Stop the War!
The State Department’s annual report, “Patterns of Global Terrorism,” says “Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian Authority’s security infrastructure contributed to the ineffectiveness of the PA… Significantly reduced Israeli-PA security cooperation and a lax security environment allowed Hamas and other groups to rebuild terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian territories,” and apparently undermined Yasser’s ability to arrest extremists and restore order.
The State Department’s annual report, “Patterns of Global Terrorism,” says “Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian Authority’s security infrastructure contributed to the ineffectiveness of the PA… Significantly reduced Israeli-PA security cooperation and a lax security environment allowed Hamas and other groups to rebuild terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian territories,” and apparently undermined Yasser’s ability to arrest extremists and restore order.
We, naturally, have another view. But it isn’t enough to sigh over the parroting of Arafat’s excuses, or groan over the slightly sick position of accusing Israel of making the PA less able to do what it wasn’t doing – blaming Israel for the bombers that blow up Israeli children. (The dog would have eaten my homework if I had bothered to do it, so I won’t do the homework and let’s blame the dog anyhow.)
The State Department appears to believe that a) recognizing that terrorists have a state-like support system in the PA, b) going after their infrastructure, and c) making local sponsors of terrorism angry, will d) make terrorists less willing to stop themselves and more likely to blow themselves and Israelis up. So, perhaps Israel should a) take a low profile, b) die quietly, and c) try not to make the bad guys mad.
It didn’t work when the U.S. tried it.
Retired CIA analyst Robert Baer told The National Journal recently:
Because Hezballah was never interested in taking credit or being publicly identified as responsible for terrorist attacks, there were no clear flow charts identifying its leaders and members that might be involved. Iranian complicity in many of the attacks on Americans in the Middle East, however, is very clear-cut. The problem is that when everyone would get around a table and try to decide what to do about it, the decision was usually that we were better off leaving Iran alone. Do you want to go to war with Iran? Do you want to take a chance that Hezballah will take its revenge at the next Olympics? Do you want to try and reason with Iranian ‘moderates’ like Jimmy Carter and Ronald Regan did? Basically, Iran is the third rail of American foreign policy.
The first responsibility of any government is the security of its people. That is not a job that gets contracted out in the best of circumstances – and the PA is the worst of circumstances. Yasser & Co. stands behind bombers of every stripe. But unlike the American unwillingness (thus far) to confront Iran’s financial, political and military support of terrorism, Israel has gone to the source. Operation Defensive Shield took the responsibility for the security of Israelis out of Arafat’s hands – hands that haven’t done the job since 1996, when Palestinian policemen fired on Israeli soldiers at the second exit of the Hasmonean Tunnels.
Only since September 11th has the American government appeared to wake up to its sovereign obligation to remove the sources of the threat of terrorism to its citizens (sponsors of terrorists are terrorists, the President said). Why is the State Department so willfully blind to that same sovereign obligation as it applies to Israel?