In The Attempt to Kill Olmert, Barry Rubin writes
Several Fatah security force officers assigned to protect Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as he went to meet with Palestinian Authority (PA) head Mahmoud Abbas, it has just been revealed, planned to assassinate him instead. This event should be amazing enough to get people to rethink their premises. After all, it is late 2007, with a supposedly moderate leadership running the PA and Fatah, and this kind of thing is still happening.It should be emphasized that the would-be assassins were Fatah, not Hamas, and that they were quickly released by PA authorities before outside pressure forced their re-arrest. (Prediction: they will be freed soon with little or no international media coverage.)
But this is merely the same basic pattern as happened with the assassins of Israeli government minister Rehavam Zeevi in 2001 or the gunmen who seized the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002: international indifference, a show of PA law enforcement, and terrorists go free. Not to mention thousands of other attacks when the PA had a chance to teach its own people about the politically counterproductive—not to mention immoral and divisive–nature of terrorism.
He follows this up with eleven reasons why this never seems to change. The final reason starts:
No speeches, no foreign aid, and no international plans or meetings have altered these basic rules.
The Palestinians pay no political or diplomatic price for their bad faith.
If we go back to the exchange of letters between Prime Minister Rabin and Chairman Arafat, the latter wrote:
The PLO considers that the signing of the Declaration of Principles constitutes a historic event, inaugurating a new epoch of peaceful coexistence, free from violence and all other acts which endanger peace and stability. Accordingly, the PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance, prevent violations and discipline violators.
The fundamental premises of certifying the PLO was no longer a terrorist organization, were that it had renounced terror and that it could control all of its elements to bring them into line. The latter condition has been violated as much as the former.
But it’s not just that these conditions have been violated, it’s been who has been responsible for this neglect. Surely successive Israeli governments have failed to address Palestinian violations adequately. (And when Binyamin Netanyahu did he found himself on the wrong side of the Clinton administration.)
But there have been plenty of aiders and abetters. As Rubin points out the Palestinians have flouted every norm of relations with Israel by allowing terrorists to escape (Israel) justice. In March 2006 6 of those prisoners who were being held in Jericho were preparing to break out. The international monitors who were supposed to watch them had left out of fear. These were terrorist who hid in the Church of Nativity and, at least one of whom was involved in the killing of Israeli tourism minister Rehavem Ze’evi. Israel permitted them to be jailed in Jericho under international observation as a condition of their being allowed to leave the Church. Now four years later, that agreement was about to be broken so Israel, under Prime Minister Olmert, took action and raided the jail capturing the 6.
How did the Washington Post react in an editorial?
So it’s not surprising that Mr. Olmert would have ordered yesterday’s sensational raid on a Palestinian prison in the West Bank, in which Israeli forces captured six militants accused of murdering a right-wing Israeli minister in 2001. True, Palestinian leaders invited the intervention by suggesting that the ringleader of the group would soon be freed, and U.S. and British monitors withdrew from the prison minutes before the raid, reportedly because of their own objections to security arrangements. But this was an act tailored for Israeli voters, some of whom will be as pleased by the predictable expressions of Palestinian and international outrage as they are by the roundup of bad guys.
Cynicism, pure and simple. The Palestinians had once again shown that they were unreliable protectors of Israeli interests (as a peaceful neighbor ought to be) and the Washington Post post charges the Israeli Prime Minister of playing politics when he rectifies the situation.
The Washington Post, I’m sure, was reflecting a view common in political, diplomatic and academic circles. Israeli claims are mere posturing. It’s the needs of the Palestinians that must be met for there to be peace in the Middle East.
Of course by prescribing a Palestinian state without ensuring what kind of state it would be puts the cart before the horse.
By creating a destabilizing nation in the Middle East the world will not bring peace. Until the Palestinians accept responsibilities of self-government and of peaceful relations with Israel, their state will solve nothing.
Nor should it come as a surprise to anyone that that would be the case. Back in 1983, Daniel Pipes wrote “How Important is the PLO?” in which he wrote about the corruption and tyranny with which the PLO ruled its “state within a state” in Southern Lebanon. But the past performance of the PLO was ignored as the future returns of a Palestinian state were heralded as essential to peace.
The peace processors who have ignored the past and excused (and continue to excuse) Palestinian bad behavior are not helping the cause of peace.
