You read it here first (March 17 post) -- Condi Rice is a wrong'un. She has just visited Israel ostensibly to calm a deteriorating situation caused by the Islamic Jihad suicide bombing outside a Netanya shopping mall on July 12, which killed five Israelis, and relentless bombardments of Gaza and western Negev communities by Hamas which killed 22-year-old Dana Galkovitch in Netiv Ha'asara inside the green line. Instead, she praised the people who the US says it expects to put a stop to such terror but have refused to do so. The Jerusalem Post is rightly aghast:

'Though PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's foreign minister has candidly reneged on the PA's road map commitments to confiscate weapons and explosives in the hands of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and those elements within his own Fatah movement aligned with the rejectionists, Rice nevertheless complimented the Palestinian leadership for taking "important steps" against terrorism. Such praise strikes the wrong tone.

'What "steps" she was referring to was left to the imagination: Perhaps Abbas's goal of incorporating terrorists under the rubric of the PA's security forces; perhaps it was the belated, uneven, largely ineffective, and now apparently suspended efforts by PA Interior Minister Nasser Youssef to end Palestinian lawlessness – not for Israel's sake, but for the Palestinians themselves.

'Whatever the "steps" and with just 21 days to disengagement remaining, Abbas's aversion to taking on the rejectionists helped make Saturday night's murder of husband and wife Dov and Rachel Kol, who had gone to Gush Katif to visit family in Ganei Tal, possible. The attack also left the area's intrepid civilian security coordinator, Ami Shaked, and a young couple, also visiting for Shabbat, wounded. It took many hours for Abbas to even bother to condemn the attack – not as immoral but as counterproductive.

'Further catastrophe was averted – no thanks to the Palestinian Authority – on Friday night, when the IDF caught a would-be suicide bomber from Abbas's own Fatah movement on his way to blow up a crowded Tel Aviv nightspot. The terrorist, wearing a five-kilogram explosives belt packed with nails, infiltrated from Gaza's perimeter fence near Kibbutz Nir-Am. Another infiltrator – married to a woman from Jaffa and thus enjoying unimpeded access inside Israel – was tasked with delivering the bomber to his target.

'All told, 92 infiltration attempts into Israel from Gaza have been thwarted by security forces since the beginning of 2005. Friday night's effort was the first successful penetration from inside Gaza in seven months. In this context, Rice's admiration for the "steps" Abbas has taken to curb Palestinian terrorism rings hollow. And yet Rice went on to compound her stance with an even more incongruous avowal: "When the Israelis withdraw from Gaza, it cannot be sealed or isolated, with the Palestinian people holed in ... We are committed to the connectivity of Gaza and the West Bank."

'This sort of statement is grating for two reasons. First, because it implies that Israel is, presumably out of spite or indifference, arbitrarily impeding Palestinian movements when all such movements have immediate security implications. Second, because at just the moment when Israel is simultaneously under terrorist attack and tearing itself apart over dismantling settlements, Washington still seems to feel a need to search for some Palestinian demand it can endorse while publicly berating Israel. This is called "evenhandedness," something that Rice's predecessor early in the Bush administration vowed would not continue under President George W. Bush, and yet remains a recurring touchstone of American policy.'

So much for the Bush doctrine.