Tuesday December 6, 2005

Column:

The scene repeats itself over and over again.

The questions are the same each time:
How many dead?
How many injured?
Where did it happen?
When were you last there?
What method did they use?
Who has claimed responsibility?

"Why?" is a question that had not been asked in a very long time. It is a question that is now back on the agenda.

Now, a few short weeks after Israel's historic withdrawal from Gaza, a few long hours after a Palestinian backed terrorist claimed innocent lives in yet another terror attack against Israel in the hard hit city of Netanya, the world community must begin to ask another set of questions.

The world needs to know:
Is the Palestinian Authority doing anything to truly stop the terror?
Are the words of condemnation mouthed by Palestinian leader Abbas enough?
Can Israel and the West help Abbas and the Palestinians fight the terror?

NO, No,no.

Palestinian Authority leadership has begun to realize that Israel and the West, most especially the United States, are using the Palestinian fight against terror as a test to determine the Palestinian commitment to democracy and reform. As a result, the PA is gesturing, gesticulating and making superficial efforts to engage in a fight against the terror in their midst, but the act is becoming tiresome and their empty gestures are becoming evermore transparent.

Even in his public condemnation of the Netanya attack President Abbas qualified his condemnation. "The PA opposes any attack on civilians" is what he said. Not, "any attack," not "any attack against Israelis," Abbas specifically said, "any attack against civilians."

Make no mistake about it. Abbas is saying that there are clear and actual attacks and targets that ARE acceptable. He is drawing a line, a blurry line, between those people and places that are more acceptable and those, like Netanya, that are less acceptable. But he IS NOT condemning terror. In the mind of Abbas, the man charged with rooting terror out of the Palestinian midst, there are actually targets that are acceptable, that are strategic, that are worthy of terrorist attack.

Do you know what that means?

It means that the Palestinians are at war with Israel. Officially. At war. With the very country they are supposed to be aggressively pursuing for peace.

Well, you might ask: Isn't Israel at war with the Palestinians? Isn't Israel regularly pursuing, targeting, capturing, even killing Palestinians? Even on a daily basis?

NO, No, no. And if the Palestinians paid attention to the facts on the ground, to the actions not the rhetoric, it would enable them to really pursue an aggressive battle not against Israel, but against the terrorists, the true enemy of Palestinian progress and reform.

Israel is not at war with the Palestinians.

Israel is at war with terror. Israel is not at war with a Palestinian government or with a Palestinian army. Israel is in pursuit of clearly identified and targeted groups and individuals who are a direct threat to Israeli sites, to Israeli citizens, to Israel's survival.

Things have changed. Israel is not attacking Palestinian military and police centers as they once did. They were once under attack because the military and police themselves were the organizations directly sponsoring terror. There are still terrorists in the PA infrastructure, but many fewer giving Israel the ability to focus on the individuals, not the institutions. Or, at least, that's what Israel thinks.

Because then the situation gets all muddied and confusing again.

Abu Mahmoud a senior al Aksa Brigade leader said that a Palestinian group was responsible for the Netanya attack. He said: "this is an important act, since it makes it clear to Israel that the organizations, despite their commitment to the calm, are also committed to a certain balance in their responses."

Al Aksa is a direct arm of the Palestinian Authority. Abu Mahmoud and Mahmoud Abbas are true brothers. They speak the same language, they think the same thoughts, they shimmy to the same music. Abu Mahmoud is justifying the terror. The suggestion that terror teaches Israel a lesson shows just how divergent Israel and the Palestinians are in their understanding of the preset day situation.

The question then is: Can Israel, the United States, the West, really expect the Palestinians to root out the infrastructure of terror when they use it as a learning device, a tool with which to teach Israelis and Palestinians important lessons? The answer is: They cannot.

The West and Israel must hold the Palestinian Authority to an absolute test on terror. No compromises can be accepted. And when the Palestinians fail, the world will know "why."