The Bush administration sees the United States at war with Islamic radicalism; has not the time come for it to see other theaters of this same war – Russia’s with the Chechen rebels, India’s with the Kashmiri insurgents, Israel’s with Hamas – as we see our own, and work for the defeat of the Islamists?
Instead, in the Israeli case at least, Washington urges understanding, restraint, compromise, management of the problem, and other half-hearted and doomed remedies. The result is an ever more exhilarated and aggressive Palestinian population that believes victory within reach.
Washington’s mistaken approach goes back to the Oslo accords of 1993, when Yasir Arafat seemingly closed the existential conflict in writing to Bill Clinton that “The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security.” But Arafat’s assurances were fraudulent and the Arab effort to eliminate Israel remains very much in place.
Israel, with U.S. support, must defeat this foul ambition. That implies inflicting a sense of defeat on the Palestinians, and winning their resignation to the permanent existence of a Jewish state in the Holy Land. Only then will the violence end.
