inion
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Rewarding Deception
Islamic Jihad and Hamas, the organiza-
s the United States considers its strategic
tions it hoped would weaken Arafat.
and tactical plans for responding to ter-
America, of course, should have learned
rorism, it ought to be mindful of the les-
the lesson by reflecting on how its support
sons that Israel has so painfully learned
for Muslim fundamentalists as a
over the last several decades of dealing
force against Russia's troops in
with the Palestinians.
Afghanistan laid the groundwork
One lesson is that is that old habits don't
for Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda.
die. Yasser Arafat may be weeping for
But now Washington is talking
America now, but the Palestinian leader is the same old
about enlisting Iran and Syria and the
terrorist he always was and will be to his dying day.
PLO in its anti-terror coalition. That
While claiming he supports the battle against ter-
might, in the short term, provide some
ror, Arafat continues to shelter terrorists in the West
Arab and Muslim cover for launching
Bank and the Gaza Strip. When Israeli authorities
operations against bin Laden from
identified the organizer of a shooting that killed one
Pakistan, but, in the longer term, it will
woman and wounded her husband Sept. 20, Arafat's
harm American interests by compromising
forces warned the suspect, Atef Abidat, not to be
its moral authority.
caught doing that again and let him go. Some corn-
It is nastily ironic, of course, that to pla-
mitment to fighting terrorism!
cate Arab feelings the U.S. may have to
Israel is correctly continuing to insist that Arafat
exclude Israel nominally from its anti-ter-
and the Palestinians provide 48 hours of nonvio-
ror coalition. But asking your best friend
lence before it allows any substantive negotiations
to sit on the sidelines is very different
on a longer-term process for maintaining security.
from inviting his most implacable foes to
To provide that, Arafat must actually crack down on
be the first-string offensive linemen.
the terror cells, sending the leaders back to the jails
The United States should seize this
from which he freed them a year ago. Actions will
moment to make the terrorist states —
speak more loudly than his words of sorrow for
among which the Palestinians would be
America or his photo-op blood donation.
included if they were a state — under-
The second lesson for America is to be careful
stand fully why targeting innocent civil-
about whom you recruit to fight your presumed foe.
ians cannot be justified or rewarded.
When Arafat and the Palestine Liberation
The world will better respect us if we
Organization were using Lebanon as a base of opera-
avoid marriages of convenience with the
tions against Israel, the Jewish state encouraged fun-
very states that helped make terrorism
damentalist Muslim organizations to become an
such a respectable force in the eyes of too
alternate Palestinian leadership. Now it is reaping
many Arabs and too many Muslims. ❑
the whirlwind of the suicide bombers sent by
Dry Bones
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Negotiating With Terrorists
T
he horror of Sept. 11 should have made
clear to us all that the slaughter of inno-
cents for political ends is, without excep-
tion, unacceptable.
Terrorism is to be accorded precisely zero toler-
ance. That it can no longer be tacitly accepted as an
unpleasant form of negotiation should be beyond
question. Indeed, its total cessation must be an
absolute precondition to negotiation.
Since the day he took office, Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon has stated plainly that he will
not resume discussions with the Palestinian
Authority until it ceases the indiscriminate murder
of Israeli citizens. While this simple policy should
have made eminent sense before Sept. 11, its cor-
David Victor of Bloomfield Hills co-chairs the
Michigan chapter of the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee and is a member of AIPAC's national exec-
utive committee. He's a past member of the Jewish
Federation of Metropolitan Detroit executive committee.
rectness today seems
inescapable. Indeed, you would
think this would be among the
very first lessons learned from
our national tragedy.
You would think so, but it
appears you might be wrong.
Despite both Yasser Arafat's
continued use of terror and,
according to the official PA
DAVID
newspaper, support by 70 per-
VICTOR
cent of Palestinians for suicide
Community
attacks against American tar-
gets in the Middle East, our
Views
administration is insisting that
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres meet with
Arafat in a bid to revive the peace process. .
It goes without saying that Americans would
never consider sitting across the bargaining table
from those responsible for the carnage in New York
City, near Washington, D.C., and on the
Pennsylvania countryside. Why, then, the insistence
that Israel negotiate with an organization that is an
up-and-fully-running terror machine?
The answer is as troubling as the request. To
quote the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, the administration
believes "that an opportunity now exists to resume
the peace process, and that this would be a signifi-
cant contribution to the American effort to bring
Arab and Muslim states into an international coali-
tion against terrorism."
Translation? It appears we are now endeavoring to
purchase cooperation in the coming war on terror
by denying a basic truth about terrorism — that its
practice is unnacceptable and its absence is an
absolute prerequisite to negotiation.
Now consider the identity of those whose assis-
tance we feel compelled to buy. They include
regimes that are themselves seats of terrorist support
(Syria and the PA), countries that receive billions of
dollars annually in American aid (Egypt and Jordan)
and independent nations that today exist as such
only because of our military (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia
and any other Gulf state you care to name).
NEGOTIATING WITH TERRORISTS on page 33
9/28
2001