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The Roadblock on the Road Map

(Washington Post) - Charles Krauthammer As long as Yasser Arafat wields power, there can and will be no peace between Israel and the Palestinians. In 2000 the most dovish Israeli government in history presented Arafat with the most generous offer the Palestinians have gotten from anyone - a Palestinian state on 97% of the West Bank, with its capital in a shared Jerusalem. Arafat, intent on getting land without peace, responded by starting a now 31-month-old bloodbath. Abu Mazen is not yet in control. And he may never be. The consistent and principled American policy had been that the road map and the push to statehood would occur only when a Palestinian government dedicated to real reform and real peace replaced the violent and corrupt Arafat regime. That has not occurred. The Bush administration can pretend that Abu Mazen is really in control and, without control of the security apparatus, he is somehow going to stop the violence. But that would be a precise repetition of the disaster of the Oslo "peace process," in which the U.S. willfully and repeatedly ignored the realities on the ground - Arafat's corruption, incitement, and support of terrorism - until all hell broke loose in September 2000, and it could pretend no more. The shunning of Arafat by the Bush administration helped bring Abu Mazen out of nowhere. To relax that shunning now, to reward the Palestinians by demanding Israeli concessions, and by encouraging negotiations while the violence continues with the support and cooperation of Arafat, will do nothing but strengthen Arafat and doom any chance for a real transfer of power. It is diplomatic suicide to stop the Palestinian reform process now by proceeding along the road map as if Arafat didn't exist, when he is in fact still pulling levers. And triggers.
2003-05-08 00:00:00
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