There was palpable anxiety nationwide in the hours that preceded US President George W. Bush's speech on the Middle East Monday night. All the talk of establishing a "provisional" state of Palestine, as the Palestinian leadership to the last man is stained by terror and murder, was terrifying and infuriating and demoralizing.

So when Bush declared "the Palestinian state will never be created by terror," most of us heaved a deep sigh of relief. By the time he concluded his remarks, our initial sense of vindication and relief was swiftly followed by a spontaneous outpouring of euphoria. The president's words were a shot of adrenalin for our traumatized citizenry, but they were also marching orders for our leadership.

Unfortunately, it is far from clear that our leadership heard or understood the message.

Bush made two central points in his speech that demand our immediate attention. For the first time, the president publicly distanced himself from the false pronouncements by the State Department that refuse to implicate Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Authority directly in terrorism. In so doing, Bush made clear that from now on, US policy will be based on reality and not on what the foreign ministries of the world would have us believe.

The president also, for the first time, regarded the Palestinians as free agents. In saying "the Palestinian people are gifted and capable and I am confident they can achieve a new birth for their nation," he told the Palestinians that they themselves hold the key to their future.

Both of these policy shifts from Washington present Israel with tremendous opportunities as well as significant challenges.

While acknowledging that the PA is a terrorist entity is a first and necessary step toward correctly diagnosing the Palestinian war against Israel, Bush fell short of the mark. Repeated polling of Palestinians shows that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians support continuing their jihad.

A survey of Palestinians late last month carried out by the Palestinian Jerusalem Media and Communications Center, found that 78.9 percent of Palestinians support the continuation of their terrorist war and 68.1% of Palestinians support the use of suicide bombers against Israelis. Most disturbing, 51.1% of Palestinians claim that the end of their war is not the establishment of a Palestinian state, as Bush endorses in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip, but rather the destruction of Israel.

This state of affairs means quite simply that a fully participatory Palestinian democracy at this point will not significantly alter the situation. Before the Palestinians will elect the type of responsible leadership that the president envisions and hopes for, they need to be cured of their notion that it is acceptable to murder Israeli civilians or to fight a war for the destruction of Israel.

Unlike in his warning to the Taliban last September ("hand over the terrorists or share their fate"), Bush did not issue an ultimatum to the Palestinians. Since the Palestinians are fighting their terrorist war against Israel and not against the United States, this was a reasonable omission. It is the responsibility of Israel's government, not the US government, to destroy the Palestinians' ability to conduct their war against us.

Popular sentiment in Palestinian society being what it is, the only way to fulfill Bush's vision of a democratic Palestinian state living side by side with Israel is for the Palestinians first to be persuaded that they have no military option and that their only hope for a good life of freedom and economic security is to live at peace with Israel. This truth began to trickle down in the aftermath of Operation Defensive Shield.

Arafat's decision to reform the PA and hold new elections was not the result of American pressure but of Palestinian pressure. It was the empty receiving lines in Ramallah and Jenin that greeted him after the IDF withdrawal that forced him to accede to reform if only cosmetic. By contrast, it was the IDF withdrawal, talk of the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state, and continued support of the PA from the UN, the EU, and the Israeli Left that made it possible for Arafat to make do with cosmetic reforms.

Today, the goal of Operation Determined Path must be to force the Palestinians to make the direct link between their personal suffering and their decision to fight a war against Israel. The Palestinians must recognize that it is their leaders and their own willingness to support those leaders that have relegated them to their squalor and poverty.

Just as Israel used the information it uncovered during Defensive Shield to prove Arafat's personal involvement in terror to the US, so today it must use information it uncovers and already has to prove to the Palestinians that their leadership has stolen their future. Palestinians must be given proof that their leaders lied to them and stole from them and brainwashed them and exploited them and then gained their acquiescence to their own enslavement by deflecting their anger onto Israel.

Given the level of radicalization in Palestinian society, Israel must be prepared to accept the fact that a long time will likely pass before a majority of Palestinians is convinced of the truth and is ready to take the reins of leadership and live at peace with Israel. Recognizing this reality, Israel must be willing to reinstate the civil administration in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip and to assert military control of the areas.

The overwhelming majority of Israelis does not want to be responsible for the Palestinians. But all Israelis want to live in security. The direct link between the Palestinian embrace of terrorism under Arafat's PA and lack of security for Israelis is clear for all to see. For now and the foreseeable future, it is self-evident that the only way to provide security is to deny the Palestinians the ability to attack us. Today, this can only be done effectively from within their towns and cities.

The fact that we ourselves do not wish to remain there is the best guarantee of the Palestinians' eventual independence. But just as the Germans, after 12 years of the Nazi regime, could not be trusted to rule themselves effectively in 1945, so the Palestinians, after nine years of Arafat's regime, cannot be trusted to govern themselves.

The second challenge presented us by Bush's address is to accept our responsibility to support our ally when that ally is supporting us. Bush went up against the entire international community and his own highly popular secretary of state when he called for new Palestinian leadership and backed our right to defend ourselves. If we want to encourage him to continue to go to bat for us, it behooves us to advance his doctrine. This is particularly so since, for the first time in recent memory, the US president is espousing a doctrine that actually stands a chance of enhancing our security and well-being.

But rather than voicing support, our foreign minister has condemned Bush. Rather than thanking him for condemning our enemies, Shimon Peres has made off-the-record comments to a half dozen journalists claiming that the address, far from being a positive development, was a "tragedy." Peres had his press men let it be known that he was so disgusted with Bush's message that he did not even sit through the entire 20-minute speech, but rather left the room in a stony silence.

Bush ended his remarks by saying, "This moment is both an opportunity and a test for all parties in the Middle East: an opportunity to lay the foundations of future peace; a test to show who is serious about peace and who is not." For Israel to use this opportunity properly, we must make it clear that security is the precondition for any future peace. We must also, while ensuring our security, empower a new and democratic Palestinian leadership that will understand that its commitment to peaceful coexistence with Israel is the source of its power and the key to its future success.

Peres's hostile reaction to Bush's address has proved beyond any doubt that, like Arafat, he lacks the vision to move the Palestinians toward the democratic transformation necessary to enable peace to be achieved. As Bush has stood up to the UN, the EU, and the Arab world this week in defending his demand for Palestinian reform, so the prime minister must stand up to his foreign minister. If Peres refuses to acknowledge that Arafat must go and that Israel must use all means to defend itself, while paving the road towards the eventual empowerment of a democratic, pacific Palestinian leadership, then he, too, must go.

Israel Radio announced that 72% of Israelis supported Bush's speech, but only one third of us believe that he can implement a change in Palestinian leadership. The truth is that only Israel, by preventing the Palestinians from continuing their war against us can change the facts on the ground in a manner that will enable the implementation of Bush's plan. But to take the necessary actions, the foreign minister must share the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of his countrymen that the speech was a great gift to the State of Israel.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post

It must be said: There is no peace process. Yasser Arafat, who is the declared commander of Fatah-Tanzim, the proud perpetrator of Wednesday's kamikaze attack on babies and grandmothers in Jerusalem, and the enabler of Hamas, which perpetrated Tuesday's massacre in the capital, is a terrorist and a murderer. The Palestinian Authority is not simply a regime that "cavorts with terror," as US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice gently put it last week. It is a fascist regime that defines terror and is defined by terror.

Today, nine years after the inauguration of the Oslo process and 21 months into the official Palestinian Authority jihad, there are no credible voices for coexistence in Palestinian society. Even Palestinian leaders considered doves - that rarefied group of Jerusalem aristocracy which includes such luminaries as Sari Nusseibeh and Hanan Ashrawi - cannot find it in their hearts to recognize that life is an immutable right.

In their much publicized (and EU financed) declaration of opposition to terrorism published in Wednesday's Al-Quds newspaper, these Palestinian peaceniks only condemned the murder of civilians within Israel's pre-Six Day War borders which exclude both the Gilo and French Hill neighborhoods where this week's attacks took place. The full-page ad, which was condemned by the PA, was also silent on the barbarity of suicide bombings.

Stipulating that the first requirement of peaceful coexistence between Israel and the Palestinians is Palestinian recognition of all Israelis' right to life cannot be viewed as an unreasonable demand. And yet, we see to our revulsion and amazement, there is no Palestinian constituency with any legitimacy or power that recognizes this natural right. Therefore, it is clear today that for the foreseeable future, there will be no peace with the Palestinians.

What remains shrouded in ambiguity is the fact that the Oslo process was not a "peace process." The Oslo process was an agreement process. Its final goal was not to produce peace, but rather to produce agreements in the name of peace. And it was successful for a time in producing agreements.

This fact was clear from the very beginning. On the very day that Arafat signed the Oslo Accords with prime minister Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn, he gave a speech, aired on Jordanian television in which he invoked the decision by the Palestine National Council made at Rabat in 1974 calling for the phased liquidation of Israel. Israel remained silent because our government wanted agreements. To this day, the PLO has not clearly amended its covenant calling for the destruction of Israel, in spite of the fact that doing so was to be a precondition for all negotiations.

Accepting the distinction between the never-existent peace process and the still throbbing agreement process is crucial for understanding Israel's predicament. And, of course, understanding this predicament is the first necessary step to finding a way out.

Oslo's architects claimed and continue to claim that the goal of the process is to bring peace, but the simple truth is that this assertion is a distortion of reality. Peace can never be a concrete policy goal because peace is not concrete. Peace is an aspiration, a dream, or a state of reality for the lucky. Peace is not a policy, and it is not a policy goal in any real sense.

Israel, as a rational, moral, free, and democratic state naturally aspires to peace. However, as a country surrounded by autocratic, bellicose regimes, in need of an external bogeyman to justify their existence to their oppressed citizenry, Israel will get no peace from its neighbors. Although Israel has signed peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, Israel has no peace with those nations.

Egypt spends a quarter of its GDP on its military. Its official press and religious authorities have demonized Israel to such a degree that Israeli physicians must be flown to Cairo to treat sick Israeli diplomats because Egyptian doctors refuse to care for them. And so, relations with Egypt would be rightly characterized as a cold war.

Israel's close relations with the Hashemite minority regime in Palestinian-dominated Jordan are not the result of the 1994 treaty. Israel has been Jordan's strategic partner at least since the IDF saved the Hashemite regime from a PLO coup in 1970, and, some would argue, since even before the establishment of both states. It could be reasonably argued that the peace treaty, bringing these relations to the attention of rank-and-file Jordanians who reject Israel's right to exist, has weakened rather than strengthened Israel's partnership with Jordan. Today, our relations are susceptible to public calumny in Jordan that simply did not exist before.

At any rate, Israel's status vis-a -vis Egypt and Jordan did not improve much after peace agreements were signed from what it had been previous to their signing. That is, the agreements in and of themselves did little to transform relations in any positive way.

Policies and strategies are geared towards the achievement of tangible goals. Since the inauguration of the Oslo process, Israel's governments, either by design or by default, have subordinated all of Israel's interests to the goal of achieving signed agreements with Arafat.

Prior to Oslo, Israel's policy, like that of most peace-loving nations, was to do everything in its power to achieve security. Israel's unbending war against terrorists aimed to provide personal security for its citizens from mayhem and murder. And Israel's preemptive military doctrine and advanced arms industries were cultivated to ensure its strategic security from the threats posed by our neighbors' military capabilities.

Israel's pre-Oslo goals were rational and achievable, if sometimes only at great cost. Israel's success at deterring its neighbors from waging war against it and in providing decent security for its citizenry in spite of its enemies' high motivation to kill and terrorize was not inconsiderable.

Then came Oslo, with its delusion that peace is a policy, and security disappeared from our lives. We armed our sworn enemy and gave it the means to transform Palestinian society from a nascent, if violent and petulant, democracy, into a fascistic, jihadi lunatic asylum with an open-door policy for homicidal Islamikazes, who ecstatically massacre us as we sleep, eat, go to work, go home, and shop.

We are told by the policy wonks in Meretz that there is no military solution. We are told by the president of the United States that while we have a right to self-defense, we must be careful to prevent the "path to peace" from being blocked. Debates on television talk shows range from the pros and cons of having the Europeans, the UN, and the peace-loving Egyptians come in and enforce a "peaceful solution," to the inevitability of this loss of sovereignty.

When we build walls, (which will only allow the Palestinians to operate with greater immunity), we are reviled by the US State Department for harming prospects for peace, and threatened by the Palestinians, who claim we have no right - given our commitment to achieving agreements - to defend ourselves.

The problem with all of these statements and discussions is that they are addressing the wrong issue. Since Oslo, all debate on national policy has been subordinated to the dictate that we must all profess our dedication to peace as a strategic goal before getting a seat at the table. Every policy and every decision, has been judged from the prism of whether it advanced attaining Arafat's signature on a dotted line, or distanced such an event.

Still today, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer protest expelling Arafat and retaking territory in Area A. Their aversion to these actions is based on the proposition that such actions by the IDF will make it harder to sign an agreement with Arafat or with one of his successors who will be equally respectful of our right to life.

For Israel to extricate itself from the intolerable situation in which we have found ourselves these past 21 months, it is imperative that we change the premise upon which our national debate is being carried out. Peace as a policy aim must be expunged from our national dialogue. Instead, we must anchor our national discourse on the rational pursuit of security.

All political, diplomatic, and military moves by the government must be based on the litmus test of whether or not such moves enhance or degrade Israel's security. In this way, we will open the national debate to a wellspring of grounded and worthy ideas that have been silenced for the past decade because they aim at achieving security, not agreements with the PLO.

All Israelis dream of peace, because peace is a dream. All Israelis demand security, because without security we cannot live our lives. This demand is fitting and appropriate, as protecting our lives is the primary task of our government.

Today we shake with rage and pain at the sight of so many precious lives blotted out. Our despair has reached such proportions that we cannot even muster the hope that protesting against our wholesale murder will do something to end this atrocious reality. Instead we sit at home, stare at the carnage on television, and pray.

Our prayers will only be answered when we wholly and completely reject the perverse notion that peace is a tangible aim for policy, and return to the rational determination that the provision of security at all costs is the primary responsibility of our leadership.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post

Israel stands at the precipice of a strategic breakdown. But first, the good news.

The Bush administration's determination to topple Saddam Hussein's regime is by definition a good thing for Israel. Saddam Hussein has repeatedly expressed his dedication to the goal of physically destroying the State of Israel. A nuclear-armed Iraq is a threat that Israel cannot tolerate. Clearly, if the US were not itself determined to go to war to prevent Saddam from achieving nuclear capabilities, Israel, as it did in 1981, would have to act on its own to prevent this, no doubt at tremendous cost.

Aside from the removal of an Iraqi nuclear threat, a US victory can have a positive influence on the region as a whole from which Israel could be the most direct beneficiary. A moderate, Western-oriented successor government in Baghdad may moderate the policies of the Arab world in general. Under the direct influence of a Pax Americana, Arab states and Iran may be forced to redefine their national interest as one of appeasing Washington by diminishing their support for terrorism and the eradication of Israel, lest the wrath of the US be redirected against their own regimes.

With these projections, it is little wonder that there is a general consensus, encompassing such unlikely bedfellows as former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, throwing its full support behind a US military offensive in Iraq. A US-led campaign against Iraq is viewed by many as a refutation of the claim that "there is no such thing as a free lunch."
Here is Israel's strategic partner and protector, the US, poised to take out one of the regimes that most threatens Israel, and all that we are asked is to sit on the sidelines and keep quiet.

All of this is well and good as far as it goes. And yet, there are two central potential long-term dangers for Israel emanating from the gathering US strike on Iraq both of which must be addressed immediately, and before any US action is taken.

The first of those dangers is a loss of our deterrence. Today our diplomatic and security echelons debate whether we can risk not responding to an Iraqi attack launched during a US-led campaign. Some argue that our decision not to retaliate against Iraqi Scud missile attacks during the Gulf War did not cause long-term damage to our deterrent strength and, therefore, inaction in the face of a future attack would also not be detrimental in the long run.

Others claim that a lack of response in the case of such an attack would render us more dependent on US security guarantees and degrade our strategic value in the eyes of the US government.

Such a development, they argue, will damage our credibility in demanding that the US preserve the IDF's qualitative edge against our neighbors' military capabilities. If the US is going to war to protect us, they warn, the US can reasonably ask why we should be concerned about retaining our independent ability to emerge victorious from a fight we will not need to wage? Proponents of attack also point out that we cannot afford running the risk that our neighbors may interpret lack of action under fire as weakness and so, in order to maintain face, we cannot simply absorb Iraqi strikes.

As today's Jerusalem Post poll shows, public opinion is firmly in the interventionist camp. The public is not interested in forfeiting our right to self-defense in exchange for a US defense umbrella. The message to the government from all of this is that we must ensure that under no circumstance will the US feel that it has the right to decide for us whether or not we can respond to an Iraqi attack. In the absence of such an understanding, we may find ourselves isolated and dependent on an America unwilling to allow us to fight our own battles.

The second strategic danger arising from a successful US offensive against Iraq is the specter of a US-dictated settlement of our war with the Palestinians. In the months preceding the Gulf War, the Shamir government went our of its way to prevent the first Bush administration from linking Iraq's invasion of Kuwait to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At least publicly, president George Bush the elder and secretary of state James Baker were careful to maintain that they were not linking the two.

In stark contrast, today the US is clearly publicly linking the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime. In his address to the UN General Assembly last Thursday, President George W. Bush twice mentioned "Palestine" and stated "America stands committed to an independent and democratic Palestine." The fact that the so-called "Quartet" the US, UN, EU and Russia met this week to work out a "road map" for the establishment of a sovereign state of Palestine at the same time that the UN Security Council was debating what to do about Iraq is further indication that the US supports, at least publicly, the direct linkage of "Palestine" with Iraq.

This state of affairs would not necessarily be detrimental if Israel and the US had reached an understanding of what sort of settlement should be reached between Israel and the Palestinians. However, no such understanding exists.

While Prime Minister Ariel Sharon speaks obliquely of the need for long-term interim agreements, Peres explained this week in New York and Washington that he supports a return to the offer that Ehud Barak made to Yasser Arafat at Camp David in July 2000. That offer of course calls for the division of Jerusalem, the transfer of sovereignty over the Jordan Valley to the Palestinians, the establishment of a sovereign Palestine in all of the Gaza Strip and some 95 percent of the West Bank, the uprooting of more than 100 communities in the West Bank and Gaza, repatriation of some Palestinian refugees to Israel, and transfer of territories inside the Green Line to "Palestine."
 

Peres, like his ally UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his friends in the EU has been quick to co-opt Bush's "vision" of a two-state solution to strengthen his own claim that the Oslo process is still viable. Reform, in Peres's view can be watered down to cosmetic restructuring of the PA cabinet.

Almost unbelievably, even as Fatah leaders refuted the claim that they had agreed to a cease-fire, and Nabil Shaath, Arafat's personal envoy at the conference, obscenely offered to encourage Palestinians to stop killing "civilians" inside the Green Line, while continuing to kill them outside it, in exchange for an IDF withdrawal from towns in the West Bank, Peres stood on the General Assembly podium and praised Fatah for its call for reform of the PA. He told the world body, "I look upon these words [calling for reform] as a first dawn of a different season. We hope it is the spring."

Since assuming office, Sharon has prevented a cabinet discussion that would lead to a determination of the country's long-term strategic interests in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The logic of forestalling debate was clear. Sharon's unity government lacks even minimal agreement on the definition of those interests. Until now, in order to ensure Labor's support for the government's campaign against Palestinian terrorism, it made sense to delay such debate.

But today, with the country facing a real prospect of an internationally imposed solution, the logic of the national unity government is unraveling. In the face of an imminent US strike on Iraq, which is directly linked by the US itself to the issue of Palestinian sovereignty, the time has come for our government to sit down with the Americans and explain, precisely, what it regards as a Palestinian entity it can live with. This discussion must delineate the borders it demands and the exact nature of the Palestinian political entity that it can accept.

The US is now under strong pressure from every quarter to force a settlement that will include a total withdrawal from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and a division of Jerusalem. Peres, in a last ditch effort to validate the Oslo process and reconstitute his reputation as a visionary, is doing all he can to add his voice to the choir.

If the prime minister is unable to mount a campaign to achieve US acceptance of our strategic interests in the West Bank and Gaza, the US will no doubt go along with the rest of the world and Peres and enforce our surrender of the territories to a "reformed" PLO regime.

The time has come for clarity of strategic purpose in our government. There is no doubt that the coming US war in Iraq can be a great opportunity.

But even in the best of circumstances, clear and strong leadership is necessary to ensure that these opportunities are not squandered. Rather than enjoy the advantages of a Middle East free of an Iraqi nuclear threat, we are liable to suffer a strategic fiasco. In the absence of proper coordination with the US by clear-thinking leaders, at the end of the Iraq campaign the country may find itself shrunken, without defensible borders, and dependent as never before on the goodwill of an outside power.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post

Speaking before the Knesset Law Committee on Tuesday, Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein warned lawmakers that the new International Criminal Court, set to start operating on July 1, is liable to indict and try for war crimes any Israeli citizen who moves across the Green Line.

According to the Rome Treaty of 1998 which established the ICC, "The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies" is considered a war crime. This subtle departure from the 1949 Geneva Conventions is designed to render private citizens who move voluntarily to "occupied" lands such as French Hill in Jerusalem into war criminals on the order of Saddam Hussein who gassed thousands of his own citizens.

The claim that Israel is an occupying power is dubious at best. But given the international community's acquiescence to the Arab propaganda machine's spurious legal argumentation, this little clause deliberately introduced by the Egyptian delegation means that all Israeli communities in Judea, Samaria, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley, and post-Six Day War neighborhoods in Jerusalem can fall into the Rome Treaty's definition of war crimes.

What differentiates the ICC from the already existing World Court at the Hague is that, whereas the World Court can only try government officials sued by other governments, the ICC also has jurisdiction over individuals against whom charges may be brought by other individuals. Thus, not only are Israeli officials - including line soldiers - liable for their actions before the world tribunal, but regular citizens are also open to prosecution.

It doesn't even matter whether Israel ratifies the treaty or not. The ICC can indict, try, and imprison anyone. Alleged crimes committed by nationals of non-member states can be referred to the court by member states or the UN Security Council. If neither refers a matter to the court, prosecutors can take matters into their own hands and indict nationals of non-member states if it so pleases them.

This is the reality we will be living under come July 1. The ICC's building is under construction and by next year, prosecutors and judges will have been appointed. It has happened. And the danger to Israel emanating from this court is far from theoretical. The groundwork for turning Israel into the first and principal state against which the ICC will take legal action has already been laid.

As we saw at the UN's Orwellian conference on racism last August, the European-based international community views Israel as a criminal state. Zionism, we were told by the overwhelming majority of delegates to the conference, is a noxious form of racism. The Holocaust is just one of many human rights abuses and should be referred to with a lower-case "h." Jewish self-determination is a new form of apartheid which, by the way, is also defined as a war crime by the Rome Treaty.

So, Israelis are Nazis. The international community has judged the IDF guilty of committing a massacre at the Jenin refugee camp. Preemptive assassination of Palestinian terrorists is a war crime and incursions into Area A are war crimes.

In Europe, as synagogues burn to the ground, Israel is daily portrayed by the mass media as a criminal state. And, ahead of the official opening of the ICC, Palestinian delegations have flocked to the Continent to make the case for indicting IDF officers and government officials by the new tribunal.

We must pause for a moment to recognize the enormity of the current distortion of reality. Today, Israeli officials are forced to warn us that we face a grim future of defending against accusations of war crimes. Meanwhile, sitting inside the Land of Israel is the Palestinian Authority, an entity laced from top to bottom with war criminals all breathlessly awaiting the formation of the new court.

At Tuesday's Law Committee meeting, Rubinstein and State Attorney Edna Arbel assured Knesset members that the Justice Ministry will defend any law-abiding Israeli citizen forced to stand for trial before the ICC. Rubinstein appointed Assistant State Attorney Rahel Sucor to head an inter-ministerial committee mandated to plan for all possible contingencies that may arise as a result of the court's operations.

This is, of course, all necessary and well and good. But to truly defend Israel against ICC action, it is necessary to assess how this danger has befallen us in the first place.

The entire notion of an international criminal court, empowered to try and punish those guilty of heinous crimes such as genocide and crimes against humanity, was spawned by Jewish jurists. Since the 1950s, both Israeli lawyers and Jewish lawyers from the Diaspora were at the forefront of the effort to establish such a court. Haunted by the Holocaust, these well-meaning Jews, like the late Israeli Supreme Court Justice Haim Cohen, believed that it was imperative that the international community have a legal means to enforce humanitarian law against criminal governments to prevent the recurrence of atrocities like the Holocaust.

The problem with these efforts is that they were born of a fallacy. This fallacy was the belief that the Holocaust was the result of a procedural rather than moral failure and its recurrence could be prevented by a change of procedure rather than a transformation of values.

At Tuesday's Knesset session, international law professor Ruth Lapidot alluded to this fallacy in explaining that she would not recommend "relying on judges if they come from some of the countries which have already ratified the agreement." These countries include Belgium, which obnoxiously opened and refuses to close its war crimes case against Israel's prime minister; Nigeria, where women are routinely sentenced to death by stoning for unsubstantiated allegations of adultery; and Jordan, where "family honor" killings of women are not considered murder, and whose bar association will disbar any lawyer who refuses to abide by its professional boycott of Israel.

The Rome Treaty opens by declaring, "All peoples are united by common bonds, their cultures pieced together in a shared heritage." But as we see when Hamas chieftain Sheikh Ahmed Yassin explains that Palestinian terrorism will in the end destroy Israel because Israelis place too high a value on life, and when Palestinian mothers encourage their children to become suicide bombers, we do not share common bonds and heritage with our enemies.

So too we found, as Theodore Herzl warned, that when it comes to the Jews, the beautiful rallying cries of European universalism "Equality, Fraternity, and Liberty" do not necessarily apply.

The sad truth is that Israel was founded because of the failure of European slogans. Israel was established too late to defend those who it was originally envisioned to rescue. Our state's very existence in fact is the result not of European procedural failure but of European moral failure. It was a momentary awakening of European conscience that enabled the UN General Assembly to accept the establishment of the Jewish State in the Land of Israel in 1947.

What we see today, as Israel has been and continues to be criminalized in Europe in a manner which echoes pre-Holocaust anti-Semitism, is that the European conscience has again fallen asleep.

The US understands the fundamental moral distortion of a court that would dare to try American nationals in front of a tribunal composed not of their peers, as the US Constitution provides, but by an international community inimical to the very values the court purports to represent. Because of this, the Bush administration rightly gave notice on May 6 that it would not ratify the Rome Treaty in spite of President Clinton's 11th hour signature to the accord.

Although the US remains justifiably concerned that the ICC will exercise its self-proclaimed right to try US nationals despite the US government's refusal to join the court, given the US's financial leverage over the UN, the likelihood of this occurring is remote.

Israel has no such financial leverage, and Israel's increasing diplomatic isolation provides scant tools with which to fight for our rights in international forums.

The only real weapon at Israel's disposal is the justice of our cause. To mitigate the clear danger the ICC manifests to the Jewish state, Israel must combat it on moral grounds. The first step in this direction is for the Israeli government to rescind its signature to the treaty. This signature, proffered by a cynical Barak government on the eve of the 2001 elections, is nothing but an abject surrender of Israel's moral ground. The move came after staunch pressure by EU-backed and now financed Justice Minister Yossi Beilin.

In rescinding its signature, the government must stipulate that it views the present international atmosphere, where the Jewish state is criminalized, as inimical to the values that European governments in particular claim to espouse. Israel should explain, that given the present international hostility towards the Jewish state, it is clear that the international community, as ensconced in the ICC, is morally incapable and unworthy of judging Israel.

Alan Baker, the Foreign Ministry's legal adviser, told the Knesset on Tuesday that Germany and Canada have both promised Israel that they will ensure the already highly politicized ICC will not be politicized in a manner that persecutes Israel. After canceling its signature to the treaty, the Israeli government must hold all governments to this promise. To do so, Israel must threaten and enact harsh diplomatic sanctions against any country that attempts to legitimize in any manner the indictment or trial of any Israeli national by the ICC.

It is very sad that Israel, which worked so hard for so long to see the establishment of the ICC, is now forced to condemn this institution as morally reprehensible. However, the Jewish state, as the embodiment of millennia of Jewish values of justice and law, must accept responsibility for its role as champion of our values first for ourselves, and afterwards for all humanity.

The international community, through word and action, has proven that the only way for Israel to advance its mission is for Israel to heed its own unpopular calling of continuing to be an example of morality and justice for the international community to follow.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post

Pakistan and India today stand on the brink of nuclear war. The 1962 Cuban missile crisis - the world's previous nuclear showdown -  was a walk in the park when compared to the danger emanating from the Indian subcontinent, home to some 20 percent of the world's population.

India, with its powerful army, robust democratic society, and enormous population and land mass, is clearly the stronger force. Since 1947, India has proved conclusively to the Pakistanis in three wars that the Islamic state is no match for it on the battlefield. As recently as 1999, when Pakistani forces led by General Pervez Musharraf attempted to grab land in the disputed Kashmir province with a combination of conventional and terrorist forces, only to beat a humiliating and costly retreat, India showed again that it has the will and the ability to put down any Pakistani attempt to change the political status quo through military means.

And yet, we see that India has failed to deter the Pakistanis. Over the past two weeks, Pakistan conducted three missile tests and declared that for it, nuclear warheads are weapons of first resort. Despite international pressure, Musharraf refuses to end Pakistani support for Islamic terrorist organizations in Kashmir.

The situation is so dangerous, because not only has Pakistan declared that it will respond to a conventional military attack with nuclear weapons, but, says Dr. Eli Carmon, of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, it "would even respond to a 'serious undermining' of its economy or society with nuclear weapons." That is, any move - from economic sanctions to a military offensive -taken by India to destroy the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistani-ruled Kashmir and Pakistan would be seen as justification for attacking it with nuclear weapons.

How has this situation come about? How is it possible that the Pakistani government can speak so blithely about the death of millions of people including its own? How can it be that, in the aftermath of September 11, the Pakistani government continues unabashedly to support terrorism even as it hosts US forces there to combat terrorism?

The answer lies in the special way Pakistan defines its national interest: a unique blend of calculated rationality and irrational nihilist millenarianism.

On the rational side, since September 11, Musharraf has seen that it is possible to play a double game with the United States and win. He has allowed US forces to use Pakistan as a staging ground against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan. Yet he has also provided shelter for these forces fleeing the US offensive in Pakistan. And the Bush administration refuses to call him to task for this. In fact, it has rewarded him.

Musharraf is received by President George W. Bush in the US. Pakistan has been promised hundreds of millions of dollars in economic aid, and the US arms embargo against nuclear-proliferating Pakistan has been lifted. All the while US special forces, who scale Afghan mountain ranges with 50 kilo packs on their backs looking for al-Qaida and Taliban forces in caves, come up empty-handed, as the enemy has fled to the Pakistani side of the Khyber Pass.

Quite reasonably, Musharraf has learned from this that there is no price to be paid for supporting terrorism and sheltering terrorists. In fact, he only stands to gain from it.

On the irrational side is the barely disguised Pakistani eagerness to use its nuclear arsenal against India. Aside from Pakistan, in the history of nuclear arms, since 1945 no nuclear power has been so overt in its embrace of a first-strike option.

In the March issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Peter Landesman described Pakistani enthusiasm for nuclear war. In the center of every major Pakistani city's central traffic circle, he writes, "sits a craggy, Gibraltarish replica of a nameless peak in the Chagai range. This mountain is the home of Pakistan's nuclear test site. The mountain replicas, about three stories tall, are surrounded by flower beds that are lovingly weeded, watered, and manicured. At dusk, when the streetlights come on, so do the mountains, glowing a weird molten yellow."

Landesman interviewed Brig.-Gen. Amanullah, formerly head of Pakistani Military Intelligence in Sind Province, which borders on India and includes Pakistan's largest city, Karachi. Now retired, Amanullah retains close ties to the Pakistani military and intelligence service. He explained to Landesman that he prays for a nuclear war.

"We should fire at them and take out a few of their cities Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta," he said. "They should fire back and take Karachi and Lahore. Kill off a hundred or two hundred million people. There is no future here, and we need to start over."

Today, after 55 years of sovereign nationhood, Pakistan can boast three achievements: a nuclear arsenal, an organized military, and a system of Islamic madrassas that inculcate millions of people with the culture and values of jihad. On all other levels, Pakistan is a failed state. Adult literacy rates are under 33 percent. Vast swaths of the 1,600-kilometer-long and 160-km.-wide border with Afghanistan are parched by drought and misuse and incapable of sustaining a population exploding at a rate of 2.6 percent a year. The poverty and squalor of the cities is beyond comprehension. Competing tribal groups war for power in the various provinces and spawn irredentist movements from Peshawar to Karachi.

In this situation, a nuclear exchange with India is seen as a way to turn back the clock, and as Amanullah put it, "start again." Thus the twin swords of terrorism and nuclear war are pointed at the throats of one-fifth of the world's population. For Pakistan today, terrorism is rewarded and nuclear war, which would lead to its physical annihilation, is an acceptable option.

This situation must be sobering for Israelis, as we find ourselves in month 21 of the Palestinian jihad against us. Even more than the Pakistanis, who enjoy only tepid international support, the Palestinians have gained from their adoption of jihad ideology and terrorist tactics. The Palestinian war against us enjoys unprecedented international popularity.

In Europe, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat is beloved, and in Washington, the Bush administration has responded to the jihad by embracing Palestinian statehood as the central plank of US Middle East policy.

While the Palestinian terrorist proto-state does not possess nuclear weapons, the Palestinians have repeatedly experimented with chemical agents on their bombs. Traces of hepatitis C and rat poison have been found on exploded bombs, and reports indicate that the Megiddo bomb was laced with cyanide. The Pi Glilot attack shows that the Palestinians intend to carry out strategic attacks that will cause tens of thousands of casualties. Like the Pakistanis, the Palestinians move forward with their calamitous plans with full knowledge that carrying them out will be catastrophic for them as well.

While Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has placed almost all his emphasis on the need to replace Arafat as Palestinian leader, OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Doron Almog claims the conflict with the Palestinians is not a simple question of bad leadership. In an address at Bar-Ilan University's Begin-Sadat Center on Wednesday evening, Almog explained, "The majority of Palestinians demands the right of return. They wish to turn back the clock. They hold on to land documents from the period of Turkish rule and plan their return."

He argued that, from a strategic perspective, Israel will only emerge victorious from the Palestinian jihad when "there is a fundamental change in Palestinian consciousness." In their nihilistic desire to "turn back the clock," the Palestinians resemble the nuclear trigger-happy Pakistanis.

Also like Pakistan, the Palestinian proto-state has no operating bureaucracies other than its security forces. Similar to the madrassas in Pakistan, the PA school system preaches jihad - training children for suicide and mass murder. In fact, from the perspective of totalitarian suicidal ideology, the Palestinian Authority may have already surpassed Pakistan. While Musharraf only hints at suicide as an option when referring to "first-strike options," Arafat overtly endorses it with his constant calls for "millions of martyrs" marching on Jerusalem.

Aside from its current lack of a nuclear option (although an Iranian or Iraqi bomb will serve its purposes just as well), the one major difference between the Palestinian proto-state and Pakistan is that the PA lacks a unified military.

As Israelis reel under the weight of Wednesday's massacre at Megiddo and face the very real and imminent prospect of a successful Pi Glilot attack, we find ourselves looking over to the Indian subcontinent and taking heart that it could be worse. Unfortunately for us, if CIA Director George Tenet succeeds in his mission of unifying the PA security forces, he will have brought us not security and stability but Pakistan.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post