Israel Matzav

What will it take to dump Abu Mazen?

At FrontPageMagazine.com, David Hornik recounts US Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice's anger with 'moderate' 'Palestinian President' Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen over the Mecca Accord at last week's pointless summit, and wonders what it will take for Rice (and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud K. Olmert) to realize that Abu Mazen is not the answer to the question of peace.

America is supposed to be fighting a War on Terror. Would it openly embrace as an ally someone who had worked in close cahoots for years with Bin Laden or Hassan Nasrallah? Would it expect such a person to behave peaceably and responsibly and then be shocked when he openly formed an alliance with other terrorists?

Whatever the extent of Rice’s frustration, it is not yet great enough for her to kick the Abbas-habit. She told the “traveling US press” that “both the U.S. and Israel want to deal with [Abbas’s administration] for as long as they can, in the hope that it will eventually bring about a change” in the Hamas-dominated government and legislature. Olmert, for his part, said “both he and his staff would keep meeting Abbas and his staff.”

One wonders what Abbas would have to do for Rice and Olmert finally to see him differently. Meanwhile, the ongoing Abbas-delusion is a large part of why a U.S. administration sworn to fight terror keeps encouraging the weakest tendencies in Israel, why the jihadist buildup in Gaza continues undisturbed, why Israel keeps living in hair-trigger peril with suicide bombings thwarted almost daily. Does this policy at least influence Washington’s “Arab allies” toward what it views as moderacy? Ask the Saudis.

Unfortunately, the answer is that there is probably nothing Abu Mazen can do that would make Rice and Olmert see him differently, unless, like Arafat, he is caught directly paying for terrorism. And even then, he would just be replaced as the "good guy" by one of his cronies just as he himself replaced Arafat after the Karine A weapons smuggling incident.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:40 PM