Soccer Dad

The topsy turvy world of peace

Today Clarity and Resolve tells us how well The New Abbas (same as the old boss) is facing down the terrorists in his midst. What's he doing? He's integrating them into his police force. How fortunate is Israel. I suppose that New York would have been a lot safer if the city had recruited John Gotti's gunsels into the NYPD instead of seeking to prosecute him and put him out of business. (That's not to say that there weren't corrupt cops. Just that systematically recruiting the bad guys into your police force is probably not a way to "increase the peace.") And I think that the picture that Patrick the Kafir included is worth a thousand words.
(Speaking of pictures look at how Hamas celebrates the yahrzeits of Yassin and Rantisi. Courtesy of It's almost supernatural.)
In other news, (thanks to the ever vigilant Malka Young) DM Mofaz is apparently at the end of his patience with the PA as Israel apparently has intelligence indicating that Palestinian security services are smuggling missiles into Gaza. (Yeah, joining the security services really seems to reform these guys.)

Mofaz also told ministers that Palestinian Authority military intelligence agents were involved in recent attempts to smuggle anti-aircraft missiles into Gaza.

He told the weekly cabinet meeting that Strela missiles may have been smuggled into the Gaza Strip from Egypt through tunnels, despite the fact that the PA has recently acted against such infrastructure and exposed about 20 tunnels.

Meanwhile someone undermined Israel's diplomatic position and AG Menachem Mazuz doesn't find it actionable.

Israel's Ambassador to the United States Danny Ayalon, responding Sunday to a controversy surrounding American policy on the Middle East, said that President George W. Bush unequivocally supports Israel's stance that major West Bank settlement blocs are to be part of the Jewish state under a future peace treaty.

On Friday, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer strongly denied a Yedioth Aharonoth report quoting the him as having stated that, contrary to Israeli statements, no understandings had been reached between Israel and the Bush administration over the future status of the settlement blocs.
...
Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, however, decided later Sunday that there would be no criminal probe into how the ambassador's comments were leaked.

This is no small matter. With publications like the Washington Post writing editorials like "Freeze this Settlement":

PRESIDENT BUSH didn't leave much room for doubt about his position on Israeli settlement construction when he last addressed the issue. The government of Ariel Sharon "must freeze settlement activity," the president said in a speech to European leaders in Brussels in February. Moreover, he added, a Palestinian state "of scattered territories will not work." The large settlement expansion announced by Mr. Sharon's government this week grossly violates both those principles. Construction of the 3,500 new homes between the existing West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim and East Jerusalem, on what is now barren land, would contravene previous Israeli commitments to the Bush administration and the U.S.-sponsored "road map" for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. By sealing off Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods from the West Bank as well as a key north-south corridor, it also would make a contiguous Palestinian state practically impossible.

This of course is an outright falsehood as this map from the Washington Institute for Near East Peace makes clear. Connecting Maale Adumim to Yerushalayim will not make a "contiguous Palestinian state practically impossible." But when someone from official Israel - or Israel's media - undermines Israel's position that action supports this kind of falsehood that only makes Israel's position harder to defend and effectively legitimizes terror against Israel. (Thanks again to It's almost supernatural.)
And of course Fred Hiatt and company don't even bother mentioning the ongoing Palestinian violations as being an obstacle to peace or violatiing the terms President Bush laid out.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at March 27, 2005 12:25 PM