 |
Dr. Aaron Lerner is co-founder of , Independent Media Review and Analysis, an Israel-based news organization which provides an extensive digest of media, polls and significant interviews and events relating to the Israeli-Arab conflict.
|
|
|
|
By Dr. Aaron Lerner
October 7, 2005
Last week Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice responded to a question at Princeton University about America being soft on Hamas with a carefully crafted statement that was not only soft on Hamas but soft on Palestinian terror in general.
Instead of calling on the Palestinian Authority to immediately disarm the terrorists, Rice showed understanding for this taking an open-ended period of time. "There are periods of time of transition in which one has to give some space to the participants, in this case the Palestinians, to begin to come to a new national compact. Eventually", the Secretary of State
explained, they have to be disarmed.
Instead of calling to bar Hamas from running in the PLC unless it first disarms, Rice said that "you cannot have armed groups ultimately participating in politics with no expectation that they're going to disarm" -- a requirement that could just as easily be met by Hamas saying that they "expect" to "ultimately" disarm.
And to drive home the point that the Hamas "politicians" can "run first -- disarm sometime later", the Secretary of State cited the example of the Good Friday Agreement in which "it was understood that when Sinn Fein came into politics .eventually the IRA would disarm" -- adding that "perhaps, hopefully, that process is now underway."
One would have hoped that Ms. Rice's remarks would have been met by expressions of concern in both Israel and from friends of Israel in America.
The opposite was the case.
The Israeli media and Israeli politicians to a man embraced the Rice remarks as if they were a no-holds-barred position against the Hamas in general and their participation in the upcoming PLC elections in particular.
"Improving" on Rice's remarks might make sense if doing so would somehow transform the forced interpretation into American policy. But there is no indication that this is the case.
By misrepresenting Ms. Rice's very serious remarks, Israel has sent a signal to friends of Israel that all is well in Washington when the opposite is the case. And with Mahmoud Abbas slated to meet President Bush in the coming weeks this is hardly the time to replace serious concerns with wishful thinking.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
|
|
|
|
Click on the blue headline to read a Talkback comment and respond to it. Click on the  icon to send a private email to the talkback writer. The icon appears only if the writer has decided to be contacted. If no popup window appears, please make sure your popup blocker allows israelinsider.com.
|
|
| |
|
|
