Reputedly moderate Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas is
re****ted to have =93sent greetings to Kuntar=94=97referring to the
Lebanese
terrorist freed in Wednesday=92s Israel-Hezbollah exchange who in a 1979
attack killed a 28-year-old Israeli man in front of his 4-year-old
daughter and then killed the girl by sma****ng her head.
Abbas was on a visit to Malta at the time and was under no known
pressure to issue his tidings. Even if he was=97Samir Kuntar being
popular among his Fatah Party, which held a rally in Ramallah to laud
his release and that of the remains of Palestinian mass murderer Dalal
Mughrabi=97Abbas did not have to accede to the pressure. He has, after
all, free will and there is absolutely no compulsion for anyone to
send greetings to an unrepentant child-murderer upon his release from
prison into total freedom at the age of 46.
Since Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian Authority in
2005, he has been fawned over and enshrined as a figure of peace and
moderation by both American and Israeli (as well as, of course,
European and other) leaders, particularly by President George W. Bush
and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the American side and by
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on the
Israeli side.
Those of us who have been disturbed by this treatment have tried to
call attention to many indications that Abbas is not really a benign
or moderate figure, of which these are only some of the highlights:
* On December 5, 2005, the same day that an Islamic Jihad suicide
bombing in Netanya, Israel, killed 5 people and wounded over 40, Abbas
signed a law giving monthly stipends to the families of suicide
bombers.
* At a Fatah rally in Ramallah on January 11, 2007, Abbas told a large
crowd of Palestinians, estimated between 50,000-250,000, that =93We have
a legitimate right to direct our guns against Israeli occupation=94 and
=93The sons of Israel are mentioned [in the Koran] as those who are
corrupting humanity on earth.=94
* Abbas has always insisted on the =93right of return for Palestinian
refugees,=94 code for the demographic flooding and destruction of Israel
and completely unacceptable even to the most pliant of Israeli
governments. A re****t last May cited Abbas=92s insistence on this point
as part of the ongoing unreconciled differences between him and
Olmert. Among many other instances, at the same 2007 Ramallah rally
where Abbas spoke of the =93legitimate right to direct our guns against
Israeli occupation=94 he said that the =93issue of the refugees is non-
negotiable.=94
* Abbas has never recognized Israel=92s legitimacy as a Jewish state. He
declined to do so at the November 2007 Annapolis Conference, and after
the conference =93reiterated his rejection of Israel=92s demand to
recognize it as a Jewish state.=94
* Abbas engages in dangerous incitement against Israel before Muslim
and Arab audiences, as when he told the Organization of the Islamic
Conference in Senegal last March=97a gathering that included Iranian
president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad=97that =93Our people in Jerusalem are under
an ethnic cleansing campaign=94 and Palestinians =93are facing a campaign
of annihilation=94 by Israel, or told the Arab summit in Damascus later
that month that =93Israel pursues its aggression and occupation=94 and
perpetrates =93barbaric attacks, causing hundreds of defenseless
victims.=94
* Abbas formed a unity government with Hamas=97officially defined as a
terrorist organization by both the United States and Israel=97in March
2007. Since that government=92s dissolution in June 2007 Abbas has kept
trying to reestablish it, discussing the matter with Syrian dictator
Bashar Assad and international terrorist leaders in Damascus as
recently as last week.
There are two basic motivations for calling attention to these
counterindications of Abbas=92s supposed moderacy. One is a regard for
truth. The leaders of the United States and of Israel should not have
to stoop to fawning over, and extolling as =93a man of peace=85a man of
vision,=94 an individual with a track record like that of Abbas.
Second, as is often the case, distorting the truth in this way has
harmful practical consequences. Upholding the fiction of the moderate
Abbas is central to encouraging perceptions of the Palestinian
Authority itself as moderate and on a path to peace with Israel,
enabling a situation where, among other things:
* Lavish international aid keeps flowing to the PA. As Rachel
Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen noted this week, =93the PA announced on
January 15, 2008 its intentions to give Hamas=85=9140 percent=92 ($3.1
billion) of the $7.4 billion pledged in December 2007 by international
donors. Evidently, the donors did not take this statement seriously,
and from January to June 2008, gave the PA $920 million in direct
budgetary aid.=94 At the abovementioned Arab summit in Damascus, Abbas
himself said the PA transfers 58 percent of its budget to Hamas-
controlled Gaza and pays the salaries of 77,000 employees there.
Meanwhile there is no evidence that the aid to the PA has reduced the
poverty and corruption that beset the West Bank and Gaza under PA and/
or Hamas rule, or has done much more than line the pockets of a venal
elite.
* With Abbas and his PA perceived as benign and peaceful, no pressure
is put on Abbas to address the problem of the severe anti-Israeli,
anti-Semitic, and anti-American incitement that permeates the PA=92s
schools, medias, and mosques=97as abundantly do***ented by Palestinian
Media Watch and others.
* The United States goes so far as to fund, equip, and train PA forces
even though the results range from corruption and ineptness to
increased terrorism.
* The belief that Abbas=92s PA is conciliatory leads to heightened
pressure on Israel to take measures that are harmful to it such as
ceasing to build homes even in its capital city and taking down
checkpoints that are vital to preventing terror attacks.
It=92s not clear whether and how much, in the time they have left, Bush
and Rice will keep chasing the Abbas-mirage with all the deleterious
consequences. As for Olmert, who also doesn=92t have much time left as
leader, he said in a news conference this week with Abbas and French
president Sarkozy that =93I think we have never been as close to the
possibility of reaching an agreement as we are today=94=97despite all the
above and much more.
But apart from these specific American and Israeli leaders, the
practice of anointing a Palestinian leader as a moderate and then
treating him that way no matter how grave the counterindications goes
back to Yasser Arafat in the early 1990s and remains a clear-cut
danger for the future. Now that Mahmoud Abbas has sent his tidings to
a heinous child-murderer, continuing to flatter and boost Abbas has
gone beyond the cowardly, undignified, and harmful: it has become
obscene. Both Americans and Israelis deserve much better conduct from
their leaders and should demand it in no uncertain terms.
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