(Washington Post) Charles Krauthammer - On Monday, a peace agreement will be signed by Israelis and Palestinians - not by Israeli and Palestinian officials but by people with no power. The Israeli side is led by Yossi Beilin, a man whose political standing in his own country is so low that he failed to make it into Parliament. He was the principal ideologue and architect behind the "peace" foisted on Israel in 1993 that brought a decade of the worst terror in Israeli history. Secretary of State Powell has written to Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo expressing appreciation for their effort, and is now planning to meet with them. This is scandalous. Israel is a democracy, and this agreement was negotiated in defiance of the democratically (and overwhelmingly) elected government of Israel. If a private U.S. citizen negotiated a treaty on his own, he could go to jail under the Logan Act. If an Israeli does it, he gets a pat on the back from the secretary of state. This "peace" is entirely hallucinatory, written as if Oslo never happened. The Palestinian side repeats the same solemn pledges promised in Oslo, as if the Israelis have forgotten that in return for these pledges 10 years ago, Israel recognized the PLO, brought it out of Tunisian exile, established a Palestinian Authority, permitted it an army with 50,000 guns, and invited the world to donate billions to it. Arafat pocketed every Israeli concession, turned his territory into an armed camp, and then launched a vicious terror war that has lasted more than three years and killed more than 1,000 Israelis. It is Lucy and the football all over again.
2003-11-28 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive