Be Careful What You Ask For, Part I

Two days ago, we asked President Bush to speak clearly about his political, military and diplomatic aims in order to let the American people decide how, when and for how long to follow him. Yesterday, he spoke. Unfortunately, the President’s determination to reassert American support for Abu Mazen and Palestinian independence is a mistake at almost every political and security level. As we parsed the main points when we agreed with Mr. Bush, we will do it now when we don’t. The President said:

Two days ago, we asked President Bush to speak clearly about his political, military and diplomatic aims in order to let the American people decide how, when and for how long to follow him. Yesterday, he spoke. Unfortunately, the President’s determination to reassert American support for Abu Mazen and Palestinian independence is a mistake at almost every political and security level. As we parsed the main points when we agreed with Mr. Bush, we will do it now when we don’t. The President said:

• This is a moment of clarity for all Palestinians and a moment of choice.
• Choosing Hamas, Palestinians would “surrender to Hamas’s foreign sponsors in Syria and Iran and crush the possibility of a Palestinian State.”
• They can choose the “hopeful option” of Abu Mazen and Salaam Fayyad.
• Only the Palestinians can decide which of these courses to pursue.

This is entirely false.

This moment is no clearer for Palestinians than 24 June 2002, when the President eloquently invited them to choose and promised if they chose well and followed through (but only then) would the U.S. support Palestinian independence. Nor is it clearer than the day Israel withdrew from Gaza, leaving intact the valuable and profitable greenhouses they created. That day the Palestinians might have chosen coexistence, cooperation and economic enhancement. Yesterday was just another moment on another day.

And the Palestinians do not choose freely. The President’s remarks entirely skipped over the fact that Palestinians in Gaza are living under the gun – literally – of a victorious terrorist organization that threw the weaker terrorist organization out of town. How exactly would the President like the people of Gaza to express their choice? Last time we encouraged them, they voted for Hamas. If the Palestinians in Gaza want to choose Fatah now, Hamas isn’t likely to care much.

If they do repent their vote, why should we be thrilled? Fatah was known by the people to be so corrupt that even many secular Palestinians couldn’t stand the idea of casting a ballot for Abu Mazen’s party. They chose religious fanatics supported by Iran instead of secular criminals supported by the West. Hobson’s Choice was presented as their choice and it remains that the people with the guns make the real decisions.

Finally, while the short term implications of Palestinian choices may differ, the long range ones do not. Hamas will not engage Israel at all; Fatah will talk about security and economic progress. But to extrapolate that Fatah then agrees that Israel is legitimate and Jews are entitled to sovereignty in the Middle East would be wrong. President Bush misuses the language — Israel does not need the Palestinians to “accept Israel’s ‘right to exist.'” That right was posited by the United Nations in 1948 and not subject to post hoc review. The Palestinians – and the Arab states – need to provide demonstrable acceptance of UN Resolution 242 with its requirement for acceptance of the “legitimacy of all the states in the region and their right to secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”