system that justifies and extols it, and in addition to hobbling Israel's efforts to counter terrorism, we and others continue to be remiss in dealing with state support of terror.

Iran, together with Hezbollah, its proxy force in Lebanon, supports Hamas, an Islamist organization based in Gaza. Hamas also has supporting offices in other countries, including Jordan. Islamic Jihad and the PFLP are based in Syria, where they enjoy sanctuary and have been provided with training camps. These organizations also raise funds and recruits in Saudi Arabia, in Europe and even in the United States.

Syria and Iran are on the State Department's list of states that support terrorism. By itself, this means nothing – their support for terror has continued with impunity. After 9/11, however, the U.N. Security Council reaffirmed the duty of states to refrain from instigating, supporting or acquiescing in terrorist attacks on other states, and it also set out positive duties for suppressing such support. This statement offers a powerful basis for pursuing, through the "inherent right of self-defense," remedies against states supporting terror.

Even before 9/11 we ourselves insisted that if a state is unwilling or unable to prevent terrorist attacks, or if it supports such attacks, a victim-state is entitled to act in self-defense. This is the legal basis upon which, for example, President Reagan retaliated against Libya for supporting terrorist attacks on U.S. nationals in Europe, and which even President Clinton invoked in his ineffectual responses to Iraq's efforts to kill the first President Bush and to al Qaeda's bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

As for Israel, it has expressly threatened to use force against states that support or fail to prevent terrorist attacks on its citizens, although it has done so but rarely. One occasion was the hostage-release operation at Entebbe; another was the bombing of the PLO headquarters in Tunis; a third was the 1982 incursion into Lebanon. It now faces the far more difficult task of dealing with terrorism supported directly by Syria and Iran and indirectly by others like Saudi Arabia. These are major states with substantial military capacities, including, potentially, weapons of mass destruction.

Syria has openly acknowledged giving shelter to terrorist groups driven from Israel and the Palestinian territories, although it claims that the facilities are not being used for terrorism. Even if that were true, such support is illegal and subject to appropriate remedial action. As for Iran, former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres identified it as long ago as March 1996 as the source of support for terrorist activity in Israel. More recently, Iran supplied the arms on the Karine A that had been purchased by the Palestinian Authority for terrorist operations; it has also supplied Hezbollah in Lebanon with some 10,000 short-range rockets, as well as Iranian-made Zelzal-2 and Fajr rockets capable of reaching Tel Aviv.

WE CANNOT EXPECT ISRAEL TO GO ON ACCEPTING STATE SUPPORT OF TERRORITTS WITHOUT ACTING IN SELF-DEFENSE

In 1986, when the Iranians were mining the Persian Gulf, we warned them to stop; when they persisted, and we caught them in the act, we destroyed half their naval vessels. They stopped. We cannot expect Israel to go on accepting state support of terrorists without acting in self-defense. If we are serious about peace in the Middle East, we and the other members of the quartet should be placing far greater emphasis on convincing Iran and Syria to alter course.

President Bush made clear where he stands in his speech of June 24, 2002: "Every nation actually committed to peace must block the shipment of Iranian supplies to [terrorist] groups, and oppose regimes that promote terror, like Iraq. And Syria must choose the right side in the war on terror by closing terrorist camps and expelling terrorist organizations." Secretary of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, have emphatically reiterated this warning. Pressuring states to stop supporting terror against Israel would help create an atmosphere more conducive to peace with the Palestinians. But the pressure cannot be merely rhetorical, or limited to one or two speeches; and the results must be seen to be believed.

I now pass to a different class of issues relating to Palestinian violence. In negotiations between the parties, the U.S. has worked to keep some matters unresolved. Of these, a few are indeed so difficult as to be properly deferred. Others, however, clearly admit of only one possible resolution; if they have nevertheless been pushed off to some future date, that is because it is felt by our diplomats that they should not be foreclosed until the parties themselves come to an agreement on them. This tactic, however, has caused far more harm than good, allowing illusions to grow and take root that damage the practical prospects for peace.

* Jerusalem. Every successful presidential candidate since at least Ronald Reagan has promised that, if elected, he would move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel's capital city of Jerusalem. Yet, once elected, every president has breached this promise, announcing that current conditions do not yet favor such a move. Sometimes Congress has attempted to cut through the issue by mandating a move to Jerusalem, only to be instructed that it must not intrude on an area of presidential prerogative.

If moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem would actually harm prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, then it should not be moved. But the claim is spurious. Moving the U.S. Embassy to the site designated for it in the western part of Jerusalem would merely acknowledge that Jerusalem is in fact the capital of Israel. It would not eliminate from discussion the issue of East, or Arab, Jerusalem, or the issue of who is to control the Old City, which includes the Temple Mount and other holy places. At most, it would make it harder for Palestinians to raise West Jerusalem as a negotiating chip in their efforts to secure control of the rest of the city. Far from being an obstacle to peace, it would tend to force Palestinians to confront the real compromises they would need to make if they truly desired peace.

More fundamentally, our continued failure to demonstrate that we accept Jerusalem as Israel's legitimate capital has encouraged virtually all other states to behave similarly. This, too, feeds the openly expressed hope of radical Palestinians and their supporters that somehow, some day, Israel can be pushed back to its pre-1948 lines, if not into the sea. Palestinians are in the grip of quite enough disabling fantasies as it is; they can well afford to surrender the fantasy of undoing Israel's claim to Jerusalem.

* Right of return. At the Camp David negotiations in the summer of 2000, American diplomats were surprised by the fierceness with which Palestinian representatives insisted upon a "right of return" for all Palestinian refugees to Israel proper. If acted upon by the millions claiming to be refugees, such a right of return would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state. The Palestinian position was especially stunning in light of confident predictions by Yossi Beilin, Israel's former deputy foreign minister, that no such right would be invoked, but only a right to appropriate compensation for property and other measures of relief.

The U.S. bears some responsibility for encouraging Palestinians in this regard. Specifically, we backed the Arab interpretation of a 1949 General Assembly resolution, No. 194, that has no legal weight, that was originally rejected by all Arab states, and that is but one small item in the great mass of anti-Israel declarations by that body. More recently, we were among those welcoming a February 2002 Saudi peace "initiative" that explicitly invoked a right of return.

The road map, in turn, cites the Saudi plan in a positive manner. Though it does – finally – call in passing for a "realistic" solution to the refugee issue, any plan seriously aimed at leading toward peace, and backed by the U.S., should make it crystal clear at the outset that a right of return is antithetical to peace, and must be renounced. Furthermore, any reference to the rights of Palestinian refugees should be balanced by one to the legitimate claims of the hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from Arab countries, which must be satisfied on the basis of the same principles. Justice requires no less.

* Settlements and borders. Although the road map leaves the final borders of Israel and a future Palestinian state to final-status negotiations, it does insist on a complete cessation of all settlement activity by Jews, including "natural growth," beyond the Israeli side of the pre-June 1967 borders. State Department officials have long adhered to the notion that Security Council Resolution 242, issued in the aftermath of the June 1967 Six Day War, requires treating those borders as final; if, they say, Israel wishes any adjustment in them, it will have to compensate the Palestinians with some additional concession, probably in the form of land on Israel's side.

The State Department's interpretation of Resolution 242 is not only mistaken – the literature on this point is formidable – but it could end up presenting at least as great an obstacle to peace as Israel's policy of building settlements in areas heavily populated by Palestinians. In Israel's history, settlements have a central and necessary place. The road map disregards both this history and the plain legitimacy of building places to live in what Israelis regard as their historic (though not exclusive) homeland. The road map also errs in treating every Israeli settlement as equally troublesome, even though some are obviously defensible on security grounds and minimally disruptive to Palestinian inhabitants of the territories. It thereby once again creates unwarranted expectations among Palestinians.

The settlements issue cannot be resolved by means of solemn declarations. In my own view, a pragmatic approach that is not anchored in the pre-June 1967 lines would have a far greater likelihood of success in any set of good-faith negotiations than the unrealistic and indiscriminate proscription contained in the road map. It would require, among other things, considering the settlements in categories.

A small number of settlements are illegal; Israel has ordered them closed, but it has not always enforced the order. If, however, these particular communities may be regarded as a genuine obstacle to peace, the same cannot be said of the largest settlements, which lie virtually adjacent to the pre-June 1967 lines and contain some 80% of the settler population. Nor would "natural growth" in or close to these settlements be a serious problem, since it is widely recognized that the areas will become part of Israel in some appropriate exchange. As for the many other settlements that exist in the territories, while some Israelis would struggle to retain control over all of them, they would be unable to prevail if the government considered it in Israel's best interests to act otherwise. Ariel Sharon, it should be remembered, removed the settlers from Sinai to implement the 1978 peace treaty with Egypt. Nor should the road map or any other plan preclude Israel and the Palestinians from developing methods for preserving some settlements under Palestinian control, or under joint administration.

By tacitly accepting interpretations of reality that unfairly put the onus on Israel – in this case by demanding a "freeze" on settlements as if all settlement activity were either illegal or evidence of evil intent, or both – the United States helps to perpetuate Arab revanchism and works against the possibility of peace.

Beyond, above and behind every failed policy that has been devised to nudge forward the prospects of reconciliation in the Middle East there lies a simple if often unacknowledged fact: There can be no peace until the Arabs of the region openly accept the existence of Israel as a permanent, sovereign state. For 55 years most of Israel's Arab enemies have refused to do so. For 55 years the community of nations has tolerated, acquiesced in and thereby confirmed the propriety of that refusal.

A PARIAH STATE

To this day, Israel is treated in international affairs and by most members of the United Nations as a pariah state. The U.S., despite the generous and indispensable support it has extended to Israel, has too often gone along with that treatment. From time to time, as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan documented in Commentary, it has even "joined the jackals."

The blanket exemption from treating Israel as an ordinary state and an equal member of the international community has had a pervasive impact on the calculus of war and peace. To Israel's enemies, it has sent a signal that the conflict between them may yet be resolved through Israel's complete delegitimization and destruction. To Israel itself, it has sent exactly the same dire signal.

* The U.N. Nowhere is this more salient than at the U.N. itself. There, Israel has been refused a place in the regional grouping of Middle Eastern states and hence an opportunity to serve on the Security Council and other U.N. bodies – an opportunity afforded to every other member state. In addition, U.N. members have prevented Israel from serving in any important role on virtually any functional agency or body. The number of Israelis serving in significant U.N. positions has always been small, even relative to Israel's size; after a series of votes against Israeli candidates, that number is now down to a single person whose term is scheduled to expire within the next year.

The notion that the U.S. and other friends of Israel can do nothing about this outrageous situation is simply wrong. For years, the State Department agreed with the U.N. legal office that the 1975 General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism could not be repealed. Once a resolution has been adopted, the argument went, it can only be modified in its effects by some subsequent resolution. The first Bush administration put the lie to this idea when Secretary of State James Baker developed a plan for repealing the resolution, thus marking the beginning of the end of that infamous chapter in the history of anti-Semitism. During the current Bush administration, similarly, the president and Secretary of State Powell refused to go along with the racist attacks on Israel at the United Nations conference in Durban in the summer of 2001; Mr. Powell canceled his appearance, and the U.S. delegation withdrew when it became clear that the conference had been hijacked by anti-Semites.

There is every reason to approach the issue of Israel's continued ostracism in international bodies in the same spirit and with the same conviction. Nothing meaningful can be done internationally without U.S. involvement and support, and nothing is more important to the principle of sovereign equality than the fair and equitable treatment of member states of the United Nations. Are we to go on approving, by our silence, a situation wherein a true pariah state like Libya can serve a term as chairman of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights while democratic Israel is refused the right to participate in multilateral affairs? It is a grotesque charade, and it dishonors us.

* Normalizing relations. Arab states – even the few that have concluded formal peace agreements – have refused to normalize relations with Israel. Egypt, for example, has created many obstacles to trade, and although it has opened its doors to Israeli tourists willing to brave the pervasive anti-Semitic climate in that country, it has severely restricted tourism from Egypt to Israel. Our State Department has rejected the idea of working to alter this behavior. Not that it opposes greater openness; it simply regards the issue as subordinate to the "peace process" with the Palestinians, and has not wished to irritate the Egyptians.

The same attitude is reflected in the road map. That document barely mentions Arab-Israeli relations, and then only to call on Arab states during Phase II to "restore pre-intifada links to Israel (trade office, etc.)" and to revive certain multilateral discussions – water, the environment, economic development, refugees and arms control – begun after the 1991 Madrid conference. But these measures amount virtually to nothing. Few Arab states had significant links with Israel prior to the intifada, and multilateral discussions, however potentially interesting they may be, do not in themselves imply or depend on a meaningful acceptance of Israel. "Even if peace is accomplished," Syria's President Bashar al-Assad remarked matter-of-factly in late March of this year, "Israel will not be a legitimate state."

Progress has been made in relations between Israel and Jordan, and between Israel and Turkey. Much more could be done – by us – to encourage Arab states and others to deal with Israel as an equal in commercial matters. Instead, we have declined to hold the international community to a proper standard of behavior, and we have acquiesced in the exclusion of Israel from the economic and political benefits of normalization.

* Israel as ally. In 1990, as we prepared to confront Saddam Hussein over his seizure and occupation of Kuwait, we built, under the authorization of the Security Council, a coalition of forces in which every state willing to participate was welcomed, except one: Israel. During the ensuing conflict, when Iraq fired 39 missiles at Israel in an effort to draw it into the conflict, the U.S. asked the Israeli government not to respond; in deference to us, and in violation of its cardinal principles of self-defense, Israel agreed.

This year, in preparing our latest campaign in Iraq, we again asked Israel to stay on the sidelines for fear of alienating Arab allies. As insurance, we took measures to defend Israel from Iraqi attack by placing missile-defense units on its eastern border and providing unprecedented access to battlefield intelligence. Once again Israel went along, although this time Prime Minister Sharon reserved the right to respond if attacked.

Asking Israel to stay out of the coalition against Saddam in 1991 and then to refrain from exercising its right of self-defense was morally wrong, tactically shortsighted and very harmful to the goal of securing Israel's acceptance in the Middle East. The decision to keep Israel out of the war gave credence to a preposterous premise: that Arab states would have preferred to let Saddam keep Kuwait than permit Israel to fight in the same campaign with them. Naturally, Saddam exploited this premise by attempting to draw Israel into defending itself and thereby undermining the coalition against him.

A way could have been found in 1991 to welcome Israel into the coalition against Saddam without destroying it. The U.S. did not even try. Instead, it granted validity to the notion that Israel should be excluded. We in effect said to the Arab and Muslim states, "We don't necessarily share your view, but we understand and accept your need to avoid any appearance of countenancing the legitimacy of the state of Israel."

Why should we continue to operate on this premise, when what we should really be doing is working to challenge and overcome it? The principle informing our action should be that Israel – our ally, remember – is a state with the same inalienable rights as all other states. President Bush has quite rightly demanded that Arab states make clear "that they will live in peace with Israel." We should be doing all we can to enforce that demand.

* The Jewish question. Some one million Palestinian Arabs – a fifth of Israel's population – live there as citizens. Jewish settlers in the West Bank number, at most, a tenth of the area's population – but the guiding assumption of all international efforts to achieve peace is that no Jew should be allowed to reside in any Palestinian area.

Some Israeli extremists, it is true, have attempted to inflame existing animosities between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in the hope of securing permanent Israeli control of certain hallowed sites in territories claimed by Palestinians. Their efforts would be futile if Palestinians accepted Jews in their midst. They do not. On the contrary, they have attacked and killed Jews seeking to live in places like Hebron, an ancient and holy Jewish seat where Jews lived for centuries before being slaughtered and driven out in the 1920s.

JUDENREIN SHOULD BE AN IMPERMISSIBLE POLICY, EVERYWHERE

The notion of a Palestine in which Jews are not allowed to live is anathema. It implicitly affirms the hatred and violence that has made the Arab and Muslim Middle East virtually Judenrein, and it thoroughly undercuts any hope for peace. It should be anathema, above all, to the U.S. Palestinians should be required to agree explicitly that Jews may live in their midst. Arab states should be expected to reverse anti-Jewish policies and laws, based as they are on racist ideas that are not only intrinsically offensive but completely inconsistent with peaceful coexistence. Judenrein should be an impermissible policy, everywhere.

As for the much larger and excruciating question of Arab anti-Semitism, this is not the place to comment at length on its frightening tenacity, its ferocity and its world-wide reach. What must be said, though, is that the failure of our government at the highest levels to denounce the genocidal teachings that issue regularly from the press, the mosques and the schools of Arab and Muslim regimes, some of them our longstanding allies, is shameful.

This failure has consequences in policy. Throughout Israel's history, and especially now, Palestinians have acted as though they have a perfect right to kill Jews with impunity. Little wonder: they live in a culture in which armed men, and men of God, publicly and routinely call for the murder of Jews. Fundamentalist Muslims and nationalist Arabs alike preach and practice a racist ideology based on the inhumanity of Jews. In their ravings, Jews – "dogs," "cockroaches," "filthy bacterial growth" – deserve to be killed en masse and uprooted from a land they have defiled by their presence. When Arab terrorists are themselves killed by Israeli reprisals, Palestinians parade through the streets of their cities with guns, masks and suicide-bomber outfits, crying to heaven for vengeance.

All this would be intolerable, and shocking beyond belief, in any society based upon law. Yet so pervasive is it in Palestinian society, as indeed in Arab society generally, that one doubts even Israelis have taken in its full dimension. About it, the road map utters not a word, and neither has our government. Instead, as I have already noted, some government spokesmen have unconscionably criticized Israel for targeting terrorists in order to prevent further homicidal attacks on its people.

The same lack of moral compass can be seen in the equanimity with which the civilized world responded to Saddam Hussein's lavish cash awards to the families of suicide bombers and other Palestinian "martyrs," with the highest amounts reserved for those who killed children and other innocents within Israel proper. President Bush was the only Western leader to condemn this monstrous behavior. Western indifference to Saddam's public offer to pay for the murder of Jews, combined with the major increase in anti-Semitism in Western Europe itself, cannot but have reassured Israel's Arab enemies that they are not alone in regarding Jews as a lesser form of humanity, and Jewish life as an object of little value.

THE PROBLEM IS EXISTENTIAL

However much it may exasperate those bent on "bringing an end" to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, decades of war, terror and hatred are not to be undone through declarations and deadlines. The problem is not one of borders and territory; it is not one of schedules; it is not even one of a Palestinian state. The problem is existential.

Israel is at present capable of defending itself against any conventional armed threat; it may also be expected to deter any overt attempt to attack it with weapons of mass destruction. But such capabilities are no longer sufficient to ensure security. An attack by an extremist group, secretly supported by a state capable of providing it with weapons of mass destruction, can no longer be ruled out of the question. Alternatively, a state could act irrationally, driven by fanatical beliefs or by leaders prepared to absorb grave punishment in exchange for wreaking irreversible harm on Israel.

That is what is meant by an existential threat – a threat to Israel's very existence, fueled by a radical and uncompromising hatred of that existence and by the implacable determination to liquidate it. Some Arab and Muslim states, along with private and religious groups around the world, have adopted the destruction of Israel as official policy. Others give sanctuary and active help to groups committed to that end. With support from Germany, France, Russia and other nations, states controlled by Islamic extremists or Arab radicals have acquired or are acquiring nuclear devices and other weapons of mass destruction. The former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani – who has been described as a "moderate" – has declared that "the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground"; Pakistan's retired intelligence chief, Gen. Hamid Gul, now a "strategic adviser" to the Islamist parties that control the Pakistani legislature, has asserted that "we have the nuclear capability that can destroy Madras [India], surely the same missile can do the same to Tel Aviv."

In the democratic West, no one wishes to believe this – it is too awful. And that, too, adds to the magnitude of the threat. By omission as much as by commission, the U.S. and other democracies have encouraged radical Palestinians and their supporters to cling to their dream of eliminating the Jewish state. They have acquiesced in and thereby promoted the separate and unequal treatment of Israel as a member state of the community of nations. They have truckled to, and pressured Israel to reach an accommodation with, the most radical elements among its adversaries, while subsidizing and turning a blind eye to the culture of violence in which generations of those adversaries have been raised. When it comes to the workings of anti-Semitism, they have chosen not to absorb, and not to act upon, the indelible lessons of history.

In late March, Condoleezza Rice remarked that although the administration welcomed "comments" on the road map, the document itself was not susceptible of "renegotiation." If true, that is a pity. A road map to peace is a fine thing, but if it is based in denial and wishful thinking it will be rightly doomed. The task for diplomats and all other interested parties is to force an end to the murder of Jews and to the effort to destroy the Jewish state; in pursuit of that goal, it is as necessary to delegitimize Palestinian violence once and for all as it is to prevent and repudiate the delegitimization of Israel. When that necessary condition is met in word and deed, all manner of desirable and mutually beneficial outcomes will become negotiable; but not before.

FULL ARTICLES

“IT CAN BE SAID THAT ARAFAT LOST THE BATTLE BUT WON THE WAR”

Road map for legitimizing terror
By Israel Harel
Ha'aretz
May 2, 2003

If political gains are, by definition, the main fruit of victory in the battlefield, the road map proves the Palestinians – not Israel – have the upper hand in the war of terror that they initiated.

The attack in Tel Aviv – in the early morning hours after Holocaust Memorial Day and after Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) was sworn in as the Palestinian Authority's first prime minister – is further proof that Israel does not have enough strength to put an end to that war.

Is it any wonder, then, that the United States is saying to itself: If Israel does not have the determination to put an end to the terror that is persistently striking it, its best friend must take the initiative to stop the bloodbath that Israel has been unable to halt – due to inhibitions that are characteristic of Jews, who are afraid to take the necessary steps, even when they would lead to the prevention of the continuous murder of Israeli citizens.

In order for the road map to have a chance, it must be pro-Palestinian because the initiative, even after 13 months of killing Jews, continues to be in the hands of the Palestinians.

The road map's main danger is not the harsh demands it makes on Israel but its very publication. The Arabs conclude, and rightly so, that America is declaring via the map that the terror against the Jews, unlike terror against the citizens of any other country, pays and is therefore permissible. The road map is also a personal victory for Yasser Arafat, the man who until recently seemed to have fallen, never to rise again.

It can be said that Arafat lost the battle but won the war. What's more, despite the fact that, in principle, his crimes against humanity, particularly in the past two and a half years, are no different from the crimes of Saddam Hussein and all the other war criminals who have butchered civilians, Arafat enjoys immunity like no other leader of mass terror. Perhaps it is because his victims are Jews.

The bulk of his immunity is granted by the Israeli government, which is obligated to act on behalf of the victims who were murdered by his criminal activities. This is because the government, due to characteristic Jewish victims' complexes ("political reasons"), does not dare charge Arafat with war crimes. If this is the nature of the victims' government, how can we complain against the rehabilitation provided by European governments whose representatives do not desist from making pilgrimages to visit him.

It is unfortunate that the Israel Defense Forces, unlike the American army in Iraq, did not manage to grant its government the unequivocal victory that would have enabled it to dictate political and security conditions to the Palestinians. Such a victory would also have restrained the international pressure and prevented the need, certainly from the American's point of view, for the road map.

This would also have created a political-psychological atmosphere that would have made it possible to try Arafat for war crimes, along with the band of terrorists who acted on his behalf, just as the Americans are about to try the war criminals in Iraq and just as the Allied forces, led by the Americans, tried the German war criminals 57 years ago.

We would also be able to drive home the awareness that the blood of Jewish terror victims is just as red as that of Saddam's victims and, believe it or not, as the blood of the Americans who were murdered in the terror attacks. Just imagine what America would do to Saddam, to bin Laden and their minions when they are caught.

Only after 19 months of rampant terror, following the attack at the Park Hotel in Netanya on Seder night (March 27, 2002), did Israel understand that it was the defensive doctrine that everyone praised, thanks to the reduced military casualty figures, that had practically given the terrorists free reign to organize and carry out the mass-fatality attacks.

Even during Operation Defensive Shield, despite its relative success, the job was not finished and the terrorists remained undaunted. The IDF, like the American army in the 1991 Gulf War, halted the war on the verge of victory, while most of the terror infrastructures, particularly the headquarters and the directive and political leaderships, continued to operate.

Abu Mazen, who is now being told to finish the IDF's job, will smoke out the terrorists with the same vigor, the same efficacy and the same results as his predecessor to the commitment "to dismantle the terrorists infrastructures" - Arafat.

The United States gave us enough leeway to win this war. President George W. Bush even tried to neutralize Arafat, the patriarch of Arab terror. When we did not meet the performance test due to our inhibitions and our failings, and the people continued to bleed, the Americans had to come up with a plan that they, in their mistaken naivete, felt would bring an end to the bloodshed.

And when Israel is ordered to start with "gestures" toward the Palestinians, and later to bear the brunt of the price of implementing the plan, there is no doubt as to who has won the battle. It is no wonder, then, that Arafat's calendar is so full of meetings with foreign ministers. He has been perceived, and rightly so, as the one who has again come out as the political victor in another round of the never-ending terrorist war the Arabs are waging, and will continue to wage, against the existence of the Jewish Zionist state.

 

ABBAS’S BURDEN OF PROOF

Column One: Abbas's burden of proof
By Caroline Glick
The Jerusalem Post
April 25, 2003

There was a distinct feeling of deja vu from 1994 in the air this week. Back then, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak saved the international community from embarrassment by physically forcing Yasser Arafat to sign the Gaza-Jericho agreement on live television. This week, Mubarak sent the commander of his intelligence service to repeat the performance. General Omar Sulieman came to Ramallah on Tuesday and literally forced Arafat to meet with his deputy, Dr. Mahmoud Abbas, and accept Abbas's cabinet.

As in 1994, the US and Europe heaved a collective sigh of relief at Egypt's manhandling of Arafat. The question is whether Arafat's seeming capitulation now will prove as fraudulent as his behavior then.

When last June US President George W. Bush called on the Palestinian people to reject the regime of PLO chief Arafat and to elect leaders "not compromised by terror," he underscored the necessity of a complete overhaul of the way the Palestinians perceive their national identity. No longer could the Palestinians conceive of their nationalism as something that must necessarily supplant Jewish nationalism in order to reach fruition. Rather, a new group of leaders was called on to rise up who would understand that the realization of Palestinian aspirations can come about only after the Palestinians accept Israel's right to exist as the Jewish state.

Today, responding to British pressure, the Bush administration stands poised to preside over new talks between the Israeli government and the PLO under the nascent leadership of Abbas, Arafat's deputy of four decades. The announced aim of these talks is the speedy establishment of a Palestinian state.

But before any such talks begin it is vital that all concerned parties, but especially Israel, pause a moment and consider the reason for Oslo's abject failure.

The Oslo process was predicated on a set of false assumptions. The primary assumption was that the PLO, an organization founded with the expressed aim of destroying Israel, no longer sought our liquidation. Instead, what we found with Arafat's rejection of Ehud Barak's offer at Camp David is that the PLO had not changed. Not only would Arafat not yield the Palestinians' so-called "right of return," he also denied that the Jewish people have any historic and legal claims to Jerusalem.

And for this stand he received a hero's welcome by the Palestinians upon his return to Gaza.

The Oslo process also posited that the PLO had forsworn its armed struggle for the destruction of the State of Israel. Yet Arafat himself formed the Aksa Martyr's Brigades, which as Thursday's suicide bombing shows, is still actively conducting terrorist operations against Israelis. Then, too, even before the Palestinian Authority launched its terrorist war against Israel in September 2000, its security services never made any sustained effort to destroy Hamas or Islamic Jihad terror infrastructures. To the contrary, PA military commanders like Col. Muhammad Dahlan embraced Hamas leaders like Muhammad Deif. Already back in September 1996, Arafat showed that he had no compunction about using the weapons Israel had given him to fight terrorism to kill Israelis.

Finally, the Oslo agreement wrongly assumed that the PLO could be trusted to abide by its signed commitments to Israel. It could not. From allowing the free flow of sewage into riverbeds streaming into Israel to amassing arsenals of prohibited armaments to registering tens of thousands of vehicles stolen from Israelis, the Palestinian Authority breached every single commitment it made to Israel at the negotiating table.

Now we are told that all of this is past, because under Abbas's leadership the Palestinian Authority is reformed. We are told that Arafat, who this week was feted by the entire international community in an effort to have him accept Abbas's proposed cabinet a cabinet that looks almost exactly like Arafat's cabinet no longer holds influence over what happens in the Palestinian Authority.

Yet even if we accept the dubious assertion that Arafat is now neutralized, we still must ask ourselves the question, why would Abbas be any different? Abbas received his doctorate in 1983 from Moscow's Oriental University. There his dissertation topic was "The Secret Relationship between Nazism and Zionism." In his dissertation, which was adapted into a book published in Jordan in 1984, Abbas argued that, as opposed to what is commonly believed, "even fewer than a million Jews" were murdered by the Nazis.

He further argued that the gas chambers were not used to kill people but rather to disinfect them and to burn bodies to prevent the flow of disease. Abbas claimed that Hitler did not decide to kill the Jews until David Ben-Gurion provoked him into doing so by "declaring war on the Nazis" in 1942. It was the Zionist conspirators, Abbas explains, who created the myth of six million murdered Jews in order to force the world to accept the establishment of Israel.

To date, neither the Israeli government nor Abbas's main champion, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, have asked him to retract his statements of Holocaust denial.

Then too, the US plan to base new rounds of negotiations with an Abbas-led PA on the Quartet's "road map" has never taken into account Abbas's expressed agreement with the maximalist Palestinian demands set out by Arafat at the Camp David summit. In an interview with Kul al Arab radio in August 2000, Abbas said of the Palestinian demand for the "right of return," "It is only natural that each refugee return to his home." In the same interview he also directly threatened Israel, stating that if Israel does not accept the Palestinian demands, "We will open up the records of the past and demand the country in which they live" that is, pre-1967 Israel. He also stated that he does not believe that Solomon's Temple ever existed in Jerusalem.

A year later, in an interview with the PA's Al-Ayyam newspaper, Abbas explained why any flexibility in the Palestinian demands toward Israel is unacceptable. "When a Palestinian says that we have missed an opportunity or a tempting or a beneficial offer [by rejecting Barak's offers at Camp David and Taba] it weakens the Palestinian position since [consequently] the Americans and Israelis say, 'Here is a Palestinian who agrees with our position.' Such things, unfortunately hurt the Palestinian position."

So much, then, for Abbas's alleged moderation. Then there are the claims that Abbas, unlike the rest of the PA, is untainted by corruption. Yet both Abbas and his Security Minister-designate Dahlan are some of the Palestinians most associated with PA corruption. Both men made a fortune from kick-backs from the cement monopolies in Gaza. For years, photographers were prohibited from taking pictures of the multi-million dollar villas in Gaza both men financed by bilking the public trough.

Abbas has also shown that his Soviet education rubbed off on him. Speaking of reforms in May 2002, Abbas explained that the reforms need to take economic power away from Palestinian civilians and transfer all power to the Palestinian Authority. Abbas argued then that a necessary reform would involve preventing international NGOs from distributing monies directly to Palestinian NGOs. All those funds, he argued, must be transferred to the PA, the sole organization responsible for deciding how it should be apportioned.

It is true that in some recent statements, Abbas has argued that the PA's terror war against Israel did not serve the national aspirations of the Palestinian people. But these sort of statements, while encouraging, should be seen for what they are: an argument about tactics, not strategy, certainly not morality. They are not denunciations of terrorism per se, only of terrorism that doesn't work. Together with his record as anti-Semitic ideologue of Palestinian terrorism, it ought to be enough to dampen anyone's enthusiasm for Abbas as an improvement over Arafat.

Learning the lessons of Oslo means placing the full burden of proof on the Palestinians. Abbas, not Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, must be challenged to show that he wishes to make concessions for peace. He must be challenged to recant his denials of the Holocaust. He must be called to accept that Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. He must forswear his insistence on the "right of return." He must be called on to accept publicly the existence of the Jewish people whose national, spiritual and political roots are in Jerusalem.

None of this is meant to humiliate Abbas. After all, no one believes that Sharon is humiliating himself when he says he will accept the establishment of a Palestinian state. Rather, all of this is necessary to ensure that not only will a peace deal be reached, but that the peace will hold. If we learned anything from the past three years it must be this: Unless the Palestinian Authority under Abbas is actually willing to abide by the commitments taken on by the PLO a decade ago, there is no point in cheering his rise, no reason to negotiate anything with him, and certainly no reason to sigh in relief that Arafat again has done Mubarak's bidding.

 

“WESTERN JOURNALISTS HAVE BEEN SINGING JOYOUS DITTIES OVER THE APPOINTMENT OF ABBAS”

Road map gives Israel just another bad steer
By A.M. Rosenthal
The New York Daily News
May 1, 2003

The U.S. has made public still another plan for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. It won't work.

For one thing, it is too vague, or tricky, about the problem that bedevils the Israelis. Once again, they will carry out irreversible concessions about land while the Palestinians keep talking about their promises – most often, to dampen terrorism. They forgot to carry through with those promises after each of seven previous negotiations.

This new plan, mostly American-made, is called the road map. But in addition to Israelis, Palestinians, Americans and Britons, a bunch of others will be at the talks reaching for the driver's wheel – Russia, the European Union and the UN, all of which spend much of their time slanging away at Israel and making its life as hard as they can.

Even though a new Palestinian state is taken as a given, the road map gives Palestinians three years to create the government and social and political frameworks to make it democratic. One might think the Palestinian movement would have to prove its ability to govern itself before it's brought into the UN.

If the Israelis have any memory, they'll recall the fiasco of Oslo and other talks that wound up with land for Palestinians and promises for them. Like earlier negotiations, this one will end without tested machinery to make peace a permanent reality.

The road map does create a lot more meetings whose accomplishments, if any, cannot be enforced. Before the talks start is the time for every Jew, Christian and Muslim to think through past Israeli-Muslim negotiations and their failure to reach peace and to ask whether the upcoming talks will succeed or merely set the scene for another round of talks in a few years.

While Arabs are given independence, Israelis must scrap their settlements – whether decades old or recently built – for Jewish families who dared to expand. Where the Jewish babies will be put, the road map does not say.

The plan instructs Palestinians to end violence, terrorism and incitements and to confiscate illegal weapons and arrest terrorists. Presumably, this time they'll keep them locked up instead of rushing so many out of prison, as in the past. Then, to show its even hand, the road map tells Israelis to do the same against its own terrorism. The authors, whatever bureaucrats or specialists they may be, are among the most unashamed practitioners of the sin of moral equivalency I have encountered.

The decades since the beginning of Israel's fight for survival show that when it came to military matters, the Israelis came out on top. But when both sides went to negotiations, Israel lost land and consequent military maneuverability. What it gained from these negotiations I cannot see, except that it may have helped destroy the snarling myth that Jews are such shrewd bargainers.

Fairy tales aside, the creation of an independent Palestine will hardly make Israel more secure. The Palestinian Authority will have another army and police force to add to its strength, and it was enormously skillful at integrating its forces with Yasser Arafat's terrorists. Young Arabs who may fight Israel in the future have grown up immersed in vicious anti-Israeli propaganda. Saddam Hussein was their hero before, during and after the war on Iraq.

Western journalists have been singing joyous ditties over the appointment by the Palestinian parliament of Mahmoud Abbas as prime minister. They may be premature. In a 1983 book, Abbas wrote that Zionist leaders gave permission to the Nazis to drive Jews out of Europe as long as they fled to Palestine. And like a good Arab leader, he mocked the idea that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust. The Zionists, he wrote, invented the figure – it was really just a few hundred thousand. The book's title was "The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and the Zionist Movement."

Is he now a different man? Maybe. But he told an Arab paper that the intifadeh must continue and Palestinians must resist Israelis with all means, including arms.

That was March 3, 2003.

 

“A COUNTRY DISJOINTED BY SPLINTERED AUTHORITY CANNOT SURVIVE”

Israel must not miss yet another opportunity
By Shimon Peres
The Los Angeles Times
May 16, 2003

For the "road map" to avoid becoming moribund even before it has had a chance of turning into a green light for the peace process, issues that have little chance of being resolved – such as the Palestinian "right of return" – must be removed from the road map agenda.

Israel's position on this issue is unequivocal and backed by the whole of the Israeli political spectrum. If millions of Palestinian refugees are allowed to return to Israel, it will endanger the very foundations of a Jewish state. A Jewish state means a Jewish majority. And Israel will not commit political suicide.

The Palestinian right of return will need to be realized within the borders of a Palestinian state. I am aware that the Palestinians will not express public acceptance of this position. On this subject, we must therefore agree to not agree, without allowing this absence of agreement to interfere with the road map.

The Palestinian government must without delay put into effect a plan to dismantle and disarm the various armed militias operating on the ground and consolidate matters of security under its sole authority. Unless this course of action is enforced, Hamas and Islamic Jihad will dictate the Palestinian agenda and foil its attempts to advance peace. A government can be democratic or not democratic, but a country disjointed by splintered authority cannot survive.

Israel's government must implement the assurances it gave not only upon its recent election but also during its previous term, that new settlement activities will cease. This resolution was debated at the Knesset and approved, making it legally binding. The same commitment was made to the United States and must be fulfilled.

Since this commitment was made, several hundred settlements and outposts were created, and they must be dismantled. The so-called "painful concessions" pledge (by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon) cannot replace the real test of deeds.

All of the sides – the "quartet" with the United States in the lead (along with Russia, the European Union and the United Nations), Israel and the Palestinians – must agree on a two-way track at the start: to fight terror as though there were no negotiations and engage in negotiations as though there was no fight against terror. If one is dependent on the other, it is doubtful that the process will ever leave the station.

Fighting terror is not a gift that the Palestinians are offering Israel.

A terrorist – or even semi-terrorist – Palestinian state has no chance of seeing the light of day. But Israel must also fight the motives for terror. The Palestinian people will commit themselves fully to fighting terror only when it becomes clear to them that an end to terror will yield greater dividends than allowing it to continue.

Therefore, it is manifestly in Israel's self-interest to create a political horizon that will encompass an end to the occupation, its agreement to borders on the basis of U.N. resolutions 242 and 338 and the establishment of a demilitarized yet sustainable and independent Palestinian state.

We must not miss yet again the rare opportunity we are now given. It has always been hard to untangle ourselves from the complexities of the situation, and this time too will not be easy. But as opposed to the past, the potential peace today seems to overshadow the fear of war.