Sep. 9, 2003
Evelyn Gordon: Abbas's idea of peace
By EVELYN GRODON
After Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas submitted his resignation on Saturday a senior Palestinian official told The New York Times that the move was a gambit aimed not only at forcing Yasser Arafat to give Abbas full backing but also at forcing the US and Israel to take, as the reporter phrased it, "bold steps to save the peace effort."
The implication, of course, is that there is a "peace effort" to save an assumption evidently shared by the Bush administration, which, in the person of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, promptly told reporters that the resignation would not deter President Bush's efforts to further the peace process.
But anyone who wants to assess the true value of this process need only examine two items: an internal Palestinian poll whose results were published in Haaretz last Wednesday, and Abbas's speeches to the Palestinian Legislative Council last week.
The poll, conducted by the Palestinian Information Ministry from August 21-28, found that 60.2 percent of the 1,102 respondents favor terror attacks against Israel and 56 percent believe that such attacks "serve the Palestinian national interest." An even larger majority, 88.8 percent, opposed any effort by the PA to halt such attacks by arresting Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives.
Perhaps the most telling finding, however, was in response to a question about the August 19 suicide bombing in Jerusalem, which killed 22 Israelis. That attack took place while the "cease-fire" declared by the Palestinian terror organizations was officially in force, and the poll asked "whether committing the attack in Jerusalem during the cease-fire was the right thing to do."
Incredibly, a majority of those who expressed an opinion said that it was: In Gaza, the vote was 48.3 percent in favor of the bombing to 46.4 percent opposed, while in the West Bank it was 47.2 in favor to 44.9 percent opposed.
In other words, not only do a majority of Palestinians support terror attacks and believe that they serve Palestinian interests, they even support such attacks in the midst of a "cease-fire" they themselves declared. That, evidently, is the Palestinians' idea of a peace process one in which Israel is obliged to halt all military operations, but they retain the right to perpetrate deadly suicide bombings at will.
GIVEN THIS attitude it is impossible to see any genuine prospects for peace. Nevertheless, one might argue that a bold leader - someone willing to try to educate his people about the need to halt the violence ought to be granted a chance to try to change this reality.
That is in fact the argument made by the US, the Europeans and even Israel's own prime minister, all of whom have repeatedly hailed Abbas as precisely such a leader. But if anyone still retained this illusion by last week, the prime minister's speech to the PLC on Thursday should have laid it to rest.
Abbas devoted the bulk of his speech to blaming Israel for the collapse of the cease-fire, charging that it acted "too hastily" in resuming its "assassination policies" rather than giving his own government time to act after the Jerusalem bombing.
Unsurprisingly, he neglected to remind the delegates that Israel had no reason to believe that his government would take action - not only because he had solemnly sworn not to do so in every public speech since taking office, but also because he had failed to do so in the 40 hours that elapsed between the bombing and Israel's first move against Hamas.
He did, however, unintentionally demonstrate that Israel's assessment was correct, by assuring the council that his policy of taking no action against Hamas remains in force.
"This government does not deal with opposition groups with a policing mentality, but with the mentality of dialogue," he declared.
In other words, Abbas's view of a peace process is identical to the one held by the Palestinian public: a process in which the Palestinian government has no obligation to try to combat terrorism, but Israel has no right to do so in its place.
In fact, as Abbas made clear in his resignation speech on Saturday, a peace process means even more than that: It means that Israel, even as it is suffering brutal suicide bombings in silence, must also release any terrorists it has previously captured and transfer generous amounts of land to the Palestinians.
According to Abbas, the process collapsed because of Israel's unconscionable refusal to take these two steps without concomitant PA action against terror.
It is easy to understand why this is the Palestinians' preferred definition of a peace process. After all, what could be better than a process in which they are allowed to murder Israelis at will while Israel is not only forbidden to respond but must also give them tangible rewards for having graciously agreed to this arrangement?
However, there is no reason why Israel should accept these ground rules, and neither should the rest of the world, if it truly desires Middle East peace. A process with these rules is not a peace process. It is merely a more efficient process for killing Jews.
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