“Stuck Again”?
I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders… not compromised by terror…to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts… when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors, the (U.S.) will support the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East.
I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders… not compromised by terror…to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts… when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors, the (U.S.) will support the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East.
– President Bush, 24 June 2002
We have always liked the phrase “practicing democracy,” bowing to the essential point that it takes practice. [It took the Ukrainians 13 years to act on the understanding that legitimacy comes from below, not next door.] When the Palestinians vote, it will not be a democratic election because the conditions for democracy do not exist – free press, multiple centers of legitimate power, ability to safely express opposing viewpoints, etc. OK, so this one is for practice. We’re willing to allow that less-than-perfect elections play a crucial role in the development of the civil society necessary for democracy.
The problem is neither the modality of Palestinian elections, nor the fascist state in which the Palestinians live and under whose eye they will vote. The problem is something else. The winner, chosen in advance by the remnants of the ancien regime and ratified by the U.S., the EU and the Russians even before the first vote is cast, promotes a vision of “Palestine” incompatible with UN Resolution 242, the Road Map, the President’s June 24th speech, Israeli security and the continued existence of a Jewish sovereign state.
The winner, of course, will be Abu Mazen, the once and future PM, Arafat lackey, Holocaust denier, and a man President Bush cannot claim is “not compromised by terror.” He wins kudos in the West for admitting the obvious – the current war against Israel was a tactical mistake, bringing more misery to the Palestinians than progress toward their goal. But he wins kudos at home, however, for embracing Zacharia Zubeida, one of Israel’s most wanted men, and promising to protect terrorists who have killed Jews. His announced platform is godfather Arafat’s three-point program for the dismemberment of Israel: an independent Palestine with its borders undefined; a capital in Jerusalem; and the so-called “right of return.”
For the U.S. to talk to him as if he is a legitimate interlocutor is to set the stage for repeating the failure of Camp David II in 2000.
President Bush has staked as his legacy his belief that elections provide leadership consonant with civilized rule. How will he respond when Abu Mazen calls, as he surely will, for the “right of return” and says his mandate springs from the “will of the people”? We turn to outgoing Secretary of State Powell for comment, “Now, if the new leadership of the Palestinian Authority – and let’s assume it is Mr. Abbas – if they don’t move in (the right) direction, then we’re going to be stuck again.”
After the all the wreckage that bad Palestinian leadership has brought to Israel and the Palestinians, “stuck again” cannot be acceptable.