For Mr. Abu-Ghdeib, a local wallpaper dealer who had enlisted in the police, the building carried added significance, for it was there that he had been imprisoned by the Israelis.

“I shook the door of the cell where I was held,” he said today. “It made my hair stand on end. I saw the place where they had beaten me. I had dreamt of freedom, and today I feel free.”

Mr. Abu-Ghdeib, who had been jailed in Nablus and elsewhere in the 1970′s for taking part in weapons training and a grenade attack on Israeli soldiers, joined the several hundred Palestinian police officers, whose arrival today from the self-rule enclave of Jericho was met by ecstatic throngs.

Tens of thousands of people spilled into streets covered with brightly colored banners and pennants in the largest outpouring of jubilation since Israel began withdrawing its troops last month from West Bank cities and villages under an agreement signed in September. Most of the pullout will be complete by January, ending Israeli rule over much of the West Bank.

And two weeks later:

Under a final cascade of stones, Israeli troops withdrew today from Ramallah, completing a pullout from six West Bank cities and their neighboring villages in preparation for Palestinian elections next month.

“Out!,” shouted youths as a column of Israeli jeeps moved away from a police station downtown, trailed by scores of cheering Palestinians. As stones pitched by the crowd arched toward the receding vehicles, Palestinian officers entered the station, raised a flag and greeted the throng from the roof, waving their rifles.

The scene was similar to others played out this month across the West Bank, and it set the stage for Palestinian elections planned for January 20.

Under an Israeli-Palestinian accord signed in September, Israeli forces have left six cities and more than 400 villages and towns in recent weeks, ending 28 years of control over much of the West Bank.

Then a few weeks later the terror started:

A six-month lull in terror attacks in Israel was shattered in the early morning today when militant Muslim suicide bombers detonated pipe bombs in Jerusalem and Ashkelon, killing 25 people and wounding 77, some critically. Among the dead were two Americans.

Messages received by news organizations said the attacks were an act of vengeance for the death of Yahya Ayyash, a Palestinian known as “the Engineer” for the bombing attacks he organized in recent years against Israel. Mr. Ayyash, who belonged to an armed wing of the militant Islamic movement Hamas called the Qassam Brigades, was killed by a booby-trapped mobile telephone on Jan. 5.

The terror lasted for about two weeks killing over 60 people.

No. 18 buses have been traveling across this tense city largely empty since two recent suicide bombers killed 45 people on the line. Today, as Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani expressed his solidarity with Israel by climbing aboard the 6:30 A.M. run trailed by staff members and a gaggle of television crews, the problem was finding space.

“Who in their right mind is going to get on this bus?” said Cristyne Lategano, the Mayor’s spokeswoman, surveying the mob of photographers, bodyguards and aides wrestling around the Mayor and his host, Mayor Ehud Olmert of Jerusalem. About 10 regular riders found seats in the commotion, only to flee when it became clear that the driver would not be making the regular stops.

Instead, the bus delivered Mr. Giuliani to the scenes of the bombings, where he laid wreaths bearing the banner of New York City. “We’re doing this in memory of the people who lost their lives,” he said.

Suicide bombers have killed 62 people in four attacks in Israel since Feb. 25, including the two bus attacks. The militant Islamic group Hamas, which is opposed to the peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians, has claimed responsibility for the explosions.

When Israel withdrew from those six cities, responsibility for security was given to the Palestinian Authority. Rather than fulfill its obligations to secure the areas it was now in charge of, Arafat (and the PA) ignored (if not encouraged) Hamas. I know that most people don’t connect the withdrawals with the subsequent terror, but I don’t think that there’s any other way to explain. Sure the killing of Ayyash provided a pretext, but the laxer (if not negligent and not complicit) security provided Hamas with an opportunity to operate.

I recall this bit of history because in an op-ed today, former President Bill Clinton asserts:

A decade and a half since his death, I continue to believe that, had he lived, within three years we would have had a comprehensive agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. To be sure, the enemies of peace would have tried to undermine it, but with Rabin’s leadership, I am confident a new era of enduring partnership and economic prosperity would have emerged.

Nonsense. That assumes that Arafat was negotiating in good faith and was committed to peace. Subsequent terror demonstrated otherwise. Arafat’s claim that there was no Jewish temple in Jerusalem to Clinton in 2000 should have cemented that fact in Clinton’s mind. Instead Clinton waxes nostalgic for a past that never could have been. He does it here too:

There is a real chance to finish the work he started. The parties are talking. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has the necessary support from his people to reach an agreement. Many Israelis say they trust him to make a peace that will protect and enhance their security. Because of the terms accepted in late 2000 by Prime Minister Ehud Barak, supported in greater detail by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and approved by President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinians, everyone knows what a final agreement would look like.

If “everyone knows” then nobody told Arafat or Abbas, because Arafat in 2000 and Abbas in 2008 rejected deals that “everyone knows” would bring peace.

Look Clinton has to believe what he wrote. It’s easier to believe that he would have been successful had Prime Minister Rabin not been assassinated. But he was dealing with one party, which has demonstrated time and again, that it is not interested in peace. I’m sure it’s difficult to acknowledge that his work on peace was based on a false premise.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

So a couple of days before I leave office, Arafat says, calls to tell me what a great man I am. And I just said, “No, I’m not. On this I’m a failure, and you made me a failure.”

Now (via memeorandum):

According to Clinton, the Russian immigrant population in Israel is the group least interested in striking a peace deal with the Palestinians. “They’ve just got there, it’s their country, they’ve made a commitment to the future there,” Clinton said. “They can’t imagine any historical or other claims that would justify dividing it.”

To illustrate his view on the Russian immigrant community, Clinton related a conversation he had with Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident turned Israeli parliamentarian, who he said was the only Israeli minister to reject the comprehensive peace agreement Clinton proposed at the Camp David Summit in 2000. The proposal was eventually rejected by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

“I said, ‘Natan, what is the deal [about not supporting the peace deal],’” Clinton recalled. “He said, ‘I can’t vote for this, I’m Russian… I come from one of the biggest countries in the world to one of the smallest. You want me to cut it in half. No, thank you.’”

Clinton responded, “Don’t give me this, you came here from a jail cell. It’s a lot bigger than your jail cell.”

Apparently the former President’s been reading Time Magazine.

The reason that there’s no peace is because the Palestinians aren’t interested. Even if a Palestinian state were created, abiding by the “Clinton parameters,” there’s no guarantee that it would lead to peace. Most Israelis know that, not just Russians. All those years of dealing with Arafat, and Clinton still doesn’t get it.

By the way I notice that Clinton didn’t say that there won’t be peace because 50% of the Palestinian population is ruled by Hamas.

Israel Matzav points out (with a wonderful accompanying graphic):

There are not enough Russian immigrants or ‘settlers’ to explain to Clinton that nearly two thirds of Israeli Jews voted for parties on the Right of the political spectrum (67 out of 110 Knesset seats held by Jewish parties if you back out the ten seats that went to Arab parties, and then back out the 28, 12 and 3 Knesset seats that went to Kadima, Labor and Meretz, respectively in the last election).

Israel has changed in the last ten years. But the Russian immigrants were already here ten years ago. And the increase in the number of ‘settlers’ (we prefer to call them revenants) is the result of high birth rate and virtually no emigration. But it’s not just the Russian immigrants and the revenants who oppose the notion of establishing a ‘Palestinian state.’

Jennifer Rubins wonders:

Maybe he’s competing with Jimmy Carter for the ex-president limelight.

Clueless after all these years.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Now Bret Stephens writes about how Peace Processes never work:

But he misses a deeper point. Even as peace processes almost invariably fail between the warring parties, they also almost invariably succeed as political theater for the peace processors themselves. Kim Dae Jung, Arafat and Shimon Peres all burnished their prestige with Nobel Peace Prizes. President Obama won one pre-emptively. And Mr. Clinton still basks in an ill-founded reputation as a peacemaker. Ironically, the only real peace he ever achieved, in the Balkans, was through the strength of American arms.

Think about the dynamic. After years of efforts the diplomats get the two parties together. Talking rather than fighting is determined to be the primary goal of the negotiations. (Or “peace” such as it is, is assigned an infinite value.)

Now say the bad guys violate some principle. There are three choices: insist that the bad guys desist, declare that the negotiations have failed or convince the good guys to overlook the breach. The first choice is too difficult. The second choice, because of the value given the process is unthinkable. The third choice is the path of least resistance.

But once you’ve ruled out the first two choices, what if the good guys say, “Enough, we won’t tolerate this?” Then you can bring pressure against the good guys, who are vulnerable to internal political pressure. If they refuse to overlook the violations, you say they are being unreasonable and are acting against the interests of peace. It doesn’t really matter. The peace process has become the end intself rather than the means to an end.

For a concrete example, think about 1996. In early 1996 Hamas unleashed a wave of suicide bombings against Israel that killed over 60 Israelis. Israelis, who, when they accepted the peace process, thought that Arafat had changed and would prevent terror, started retreating from support of the process and the Labour government that championed it. So what did President Clinton do? He organized as “summit of the peacemakers” and invited every Arab leader (including Hafez Assad, who refused to come despite Clinton’s pleas). Arafat, despite his failure to act against Hamas (and likely despite his tacit support of Hamas) was invited too. The purpose of this grotesque charade was to forestall the likely (and eventual) election of Binyamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister of Israel. Clinton prized Arafat’s phony participation in the peace process above the democratic process in Israel. (Clinton should not have been surpised byt Arafat’s rejection of peace at Camp David in 2000; Clinton is the one who showed Arafat that there were no consequences to his perfidies.)

Note: I added to and changed this article slightly from what I first posted.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

If an army has to be there for your swearing-in, are you really the “elected leader”? Robert Gibbs said yesterday that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the “elected leader” of Iran, in spite of the fact that he had to have 5,000 security forces at his swearing-in ceremony, the opposition boycotted it, and his mentor, the Ayatollah Khameini, didn’t give him the victory kiss of congratulations the other day. Sucks to be you, Mad Mahmoud. (As for that “Smartest administration EVAH” thing—I’m thinking not.)

Billy Jeff goes to North Korea: President Clinton came through with the goods and got two American journalists out of the hell that is North Korea. As I am simply glad that he got them back, there is not much to snark about. Oh, of course there is. The North Koreans rejected the Obama administration’s first choice for mediator: Al Gore. Do you think it was the gasbag effect, or the Gore Effect? The good news is that Clinton didn’t do to Obama what Jimmy Carter did to him, and go off the reservation. We’re still paying for that trip.

News I really don’t care about: Paula Abdul is leaving American Idol. The fact is I have watched, perhaps, a total of ten minutes of the show since it first aired. The only “reality show” I’m finding myself at all interested in watching is Wipeout, because you get to go “Oooh!” “OW!” “That had to hurt!” and “No way are you going to make it!” at the TV when you watch it. Plus, it’s fun to watch people get knocked into the water over and over again. I can’t explain why. But it really is.