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Dry Bones

The Washington Waffle

L

ast week, we suggested that Israeli leaders
should clarify, their goals and processes in
dealing with the territorial settlements.
The same advice — be clear, be firm —
applies to the Bush administration's intent toward
Israel, toward the Palestinians and toward the Arab
nations.
Three years of terror attacks and unrelenting
incitement and hatred have made it plain that there
is no partner for peace in RamaIlah or among the
Palestinians generally. The rest of the Arab world,
refusing to take any steps to curb the Palestinian
violence, has shown that it also chooses not to work
for a lasting peace. Much of Europe and the United
Nations have demonstrated repeatedly
that, at heart, they would be happier if the
Jewish state disappeared.
Thus, for the foreseeable future, Israel
will be acting either unilaterally or, in some cases,
bilaterally with the United States to protect its citi-
zens and restore its economy. To make the process
work, Washington and Jerusalem have to be open
and honest with each other.
And Washington in particular needs to stop hedg-
ing its bets about what it wants and expects from
the governments of the Middle East. Every time it
veers and creates ambiguity, it creates another open-
ing that both Israel and the Arab world seize as
proof that the U.S. doesn't know what it is doing
and thus can be ignored.
Consider, for example, Washington's recent han-
dling of the issue of the barricade that Israel is
building around the West Bank in hopes of slowing
the terror attacks. The fence is a contentious issue,
and people of good will can easily differ on whether
it elevates short-term security above the goal of a

REVIEWING
LAST YEAR'S
MEWS EVNTS
COULD BE
DEPRESSING.

PROICT(NG7

WHA - i NW'

long-range peace by eating up a lot of
({EAR mtGi-l -r
contested territory, cutting off
1 3RING COULD
Palestinian villages from one another and
Be SCARY.
forming a de facto permanent boundary.
Where does Washington stand? Says
•■■•
00
the State Department: "It remains our
long-standing policy to oppose activities
by either party in the West Bank and
Gaza that prejudge final-status negotia-
tions." That kind of mealy-mouthed
non-position serves no one's interest.
The administration can't seem to make
up its mind on whether it intends to
enforce the requirement to reduce the $9
billion in loan guarantees by
_so I'M
the amount it judges Israel is
PLANNING ID
misspending on the fence and
CoNCEIORATE
for enlarged settlements.
4 ON SHE PRESS
We disagree with that provision in the
loan guarantee legislation — and yes it
would be better to rewrite the law —
but Israel accepts the loan guarantees
knowing the lawful conditions. Failing
to enforce it signals to the Arab world
that we are playing favorites and under-
cuts any American ability to serve as an
honest broker while in full support of
Israel's right to safe, secure borders as the
Jewish state.
More largely, the White House should
admit that the peace road map is dead
From the days of the British Mandate, the
and then explain how it intends to deal with present
realities. If, as seems probable, it is going to back
Western world has promoted one ambiguity after
another in the region. A century of failure is
out of any significant involvement in the Israeli-
Palestinian warfare until after next year's presidential
enough.
How much worse could honesty make it? ❑
election, it should have the courage to say so.

AM

• 11,

I

EDITORIAL

Os

The Price Of Terror

IV

hen Israel bombed a terrorist training
camp in Syria in response to the
Maxim restaurant massacre last
Saturday, it served notice that it is
fully prepared to take hostilities in the Mideast to
the next level if Arab nations do not stop harboring
and financing terrorists. The message is exactly the
same one the United States sent when it destroyed
the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan after 9-11 and
removed Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
While we can fear that the Israeli strike
might prove the catalyst for another large-
scale Arab attack on the Jewish state, like
the Yom Kippur War 30 years earlier, we
cannot fault the necessity for the action.
The training camps are the spiritual homes of ter-
ror.
Despite Syrian protestations of innocence, it has
been clear for more than a decade that the leader-
ship of Islamic Jihad uses its center in Damascus to
organize terror attacks against Israel, often training
its recruits at bases like the Ein Saheb facility that

Israel struck Sunday.
Like his father, Hafez, before him, President
Bashar al-Assad has actively encouraged the terror-
ists and permitted Iranian government funds to flow
through Syrian banks to the paymasters recruiting
for Islamic Jihad in the West Bank and Gaza.
It is worth noting that Islamic Jihad, which
claimed responsibility for the attack in Haifa as it
had for many similar bombings, has none of the
political or social service trappings of groups like
Yasser Arafat's Fatah — or the Lebanese-based
Hezbollah, which uses the same training
camps for its military wing. Islamic Jihad
does not run schools or hospitals; it exists
only to conduct attacks that it hopes will
rouse all Palestinians to a final war to exterminate
Israel.
The strike on Ein Saheb should never have been
necessary, of course. It was easily within Arafat's
power to contain the ini,- ifada (uprising), which
began just over three • us ago. It was his decision
to free the jailed Is 1 •
Jihad and Hamas leaders

EDIT ORAL

then and his failure to curb the suicide bombers
when first they struck. He lacked the will to disarm
the terror groups when that was the first condition
of all the peace plans laid out by at least three major
initiatives, including the now-defunct road map.
Instead, his Palestinian Authority gave and con-
tinues to give free rein to the most violent ele-
ments that reject any peace ever with Israel. The
P.A. actively glamorizes the suicide killers, naming
its schools, summer camps and streets in their
honor. The price for that is the security barricade
that Israel is now building, the closing of crossings,
the wasted hours at checkpoints and the stagnant
economy.
In principle, Sunday's strike was simply an exten-
sion of Israel's policy of destroying the homes of the
intifada-inspired suicide bombers. The message
should now be as clear to Syria's al-Assad and to
Iran's supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, as it is to the families of the suicide
bombers: If you help terror, be prepared to pay
what could be an ever-rising price. ❑

10/10
2003

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