The approach to threats against Israel is one of those things that is taken casually. Here’s Secretary Rice on the regular but (relatively) infrequent Qassams that still get fired into Israel despite the ceasefire with Hamas:
QUESTION: How does the ceasefire in Gaza help matters? Has it endured better than you imagined?
SECRETARY RICE: Well, it has its ups and downs, obviously. But look, I – we said early on that if there – that calm in Gaza would be a useful thing because it – the Egyptians, who – with whom we worked, have managed to keep what is a very fragile situation at least stable, and that’s certainly a help to any process of trying to move forward on the peace process.
Ultimately, though, Gaza has to be resolved and it has to be resolved on the basis of the – Abu Mazen’s program for it, which is that legitimate Palestinian Authority institutions have to be reinstated. I think we want to continue to look at what can be done at the crossings for regularization of those ultimately along the lines of the November 2005 agreement. So this is not, I think, a metastable situation, but it’s a situation that for now has seemed to allow at least people to – you know, the levels of violence to stay low, and that’s welcome.
(h/t My Right Word)
Nothing about the threat from Hamas’s building of fortifications and re-arming. Somehow Abu Mazen (she’s using his nom de guerre, how reassuring) is going to impose his authority on Gaza.
And how’s that Abu Mazen thing going? Didn’t Israel just build his confidence? Why yes they did. The New York Times reports:
Israel released almost 200 Palestinian prisoners Monday in a good-will gesture aimed at reinvigorating the faltering peace process. Hours later, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in the country to make her own push for a deal between the two sides.
And what does this “good will gesture” entail?
Among those freed Monday were two men whom Israel says have “blood on their hands,” meaning they had been convicted in attacks that harmed Israelis. Said al-Atabeh, 57, who had been in custody since 1977, was the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner.
“This is a great joy for our mothers and our people, but it remains a small step because we left behind us thousands of prisoners,” Mr. Atabeh said after his release, according to Reuters.
Mr. Atabeh had been convicted in bombings that killed one Israeli woman and wounded dozens of people.
A second long-serving prisoner was Mohammed Abu Ali, who had been jailed since 1980 for the murder of an Israeli settler in the West Bank.
However, most of those set free had been arrested for lesser crimes within the past two years.
“It’s not easy for Israel to release prisoners,” said a government spokesman, Mark Regev, according to The Associated Press. “But we understand the importance of the prisoner issue for Palestinian society.”
(h/t Boker Tov Boulder)
Note that “blood on their hands” is in quotes. Why not just write “who were convicted of murder in the commission of acts of terror?” (without the quotes, of course) Why is almost as much time spent describing the prisoners by the length of time served as by the crimes they committed?
By emphasizing the time served changes their status from terrorists to prisoners. Put another way Snapped Shot asks and answers a question about the coverage of the prisoner release:
How does our “impartial” press choose to represent them?
You guessed it: As heroes.
And as far as the release of prisoners being important for Palestinian society, Israelly Cool explains why it’s important.
These murderers are but two of the “prisoners” we freed today, as a “goodwill” gesture to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. And he reciprocated with a goodwill gesture of his own – a threat that unless all the “prisoners” are freed, there will be no peace.
Speaking of gestures, this one made by the released prisoners does not mean “peace.” It means “V for victory”, and is basically a promise that the terrorism will continue.
JoshuaPundit writes (regarding Condoleeza Rice but the general point holds) about what’s not important:
No mention of course on whether it might matter a lot to the Israelis to keep these killers behind bars.I doubt that matter penetrates her consciousness.
Nor does it matter to Mahmoud Abbas, who referred to the released terrorists as ‘heroes’ and made a point of saying that no peace agreement with Israel was possible until all of the terrorists are released.Nor did eithr he or Condaleeza Rice have the common decency to mention a single word about Gilad Shalit, who’s still being held incommunicado in the Gaza Strip.
And as noted before past experience shows that these prisoner releases will lead to more terror, not peace.
Israel freed 400 Palestinian prisoners and five other prisoners in return for Elhanan Tannenbaum, who was held captive by Hizbullah, and for the bodies of three soldiers kidnapped on Mount Dov. According to Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Tzahi Hanegbi, from the date of the deal on January 29, 2004, until April 17, 2007, those freed in the deal had murdered 35 Israelis.
The Washington Post describes the issue of prisoner releases like this:
Israel has periodically released Palestinian prisoners, whose fate is among the most politically and emotionally compelling issues for the Palestinian public, to shore up Abbas’s government. Abbas favors negotiations with Israel to create an independent Palestinian state, while the rival Hamas movement has advocated destruction of the Jewish state. The releases, although modest, are designed to show that Abbas’s approach yields rewards.
“Modest?” “yields rewards?” No mention that there’s a very good chance that a portion of the terrorist released will likely return to terrorism. So who receives the “rewards” other than terrorists who have seen their terms reduced, is not clear. No mention that the fellow who “favors negotiations” considers resistance (i.e. terrorism) to be peace. There’s something really Orwellian here.
And as a Blog for All writes:
It’s supposed to help bolster Fatah in their internecine struggle with Hamas, but all it does is provide more fodder for the terrorists to hold out hope that they can beat Israel for control over all territory West of the Jordan River.
Despite the romantic terms used to describe the prisoner release, they present a real risk to Israel. When will the world demand that the Palestinians take similar risks for peace?
Crossposted on Yourish.
What an insane country Israel has beome by making “gestures” to a murderer like “Abu Mazen” (as Olmerde slavishly refers to him as). I long for the day when Olmerde gets handcuffed and does the perp walk to prison. As for Condi Clueless Rice – she gives Madeline Albright a run for the money as worst Sec. of State in my lifetime (and I go back to the Eisenhower administration).
There will be peace between Israel and the Arabs when the Palestinian Arabs sicken of being killed. This will take killing many of them. That’s the way it is, too bad. But the Arabs chose war. In that case, war they should get, until they are sick of it, until the very thought of more war sends them into convulsions.
As for the terrorists, Israel should execute them, not give them a cozy jail cell until the Arabs kidnap some poor guy to trade for 400 of them, or when Abbas needs a minor success and spits in Israel’s eye after the “confidence building gesture”.
Does anyone believe that Israel will ever get Cpl Shalit back alive, even if he is not already dead? Regev and Goldwasser were alive when Hezbollah captured them. Israel got them back as corpses, because the Arabs intend genocide and have utter contempt for Jews, just as the Nazis did.