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One Harmful Handshake

[New York Daily News] Danielle Pletka - The American secretary of state believes that a Sunni Arab world unified by fear of a radical Iran may finally force the Palestinians into peace with Israel. In other words, the Arabs will deliver the Palestinians, and the Americans will deliver the Israelis. This is old think at its worst. In keeping with the effort to bolster the "moderates," the administration is trying to funnel $86 million to Abbas for his security forces. The fact that those self-same security forces are indistinguishable from the Fatah terror group known as the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and that Fatah itself pursued a policy of terror over peace throughout its tenure in power, has not slowed the administration's eagerness to engage in a new peace process. Clever State Department diplomats believe that by describing a "horizon," or shape to a future Palestinian state, they will undercut Palestinian rejectionists and, in turn, destabilize Hamas. But embracing one terrorist to weaken another is not a foreign policy strategy, it's just unprincipled gamesmanship. The writer is vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
2007-02-20 01:00:00
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