Ariel Sharon has started his US tour this week, seeking support for the plan to pull out of Gaza. Of course he's accompanied by the usual gang of protesters and hecklers.

Whatever the merits of the plan, the near hysteria from those in the pro-Israel camp who feel they can tarnish and soil the reputation of a man who has dedicated his entire seventy-seven year life to Zionism is becoming ridiculous, even offensive. And for many Israeli residents it's an odd thing to watch from a distance:

If you are Jewish and you really believe that (parts of) this land belong to the Jewish people, you should pack up your things and take the first plane to Israel. If not, you can of course still support or criticize whatever government is in power here, but it does not help anybody - Jew or Palestinian - if you overcompensate for your own weaknesses and failures. Showing 'solidarity' with the settlers by coming here in order to complicate the work of Israel's security forces, shouting at Israel's Prime Minister, embracing the Jewish-Zionist version of trying to be 'more Catholic than the Pope', all those expressions of 'love' for the Jewish state by rightwing Jews abroad are meaningless, and only are yet another proof that fanatics on both sides share oh so many ideas and interests.

Amen to that. Given the complexity of the task and the emotional impact of it on the Jewish psyche it seems to me that closing the ranks and lining up behind one of the nation's shrewdest survivors is a far wiser approach.

The suspension of hostilities in Gaza and the West Bank and the meeting at Sharm-el-Sheikh between Sharon, Mubarak, Abbas and King Abdullah is generating a mixed response around the world and I can’t blame Israelis for being indifferent about it all, although some are more optimistic than others. Given recent history the prevalence of negativism and indifference was to be expected, even the chances of achieving an asymmetric deal between Israel and the Palestinians proved to be elusive. Yet, there’s a good reason to look at last week’s developments with at least a glimmer of hope because the mechanics on the ground have changed considerably:

1. Arafat is gone and Abbas is probably the least unpleasant of all possible replacements;

2. Sharon’s is now in charge of a government of national unity which means a strong potential for broad Israeli support;

3. Economic disarray in the occupied territories could prove to be the incentive for Abbas to solidify his power by improving the lives of average Palestinians, a route which requires far closer co-operation with Israel.

This is a unique confluence of aspects that may have created a small window of opportunity and I say small because any of these potentially positive developments can easily be disrupted. Those that take a negative point of view point to the broader Arab-Israeli conflict, as Melanie Phillips does:

“ … the source of this terrible conflict is not Israel’s behaviour. It is not the settlements, the road blocks, the prisoners. It is not, despite the near-universal assumption, the absence of a Palestinian state. The source is the Arab world-backed Palestinian terror war against Israel’s existence”

1. Al-Qaeda has been put on the defensive and lost its base of operations in the process of which the radical Muslim regime in Afghanistan was destroyed to make way for a pro-Western democracy;

2. One of the Palestinian’s greatest benefactors, Saddam’s Iraq, was invaded by US forces and is now a nascent democracy that is likely to be as un-involved in Israel as possible;

3. Both the Afghan and Iraqi invasions have put a number of notorious Arab nations on the defense: Syria (and by consequence Lebanon) and notably Saudi Arabia have become the subject of unprecedented international pressure and scrutiny;

4. Likewise Iran, that other anti-Israel force is now under the gun with US forces next door and a European diplomatic front now forcing it to weigh its options in the new Middle East.

These are not hard conditions that will all of a sudden result in a rock solid peace deal between jubilant Israelis and free peace-loving Palestinians, absolutely not. There’s an equal argument that domestic pressures force Mubarak to be un-cooperative and Syria, Saudi-Arabia and Iran may interpret the pressure they’re under as a sign to lash out and turn back the clock for years to come. Still the changed situation on both Israeli and Palestinian sides and the new realities in a divided Arab world (whatever happened to the once forceful Arab League?) may provide an opportunity to make progress and at least achieve a lasting ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians. And you can bet that the new US Secretary of State - who in terms of age and intellectual-political background is bound to approach the conflict in a manner far different from her predecessors – is going to do whatever it takes to see to it that this crucial aspect of helping reshape the Middle East succeeds. You can’t afford to be either negative or overly optimistic and indifference is not very productive either, but maybe, just maybe, there’s scope for hope.

And while we are all focusing on Iraq, another election in the Middle East took place, yesterday, in the Gaza Strip no less:

The Islamic group Hamas won an overwhelming victory in local elections in Gaza towns, election officials said Friday, in a setback for the Fatah Party of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

The Hamas victory reflected widespread support in the Gaza Strip for the Islamic movement, which provides welfare, schools and kindergartens to the impoverished residents of the territory and is the strongest militant group carrying out attacks against Israel.

The Hamas strategy of picking up the pieces of the late Arafat's disastrous domestic policies is starting to bear fruit, so I can't say that I share Roger's optimism, yet.

It’s hard to muster any enthusiasm for Abbas’ election as I can’t see him as anything but a transitional figure who, like Arafat, is beholden to too many radicals in the Palestinian camp. His campaign was built on the usual anti-Israeli rhetoric so don’t expect him to disarm Al-Aqsa and Hamas anytime soon. On the contrary, it will be business as usual on the West Bank and in Gaza for the foreseeable future. Abbas is not the moderate that many believe him to be, and if he is, the people that engineered his mandate certainly wouldn’t let him act on any reasonable instincts he might have.

Still, I do think that it is within his grasp to at least change some of the domestic Palestinian dynamics by breaking with the corrupt mismanagement that characterized Arafat’s rule. That could be a very first and tentative step on a long road to peace between Israel and Palestinians. But it is too long for Abbas to travel that road; he’s got too much baggage for it. An interim figure, that’s all.

UPDATE I: Interesting piece on the spirit of Arafat and the inability to enforce by Efraim Karsh here.

UPDATE II: Abbas has been invited to the White House, a significant move.

The quest to point out the inherent weaknesses of the UN and the suggestions to abolish the institution altogether, or replace it with a league of democracies, have been gaining momentum in recent years. With good reason, although we should note that the UN did produce some important resolutions that form the basis of many important international arrangements. Today is the anniversary of the UN vote on resolution 181, which approved the partition of the western part of Palestine into a predominately Jewish state and a predominately Arab state. Not only does this resolution establish the right of Israel to exist, it equally provided a framework by which both Jews and Arabs could live on the same, relatively small, plot of land. The rejection of the Arab world of this resolution is crucial in understanding of where we are today. Of course, you might wonder if in retrospect the Palestinians shouldn’t have accepted the deal for it gave them far more land then ever was on the table during the peace process that was established by the Oslo Accords. Resolution 181 will probably never be implemented in terms of carving up the land, but it establishes a benchmark against which further negotiations will be held. If we reduce the UN to irrelevance then 181 will equally lose its status, affecting both the Israeli and Palestinian cases and the potential for a long term solution. As a strong supporter of UN reform we should ensure that whatever we do with this institution, we should salvage the bits and pieces that did make the UN a relevant entity.

Finally, the peace talks can begin. Arafat is dead.

UPDATE: A little while back I compared Arafat to Mao, he may be dead but it will be along time before he's really gone. Of course, bloggers react in style:

Arthur Chrenkoff: I write about the guy and about an hour later he dies.
Glenn Reynolds: Good riddance.
The Monger: Analyzes the cause of death.
Jeff Jarvis: It will be a bumpy ride.
Meryl Yourish: He tried to kill us. He failed.
Dan Drezner: Is looking for a Palestinian Gorbachev.
Sari Stein: I refuse to celebrate death. I prefer to celebrate life.

I agree with Sari. Let's look at what is going to happen next, that's far more important.

Yasser Arafat not only defined the Palestinian struggle, he became a symbol of it and as long as he’s alive he will to continue to have a hold onto power that may last well beyond his death. Yet the Palestinians have suffered enormously under his disastrous tenure and almost all opportunities to improve the lives of ordinary citizens on the West Bank and in Gaza have been botched by this Palestinian leader. From that perspective he is very similar to China’s Mao Zedong, brute totalitarian force unified the cause but things got better only once he had been dead for a while. You don’t eradicate such a legacy that easily and I expect the same to happen in the Palestinian Territories. There will be a struggle within Arafat’s Fatah movement with Hamas playing an important role on the side as the Economist pointed out yesterday. We can only hope that Arafat’s forced departure will herald a new area but whatever the outcome, like Mao, Arafat will even in death remain a powerful player in Palestinian politics. Be prepared for tomorrow’s reformers to insist on keeping the Arafat legacy alive, we will be stuck with his face for generations to come.

Lots of speculation over Arafat, his health, and the imminent succession battle. The punditry points to the likelihood that his death and the ensuing power struggle will further delay an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. That may be true, but that deal has never been realistic option with him alive. If he dies as a result of his current illness maybe one of the surest obstacles to an agreement will have been removed in a very peaceful way.

One of my colleagues today pointed to me to this interesting site, Israel 21c, Beyond the Conflict. Although not a blog, it probably falls into the same category as the regular efforts from Arthur Chrenkoff to highlight the positive aspects of life in certain conflict zones. And in Israel there are plenty of signs that things aren’t all that bad, take a look at this:

Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin - 109 per 10,000 people - as well as one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed;

Israel is ranked #2 in the world for venture capital funds right behind the US;

Israel's $100 billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbors combined;

On a per capita basis, Israel has the largest number of biotech start-ups;

Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R&D facilities outside the US in Israel.

There’s a lot more on Israel 21c that makes for good news and interesting reading although I am not entirely sure if the Madonna visit to Israel - every newspaper I open this week is full of it – would qualify as such. But in a way it’s reassuring, despite war and conflict Israelis love to engage themselves in the same sad celebrity worship that has become an important benchmark of North American culture.

I have long abandoned the practice to comment on individual terror attacks on these pages and instead relied on bloggers that are somewhat closer to the fire. Following today's attacks in Beersheba I checked out Dutchblog Israel where Bert provides us with some sane and succinct commentary, I especially liked this bit:

The timing of this attack - the day on which dates were made public for decisions related to a pullout from Gaza - suggests that, like the settlers and their supporters, Palestinian(-Islamist) terrorists would prefer Israel to continue its occupation. In the past, during every stage of negotiations or planning towards some Israeli pullout from occupied territory we witnessed a rise in terror attacks.

Discontinuation of the occupation would be a major setback for a group like Hamas as it would nullify it's raison-d'etre. Like any radical terrorist group its greatest fear is a transformation to normality, a phenomenon that has haunted the IRA for decades.

UPDATE: Mitch has e-mailed some thoughts:

Might I suggest as a countertheory that withdrawals give the impression of retreat, and that aggressive tacticians will respond to apparent retreat with a form of pursuit, ie, a redoubling of effort? That is, if you leave your enemy with the impression that he "has the bulge" on you, and he's rash or headstrong, he'll plunge forward.

An equally plausible position I think, unfortunately there is not enough 'hard' evidence to support either theory. I am tilting towards the first one as Israel has always responded with forcefully re-entering previously occupied territories after an attack. On the other hand the second theory would give Hamas far more credibility among Palestinians in the long run, enabling it to replace the Palestinian Authority as the de-facto government of all Palestinians.

Hardly surprising, but disappointing nevertheless, the South-Africanization of Israel by the UN. The vote of the UN General Assembly yesterday calls on Israel to dismantle its security fence as requested by the International Court of Justice. The vote was 150-6, the US dissenting and Canada abstaining, but the European bloc voted in favor after some last moment tweaking of the language in order to line up all European nations behind this resolution. Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman left the meeting in a fury, which is what he usually does after UN get-togethers discussing Israel, and commented:

“It is simply outrageous to respond with such vigor to a measure that saves lives and responds with such casual indifference and apathy to the ongoing campaign of Palestinian terrorism that takes lives. This is not justice but a perversion of justice”

Yes. Now we have to bear in mind that the UN General Assembly is unlikely to ignore a majority ruling of its own court and that the resolution is non-binding, so it hasn’t got the teeth to make life really difficult for Israel. A referral to the Security Council to make it binding would be fruitless: the US would veto it instantly. However the symbolic value shouldn’t be underestimated, it will give the Palestinian leadership a false sense of victory and it will embolden many others to finger Israel as a violator of international law, a country worthy of sanctions. These implications will in turn make peace ever harder to achieve and from that perspective the UN has failed to make a meaningful contribution to resolve this lingering conflict. Over to the White House.

And, if you wanted to have a good reason for Israel’s security fence , Yael has made a list of 987 very good reasons.

One of the things that, historically speaking, always ended up in tears, defeat and disaster was the West supporting and propping up dictators who we thought represented our best interests. Yasser Arafat has for the past decades received not only a red carpet treatment wherever he went, his corrupt Palestinian Authority could count on generous support from a variety of western nations and multilateral institutions as he was perceived to be the only likely ticket to an Israeli-Palestinian peace arrangement. I don’t know if it would qualify as an intelligence failure, but we should have seen long ago that Arafat was a very unlikely partner for peace. And I am not referring to his continued support for terrorism, no his disastrous rule in the occupied areas is so corrupt, reckless and violent that it should have been a red flag ages ago. Now, his own people have taken up arms against him, in a link filled post Meryl Yourish summarizes what happened and ends on a wry note: the world will probably blame Israel, which takes me to my next post …

It was in Hong Kong a few years ago that I ran into an Israeli in a Lan Kwai Fong bar and after having had a few beers displayed my knowledge of Israeli folk songs to him. He dismissed my knowledge with the words “these are very old songs”, an incident that my wife Irene finds hilarious to this day claiming that the guy was more interested in her than in me blurting out some Naomi Shemer classics.

Well, I had to wait until last Saturday when the National Post ran an interesting column by Mireille Silcoff (subscriber link only) that I could claim that there is indeed something to old Israeli folk songs. Silcoff reports on the fact that nostalgia is now part of Israeli youth culture with youngsters gathering in nightclubs to sing the old songs that at one point were considered too old to be interesting in Israel’s culture of moving forward. However with a future looking bleaker and bleaker, dusting off memories from a time when that future did look bright appears to be a way to deal with the low morale that is currently prevalent in Israel. There's always value in old songs and sooner or later they will resurface, for Israelis it would be nice however if today's retro-ism could not only function as offsetting today's bleakness, but also serve as an inspiration for a better tomorrow.

Oh and yes, my favourite Shemer tune was Bisdot Bet-lechem. No idea what it means but it was part of the various folklore albums that were used to teach us children Israeli folkdances back in Holland. That is, Holland in the 1970s.

It’s been a while since I wrote about Israel, but today the country was thrown into the international spotlight in a serious enough way to pen a post. The International Court of Justice has ruled that the construction of Israel's security fence, or "the wall", violated international law and has ordered Israel to make reparation payments to Palestinians whose land had been seized in the process. Why should a court be given jurisdiction over an essentially political issue? Even though the court’s ruling is non-binding you can rest assured that Israel’s opponents see the court’s opinion as a validation of their case allowing them to muster further support to challenge anything Israel undertakes to defend itself. This pattern of compliant international institutions South Africanizing Israel is not new and Meryl Yourish places the court’s decision in the context of previous rulings, which makes for interesting reading.

There’s a flip side to the argument of course and this Dutch-Israeli blogger contends that had Israel gone about construction in a smarter way, for instance by not infringing on occupied lands, it would have seen far less criticism and a potentially milder judgment from the courts. There are some merits to what I would call the “construction argument” but if you look at today’s ruling that would not have changed one thing for Israel. The “reparation payments” on encroached lands would probably have disappeared, but the assertion that the wall violates international law would likely still be there as the unwillingness of the court to weigh Israel’s security arguments is evidence of where the ruling was destined to go. More depressing resolutions from the UN Security Council can be expected now that it has the ruling in hand that it had asked for.

UPDATE: Read Imshin's comments.

NOTE: This post was submitted to Outside the Beltway's Traffic Jam.

Driving back in a torrential rain last night I heard some interesting analysis on the radio following the latest suicide bombing in Israel. A female professor who had carried out extensive research was able to tone down the notion that female suicide bombers were primarily driven by religious and political fervor. She had interviewed the few females that had survived and were now captive, and she was able to deduct that a significant portion was driven by generic suicide impulses. Abandoned by a husband, the old husband fathers a child with new wife, rocky marriage etc. So if that is the case Hamas and al-Aqsa must be using some very sophisticated recruiting methods, singling out females (who as yesterday’s bombing showed have a little edge in checkpoint situations) who are desperate enough to die but too ashamed and depressed to conceal the real reasons and wrap themselves in the blanket of the Palestinian cause.

PS: If anyone knows who that Professor is let me know, I googled for quite a while but nothing tangible emerged.

Lots of activity on the business side yesterday, so there was little time for posting, but I did not miss the controversial interview in Ha’aretz with Benny Morris (hat tip: Roger Simon), a formerly left-wing Israeli historian who has abandoned some of his left-liberal viewpoints, to put it mildly. After you have digested his findings of war crimes by Jews during the 1948 war for independence and his take on the moral bankruptcy of Arab society, as well as his comparison of barbarians destructing the Roman Empire from within to the relationship of the West with the rest of the world today, you know he’s essentially a realist, neither left nor right.

Trained as historian myself I always identify with detached historical comparisons and Morris definitely strikes a chord. In abandoning the left but equally criticizing those on the right, he’s not just a realist, but a bitter one at that. That bitterness comes through in the end of the interview when he throws doubt on the ability to ever achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians. My argument has been that a peace deal could never work if it’s asymmetrical which is what it would boil down if one was signed today, so give it another ten or twenty years. By that time, according to Morris however, the Arab world (where fundamentalist takeovers of Egypt and Syria are practically guaranteed) is well equipped to destroy Israel with nuclear and biological weapons, and a fifth column of Arab Israelis is ready to rise up. There are a few weaknesses in the Morris view, notably his terrorism analogy with Europe and Africa falls flat and he completely discounts the potential for democratic development in the Arab world, Iraq is not mentioned once in the entire interview. Still this is a worthwhile read, a must-read I should say.

Update: Michael Totten is putting a name to the likely implications of what Morris foresees: total war, introducing us to a world where our current strategies against terror have failed. Not exactly stuff for your morning coffee read.

With the capture of Saddam another pillar of Arab terrorism has come under media attention: the Palestinian Authority. Saddam not only backed Arafat and various Palestinian terror groups, the Palestinians had equally backed Saddam and standing by him during the first Gulf War in 1990-91 had cost them dearly, so much that this debacle was partly responsible for Arafat engaging in peace talks with the Israelis after so many other Arab nations had abandoned him, notably the cash rich gulf states. With his continued support for Palestinians, notably the payments he made available to suicide bombers and their surviving families, Saddam continued to be an icon of Arab defiance on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It should not come as a surprise that the Palestinian street is dumbfounded and devastated when one of its heroes and remaining friends is being paraded on TV as a beaten man:

"It's a black day in history," said Sadiq Husam, 33, a taxi driver in Ramallah, West Bank seat of the Palestinian Authority. "I am saying so not because Saddam is an Arab, but because he is the only man who said 'no' to American injustice in the Middle East," he said.

Well, if that’s the case it would appear they have already given up on Bin Laden. And if Saddam had a reputation of standing up and take on the enemy then the nature of his capture must have struck his followers as more than a little disappointing:

"I had expected him to have fought back, or at least end his life," he said. "But then again, all dictators are cowards."

Indeed. And hopefully Palestinians will come to see the tenure of their own dictator in the same light, soon.

I can’t link it – subscriber item – but Christopher Caldwell made some good points in the FT this weekend on the Geneva Accord, criticizing the sponsors of the accord’s claim that Geneva reflects democracy at its best. On the contrary argues Caldwell:

In fact, the Geneva summit reveals democracy as alarmingly weak, insufficient to solve pressing problems to the international community’s satisfaction and losing legitimacy in the eyes of the world’s advanced countries, which are increasingly willing to look at alternatives. So that even those public figures who have been repudiated by their nation can now, it seems, rear up and claim a moral right to lead it.

Exactly, and Yossi Beilin, who lost his parliamentary seat in the most recent Israeli election is now hopping around the world as a statesman trying to give everyone the impression that he has discovered the key to peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. That makes him oblivious to the fact that a majority of his countrymen consider his actions an outright danger to their security. If the international community bestows legitimacy on this man and his plans it will only further isolate Ariel Sharon, the one that got elected with a mandate from the voters, a mandate given at a time of extreme distress and danger. The world at large may not like the current stalemate in Israeli-Palestinian relations, and yes, we may at one point in time see a deal along the lines of the Geneva Accord, but for now the Sharon team and the Israeli people do not have a lot of appetite to sign away their security in return for a questionable peace arrangement. They did that before, remember Oslo and Camp David, and the net result was the unleashing of a torrent of violence from the West Bank and Gaza. Those were asymmetrical deals. Beilin’s plan may look a lot more symmetrical, but in reality it is quasi-symmetrical, which means that in essence it's unbalanced.

Is Israel. Yes, if anyone needed further evidence of the deep-rooted anti-Semitism in Europe, take a look at the results of this Gallup survey among a cross-section of Europeans, which reveal that, according to those interviewed, Israel is the biggest threat to world peace today, ranking higher than Iran and North Korea. This really is jaw dropping stuff. It not only reflects anti-Semite attitudes, no doubt the survey’s results mirror the shift towards a pro-Palestinian stance among many European leaders as well as the support that many European nations have given to last month’s UN resolution condemning Israel’s security wall. With the passing of each day, we see more evidence that the broad-based European reluctance to engage itself in any meaningful way in the Middle East is not just thwarted by biased politicians, it is deeply ingrained in the belief of many ordinary European citizens. Nothing short of devastating terrorist attack on a major European urban center can change that.

When I was a child I dreamed of becoming a diplomat but the fact that you are restrained by the mores of diplomacy was a somewhat daunting prospect. That’s why I envy Israeli’s Ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman. He is the one diplomat for whom all the diplomatic finesses no longer apply for it does not matter what he says and does, the world is out to get his nation, no matter what. Anyone thinking the world would pause after last week’s anti-Semitic rants from the doctor, was proven wrong last night when the UN General Assembly voted 144-2 demanding that Israel stop the construction of its Security Wall as it was deemed to be in contravention of international law. Gillerman called the proceeding "a humiliating farce" and berated the European Union governments supporting a resolution that implies that Israel's security measures are far graver than the terror attacks perpetrated by Palestinian terrorist groups. Again Gillerman:

"As long as the majority in this assembly will pander and tolerate these rituals, no one should wonder why the victims of terrorism and those who hope for peace look elsewhere for guidance, protection and inspiration," Gillerman said.

This resolution reminds me of that other absurd UN resolution that qualified Zionism as racism. The latter was adopted in the 1970s and at that point the Europeans took a far milder stance with regards to Israel. The fact that they are now throwing their weight behind a questionable motion in an already highly charged environment is certainly not good news. Gillerman represents a nation that is slowly being isolated and, to make a 1980s analogy, being South Africanized. Get ready for economic sanctions. Thanks to a lack of analysis, fear and hard to follow positioning the net result is that Israel will have to undergo this humiliation and potential isolation for all the wrong reasons and for probably a long time to come.

The critics have a point when they argue that the wall allows Israel to add some territory to Israel proper. But if my neighbour enters my property on a regular basis to trash my house I will probably build a wall in a manner that does not interfere with the full and unfettered enjoyment of my property and yes, that would mean building it on his land, allowing him to do whatever he wants to do on his territory without violating my rights. That scenario would also prevent me from doing what I would like on his territory and the security wall may be a precursor to the isolation and potential end of Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands. Has the UN General Assembly taken that into consideration when it was doing its analysis?

The wall brings back memories of Eastern Germany’s infamous piece of work, but the two are hardly comparable. While walls separate and have a very negative connotation, Sharon is not exactly building it to prevent Israeli’s from leaving their native lands. Think about it, has anyone ever retroactively condemned the Chinese Wall? If there is one parallel with the Berlin Wall, it is that it will not be there forever. For now, it is a necessary measure.

This weekend’s suicide bombing in Haifa brought an end to a period of three weeks of relative quiet and the question was whether Israel’s security fence had started to yield some dividends or that the Palestinian leadership had shifted its priorities. Sadly nothing has changed, but the fact that Israel has retaliated by attacking a terrorist camp deep into Syria caught everyone by surprise. Not unexpectedly, world opinion quickly stepped over the horrific deaths of 19 civilians in the Haifa restaurant, among them four children, to blast Israel over its violation of Syria’s sovereignty and the impetus that the attack has given to the further escalation of the conflict in the Middle East. German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder reacted by terming the attack an “unacceptable” violation of sovereign territory. And let me clarify: he is talking about Syrian sovereignty, not Israeli sovereignty. He is both misguided and wrong in his analysis, the Daily Telegraph summarizes in its editorial the validity of the Israeli raid as follows:

Syria has a long history of complicity with terrorism, whether Hizbollah in southern Lebanon, or Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, all of which have representatives in Damascus. The Sharon government is, therefore, perfectly justified in striking a neighbour that sponsors groups wishing to drive the Israelis into the sea.

And not only driving them into the sea, killing as many of them before they are driven into the sea I might add. The Syrians have asked for the UN Security Council to meet to condemn the Israeli actions. The Israeli Ambassador to the UN reacted as follows:

It was ``as if (Osama) bin laden would have asked for a Security Council meeting after 9/11,'' Gillerman said before the meeting. He said it was ironic that no council meeting was called to condemn the attack on Israeli civilians in Haifa on Saturday.

The implications of these events are manifold but let me quickly go through them. Sharon may be disliked in the world and may be portrayed as a fool in international media, but he is anything but. The targeted attack on a terrorist facility in Syria (not any Syrian military or civilian target came under attack) is something he will not have done lightly but given the evidence available to him it was probably one of the decisions he had to take. And like the continued construction of the defense wall around Israel it does not win him a lot of admirers overseas but it seeks to achieve only one thing, which is the item of paramount importance on the list of any Israeli Prime-Minister: protecting and saving Israeli lives. Anyone who would condemn someone for trying to achieve such a simple and human goal is not worth listening to and that’s why the Europeans have now forever disqualified themselves as partners in the peace process or whatever what was left of it. Escalation as claimed by the Arabs is likely but that’s exactly what many in the Arab world have been aiming for. Ironically, the Syrians cry for help over at the UN is a symptom of the realization that such an escalation could very well lead to the obliteration of that other remaining Baathist bulwark in the Middle East. Sharon has pointed in the right direction and reminded them of how vulnerable they now are. They may be the next domino to fall.

According to Allison over at an Unsealed Room the wisest thing would be to ignore Arafat completely. She’s probably right, the man is like a spoilt child, any attention is better than no attention at all and I stepped right into that trap by now devoting my third post to him in an equal amount of days.

But then, it’s an interesting topic and to an extent the international community at large has done everything within its reach to give the Palestinian leader an unlimited amount of attention from the day he was invited to address the UN General Assembly now almost 30 years ago. He has skillfully leveraged his access to that international community to the fullest, even collecting a Nobel Peace Price in 1994, to my knowledge the first terrorist to have accomplished that. And up to a certain point his peace making credentials earned him a following in Israel. He shrewdly took advantage of all those things over the years and built up a phenomenal amount of credit around the world and that credit will probably see him through the difficult patch he is in today and it may actually benefit him for as long as he is alive. Remember, that credit was extended to him by all of us and if the Israelis now want to void it, they’re absolutely entitled to do so. It will however not win them a lot of supporters, but then history often bestows praise upon those that were right long after the fact. So, I just wanted to say that, no more attention for Yasser on these pages for the next little while.

OK, so maybe expelling Arafat is not the greatest idea, Sari pitches in and rightly points to the martyr problems that arise if we clip Arafat but also thinks that in exile he would be able to create a huge public relations offensive that far outweighs anything he has done so far from his base in Ramallah. I doubt that. The difference with the past is that these days there is a Palestinian Authority established in Gaza and the West Bank. If Arafat is exiled they can continue to exercise their authority on the ground, and if they can’t, Hamas or similar radical groups will step into the void. Arafat in both cases will be floating in the middle of nowhere and I doubt a lot of government leaders would still want to meet with him as anyone will know that there is a decisionmaking body on Palestinian territory. That was not the case before the Oslo accords were signed and Arafat was hopping around the globe as a hot political celebrity. It also remains to be seen if he continues to have the leverage that he apparently has today, there may be more political mileage for the pro-Palestinian forces around the world to meet with however is calling the shots in Ramallah after Arafat’s departure. The moderates will praise his departure and so will the radicals. A civil war scenario is on the table, and that may be exactly what the Israelis are aiming at.

By increasing the pressure they can either set the stage for his departure through exile or for that wayward bullet or missile hitting his compound to ensure he is exiled for good. But what the current strategy might also achieve is what could be the best solution: regicide. Let the Palestinians take matters into their own hands and get rid of Arafat themselves if they want to have a shot at a better future. Again, this is a roll of the dice but that really goes for any scenario and that includes signing on to the status quo which I happen to believe is not a great option. To have the Palestinians make their own decision about Arafat could result in two things: if the moderates do it, it would strengthen the hand of those on both sides believing that a peace deal could work, if Hamas does it then we would end up with a Palestinian entity that is next to impossible to deal with which in turn would give the Israelis sufficient ammunition to turn their backs on the problem, complete their security wall and say: “See, we have given it our best, but the net of all of this is a Hamas-led PA, we’re done”. Not a great prospect I admit, but it is one that is not unlikely.

The question is whether anyone in the Palestinian camp would dare to initiate an attempt on Arafat’s life. I doubt it. The man has managed to achieve a cult like, even Mao-esque status, and in such circumstances his followers, be they moderates, be they radicals will probably attempt to sway him in whatever direction they feel is necessary in order to have him serve their agenda. They wouldn’t dare to kill him. Both sides can use him as their symbol for Palestinian unity and identity; we can’t deny that the man has some pan-Arab revolutionary brand appeal. He knows this very well, and has leveraged that position to the absolute maximum, even Washington is reluctant to hasten his departure. That is what leaves the Israelis so furious and so desperate that they are almost willing to roll the dice and get rid of the man. There’s no quick answer and no easy fix, but if somehow we could influence matters, regicide would be the most preferred option.

In every business decision and in every policy decision, there’s an element of risk. An element of uncertainty. A roll of the dice. In this respect some very often refer to the law of unintended consequences: we may end up with something that we did not want when we implemented our policies. Sure, there's always that risk. Those that seek to mitigate risk to the extent that they remain stuck with a status quo know that by not taking a bit of risk they will at least stay in control for a while. But things will not change. The Israeli cabinet yesterday prepared itself for the proverbial roll of the dice to get ready for Arafat’s expulsion.

Let’s argue the case a bit. There are two camps on the Palestinian side. The hard-line terrorists that bomb buses, cafes and restaurants and the other group, let’s call them the moderates, the ones that are willing to sit at the table and do not appear to be directly involved in bombing civilians. The inherent problem is that the person in charge of the moderates is not only providing a notional leadership to these moderates, he is also encouraging the hardliners to do whatever they feel is necessary to further their interests. At one point in time the international community has convinced itself that the leader of the moderates was a guy to do business with, but as time has moved on it has become patently clear he is anything but a moderate. The logical step would be to sideline this guy. Which is what happened following international pressure, but apparently he wields so much power behind the scenes that even if you isolate him in his compound and appoint a new moderate leader for his group it still is impossible to neutralize his belligerent scheming. In short: the man is a seriously disruptive factor. If you want to talk to the moderates or at least give the moderates a chance to have some success, that man needs to go. In an ideal world the moderates should take care of this themselves in order to give them a bit more legitimacy, but out of fear they can’t. We have two options: give them a hand and remove the disruptive leader or continue as we have done as before without any results.

The answer is clear. Let’s get rid of Yasser Arafat. And for once maybe the Israeli government will put aside all the advice coming from Washington, Brussels and even Moscow. It may be risky, the moderates may face a bitter struggle with the hardliners going forward but at least they will be able to enter this fight on a level playing field without the unruly Yasser Arafat controlling their every move. It’s time to move forward. Things will not get better in the short run but at least the Israelis are taking a risk to bring about some change. Let’s try and the stop the killing and see if there’s another way to work out some agreement. Remove him. Roll the dice.

Update: Michael Totten doesn't believe in removing him, unless we put him on trial and execute him. No, that would make him a martyr. We need to make him completely irrelevant and all the strategies aimed at doing so while he's in PA territory have failed miserably. The fast track to irrelevance is what is needed, let the Israelis do whatever is required to achieve that.

Over the past few hours I have been trying to craft a post that deals with the two suicide bombings in Israel, two within 24 hours, but somehow words are beginning to fail me to put any meaningful analysis together. A quick tour around the blogosphere to check out some of my favorites knowing they would discuss the bombings did not help either, no one it seems is able to go beyond a brief report about the attacks. It appears we are beyond the point of analysis. With a Bush approved Palestinian leader sidelined, Arafat in a strengthened position and an unrestrained Hamas (now even blacklisted by the EU), we are in for a very dark period.

It may be worthwhile to start focusing on everyday life in Israel in order to understand how people are brave enough to continue to visit restaurants, cafes, use public transportation and go about their everyday life under these circumstances. I have been remiss in doing that, instead focusing too much on analysis from a distance and that when there are some great Israeli blogs on the ground. An Unsealed Room reported on restaurant visits a few days ago, yesterday Tal G. was very close to the latest attack and Balagan is another one worth visiting for great commentary directly from Israel. One of my solid referrers, Alisa, is now in Israel (but hardly blogging) and another great referrer, Entre Nous, appears to be in Israel something I was never really aware of. And then there's Imshin. Anyway, there you go: good blogging from Israel.

As I mentioned earlier the bus attack in Jerusalem left me depressed, something that I had not experienced in a long time. Maybe it was because there were so many children involved but it could also be that it delivered final and conclusive evidence that the truce and the roadmap are indeed a complete sham. We have also not received a clear indication of which direction Sharon will take following the cabinet meeting that took place earlier today, which is somewhat unusual. Whatever it was, CNN today reports that there is indeed a feeling in Israel that the latest attack was different and that it could be a turning point: either the last milestone of a fundamentally flawed peace process or the beginning of a new one. It somehow reminded me of another devastating bombing that took place five years ago, one that set a new standard in cold-blooded brutality, again underlining that attempts to achieve peace with terrorists will never work as they are asymmetrical in nature.

Following on the heels of the attack on the UN in Baghdad, news is just in on a terror bombing on a bus in Jerusalem, killing 20, including children. On the same day: is this a coincidence? IsraPundit not only covers the event, but also assesses the way in which it is being reported by Reuters.

Sharon and Abbas are navigating the roadmap and it appears there is some progress. I have not commented on the peace process for a little while given the dim view I have of it, but now that there is some movement in the right direction I do have to concede that it is not all gloom and doom. But, any optimism has to come with serious caveats as evidenced by Sharon’s words:

There are many people still that would like to see this process -- any process crashing and collapsing. "There will be no compromise with terror ... no peace with terror."

The problem continues to be what I have called the asymmetrical nature of the proposed roadmap, where a democratic state with representative government is essentially asked to sign on to a long term arrangment with its complete opposite: a corrupt dictatorship where terror and intimidation are the tools of debate. While there is significant opposition to the peace process on the Israeli side, it could be argued that any dissent there is funneled into the democratic process of debate and compromise. Disagreement on the Palestinian side however will most likely lead to the spawning of new groups that embrace terror as the essential means of operation. Hamas may suspend its suicide-bombing campaign, but the longer that suspension is in place, the greater the likelihood that Hamas dissidents will set up new groups to continue the campaign of trying to destroy the state of Israel as well as the peace process by whatever means they have available.

How do you reduce an opponent to complete irrelevance? By tying him down in a place where he can do no harm at all. And if the cost of killing him is higher than the benefit, what do you do? You let the world know that you have him at gunpoint and can kill him whenever you like. Even Saddam was able to do better than Arafat who is not just irrelevant, he’s disposable material.

I have always been impressed with elder statesmen who were able to achieve phenomenal things late in life. Ronald Reagan became president at 69 and retired at 77, Deng Xiaoping was in his mid-seventies when he was finally able to consolidate his grip on power in China and turn the country around. Ariel Sharon is 75 and doing whatever he can under the dire circumstances his country is in, but Israel’s Labor Party is becoming seriously desperate to re-appoint, at almost 80, Shimon Peres as its new leader. Octogenarians can achieve great things, but I think it is time that the Israeli opposition party starts to rejuvenate its leadership and pick a leader not shortly before an election but earlier on in order to set the party on a new course, establish leadership credentials and ensure that it remains a credible party. It is somehow surprising that Israel’s two largest parties have not successfully groomed a new generation of leaders and to the extent they have done so, both apparent heirs, Nethanyahu and Barak, have been sidelined for the time being.

I predicted this would happen, but I am still surprised at the speed at which it occurred. Within a few weeks the plan was accepted by Israel, boosted by Bush, and now it is in tatters and many innocents have died. What has happened underlines the basic facts of the situation: Sharon will not be arm twisted into a deal with people who he knows are out to destroy the nation he represents and Abbas is and remains unwilling to restrain Hamas, al-Aqsa and similar groups. This is not even close to an asymmetrical arrangement, there’s no arrangement at all, there’s war, hate and destruction and what is worse: there is no end in sight. We will have to see how the Bush administration is going to deal with this, but more importantly there are number of short and long term implications of the failed negotiations.

First of all, Israel’s economy is starting to contract and this could be something that requires Sharon’s immediate attention and time, rather than wasting time on roadmaps that go nowhere. Likewise, the Palestinian economy is hurting and a rapidly impoverishing population on the West Bank and in Gaza could only add fuel to the deep discontent in these territories. Radical groups such as Hamas relish poverty and discontent, as these are the feeding grounds for support and recruitment. The Palestinian Authority has to date achieved very little with the aid it has received from overseas. By promoting violence against Israel it has not only cut off Palestinian laborers from a reliable source of income, it has also succeeded in the international community turning sour on possible investment in both Israel and the Palestinian territories. In the longer run, and this going well beyond Sharon’s term as Prime-Minister, both Israel and the Palestinian territories will start to feel the demographic pressures of a rapidly growing Palestinian population, growing faster than the Jewish contingent in Israel. An ever increasing Palestinian population will not only add to the political and ethnic tensions, it will put severe demands on the resources (water, to name an obvious one) available to both the Israelis and Palestinians. Without a stable and violence-free environment it may be contradictory to start talking about economies and joint resources, but these may very well be the catalysts to get back to the table at some point in the not too distant future. If you can’t eat, you can’t live.

The centerpiece of the Bush trip was of course not the G-8 event in France; it was the formal launch of roadmap negotiations with Sharon and Abbas. The White House has done an excellent job, great setting, nice camera shots and lots of smiles, all made possible by the swift conclusion of the campaign in Iraq. There’s no doubt that US pressure has resulted in dumping Arafat in favor of Abbas and bringing Sharon into the fold, but I do not believe for a second that Sharon will throw away the mandate given to him by the Israeli people. This mandate is built on security and survival. Sharon will continue to roadmap out of political expediency in the months ahead, but if the terms are unfavorable for Israel he will have no other option but to walk away from the table. Likewise, Abbas’ call to lay down arms has been firmly rejected by Hamas and other fanatics on his side but that should not be a surprise to anyone.

Bush is putting his personal credibility on the line here by committing to deliver peace and judging from our experience with this President he will want to see clear and unambiguous results, fast. As opposed to Clinton however he will be realistic enough to know that a bad deal will not stand the test of time, but I fear that with an election and personal reputations playing an increasingly important role, he may resort to arm twisting the parties into a deal that may again fall to pieces. I admire Bush’s resolve and support the necessity to bring peace to the Middle East, but the roadmap contains a route to an asymmetrical arrangement and we have seen too many of these before.

The asymmetrical peace process is in full swing, the fact that I did not post on the horrific and sickening suicide attacks over the past five days does not mean I ignored them. I believe they were just more evidence of what many of us had suspected would happen but I cannot post on every suicide attack, I will try to focus on the larger picture. It was interesting to see that Bush got on the phone with Palestinian PM Abbas yesterday and one can only imagine the tone of the conversation that took place, I have a hard time believing it was “friendly and hopeful” as this article suggests. The Bush team has succeeded in finally sidelining Arafat, relegating him to irrelevance for good, but that does to mean that we are any closer to a resumption of peace talks. On the contrary, the latest bombings I think make it abundantly clear that we can forget about that for quite a while.

What is hopeful though is that some Palestinians have come out against Islamic militants, protesting that the violence and destruction brought to their villages is a direct result of the way these fanatics behave themselves. It is to be feared however that, like so many other terrorist groups, Hamas and other Islamic groups will not only continue to terrorize Israelis, they will also extend their rule of violence to their fellow Palestinians in order to crush any dissent. That’s how these groups work and that’s why there is an inherent asymmetry in any peace negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians.

Of course the mainstream media are always quite silent on certain events. When I wanted to blog about pro-war rallies in the run-up to Iraq, I had a hard time finding any solid reporting by mainstream media and abandoned the plan to put a pro-war demonstration post together. The latter is also the reason why I largely ignored the entire anti-war movement, they got too much coverage elsewhere and I did not agree with their message anyway. I had to visit Sari’s blog today to find out that a crowd of about 15,000 had gathered in Montreal yesterday to celebrate Israel’s day of independence (another example of the growing primary news gathering role of weblogs). The march apparently was a big success and when I read that Hatikva was sung by a large group I just got goose bumps. This is by far the most haunting and emotional of all the national anthems that I know and it beats my beloved Wilhelmus and even the Star Spangled Banner in terms of emotional appeal. It gets to you especially when you grasp the meaning, history and background, so if you can deal with a little emotion today go here, I recommend the choral version.

Some of you have pointed out to me that there is quite a bit of biographical info on Mahmoud Abbas the nature of which warrants a closer examination of the man. Agreed, I did not read everything available on Abbas, but my point was really that whether he is or is not a moderate is not all that relevant at the moment. His ability to negotiate a peace deal is severely hampered by the continued presence of Arafat on the one hand and the radicals of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyr brigades on the other. Yes, the biographical info you have sent to me is further evidence that his efforts to achieve peace will not only be hampered by others, but also by his own character and past statements. So to set the record straight, this article has some more info to add to the Abbas file. Here’s an excerpt:

As a doctoral candidate at Moscow's Oriental College in 1982, Abu Mazen (his nom de guerre) composed a thesis accusing the Jews of exaggerating the Holocaust for ulterior motives. "The Zionist movement's stake in inflating the number of murdered in the war was aimed at ensuring great gains," he said, asserting that "this led it to confirm the number [6 million] to establish it in world opinion, and by so doing to arouse more pangs of conscience and sympathy for Zionism in general." In his paper, later published under the title, the Other Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and the Zionist Movement, the Palestinian leader sought to deny the German use of gas chambers as instruments of death and suggested that the number of Jews killed was less than one million. Abu Mazen also went to great lengths to compare Zionism with Nazism and accused Jewish leaders of conspiring with Hitler to annihilate European Jewry.

Abbas never retracted any of these offensive and absurd statements. Another interesting excerpt:

In an interview with al-Sharq al-Awsat he sought to clarify statements attributed to him in which he allegedly called for an end to anti-Israel terror. "On the basis of the talks held in Cairo [between the Palestinian Authority and terrorist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad], we agreed upon the freezing of Palestinian military operations for one year.... We did not say, however, that we are giving up the armed struggle... The intifada must continue."

So we agree to suspend military operations but we will, at the same time, continue our armed struggle. Not very convincing material for a peace negotiator, but in making these statements he is of course pandering to the radical base and that is precisely why a peace deal is probably ages away. Again, asymmetrical peace in action. His name has also been mentioned in connection with the terrorist attack on and killing of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympics in Germany, here.

Today the new Palestinian cabinet was inaugurated following substantial international pressure and last minute behind the scene negotiating, the latter a measure to placate Arafat’s hard-line Fatah supporters. My background on the new Palestinian Prime Minister is limited, however Mahmoud Abbas’ biography points to him being a moderate Palestinian with a willingness to help formulate some sort of deal with Israel. The fact that as a moderate he is still alive is either a miracle or he may not be as much of a moderate as we are lead to believe. The fact of the matter is that at this point it is not even relevant what strain of political thought he espouses, as on the day of his inauguration hardliners such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad have made it very clear that they are not going to lay down arms. Not for Abbas, not for Arafat, not for anyone. This is not a surprise to anyone, of course. They will not disarm until their goal of an end to the Israeli occupation has been realized and we know very well that the term “occupation” does not necessarily apply to the West Bank and Gaza only.

Developments on the political side are always responded to with violence as I discussed in my piece on the Baltic Exchange bomb below. Today is no different as a suicide bomber attacked a bar in downtown Tel Aviv killing four, sending a clear message that we can roadmap whatever we want with Abbas and his new cabinet, that roadmap will be drenched in blood as far as Hamas and Islamic Jihad are concerned. The asymmetrical peace process is at work here and a peace settlement in Israel unfortunately has a very long way to go.

Following my post last Friday on the difficulty of negotiating peace deals with terrorists it seems that the Palestinian Authority is struggling with the appointment, under international pressure, of a Prime Minister. So if appointing a new face is already a major problem, just try to think of what issues a real election would bring. Arafat wants to hang on to as much power for as long as possible, making it impossible to negotiate any credible and lasting peace arrangement.

As I referred to yesterday in the wake of the Abu Abbas arrest, the question has been asked to what extent we can allow terrorist organizations certain concessions when we are trying to achieve a peace or ceasefire arrangement with them. The 1990s produced two such arrangements, both fairly high profile: the deal between the UK and the IRA, the so-called Good Friday accords (five years ago today) and the deal between Israel and the Palestinians, the Oslo accords which go back to 1993. Both arrangements to date have not been fully implemented and one could even argue that they have failed miserably. The peace process in Northern Ireland has been very challenging with continued reluctance by the IRA to disarm and the Israeli-Palestinian negotiation collapsed entirely when Arafat walked away from the Camp David negotiations during the final days of the Clinton administration.

The key reason for the inability of the parties to get both peace agreements fully implemented is that they are agreements between a democratic and free nation on the one hand, and a terrorist organization on the other. If we call war waged by terrorists on democratic societies asymmetrical, then it is not too much of a stretch to conceive of a peace deal between them as asymmetrical too. Relations between the two, in peace and at war, are fundamentally unbalanced. Those who negotiate on behalf of the democratic entity are accountable to their electorate who in general would like to see a lasting peace deal that ensures freedom, stability and above all, safety. However that deal should not come at any price. If it means that too many concessions are made that would allow the terrorist group to continue to operate using the same asymmetrical tactics as before the deal, then it is probably not a great deal and it will be a deal that would be rejected if it were ever tested at the polls.

Leaders of terrorist organizations have a completely different constituency that they have to respond to. They are not accountable to the people that they claim to represent for they have never been elected in a democratic manner; the only accountability they have is to those who are a member of their own group. Membership of these groups has been defined by waging war on the perceived enemy over a long period of time with all means available using a military command structure, negating any open and democratic way of decisionmaking. In order to achieve cohesion within the group, adherence to a radical creed is mandatory, otherwise it is impossible to hold the group together and ask it to commit extremely violent crimes. Sitting around the table with the enemy not only brings an end to the conflict by way of a compromise; it also brings an end to the raison d’etre of that very terrorist group. In other words, the members of a terrorist group will be out of a job and they will not have achieved what they have been fighting for, as the end result will be a compromise that does not fully address the agenda they had been pursuing. Indeed the compromise in itself negates the cause that so many of their fellow combatants have died for. The indoctrinated core of the terrorist group will instinctively reject any peace deal and that is why Arafat walked away from the Camp David proposal (without returning with a counter offer) and that is also why Gerry Adams is not fully able to come to terms with the implications of the Good Friday accords. Even if Arafat and Adams were willing to go far enough to achieve peace, they would have to answer to their uncompromising base who will have very little to lose and are therefore quite willing to reject any peace compromise and continue to fight.

It is therefore not unusual to see that many are demanding that the Palestinian Authority becomes more open, democratic and accountable to the Palestinian people for as long as its leadership is only accountable to intransigent terrorists chances of any lasting peace arrangement are remote. In Northern Ireland the parties are closer as there have been elections, but as long as Gerry Adams is primarily accountable to a hardcore group of IRA members chances of a comprehensive and fully disarmed peace continue to be difficult to achieve.

In the world of the 1990s it was believed that terrorist groups would abandon their warfare, as they would not be able to achieve their objectives through these violent means. The next step in the argument was that it was therefore possible to work out a peace with those terrorist groups. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair both believed that this could be achieved and we should not fault them for thinking this, but now that a number of years have gone by we can conclude that in general it is very hard to make these deals work. We have learned and are now sadder and wiser. The reasons as to why these deals do not work are very simple as by achieving peace the terrorist organization becomes irrelevant and may even lose its grip on the cause once it transforms itself into a political entity seeking voter approval at the ballot box. In essence the peace deal brings to an end the fundamentals on which the terrorist organization is built: (a) the goal of complete realization of the group’s goals; and (b) the group’s role as the only representative of the people whose goals it claims to represent.

The Palestinian claim that Abu Abbas should be exempt from prosecution is only a symptom of a fairly complex problem that it is enormously difficult, but not impossible to solve. It requires terrorist leaders to abandon their grip on power, open their constituencies to a democratic process and disarm the reactionary base of their organizations. That is a very tall order and that is why it takes so long to achieve peace in both Northern Ireland and Israel.

It is good to see that so many in the blogosphere jumped on the Abu Abbas story and I am sure most of those reporting vividly remembered the brutal way in which Leon Klinghoffer was murdered. A Palestinian cabinet minister came out with a statement saying that PLO members should not be detained or tried for matters that were committed before the signing of the Oslo accords in September 1993. Well, the answer to this is probably no, he should be detained and tried because: (a) the acts of terrorism carried out by Abbas were committed in the name of the Palestinian Liberation Front and thus not the PLO which apparently is exempt; and (b) the Oslo exemptions only apply to criminal prosecution by Israel or the Palestinian Authority, and so do not extend to immunity from prosecution by the United States, or in this case Italy. The latter is a great loophole by the way; if you can not bring them to justice in Israel, send them to the US or any other country that knows how to deal with terrorists. Abbas will have to be tried for the heinous actions that have his fingerprints on them and this is the case with so many other terrorists that still need to be brought to justice. It is disconcerting to see that senior Palestinians are looking for ways to get some of their more notorious friends off the hook at a moment when many believe that the time has come to start seriously working on an Israeli-Palestinian roadmap to peace. The Palestinian Authority would be well advised to sever its ties with terrorist elements in order to deliver some sort of peace arrangement for its people but that would include finally getting rid of Yasser Arafat and I guess we are not quite there yet. So Abbas gets to benefit from some support from his erstwhile partners.

Comments on the Abbas case have been peculiar; look at these excerpts from a Washington Post article:

Intelligence officials said privately, however, that Abbas has not played an active role in terrorist activities for at least a decade, and the PLF is not believed to have any connection with Osama bin Laden or the al Qaeda network. Abbas has said in press interviews that the Klinghoffer killing was a mistake and that the hijacking should not have happened.

Whether or not al-Qaeda is part of the equation is completely irrelevant. The man committed serious crimes and is directly responsible for the death of innocent civilians and it is not relevant whether they occurred five, ten or thirty years ago. Any remorse over the Klinghoffer killing only serves Abbas to escape or mitigate judgment. The article has more: I. Michael Greenberger, a University of Maryland professor and Justice Department counter terrorism official in the Clinton administration says:

The Bush administration "can be vindicated . . . if he has been in active collusion with terrorists today; that would moot all the issues," Greenberger said. "This is a coup that they picked this guy up, but it does not support the theory that Iraq was crawling with terrorists. This was not the kind of guy that people were losing sleep over."

What? We picked up a key terrorist leader but “it does not support the theory that Iraq was crawling with terrorists”. What about Abu Nidal who until his violent death a while ago had been living comfortably in Baghdad? The place was full of terrorists altough most of them by now will have packed up and gone to Syria, Saudi Arabia or Iran. As for the statement about losing sleep over Abbas, ask the Klinghoffer family whether they have been losing any sleep over this. I have a feeling as to what their reply might be. The article goes on to say that:

Abbas was captured during a U.S. raid Tuesday in south Baghdad, which, according to witness accounts, lasted two hours and included intense firefights between Special Operations forces and Abbas supporters. Abbas had attempted escape to Syria at least twice in the week before his arrest, U.S. officials said, but was turned away by the Syrians.

Hm. Syria is adopting some changes to its entry policies following this week’s events?

I will return to the issue of cutting deals with terrorist groups later. Arrangements which allow terrorists with blood of innocent civilians on their hands to walk away with a deal that either sets them free or exempts them from prosecution are questionable and it is time that the 1990s practice of cutting deals with terrorists is revisited. High profile deals with the IRA and the PLO have not only been impossible to implement, they have also allowed many terrorists to walk free.

Another aspect of the Syrian issue is of course the Golan Heights which were annexed by Israel after they were captured during the Six-Day war in 1967. Israel has always made it very clear that it will never allow hostile troops on the strategically located Golan Heights. Syria in return has consistently frustrated any chance of peace between the two countries as it felt that a return of these heights was a precondition for a peace deal. Any regime change in Syria in the near future may well set the stage for revamped discussions between Israel and Syria, although I seriously doubt whether Israel will ever take the risk of giving up the Golan Heights.

My father is someone deeply fascinated with history and it is probably from him that I developed my passion for politics, wars, revolutions and international affairs. I can clearly remember picking up a book with on the cover a group of smiling and celebrating soldiers. I was deeply fascinated by it and flipped through it very often although I must have been only 5 or 6 years old and was never able to grasp what it was all about. That changed very soon as I started to learn the history of a relatively young country named Israel and its brave fight against the countries that were seeking to annihilate the young state. The book it turned out was about the Six-Day war.

Growing up in Holland in the early 70s meant growing up in an environment that was passionately pro-Israel and for some reason I plugged right into this. I collected Israeli stamps, read everything there was to read about Israel, and Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan became household names for me. I even regretted being born a Dutchman and was disappointed I was not one of those heroic Jews that we’re able to build up a country from scratch and defend it against its enemies. The fact that Israel has a nice warm climate with palm and olive trees all over the place also played its part in my love for the place I have to admit. During the Yom Kippur War of 1973 I even managed to raise some coins and nickels and contributed them to a help Israel collection in a local store. At school we sang Israeli folk songs, accompanied on the guitar by our teachers. Again, we are talking the early 70s and The Netherlands was one of Israel’s closest friends. That has changed, but I will not go into that right now.

The solid relationship between our two countries culminated for me in a memorable visit by an Israeli dance group to our school in, I think, 1975. They toured our country and for some reason our school was part of this cultural feast and I can still vividly see all the children at our school shouting, clapping and singing during the performance of this vibrant bunch of young Israelis bringing a piece of their world into our school. Afterwards we collected signatures and we were so proud to have a collection of Hebrew names, I still must have them somewhere.

My mother was on the school board and as a result she organized a dinner for the dance group’s leader Jonathan and his wife as well as its key singer, Effi Netzer (I did a Google and he’s still around performing all over the place). I clearly remember the dinner at our house with my parents, a few of their friends and the guests of honor. There were also two other guys that had tagged along with Jonathan, wife and Effi, Dov and Gil. As an innocent child I assumed they were responsible for the music or something like that but it was not entirely clear to me. Not long after the visit my father told me that Dov and Gil had very little to do with the creative part of the tour as they were armed Israeli security agents. You can imagine the impact on a Dutch boy of only 11 years old growing up in one of the most boring suburbs in Europe: Israeli security men with guns in our house ! This sealed my passionate love affair with Israel once and for all.

Even though I was very young I must have sensed what it meant to bring your own security wherever you went: you are nowhere safe and, more importantly, you can rely on absolutely no one to provide that security for you. It was so different from the way we lived. At the time I was impressed with and proud of those great Israelis who took care of their own affairs and it must have instilled the importance of being self-reliant and independent in me. This feeling was reinforced a little while later when Israeli commandos liberated a group of Jewish hostages on the airport of Entebbe in Uganda were they were held captive by a group of Palestinian and German left-wing terrorists. And a few years later the Israelis again took matters into their own hand by bombing a nuclear facility under construction in Iraq, knowing very well that the country’s security would be fatally impaired if that facility would ever become operational.

Israel’s security has not improved one inch in the 28 years that separate today from that great evening at my parents house. On the contrary, the threat that was facing them and forced them to bring out their own security detail has now come to visit us. It reinforces the need to be self-reliant, tough and independent for we can not rely on anyone to provide us with that great blanket of security for it does not exist.