[CMichael]

I have several concerns about the so called Road Map.

1) Abbas isn't going to take on the terrorists by force and has said so. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he is encouraging them on one hand and putting up an act for everyone else. That is what Arafat has done all thist ime.

2) I see what is to be gained by giving anything tangible to Abbas and the terrorists when their ultimate goal is the destruction of Israel.

3) If the terrorists groups aren't going to be dismantled which it doesn't look like the PA they will continue to wage the war to destroy Israel while Israel make it easier for them to do by giving them some of the little land that they have.

4) Abbas himself was chosen by Arafat. That should say it all right there.

5) The PA hasn't been elected. It's still the same dictatorship it's always been. There is a fresh face who will most likely use the same tactics -- say what America wants to hear publically and say something else privately to his minions.

What are your thoughts?

[CMichael]

Sorry about the typos in the above post.

[Standing Wolf]

When people say they want to kill you, it's generally advisable to believe them—and take appropriate action.

[2dogs]

President Yasser Arafat's newly appointed Palestinian Authority prime minister does not have the pristine past touted by his supporters, charges an Israeli civil rights group.

Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, provided financing for the terrorist attack that killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, says Israeli attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of the Shurat Hadin - Israel Law Center.

In a letter to President George W. Bush and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Darshan-Leitner called for an investigation into Abu Mazen's role in the Sept. 5, 1972, attack, carried out by Arafat's central Palestinian Liberation Organization faction Fatah.

The terrorist group, operating under the name "Black September," sent a squad of armed Palestinians to attack dormitories housing the Israeli Olympic team. The gunmen murdered a coach and a member of the weightlifting team, then took nine other Israelis hostage. The Palestinians demanded they be transported to the Munich airport where a rescue attempt by German police failed, and all nine hostages were murdered.

Last week, President Bush praised Abu Mazen as "a man dedicated to peace," indicating he would invite him to the White House for talks after his cabinet was installed. The Palestinian parliament meets today to confirm the new prime minister as head of a cabinet created under international pressure to curb Arafat's powers as president.

Shurat Hadin claims it has contacts within the Palestinian Authority itself who point out the hypocrisy of Abu Mazen's insistence he has never been involved in terrorism.

The Israeli group also notes the mastermind of the Munich attack, Mohammed Daoud Oudeh, or Abu Daoud, claims Abu Mazen provided the funds to carry out the Black September attack.

Daoud made that charge in his 1999 French language memoir, "Palestine: From Jerusalem to Munich," and again in an interview last August with Don Yaeger of Sports Illustrated magazine.

Abu Daoud said he was angered by the dozens of Palestinian terrorists allowed to return to the Palestinian territories as a result of the Oslo process while he remained persona non grata to Israel and the United States. Abu Mazen, Daoud complained, is now considered "respectable" even though he also was involved in the Munich attack.

Abu Mazen, part of the Palestinian hierarchy for nearly four decades, has served as PLO executive committee chairman.

In his book Abu Daoud states:

"After Oslo in 1993, Abu Mazen went to the White House Rose Garden for a photo op with Arafat, President Bill Clinton and Israel's Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.

"Do you think that ... would have been possible if the Israelis had known that Abu Mazen was the financier of our operation? I doubt it."

In the Sports Illustrated interview, he added: "Today, the Bush Administration seeks a Palestinian negotiating partner 'uncompromised by terror,' yet last year Abu Mazen met in Washington with Secretary of State Colin Powell."

Daoud also was interviewed about the Munich massacre for a film called "One Day in September," produced by John Battsek and Arthur Cohn for Sony Pictures Classics. Director Kevin Macdonald said Abu Daoud admitted Black September was merely the cover name adopted by Fatah members when they wanted to carry out terrorist attacks.

The PLO operative recalled how Arafat and Abu Mazen both wished him luck and kissed him when he set about organizing the Munich attack.

The Shurat Hadin letter to President Bush said:

"Under your leadership the United States has declared that it will no longer conduct diplomacy with those tainted by terrorist pasts. It appears that the new Palestinian leader to which the United States and Israel are now pinning all their hopes, was also involved in murderous attacks perpetrated by the PLO's Black September. Abu Mazen's alleged role in the brutal killing of the Israeli athletes and American citizen David Berger must also preclude his involvement in the negotiations between Israel and their Arab neighbors."

Abu Mazen also has been criticized for a 1983 book in which he suggested the figure of 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust was "peddled" by the Jews. In "The Other Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and the Zionist Movement," he said the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis to murder Jews in a plot to gain sympathy for creation of the state of Israel.

Nevertheless, as one of the PLO architects of the Oslo Accords, Abu Mazen is regarded by Europe and the United States as the best hope to lead the Palestinians to renewed negotiations, known as the "road map" to peace.

His supporters also point to statements he has made against the Palestinian armed struggle, or Intifada, as evidence of his moderate credentials. However, analysts, such as the Middle East Media Research Institute contend his position has been primarily pragmatic, based on strategic reasons.


http://www.freeman.org/m_online/may03/walz.htm
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The "road map" is a joke- it's the same old policy that we've been pushing on Israel for years, with a dumb name.

I support the "two state" solution- Israel for the Israelis and Jordan for the Palestinians.

[Thumper]

When people say they want to kill you, it's generally advisable to believe them—and take appropriate action.

Darned insightful. You'd think that folks would get that, but somehow they don't

[CMichael]

Thank you for the article Dogs.

Talk about the wrong road. I don't see what is the point if Abbas supposedely makes a cease fire agreement which will only be temporary until they are in a more strategic position to continue the attack.

I am glad that Israel is continuing to take on the terrorists directly.

Also, I am concerned about the freeing of terrorist prisoners. They will surely attack again. How many civilians will be murdered by them as a result?

[RON in PA]

There was an explosion on a bus in Jerusalim this morning, plus the incidents in Gaza the last two days. Same old, same old. Unless the Palistinians have a civil war and the terrorist factions are destroyed (and I mean destroyed) there will be no peace. If that is the case then the Arabs of the west bank and Gaza need to migrate to Jordan.

[CMichael]

I don't think there is a need for a civil war because Abbas IMO sympathizes with the terrorist groups. He was picked by Arafat.

Abbas is no doubt saying stuff that Bush likes and something that Hamas likes in private.

The thing about a dictatorship like the PA is there is no accountability to the public.

[matis]

... is sauce for the gander.

Vice President Cheney said:
__________________________________________________

As Vice President Cheney expressed after the recent attacks against Americans in Saudi Arabia, to bring peace, terrorists must be eliminated: "The only way to deal with this threat ultimately is to destroy it. There's no treaty that can solve this problem, there's no peace agreement, no policy of containment or deterrence that works to deal with this threat. We have to go find the terrorists."
________________________________________________




This is the only kind of policy that will protect us as Americans.



Why does President Bush and especially our Arabist State Department not allow our only ally in the middle-east, the only democracy -- a valiant but tiny nation surrounded by 100's of millions of Arabs oppressed by their own tyrannical rulers, and who are all committed to Israel's destruction -- why is Israel condemned for practising what VP Cheney correctly declares WE must do?



Abbu Mazen, as outlined above, is complicit in the murder of Israeli Jews from the Munich Massacre on.

He is a holocaust denier.

He says in English what the west wants to hear -- and in Arabic tells his Arab brothers what he really stands for.


And anyway, even the Arabs who say they are for a cease-fire really want only a "hudna", a temporary, tactical cease-fire so they can regain their strength to renew their Jihad against Israel's very existence.


To re-iterate in VP Cheney's own words:
________________________________________________
"...There's no treaty that can solve this problem, there's no peace agreement, no policy of containment or deterrence that works to deal with this threat. We have to go find the terrorists."
________________________________________________


....and destroy them and their organizations completely.


"Si vis pacem, para bellum. (If you want peace, prepare for war)."



Matis

[CMichael]

Excellent post Matis.

[sw442642]

Here are the reasons:

1. GWB is hoodwinked by an antisemetic state department .
2. GWB's buddies are in the oil business and will do business with any Mideastern monster and even absorb hits on the USA if their profit flow is good.
3 GWB is not really a scholar and probably doesn't read anything and if he does he gets some paragraph from #1 and 2.

The Palestinians could have peace if they wanted it. They don't they want the complete destruction of Israel. The USA government won't acknowledge that. What a surprise.

[Master Blaster]

This is an asside, but Mazzen, and Arafat and their Ilk were granted immunity from prosecution by the Oslo accords for any of their past deeds.

I fail to see what the difference is between the suicide bombers who attack Israeli civilians, and the Alqaida operatives who destroyed the WTC.

But then logic has no place in the middle east or in past or present US policy with regard to the same.:confused:

Arafat should never have been allowed into the territories by the UN or the Clinotnistas/ Israelis. If he and his band of cutthroats had been excluded the palestinians would be better off, and migh even have their own state.

A fair response by Israel to the latest bombing would be an assault on the hospital where the HAMAS leader lays wounded to finish the job. :fire:

[CMichael]

The only thing I am sorry is that they weren't successful in killing the slimeball :cuss:

[Jeff White]

It's as simple as that. There is no way these two factions will ever live side by side in peace. You just postpone the inevitable with attacks and counter attacks and being halfway at war.

It's time the world recognized this as a war. It's not simply a conflict or border disagreement. There won't be peace until one side has totally defeated the other. By defeated, I mean like Germany and Japan were defeated in 1945.

Jeff