Just before the World Trade Center and the Pentagon attacks stood American foreign policy on its head, the United States was about to undertake an initiative that would have created a new terrorist state in the Middle East.
The Bush administration was all geared up to introduce a new peace initiative that would have extended recognition to the government of the father of modern terrorism, Yasser Arafat.
Secretary of State Colin Powell had planned to meet with Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan on Sept. 13, and the U.S. was even contemplating a meeting between President Bush and Yasser Arafat 10 days later.
Powell’s planned speech to the United Nations on Sept. 23 would have broken new ground for Republican administration involvement in Middle East peacemaking.
The administration has said it will not bow to terrorism, but conventional wisdom dictates that if America shifts its support to favor the Palestinian agenda, the terrorists will crawl back into their holes and leave the U.S. alone.
The Sept. 11 attacks derailed the Middle East peace initiative timetable, but not the plan for the United States to try and use a back-door appeasement policy to force Israel to accept a Palestinian state, whether or not said Palestinian state is prepared to accept Israel.
If both history and untainted intelligence information shows anything, it shows that the Palestinians aren’t interested in peaceful coexistence with Israel on any terms.
These are the clear and simple facts. A poll taken last week showed 72 percent of Palestinians favor continuing the uprising, while 66 percent favor continued attacks against Israeli civilians.
An exhibition that opened to commemorate the 1-year anniversary of the current intifada is a case in point.
Palestinians put on a reenactment of the suicide bombing of the Jerusalem Sbarro Pizzeria recently in Gaza City. The PA bomber and 15 people were blown to pieces in the actual Aug. 9 Sbarro bombing.
Of the 15 victims, seven were children, including a 4-year-old boy and his 2-year-old sister. One of the victims was a 31-year-old American woman. Four were teen-agers. The exhibition included fake body parts scattered about to add more “realism” to rejoice over.
Near the end of the exhibition was a large rock, behind which is a figure dressed in the garb of an ultra-Orthodox Jew. A recording inside the rock simulates the rock itself crying out, “O believer, there is a Jewish man behind me. Come and kill him.” This is an ancient parable of the Muslims.
The Palestinians claim they are not terrorists. The Palestinian people say their uprising, or intifada, is a struggle for statehood. What kind of state would it be? It would be a Palestinian state that would celebrate murder, just as the Sbarro exhibition proves it is now an autonomous Palestinian Authority that celebrates murder.
This kind of hate will not go away with a compromise state. This hate is born out of the passionate religious conviction that the Israelis are invaders in their sacred holy Muslim land. This is something the U.S. State Department either cannot or will not recognize.
The newest double-speak being advanced as the true state of affairs among the Palestinians is that Arafat has lost control and cannot control the terror. That argument is usually offered just before a new wave of terror against Israel to give Arafat some plausible deniability.
But if it is true, if Arafat has lost control, it becomes even more disturbing a situation. Instead of there being a terrorist leadership making decisions on behalf of the Palestinian people, it means the Palestinian people are making decisions to conduct terror on their own behalf. It means the lunatics have literally taken over the asylum.
That makes the U.S. plan to offer statehood look even more like a back-door appeasement plan than a peace plan. If it were only Arafat, or a few of his henchmen to blame for the ongoing terror, then the argument can be made that under the proper leadership, a Palestinian state could coexist beside a Jewish state.
But if indeed Arafat has lost control, then the U.S. is talking about recognizing statehood to a population that Palestinian opinion polls suggest consists of a majority of terrorists, rather than a small leadership who can’t seem to break the old habit of extending one hand of peace while extending a grenade in the other.
