Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is telling Palestinians to put up or shut up regarding the removal of checkpoints:
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday that Israel would not take any security risks in its gestures to the Palestinians until the Palestinian Authority begins taking the necessary actions against terrorist groups.
“As long as the Palestinian Authority does not take the required measures, with the required intensity, to fight terror groups, the State of Israel cannot make any changes that may expose it to dangers and create security hazards,” said Olmert, at the outset of the weekly cabinet meeting.
“We do not intend to compromise on this, and it will be an inseparable part of any dialogue between us and the PA,” the prime minister added. Olmert’s comments came in the wake of Friday’s deadly West Bank shooting attack, in which two Israelis were killed.
The Palestinians have no intention of stopping terrorism, in spite of the platitudes you see their leaders mouth from time to time. It’s obvious when you read quotes like this, and realize the duplicity behind the Palestinian leadership’s empty promises about peace.
Abbas aide Nabil Abu Rdainah said Abbas’s government was committed to meeting its security obligations under the road map.
He said Israel should not create obstacles in the way of the negotiations by expanding Jewish settlements and by carrying out “assassinations” in the Gaza Strip, which the Hamas Islamist group seized by force in June after routing Abbas’s secular Fatah forces.
You see the backwards logic of the Palestinian leadership. The deaths of terrorists on their way to and from shooting rockets at Israeli civilians are “assassinations.” Rocket attacks that kill terrorist leaders who are responsible for the deaths and injuries of hundreds of Israeli civilians are “assassinations.” And they are “obstacles” to negotiations with the Palestinians. But rockets falling on Israel? Well, that’s Hamas’ fault. The PA can’t control that. And shooting attacks, firebombing, thwarted suicide bomb attacks, knife attacks on Israelis? Funny, but the PA leadership never really says a thing when a boy is stopped at a checkpoint and found to have a suicide bomb vest hidden in his bags.
But the larger fraud is the one the wire services always perpetuate on the world: When they insist that Palestinian leaders “condemn” the deaths of Israelis. Here is what Reuters considers a “condemnation.”
“We mourn the deaths of the two soldiers. Every death is a senseless one,†Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said on Saturday evening in a meeting with President Shimon Peres in Herzliya.
“We are working to end the bloodshed, to create a better future,” said Fayyad and extended his condolences to the families of Cpl. Ahikam Amihai and Sgt. David Ruben, two off-duty soldiers on a hiking trip who were killed in a shooting attack south of Hebron.
I’ll give you a hundred bucks for any word of condemnation in those quotes. But that doesn’t stop Reuters from claiming he “condemned” the deaths of two Israelis. The fact that the Palestinian prime minister actually said he mourns the deaths of the soldiers (and I believe that about as much as I believed that Arafat was concerned about Palestinian Christians, whom he allowed to be driven out of Bethlehem and Nablus) is astonishing in and of itself, but I suspect that if the reporter had managed to stick around afterward, he would have found Fayyad laughing his ass off with his buddies at having managed to pull off such a great PR move.
Here’s another so-called condemnation that is not a condemnation, carried by the Jerusalem Post, whose editors should know better:
Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad Malki strongly condemned Friday’s shooting attack near Hebron which claimed the lives of two Israelis.
“The group that carried out the attack seeks to sabotage peace negotiations and the Palestinian Authority’s plan to increase security in the Palestinian territories,” he was quoted as saying by Israel Radio on Saturday.
Malki added that severe steps would be taken against those responsible for the terror attack.
You see what is condemned? The group’s actions in trying to “sabotage peace negotiations.” The PA’s “plan to increase security.” In other words, the PA is upset that their cover is being blown. As far as the “severe steps” to be taken, I expect they will be similar to Yasser Arafat’s revolving door policy for captured terrorists. Pick them up, imprison them (all the while allowing them full access to phone, TV, visits from relatives and other terrorists), then release them the next time Israel takes out a terrorist or three and blame Israel for it.
Adding to the theme are the words of Marwan Barghouti, convicted Palestinian terrorist that some people think is Fatah’s the PA’s last, best hope for leadership:
“Israel has not made a strategic decision to make peace with the Palestinians,” Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti said in an interview with the Saudi paper Al Wattan on Sunday.
“What is demanded of Israel now is that it announce clearly that it is ready to end the occupation, retreat from occupied territories, remove settlements and checkpoints, stop seizing land, release prisoners, stop the siege of the Gaza Strip and stop killing and destroying operations,” he added.
These are the operations that stop Palestinian terrorists from killing Israelis. Every Palestinian leader, including the so-called “moderates,” insist that Israel must stop targeting and killing terrorists. In an earlier post, I pointed out how the IDF is now so careful to avoid civilian casualties that 97% of all casualties in targeted killings in 2007 were terrorists. In the last few weeks, 40 terrorists have been killed by the IDF with zero civilian casualties, and only three wounded IDF soldiers.
And there you have the real reason why the Palestinians want Israel to stop the “assassinations” and the “killing and destroying operations.” Because they are successful. PIJ leaders have been killed and arrested. The Hamas leadership have all gone to ground for fear of a Hellfire missile knocking at their door. The PA/Fatah/Tanzim leadership doesn’t have to do that, because Israel—and the world—are pretending that Fatah has moderated its stance, and that it wants peace with Israel.
The words of their leaders prove they do not. But the fraud will continue, at least for now.
I really do wonder what is going to happen when the Palestinians eventually get their state. Because I think they will. And I don’t think that terrorism will stop when that happens. Nor will the world condemnation of Israel when she defends herself against the murderers.
Who gave Olmert a backbone transplant?
When the Palestinian Arabs have ceased terrorism then Israel can cease the operations against terrorists. There is not the slightest evidence that the Palis, PA, Hamas, or any other group (insofar as they are actually distinct from each other), actually want to make peace with Israel. The more Pali fighters and especially leaders the IDF kills, the sooner the Palis will be willing to make peace. That will not happen until so many have been killed that the remainder are sick of Palis being killed. At the present rate that will be years, if not decades.
Economic and political despair might make it come sooner. Cut them off from all outside aid and leave them to work or starve, and tell them there will be no state until they stop practicing terrorism and throw all the terrorists out of their government (Fatah, Hamas, PIJ, and every other scummy terrorist outfit). But the outside world will not do this, for they are not, most of them, interested in stopping the war but rather in seeing Israel defeated, even if they don’t want to see Israel destroyed. And the latter do not have the wit to understand that the one implies the other.