By Dr. Aaron Lerner
October 21, 2005
To Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' credit, from the very first day he recognized that when it comes to the Palestinians, the Bush team isn't really serious about security compliance, that the White House is more interested in the melody than the lyrics.
That's why Abbas can consistently say flat out that he has no intention to confront the illegal armed militias and it doesn't matter.
That's why Abbas could make it perfectly clear -- as he stood next to President Bush in the White House today -- that he has no intention to collect weapons before the elections.
And that's why Abbas can repeatedly explain that, at best, his idea of "one gun" is that ultimately all the terrorists generously agree to be on the PA's payroll.
Sure, Mr. Bush talks the talk about the need for the Palestinians to fight terror -- but his carefully crafted remarks, wrapped in praise for Abbas, are bereft of any clear timetable or measurable standards for action.
This is nothing new.
A few weeks ago 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.
Paradoxically, rather than help Abbas, Mr. Bush is sending a message to the Palestinian street that there isn't any genuine pressure for the PA to take serious steps against the terror infrastructure.
The deleterious absence of pressure from Washington on the Palestinian leadership isn't limited to security matters. The PLO could readily inject hundreds of millions of dollars from its "war chest" today to alleviate the situation in the Gaza Strip rather than hold out for contributions, but instead Washington acts as if Arafat took the PLO's holdings with him to his
grave.
This shortsighted approach is a disservice to the Palestinians, Israel and the entire region.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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