Compartmentalization: Palestine Policy

[Ed Note: This is the second in series of JINSA Reports on the Administration’s “Palestine Policy” and efforts to score a Middle East success by creating the State of Palestine, even if the current State Department proposal for an international conference fails.]

Syria has assumed the third leg of the Axis of Evil. So egregious is Syrian flouting of American interests and international norms that not only was the U.S. silent after Israel’s air strike, but not a single country in Europe or the Middle East (except Iran) joined Syria, North Korea and Russia in protesting. (Turkey’s mild and short-lived protest had to do only with the discovery of Israeli aircraft drop tanks in Turkish territory.)

So why was Syria invited by Secretary Rice to the presumed upcoming conference on Palestine?

Saudi Arabia worries tremendously about Iranian-sponsored Shiite fundamentalist jihad. But it also supports al Qaeda and the export of anti-American, anti-Semitic Wahhabi ideology not only in the Middle East, but also in America, where Saudi-financed clerics promote a narrow view of Islam in the majority of American mosques and schools.

So why is Saudi Arabia to receive billions of dollars more in American arms and why was Saudi Arabia invited to the conference on Palestine?

The Palestinian Authority has split in a civil war between the corrupt, secular Fatah – which ran the Second Intifada with its bus and cafe bombings, and started the rocket war against the Israeli town of Sderot – and the religious terrorist Hamas, which continues the rocket war and has begun to attack Fatah assets in the West Bank. Neither faction meets even the minimal conditions set by President Bush in his 24 June speech on the conditions under which the United States would support provisional Palestinian statehood.

So why is the U.S. arming and training Fatah, and supporting a conference with the goal of creating the parameters for a Palestinian state?

On the other hand, there is – Americans and Israelis agree – “no daylight” between their views of the danger posed by Iranian nuclear activity and the Iranian export of terrorism and missile technology. The United States was better than sanguine about Israel’s raid on Syria. In addition, the U.S. and Israel cooperate on counter-terrorism technology and tactics and maintain very close working relations in the region.

So why is Israel expected to find yet another way to entice the Palestinians into giving up their expressed belief that the State of Israel is a mistake that needs correcting – by negotiation if possible, by force if necessary?

We believe the Administration is actually looking for a unified regional position opposing Iran – a goal we strongly support – but America cannot buy regional unity with the currency of Israeli security. Neither can Israel.