An analysis in Ha'aretz suggests that, notwithstanding President Bush's gesture of thanks to Tony Blair by having a cosy chat this week about kick-starting the Middle East 'peace process', Bush is not about to change course. Thank goodness for that, if true, since Blair (with the Europeans behind him) is singing the siren song of appeasement. As the Ha'aretz article observes:

'Sharon is under both domestic and international pressure to recognize the new reality created by Arafat's death, and change his approach accordingly - to coordinate the disengagement with the Palestinians and restart talks on the implementation of the road map. Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to freeze the disengagement and negotiate with Arafat's replacements. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has spoken in closed forums of "coordinated disengagement" and talks with the Palestinians. Opposition leader Shimon Peres is dying to resume negotiations. So far, Sharon is withstanding this pressure. He scorns Netanyahu and ignores Mofaz. And Likud kingmaker Silvan Shalom is backing him: "A war on terror, in accordance with the first stage of the road map, is the only way to return to negotiations."

'Sharon's firm stance is possible because of backing from Washington. President George Bush is in no rush to change directions in the Middle East. He is rejecting Europe's urgings that he rush forward with negotiations and evict Israel from the territories in exchange for improved trans-Atlantic relations. White House officials Elliott Abrams and Daniel Fried told European emissaries this weekend that "there are no shortcuts." America is unwilling to skip the first stage of the road map, which requires the Palestinians to halt terror, dismantle the terrorist organizations and enact governmental and security reforms. The Europeans and new Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas want to go straight to final-status negotiations on borders, refugees and Jerusalem. But Washington insists that the new leadership prove itself first.'

If this is so, then undoubtedly the terror-supporters' glee club will strike up once again their morally obtuse refrain that it is Sharon and Bush who are, through their war-crazed obduracy, preventing peace from breaking out. But the fact is that Bush's attributed position is the only moral position. There is not a balance of terror on both sides in the Israel/Arab impasse. It is the Arabs -- in recent years through their Palestinian proxies -- who are trying to annihilate Israel. For any peace settlement to be achieved, the onus is therefore on the Palestinians to stop instigating terrorist mass murder and inciting their populations to hatred and killing. If they were to do that, the Israeli incursions against the Palestinians would stop instantly, as everyone whose mind has not been twisted grasps only too well.

It is because the conflict is that way round that the now defunct Road Map laid down as its first requirement that the Palestinians dismantle their infrastructure of terror. The European position that the Israelis should immediately move to final status talks regardless of the fact that Palestinian murder and incitement continue, in defiance of the Road Map, is simply a grotsque capitulation to terror and makes the Europeans effectively party to the extermination of Israelis and, beyond them, the Jewish state. Before negotiations begin, the Palestinians have to demonstrate that they are now prepared, after a hundred years of refusing to accept the Jewish presence in Israel -- or before that, Palestine -- at all, to accept a Jewish state living in peace side by side with their own rather than as a 'Trojan horse' -- their term -- to achieve the ethnic cleansing of the Jews. In other words, they have to show that with Arafat's death they really have drawn a line under their bloody past.

So far, the signs are not auspicious. Mohammed Dahlan, the Gaza strong man who for some reason the Israelis think is a pragmatist in the making, has said that:

'...halting four years of violence with Israel will not be the first priority of the post-Arafat leadership. “If you want, there will be a cease-fire. If you don’t want, there won’t be. The key is in your hands,” he was quoted as saying, blaming Israel for the breakdown of previous cease-fires. “But a cease-fire is not the first stage. We are building a new house now from the foundations. That is the first task,” he said.'

And a permant cessation of Palestanian violence will not happen while Blair and the Europeans insist on piling the pressure not on Palestinians such as Dahlan but instead upon Israel to stop defending itself, leaving Bush alone to champion the victims of terror against their slaughterers, and uphold right against wrong.

Posted by melanie at November 12, 2004