COLUMN ONE: GLAD TIDINGS OF PEACE PROCESSES
By Caroline Glick

Jerusalem Post
Dec 25 2006

You have to wonder what thoughts passed through the minds of
Bethlehem’s Christians as Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah
commander Mahmoud Abbas appeared at the Church of the Nativity for
Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

On April 2, 2002, as IDF forces swept into Bethlehem to root out
the terrorists who had taken control of the city, between 150 and
180 Fatah terrorists under Yasser Arafat’s command shot their way
into the Church of the Nativity. For the next 39 days they held the
sacred site and some 150 clergymen hostage.

Three weeks into the siege, three Armenian monks escaped from the
church through a side entrance and revealed what was happening
inside. Friar Narkiss Koraskian told reporters: "They stole
everything. They stole our prayer books and four crosses. They didn’t
leave anything."

When the siege ended, the released hostages told of frequent beatings
of clergymen. The terrorists, they told The Washington Times, "ate
like greedy monsters," gorging themselves on food and slurping down
beer, wine and Johnny Walker scotch they stole from the rectory as
their hostages went hungry.

CATHOLIC priests said that the terrorists used their bibles as toilet
paper. Franciscan priest Nicholas Marques from Mexico reported:
"Palestinians took candelabra, icons and anything that looked like
gold." Thirteen of the ring-leaders of the siege were deported to
Cyprus and then dispersed to European countries. Twenty-six were sent
to Gaza.

Bethlehem’s Christians could not hide their relief at the expulsions.

They spoke of a "reign of terror," of rape, murder and extortion that
the men had waged against them over the previous two years. Helen,
a Christian woman, told The Washington Times, "Finally the Christians
can breathe freely. We are so delighted that these criminals who have
intimidated us for such a long time are going away."

On Saturday night, as part of his massive effort to "strengthen"
Abbas, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed to convene a joint committee
to discuss the return of these terrorists to the city.

Speaking of his good friend Mahmoud on Sunday afternoon to a Kadima
audience in Ashkelon, Olmert allowed that "Abu Mazen [Abbas] is an
adversary." But, he explained, he is an enemy Olmert can do business
with.

IT IS TRUE that business sometimes can be done with enemies. But what
business can Olmert do with Abbas? And how does any of this business
advance Israel’s national interests?

At the cabinet meeting Sunday, Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin embraced
Olmert’s decision to "strengthen" Abbas, by, among other things,
giving him $100m. and agreeing to release terrorists from Israeli
prisons even without receiving so much as a sign of life from IDF
Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who has been held hostage by Abbas’s underlings
and their Hamas pals in Gaza for the past six months.

Diskin warned the ministers that if elections were held today in
the PA, Hamas would win hands down. Not only would they retain their
control over the PA government, they would no doubt rout Abbas himself
and take over his presidency.

In light of the Palestinians’ apparent satisfaction with their lot
at being governed by genocidal jihadists from Hamas as opposed to
corrupt genocidal jihadists from Fatah like the ones who took over
the Church of the Nativity, the government believes that it needs to
make the PA irrelevant – a mere school district – as one government
official put it. In the meantime, the real power will be placed in
the hands of the Fatah-controlled PLO.

There are of course, two problems with this. First, that "mere school
district" will be armed to the teeth and controlled by an Iranian- (and
Saudi-) trained, funded and armed regime that is overwhelmingly popular
among its "students." This little backwater will continue to serve
as a nexus for global jihad that is little different from Somalia.

Hamas has made clear that it will fight to the last man to protect
its regime. Yet in the interest of "strengthening Abbas," Israel is
doing nothing to weaken Hamas either militarily or politically.

THE SECOND problem with the "school district" strategy is that the
edifice of power the Olmert government seeks to replace the PA with
has no interest in making peace with Israel. To the contrary, far
from seeking to transform the PA into a liberal, pacific democracy
committed to peaceful coexistence with Israel (or for that matter,
just freeing Shalit from captivity), Abbas seeks to strengthen the
terrorist character of Palestinian society.

Abbas’s demands of Olmert make this fact perfectly clear.

If Abbas were interested in peace he would not be demanding that Israel
release terrorists from prison; stop arresting wanted terrorists;
make it easier for terrorists to operate in Judea and Samaria by
suspending IDF counterterror operations and taking down roadblocks;
bring more terrorists into the areas from Jordan; arm terrorists
through Egypt; and give him money to pay the salaries of terrorists.

If Abbas wanted peace he would be asking the IDF to escalate its
fight against the terrorists. He would prefer that they rot in jail
and not be released to enjoy the freedom to kill again.

In other words, if Abbas were interested in peace he would be doing
precisely the opposite of what he is doing.

THERE ARE three reasons why Olmert and his government are acting as
they are. First, they are doubtless bowing to pressure from the Bush
administration. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated several
times over the past week alone that the US has decided that its
interest is advanced by Israel giving things to Abbas. But is US
pressure a reasonable justification for Olmert’s treatment of Abbas?

Olmert justifies his refusal to negotiate with Syrian dictator and
Iranian toadie Bashar Assad by noting that the Bush administration
strenuously objects to holding such talks. Yet this is a flimsy excuse
for not negotiating with Syria. Even if the US were pressuring Israel
to negotiate with Syria it would make no sense to engage Assad because
Israel has absolutely nothing to gain from doing so.

As is the case with Abbas, by holding talks with Syria Israel would
be conferring unwarranted legitimacy on Assad while receiving nothing
of value in return. If Syria agreed to the handover of IDF hostages
Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser and to ending Syrian sponsorship of
Palestinian terror groups and Hizbullah in return for negotiations
with Israel, it might make sense to confer such legitimacy on Assad
even if the US objected. But Assad will do no such thing, and so
there is nothing to be gained from talking to him.

So too, were Abbas to agree to fork over Shalit and end Fatah terrorism
and indeed cooperate with the IDF in fighting Hamas and Islamic Jihad,
there would be something to be gained by meeting with him – regardless
of the US’s position.

Although US pressure is real, it would be relatively easy to brush off
simply by publicly pointing out the obvious. Aside from Washington’s
carping, Olmert’s decision to "strengthen" Abbas stems from the fact
that his government has no strategic vision whatsoever.

Cast adrift, Olmert is moved by the prevailing winds.

FOR THE PAST two weeks or so, since Assad began chirping about his
wish to negotiate, the leftist-controlled Israeli media has been
excoriating Olmert for bowing to Washington by refusing to meet with
Assad. The weekend papers were full of condemnations by the chief
diplomatic commentators in the major papers demanding that Olmert
give the Golan Heights to Assad regardless of what the fuddy duddies
in Washington think.

And so, Saturday night’s kissy-kissy meeting with Abbas was aimed,
among other things, at shutting them up. And it worked quite nicely.

Both Ma’ariv and Yediot Ahronot merrily proclaimed in their Sunday
editions that Abbas was a stand-in for Assad – but he’d do for now.

Finally, it is impossible to ignore the contribution the apparent
stupidity of Israel’s leaders made to Olmert’s decision to embrace
Abbas.

Sunday morning, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni exposed this idiocy when
she asked Diskin whether he thought that Hamas was strong enough
to stop the rocket attacks on Sderot and the Western Negev. In
response, Diskin gently pointed out that Hamas is a terror group
that is dedicated to destroying Israel, and so while it could stop
the rockets, it has no interest in doing so.

GEE, HOW COME she didn’t think of that? But then Diskin inanely
opined that if Israel responds to the rocket attacks on Sderot’s
kindergartens, elementary schools and apartment blocks, Hamas will
get really mad at us for breaching the cease-fire that only the IDF
upholds and will continue to attack us.

In light of his schoolhouse analysis, Diskin concluded that there’s
nothing we can do except pretend that the terrorists will change
their minds about attacking us after we reward them for doing so by
giving them money to pay themselves, bullets and rifles to shoot us
with, send their terrorist buddies home from prison to join them in
attacking us, and maintain the imaginary ceasefire to enable them to
shoot at us with impunity.

In the meantime, while Olmert is planning to spring terrorists from
prison next week in honor of the Islamic holiday, Gaza’s Christians
were too terrified to go to their Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. So
the mass was cancelled.

And in Bethlehem, as the dwindling Christian population reeled with
the news that their tormentors may soon return to rape, murder and
extort them again, Manger Square stood near-empty on Christmas.

But at least the peace process is getting back on track.

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