An excellent and necessarily sobering article by Emanuele Ottolenghi reminds us of what Mahmoud Abbas has to do to qualify for the mantle of man of peace and Palestinian statesman that so many are desperately hoping he will assume. Simply, he has to not only talk the talk but walk the walk -- and that means disarming the Palestinian terror infrastructure. His first gestures were promising - deploying Palestinian police to stop rocket attacks on Israel and negotating a cease-fire. But gestures is so far all they are. As Ottolenghi observes:

'Those who advocate a cease-fire in the hope that bringing extremists into the political process will turn them into moderates forget the lessons of history. Extremists must first be disarmed: leaving them with their weapons will only allow them to challenge state power and blackmail elected authorities. That is why a cease-fire is but an illusion, unless Abbas resolves to fight terrorism'.

Unfortunately, Britain and Europe are all too eager to pretend that such illusions are reality. Once a piece of maybe wishful thinking takes hold -- such as 'Abbas is a moderate' -- it becomes impossible to shake, regardless of all the evidence to the contrary, if other politicians are determined to bury their heads in the sand. There is no doubt that Abbas's character and style are very different from that of Arafat, whom one could not have imagined making these anti-terror gestures. But Abbas's own record in Holocaust denial and his stated ultimate aim -- the right of Palestinian immigration into Israel, which would destroy it as a Jewish state - mean prudent circumspection towards him should be the order of the day.

Of course it is possible that despite this background, he will prove to be a real statesman by putting all that behind him. But as Ottolenghi emphasises, the real evidence for that must be his determination to end both the violence and the institutional incitement of his people to murder the Jews. If he does that -- well, then we really would have a sensational transformation in the Middle East and the first real hope for peace in a century. And that's precisely why I am sceptical.

Posted by melanie at February 2, 2005