[Spectator-UK] Melanie Phillips - The U.S. persists in its dangerous pretense that it can bring about a resolution of the Israel/Arab dispute at Annapolis by insisting on treating Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah as credible interlocutors for peace. The Bush administration, Europe, and Britain insist on behaving as if Fatah can and will make peace, while ignoring the fact that Abbas has not complied with one single precondition for negotiations laid down in the Roadmap, namely, that he dismantle the infrastructure of terror. This is not, as they imply, a fight between two parties equally responsible for a terrible conflict. It is a war to exterminate the Jewish state that is being waged by Arabs and Islamists with differing strategies and agendas on the same continuum of annihilation - and with not one single credible interlocutor on their side who genuinely wants to live in peace with Israel. The Western refusal to acknowledge this inconvenient truth gives this conflict its surreal dimension, in which a country that has been under exterminatory attack for the past six decades is expected to make reparations to its assailants and reward them with a state of their own even while they continue with their war against it; to provide food, power and other supplies to its attackers in Gaza in order that they can continue their murderous assault upon it; and to treat a leader who refuses to stop the war as an apostle of peace simply because no one can think of a better idea.
2007-11-01 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive