With ‘Partners for Peace’ Like Arafat, Who Needs Enemies?

(Washington, D.C.): Just when it
seemed impossible for Yasser Arafat to
demonstrate more clearly his contempt for
the Middle East “peace process”
and the commitment to peaceful
co-existence with Israel on which it is
supposed to be predicated, he finds yet
another, still more palpable vehicle: On
19 August, it was a kiss, warm embrace
and applause for Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, a
leader of the Palestinian terrorist
faction Hamas, and others described
yesterday by State Department Press
Spokesman James Rubin as “enemies of
peace.”

In fact, the Hamas Charter first
issued in 1988 declares very explicitly:

“There is no
solution to the Palestinian
problem except by Jihad
(holy war). The [peace]
initiative, proposals and
International Conferences are but
a waste of time, an exercise in
futility. The Palestinian people
are too noble to have their
future, their right and their
destiny submitted to a vain
game.”

Unity, Arafat-Style

According to today’s New York
Times, at a “National Unity
Conference to Confront the
Challenges” which included various
Palestinian groups “including the
militant Islamic groups who favor a more
confrontational stance toward the
Israelis” — notably, Islamic Holy
War which “has devoted itself almost
exclusively to attacks on Israel” —
“Arafat returned to the combative
language of the seven-year uprising
[intefada] against Israeli
occupation….”

Making clear the terms of reference
for Palestinian “unity,”Aziz
al-Rantisi, declared that, “This
is not a conference to support Oslo,
but to support the stance of our people
against the American and Israeli
pressures on the Palestinian Authority to
arrest and crack down on the Islamic
movements.” The Times noted
that, “The speakers, apparently
following rules agreed upon in advance,
did not call explicitly for violence
against Israel, but instead urged
‘resistance,’ ‘confrontation’ and
‘struggle’ against the Israeli
‘enemy.'”

Beyond the embraces and applause and
calls for struggle against the Israeli
enemy, Arafat used the occasion to
reaffirm the common objective he shares
with the most radical of Palestinian
Arabs: “We are one on our
path to Jerusalem, the capital of the
State of Palestine, whether anyone likes
it or not, and whoever doesn’t can go
drink the sea water.⁽¹⁾

‘See No Evil…’

Incredibly, the U.S. government
remains determined formally to ignore
this development — just as it has the
many previous indications of Arafat’s
true colors and intentions towards
Israel.⁽²⁾
While the Times described senior
Administration officials as privately
“dismayed,” the party line was
as pollyannish as ever. For example, in
his press briefing yesterday, Rubin
repeated his shopworn formulation:
“Chairman Arafat has signed peace
agreements; he has implemented peace
agreements. He has indicated he wants to
negotiate further peace agreements. We
have worked with him, and he is a partner
in that process.”

The briefing took on an almost
Wonderland-like quality as Rubin was
challenged by a reporter about his blithe
assertion that “We have received a
series of assurances from Chairman Arafat
in the course of Ambassador Ross’ and
others’ discussions in recent days and
weeks that he will assist in the fight
against terrorism; that he will assist in
the renewal of security
cooperation.” As the reporter put
it: “Secretary [of State George]
Shultz…often said ‘words in the Middle
East are very important.’ You have private
assurances. This is the man’s public
statement. Which do you
think resonates more with the
Palestinians – his public statements or
what he confides to Dennis Ross?“
With no sense of the irony — not to say
absurdity — of his response, Rubin
replied: “Secretary Shultz’s words
aside, we’re going to judge — in the
area of security cooperation and
anti-terrorist cooperation — Chairman
Arafat by deeds. Deeds
are the coin of the realm when it comes
to fighting terrorism.”

The Bottom Line

It is now crystal clear that the
Clinton Administration is not
interested in deeds when it comes to
Yasser Arafat, it is interested
only in words and symbolic gestures
intended for a Western audience. The
deeds that count — the actions he
engages in that encourage violence and
that confirm his abiding enmity towards
Israel, an enmity that he shares in
equal measure with the members of
Hamas and Islamic Jihad — are of no
interest to the U.S. government. Instead,
in a manner all-too-reminiscent of the
self-confident reliance placed by Neville
Chamberlin’s appeasers on the words and
agreements of the despots of an earlier
age, the Clinton team believes Arafat’s words
are the coin of the realm.

The Administration — and those who,
like it, persist in ignoring the ominous
implications of the real Arafat
agenda — would do well to adopt the
advice given to Ambassador Ross by the
editorial page of the Jerusalem Post
on 8 August:

“We do not accuse you of bad
faith, but rather of misguided
policies that have had serious
consequences. You have
participated in an attempt to
hoodwink the Israeli electorate.
You have helped teach the
Palestinians that they can wiggle
out of signed commitments. You
have assisted them in pursuing a
twin-track approach of talking
peace and pursuing violence for
the past four years. All
of which has meant the death and
dismemberment of many innocent
people, and declining public
confidence in a vital process
that you have worked so hard to
advance. Please don’t give us any
more summits against terrorism
like the one cooked up at Sharm
el-Sheikh during the last
election campaign. We ask
you instead to examine your
conscience and change your
ways. Human lives,
indeed the fate of the region,
depend on it.” (Emphasis
added.)

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1. A
long-standing goal for the PLO,
among others determined to
destroy the State of Israel, has
been to “drive the Jews into
the sea.”

2. These
include: attending memorial
services for Palestinian suicide
bombers and describing them as
“martyrs,” inciting his
police forces to use
Israeli-supplied automatic
weapons against Israel’s military
and civilian population, using
maps of “Palestine”
which include the entire
territory of pre-1968 Israel,
endlessly calling for jihad
(holy war) against Israel, etc.