This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/427

Dr.Daniel Pipes : Peace Plan won't work - Arabs attempting to "get more benefits from Israelis ...to fight them later on"

February 10, 2005

Hamas March in Gaza with suicide bombers and Kassam rockets www.science.co.il/ Arab-Israeli-conflict/

MIM: Dr.Daniel Pipes stated in an interview that Arab accceptance of the 'peace plan' is a tactical move and points out that they have not given up their dream of destroying Israel and are " playing for time".

His words on Feb. 9th proved true less then 24 hours later, when 4,200 news reports were posted (on Google) with headlines such as "Militants Attack Israeli Settlements Despite Truce", and "Security Talks Delayed After Gaza Attacks".

Despite this Sharon is planning on releasing jailed terrorists in what is perversely termed 'a good will gesture' which will obviously add to the pool of fighters and lead to an increase in deadly attacks.

In a recent article, "Which Way will Abbas Go?", Dr.Pipes pointed out that Abu Mazen was much more dangerous then Arafat, and asked the question:

"Does he accept Israel's existence or want to destroy it?" and concluded that Abbas is " a potentially far more formidable enemy to Israel then the one - note, blindly violent, and flamboyantly evil Arafat".

MIM: The US has promised to give Mazen more then 350.000 million dollars. One can only guess at how much went to Mubarak of Egypt and Abdullah of Jordan for going through the motions of 'making peace' which has proven quite a lucrative business for them. Readers may recall that the US voided Egypt's entire debt with them and gave millions of dollars of military aid to the country in exchange for signing a peace agreement with Israel.

Dr. Pipes also warned about giving additional aid, stating that "instead of showering money and other benefits on Palestinian Arabs "the outside world" should be "pushing them relentlessly to accept Israel's existence".

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PM - Peace plan won't work, think tank says

ABC (Australia)
February 9, 2005

http://www.danielpipes.org/pf.php?id=2407

PAUL LOCKYER: One of America's most outspoken critics of past Middle East peace deals is pessimistic about the ability of the Palestinian Authority to control violence in the wake of the proclaimed ceasefire.

Dr Daniel Pipes is the director of the think tank the Middle East Forum and was nominated by President George W. Bush to the United States Institute of Peace in 2003.

Dr Pipes says the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas is playing for time by agreeing to the ceasefire because it hasn't given up the idea of destroying Israel.

Daniel Pipes is speaking to Hamish Fitzsimmons.

DANIEL PIPES: The new leadership on the Palestinian side is saying violence hasn't worked, terrorism has been counterproductive, we are going backwards rather than forwards as a result of it, so it's time to stop it.

In other words it's a tactical decision, and it's a correct tactical decision, but it's merely a tactical decision, it's not saying that we accept Israel and we're going to live in harmony with Israel. It's saying violence at this time is counterproductive.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: But given the rapidity that this deal was reached after Mr Abbas gaining control over the Palestinian Authority, do you think that signals that he is serious about peace?

DANIEL PIPES: He is serious. He has been talking for two-and-a-half years about the need to end the violence, and so it's not surprising that he's made this his first priority. Whether he can actually clamp down on violence is one question, and then what his purposes are is another question.

I believe his purpose is in order to get more benefits from the Israelis in order to be stronger to fight them later on. I mean, it's purely tactical.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Is your sense of pessimism shared by many in the US, and particularly in the Bush administration?

DANIEL PIPES: No, there is a widespread feeling of elation that the logjam has broken, Arafat is out of the way, there's real progress.

In other words, the consensus approach is that the Palestinians have accepted Israel, and now it's just a matter of getting the circumstances correct, getting the mood right, getting the deals in place, and everything will follow.

And my conclusion from the Oslo round of diplomacy between 1993 and 2000 is that it's a more profound problem. In other words, the general view is that Oslo didn't work. Everyone agrees it didn't work. But the reasons are rather superficial – Arafat's personality, not paying enough attention to public opinion, Israelis increasing their presence on the West Bank.

But I don't see those as so important. I see what really is important is a reluctance on the Palestinian side to give up the long-held dream of destroying Israel.

PAUL LOCKYER: Middle East commentator Daniel Pipes speaking to Hamish Fitzsimmons.

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Which Way Will Abbas Go?

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2339

by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
January 11, 2005

There's some puzzlement about Mahmoud Abbas, the new chairman of the Palestinian Authority. Does he accept Israel's existence or want to destroy it?

Matthew Kalman of Canada's Globe and Mail discerns "an apparent campaign flip-flop" in this regard. A Jewish Exponent story is titled "He Wants It Both Ways: Palestinian front-runner: Anti-terror, but pro-‘return'." An Australian Broadcast Corporation title acknowledges its mystification, writing that "Abbas's election tactics confuse analysts."

The press dwells on the same apparent contradiction: One moment Mr. Abbas demands that Palestinian Arab terrorists stop their attacks on Israel and the next he (literally) embraces them, calling them "heroes fighting for freedom." Also, he talks of both stopping the violence and of the "right of return" for more than 4 million Palestinian Arabs to Israel, a well-known way of calling indirectly for the elimination of the Jewish state.

What gives?

Actually, there is no contradiction. By insisting on a "right of return," Mr. Abbas signals that he, like Yasser Arafat and most Palestinians, intends to undo the events of 1948; that he rejects the very legitimacy of a Jewish state, and will strive for its disappearance. But he differs from Arafat in being able to imagine more than one way of achieving this goal.

No matter what the circumstances, Arafat persisted, from 1965 to 2004, in his reliance on terrorism. He never took seriously his many agreements with Israel, seeing these rather as a means to enhance his ability to murder Israelis. Arafat's diplomacy culminated in September 2000 with the unleashing of his terror war against Israel; then, no matter how evident its failure, it went on until his death in November 2004.

In contrast, Mr. Abbas publicly recognized in September 2002 that terror had come to harm Palestinian Arabs more than Israel. Intended to prompt demoralization and flight from Israel, this tactic in fact brought together a hitherto fractured body politic, while nearly destroying the Palestinian Authority and prostrating its population. Mr. Abbas correctly concluded that "it was a mistake to use arms during the intifada and to carry out attacks inside Israel."

Mr. Abbas shows tactical flexibility. Unlike Arafat, who could never let go of the terrorist tool that had brought him wealth, power, and glory, Mr. Abbas sees the situation more cogently. If stopping the violence against Israel best serves his goal of eliminating the sovereign Jewish state, that is his program.

He no more accepts what he so charmingly the other day called the "Zionist enemy" than Arafat did (or Hamas, or Palestinian Islamic Jihad), but he is open to a multiplicity of means to destroy it. As he announced after his electoral victory this week, "the lesser jihad is over and the greater jihad is ahead." The form of jihad must change from violent to nonviolent, but the jihad continues.

And count the many ways to undo the Jewish state: nuclear weaponry, invading armies, mega-terrorism, plain old terrorism, Palestinian demographic fertility, the "right of return," or confusing Israelis to the point that post-Zionist leftists cause the population unilaterally to crumple and accept a dhimmi (subservient) status within "Palestine."

For an instructive parallel to Mr. Abbas' having concluded that violence is inappropriate, consider Stalin in the decade before World War II. Aware of his weakness, he announced in 1930 an intention for the Soviet Union to be a good international citizen:

Our policy is a policy of peace and of increasing trade connections with all countries. A result of this policy is an improvement in our relations with a number of countries, and the conclusion of a number of agreements for trade, technical assistance, and so forth. We shall continue to pursue this policy of peace with all our might and with all the means at our disposal. We do not want a single foot of foreign territory.

These were not empty words. Stalin did largely keep to this program - until 1939, when he felt strongly enough to go on the offensive, at which point he initiated an unparalleled half-century's campaign of aggression, which ended only with the Soviet state's collapse.

For Mr. Abbas, it is 1930. He understands the need to cool things down. As someone who can realistically appraise circumstances and quietly respond to them, he is potentially a far more formidable enemy to Israel than the one-note, blindly violent, and flamboyantly evil Arafat.

From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/2339

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Palestinians Don't Deserve Additional Aid

by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
December 21, 2004

Yasser Arafat died last month. This month, his death is prompting plans for a foreign aid bounty of $500 million to $1 billion a year for the Palestinian Arabs.

That's the scoop Steven Weisman published in the New York Times on December 17. He revealed that Western, Arab, and other governments plan to add a 50% to 100% bonus to the $1 billion a year they already direct to 3.5 million Palestinian Arabs in the territories, contingent upon a crackdown on terrorist groups and the holding of credible elections in January 2005.

(Asked about Mr. Weisman's report, White House spokesman Scott McClellan neither confirmed nor denied it. But President Bush did subsequently make some hugely ambitious statements about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: "I am convinced that, during this term, I will manage to bring peace" and "Next year is very important, as it will bring peace."

Aid-wise, residents of the West Bank and Gaza have hardly been neglected until now. They receive about $300 per person, making them, per capita, the world's greatest beneficiaries of foreign aid. Strangely, their efforts to destroy Israel have not inspired efforts to crush this hideous ambition but rather to subsidize it. Money being fungible, foreign aid effectively funds the Palestinian Arabs' bellicose propaganda machine, their arsenal, their army, and their suicide bombers.

This, however, does not faze international-aid types. Nigel Roberts, the World Bank's director for the West Bank and Gaza, blows off past failures. Addressing himself to donors, he says, "Maybe your $1 billion a year hasn't produced much, but we think there's a case for doing even more in the next three or four years."

Mr. Roberts is saying, in effect: Yes, your money enabled Arafat's corruption, jihad ideology, and suicide factories, but those are yesterday's problems; now, let's hope the new leadership uses donations for better purposes. Please lavish more funds on it to enhance its prestige and power, then hope for the best.

This la-la-land thinking ignores two wee problems. One concerns the Palestinian Arabs' widespread intent to destroy Israel, as portrayed by the outpouring of grief for archterrorist Arafat at his funeral, the consistent results of opinion research, and the steady supply of would-be jihadists. The Palestinian Arabs' discovery of inner moderation has yet to commence, to put it mildly.

The other problem is blaming the past decade's violence and tyranny exclusively on Arafat, and erroneously assuming that, now freed of him, the Palestinian Arabs are eager to reform. Mahmoud Abbas, the new leader, has indeed called for ending terrorism against Israel, but he did so for transparently tactical reasons (it is the wrong thing to do now), not for strategic reasons (it is permanently to be given up), much less for moral ones (it is inherently evil).

Mr. Abbas is not a moderate but a pragmatist. Unlike Arafat, consumed by his biography and his demons, Mr. Abbas offers a more reasonable figure, one who can more rationally pursue Arafat's goal of destroying Israel. In this spirit, he has quickly apologized to the Kuwaitis and made up with the Syrians; compared to this, reaching out to the Americans is easy.

But, no less than his mentor Arafat, Mr. Abbas remains intent on eliminating Israel. This is evident, for example, from his recent comments insisting that millions of Palestinian Arab "refugees" be permitted to enter Israel so as to overwhelm it demographically; or from his keeping the virulent content of the Palestinian Authority's press in place.

To give additional money to the Palestinian Arabs now, ahead of their undergoing a change of heart and accepting the permanent existence of the Jewish state of Israel, is a terrible mistake, one that numbingly replicates the errors of the 1990's, Oslo diplomacy. Prematurely rewarding the Palestinian Arabs will again delay the timetable of conciliation.

As I have argued for years, money, arms, diplomacy, and recognition for the Palestinian Arabs should follow on their having accepted Israel. One sign that this will have happened: When Jews living in Hebron (on the West Bank) need no more security than Arabs living in Nazareth (within Israel).

Until that day of harmony - which I predict is about thirty years off - the outside world should focus not on showering money or other benefits on the Palestinian Arabs, but on pushing them relentlessly to accept Israel's existence.

From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/2298

This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/427