Reuven Koret puts it somewhat more strongly:
Analysis: Panicked Administration rushes back into Arafat's arms
By Reuven Koret August 21, 2003
"I call on Chairman Arafat to work with Prime Minister Abbas and to make available to Prime Minister Abbas those security elements that are under his control so that they can allow progress to be made on the road map -- end terror, end this violence that just results in the further repetition of the cycle that we've seen so often." Thus implored U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell after a meeting with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in New York.
That's "call on" -- not "demand." That's "make available" -- not "transfer." And when Powell said "under his control" -- he was referring to Arafat.
In this stunning turn of phrase did Powell -- not known to be a man of imprecise words -- publicly drop the key precondition of America's launching of the Roadmap: that Arafat is essentially out of the picture and that a new authority was rightfully in his place. So too did he acknowledge that Arafat controlled the key security elements of the Palestinian Authority.
In his pronouncements, Powell appeared to put the final nail into the coffin containing the nearly-decomposed corpus of President George W. Bush's landmark speech of June 24, 2002.
Then Bush said that "peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership ... leaders not compromised by terror."
It was unacceptable, said Bush, that authority among the Palestinians "is concentrated in the hands of an unaccountable few" especially when those few "are encouraging, not opposing, terrorism."
He went on: "The United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure. This will require an externally supervised effort to rebuild and reform the Palestinian security services. The security system must have clear lines of authority and accountability and a unified chain of command."
And now, two days after the gruesome Jerusalem bus bombing, which killed 20, including 7 children, and wounding more than 100, Powell -- along with the obscene Foggy Bottom tripe about cycles of violence that equates Palestinian barbarism with Israeli anti-terrorism -- is explicitly saying that the clear line of authority and accountability starts with Arafat, to whom he appeals in panic for help. Only Arafat's help in fighting terror, the Secretary said, would prevent Israelis and Palestinians from "going over the cliff."
But Powell took an even bolder step in that direction. "The alternative is what? Just more death and destruction? Let the terrorists win? Let those who have no interest in a Palestinian state win? Let those who have no interest but killing innocent people win? No. That is not an acceptable outcome."
In this amazing statement, the U.S. Secretary of State equates terrorists with those who oppose a Palestinian State -- a Palestinian State led, as Powell himself today admits, by none other than master terrorist Yasser Arafat!
So much for the reassurance of President Bush on June 24:
"I can understand the deep anger and anguish of the Israeli people. You've lived too long with fear and funerals, having to avoid markets and public transportation, and forced to put armed guards in kindergarten classrooms. The Palestinian Authority has rejected your offer at hand, and trafficked with terrorists. You have a right to a normal life; you have a right to security; and I deeply believe that you need a reformed, responsible Palestinian partner to achieve that security."
For more than a year, the Bush Administration avoided Arafat like the plague, treated him as irrelevant and irredeemable, worked around him, pretending against all the evidence that he was not pulling the purse and security strings of the Palestinian Authority. This distancing, at least, kept some Israelis suspended in the belief that there was American support for real, not superficial, reform, that America saw Arafat, finally, as the terrorist he is.
Now, after the truth about the weakness of Abbas has become clear to all, Secretary Powell suddenly throws up his hands and begs for help from Arafat: he who backed and funded the most recent terror acts, some carried out by his own Fatah organization; he who refused to allow any action against the Islamic militants after the recent bus massacre; he who undermines at every turn the suited man whom the Americans consider "a reformed, responsible Palestinian partner."
It is a stunning victory for Arafat, and a humiliating prostration at his feet by the American Administration.
What it says to Israelis is that the June 24 speech was just so much hot air, intended to soften the blow of American support for a Palestinian state, sand in the eyes of the American people to blind the reality of U.S. adoption of the Saudi plan. It says to Israelis that America's fight against terrorism is not serious, driven by motives that probably have more to do with payoffs for unfettered lucrative access to oil than with the elimination of terrorists or security for the people of the region.
If this is the American response to the revealed impotence of their boy Abbas, then it means that they knew all along that the Palestinians have been playing "good cop, bad cop." At high noon, the time has come to scrape and beg to the real sheriff of the Arab street.
Are we soon to see Secretary Powell once again kissing the nether cheeks of the Palestinian President and embracing him as the head of a sovereign terror state?
After today's breathtaking bleat of appeasement, Bush and Powell may just as well have said to the Israeli people: "You took seriously all that stuff about Palestinian reform and anti-terrorism? You should know better. When push comes to shove, if it makes our Saudi friends happy, we will traffick with Satan himself to get the job done." And push will, it seems, come to shove, even if it means that American principles and the integrity of its anti-terror campaign "go over the cliff."
Israelis see two possibilities here: either Secretary Powell is speaking for himself, in which he should be made to resign. Or, if he is speaking for his boss, President Bush should be asked to answer: are those who oppose a state led by Arafat equal to those who blow up buses of families returning from prayer?
Seeing the Administration beseeching the arch-terrorist for help, some Israelis will, after the murdering and maiming of thousands at Arafat's direction and with the cries of burning butchered babies still ringing in their ears, reach the overdue that the time has come to be done with this corruption before he and his barbarian hordes are done with them.
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