From the beginning of May until last Tuesday, the Palestinians carried out 323 terrorist attacks against Israeli targets. That is an average of 12 per day. These attacks include suicide bombings, penetrations of Israeli towns by gunmen, roadside shootings, grenade and anti-tank missile attacks, mortar shellings, rocket attacks, assaults, and stabbings.

The navy's interception last Tuesday of the Hizbullah arms boat en route to Gaza was an indication that the Palestinians are not satisfied with the results of their aggression but are intent on improving their capabilities. It is also a sign that the Palestinians are not acting on their own; they are conducting their terrorist war with the direct military support of Iran, Hizbullah's boss, and Syria, Hizbullah's enabler.

Over the past two weeks, rocket attacks on Sderot from the Gaza Strip have markedly increased. On Wednesday, Sderot was attacked twice with four rockets. Two rockets scored direct hits on private homes. Luckily, the residents were not present when their homes were destroyed, yet two women and a young girl were hospitalized for shock.

Speaking in Holon last Saturday, Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal explained that while it seems as though the IDF's actions in the northern Gaza Strip have been unsuccessful in thwarting the rocket attacks, the truth is that were the IDF not operating in Beit Hanun, the home of the Kassam rocket industry, Sderot would be absorbing "not a few rockets a day, but hundreds."

The cargo on board the intercepted boat showed that the Palestinians are intent on increasing the effectiveness of their attacks. The navy seized 36 CD-ROMs with instructions on how to make bombs, rockets, and various other types of explosives and how to maximize the kill rate of suicide bombers on buses. As well, the boat's cargo hold included five boxes of 122 mm. rocket fuses and other bomb making components, including a radio activation system and electronic delay units.

In an interview with Yediot Aharonot on Thursday, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas repeated for the 1000th time that he has no intention of taking any action against the terrorist infrastructure. While he maintains that he is presently negotiating with Hamas to stop attacks on Israelis and states that once he has an agreement for a cease-fire, he will try to work out arrangements with Fatah and Islamic Jihad, Abbas will take no military action against any of the terror networks. "We will never have a civil war," he said.

He also indicated that Israel must help him to convince terrorists to agree to a work stoppage by "releasing prisoners and avoiding military operations."

For his part, Saeb Erekat was even more succinct. Speaking with the Associated Press on Wednesday, he explained that Abbas is aiming to get Hamas and Islamic Jihad to agree to wait until after a Palestinian state is declared before attacking Israeli targets. In his words, Abbas "will insist on this declaration [of a cease-fire] because that's the key... for him to go out and tell the Palestinians, 'Look, we've got the Israeli government to recognize the Palestinian state, [so] we need two years in a peaceful, meaningful peace process."

With all this taking place before our eyes, the government Sunday agreed to accept the Quartet's road map plan for the swift establishment of a Palestinian state. Unbelievably, the cabinet ministers who voted in favor of the road map stated that they were doing so even though the plan is antithetical to Israel's national interests. Naively, they excused their behavior by mentioning that the Bush administration has agreed to consider Israel's qualifications to its agreement during the implementation stages of the plan.

These 14 qualifications, which the government was too cowed to even release officially and therefore simply leaked to reporters, would, if accepted, mitigate some of the dangers inherent in the road map. But there can be no consolation in this, because the Bush administration has made clear that it rejects these qualifications. Secretary of State Colin Powell said flat out that there would be "no changes" to the road map.

It is necessary to point out that the road map forces Israel to accept at the outset the establishment of a Palestinian state ruled by the PLO on land to which Israel has a legal claim to sovereignty as strong as, if not stronger than the PLO's.

While Israel is forced to cease taking actions to defend its citizens from armed aggression carried out by the Palestinians, the Palestinians themselves are requested only to make statements to the effect that they are opposed to armed aggression against the State of Israel. While Israel must recognize the right of the Palestinians to self-determination and to relinquish the right of return of Jews to lands whose sovereignty is disputed, the Palestinians are not asked to recognize that the State of Israel has a right to exist as the Jewish state. The road map makes no reference to the need for the Palestinians to renounce their demand to settle millions of Palestinians within Israel.

Israel, which has absorbed 32 months of unremitting terrorist warfare against its civilians - warfare directed by the Palestinian Authority - is the side the Quartet points to in the road map as the villain. Israel must stop defending itself from aggression. Israel must accept Palestinian political demands lock, stock, and barrel.

Perhaps Prime Minister Ariel Sharon thought that accepting the road map would throw the ball back into the Palestinian court. For the past two months, the Bush administration placed unrelenting pressure on the prime minister to accept the road map "for the president." According to some reports, the State Department was even threatening Israel with economic and military sanctions if Sharon were to refuse.

The Middle East Newsline reported earlier this week that the State Department recommended denying Israel $8 billion in loan guarantees and $1 billion in supplemental military assistance if the government did not accept the establishment of a Palestinian state by the end of the year as stipulated by the road map.

The State Department was also recommending that the administration announce an investigation into the use of Apache and Cobra attack helicopters and F-16 fighters by the air force in operations against Palestinian terrorists.

And yet, immediately after the cabinet announced its decision, Washington announced its plans for a trilateral summit among President George W. Bush, Sharon, and Abbas next week. Top administration officials are now here busily working to ensure that Sharon will be forthcoming with concrete concessions at the Akaba summit to ensure the meeting's "success." So if Sharon thought accepting the road map would decrease US pressure, he was dead wrong. Far from lessening the pressure, Sharon's decision to accept the road map has only increased US pressure on him tenfold.

Since assuming office, Bush has been viewed by many Israelis, including by this writer, as the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House. In his June 24 speech last year about the Palestinian war against the Jewish state, he made quite clear that the Palestinians are the aggressor.

And yet, in light of the recent actions by the administration, actions that are quite simply hostile to the State of Israel, the president's credibility as a friend and an ally of the state is necessarily placed in doubt.

Parallel to his calls for democratization of the PA and demands for PA action against terrorism, Bush has distinguished himself as the most outspoken champion of Palestinian statehood to have ever occupied the Oval Office. Bush is the first US president to have ever adopted the establishment of a Palestinian state as an aim of US foreign policy.

Bush first made this statement in a letter to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah on August 29, 2001. The announcement came 36 hours after Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar delivered a breathtakingly hostile message from Abdullah to the White House that amounted to little less than a declaration of war against the US. According to press accounts, Bandar informed National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that because of the administration's support for Israel, "the crown prince feels that he cannot continue dealing with the United States."

Subsequently, the Bush administration sponsored UN Security Council Resolution 1397 that for the first time gave Security Council support for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Bush, while acknowledging Israel's right to self-defense, has never allowed Israel to take decisive action against the Palestinian war machine.

In spite of the fact that the Palestinian terror threat to Israel is backed by the same forces that back al-Qaida and in spite of the fact that Palestinians fought at the side of Iraqi Republican Guard units in Baghdad against US forces, the Bush administration refuses to accept that the Palestinian terrorist war against Israel is related to the Arab-Islamist jihad against the US. Indeed the administration has labeled "illegitimate" Israeli counterterrorism tactics that are identical to those of the US.

And now, today, all that remains of the contents of Bush's historic address last June, all that has survived the events of the past year, is an unwavering demand from Israel to accept Palestinian statehood - immediately.

Critics of the president's newest actions against Israel have argued persuasively that this new hostility toward Israel and embrace of Palestinian terrorists is inimical to US national security interests and deals a harsh blow to the US war on terrorism. From Israel's perspective, however, the largest problem with this policy is the one with which we never imagined having to contend.

This problem is that when judged solely on its actions, the Bush administration has shown that while in the past it could be relied on for at least a modicum of support, today it no longer views such support as concordant with its interests. Therefore we can no longer blindly trust its intentions.

Whether the current, openly hostile US policy toward Israel is the result of the president's own preferences or of bad advice he has received from his advisers is impossible to know. But whatever the case, this crushing and heartbreaking reality cannot be swept under the rug. The threats arrayed against us are too foreboding.

We must accept the truth. As presently constituted, the Bush administration's Middle East policy is hostile to the national security interests of the State of Israel.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

 As the world's media and foreign ministries have again trained their sights in on Israel and the Palestinians, a much more significant drama is being largely underplayed.

At its meeting next month in Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency will address the recent confirmation of reports that Iran is now poised to produce nuclear weapons.

Since a consortium of Russian companies signed an $800 million deal in 1996 to build a 1,000-megawatt light water nuclear reactor for Iran in Bushehr, most efforts by the US and Israel to stop the Iranian nuclear program have centered around applying pressure on the Russian government.

"The Iranians learned from Iraqi mistakes," says a senior Israeli intelligence official who is involved in efforts to monitor the Iranian nuclear program.

"The Iraqis worked 80 percent in secret and 20 percent in public on their nuclear program. This attracted attention to the program and made it possible to take action to prevent them from moving forward.

"In contrast," he says, "Iran works 80 percent in public and 20 percent in secret in developing its nuclear weapons program. It moves forward publicly, lulling the international community into a sense of complacency that all the Iranians are building is a nuclear power plant. Then suddenly we discover that they are on the verge of producing nuclear bombs."

Last August, an Iranian rebel group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, showed that the Bushehr plant might very well be little more than a sideshow to the real Iranian nuclear program.

The group's disclosure, which was later substantiated by satellite imagery, indicated that Iran secretly developed two other nuclear sites in Natanz and Arak. The Natanz plant is used for the production of nuclear fuel, and the Arak facility is used for the production of heavy water. While Russian companies have been under constant Western intelligence surveillance, it appears that these two facilities have been built with intense and little noted Chinese, Pakistani, and North Korean assistance.

When satellite images taken after the group's disclosure backed up the allegations, IAEA director Muhammad el-Baradei requested permission from the Iranian government to inspect the sites last December. In what is itself a violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty, (NPT) of which Iran is a signatory, the Iranian government delayed the inspection until February.

The IAEA's inspections were limited to the Natanz facility due to Baradei's tight schedule. Visiting the Natanz plant, Baradei and his inspectors found a network of centrifuges for enriching uranium. At the time Baradei indicated that a pilot facility at the site was complete and that a large centrifuge enrichment plant was still under construction. He described the plant as sophisticated and comprehensive.

Reports have noted that the Natanz facility already has 160 operational centrifuges and that an additional 1,000 are set for production in the next 18 months.

If left to their own devices, with the enriched uranium produced by these centrifuges, by 2005 the Iranian government will be able to field several uranium-based nuclear weapons every year. The still uninspected heavy-water plant in Arak will presumably be capable of producing plutonium-based nuclear weapons.

For their part, the Russians appear to be cooperating in the attempt to rein in the Iranians. Although they refuse to curtail their involvement with the Bushehr reactor, they have conditioned the operation of the Bushehr plant on Iranian agreement that the spent fuel rods from the reactor, which can be used to produce enriched plutonium, be returned to Russia. The Iranians have refused to sign on to the Russian proposal and as a result, although complete, the Bushehr plant is not operational.

As MK Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, notes, "The Iranian nuclear program is of course a strategic threat to Israel, but it is far from being only Israel's problem. The Iranians are now enhancing their ballistic missile capabilities to cover not only Israel but targets throughout Europe. A nuclear armed Iran, capable not only of bombing Israel, but of bombing Europe, will be a force of global instability and will significantly change the global balance of power."

As with every other significant national security and foreign policy issue, the Bush administration is divided on how to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat. Hawks in the Pentagon are pushing for the US to force the IAEA to find Iran in material breach of the NPT at its meeting next month. Such a finding would open the Iranian nuclear program to UN Security Council scrutiny that could lead to UN-sanctioned military action similar to the actions taken by the Security Council against Iraq in 1990. At the very least, it could have salutary effects on the US's thus far unsuccessful bid to force Europe to cut economic ties with the mullocracy.

For its part, the State Department, as usual has recommended traveling a less contentious path that involves "engaging" the Iranian government in an "unofficial" dialogue that has been taking place over the past several months in Geneva under UN supervision. At these meetings, the Iranian officials have denied that they are pursuing nuclear weapons just as they refused to accept that Hizbullah is a terrorist organization, denied supporting terrorism, and pretended they are not harboring al-Qaida commanders. That is, these unofficial negotiations with the Iranians, which as recently as early this month the State Department recommended making official, have been characterized by complete Iranian duplicity.

At the same time, by soft-pedaling the Iranian threat, the State Department is paving the way for a failure at the IAEA meeting next month. Speaking to Reuters, a Western diplomatic official in Vienna said last week that Baradei is expected merely to note that there are "inconsistencies" in the Iranian nuclear program that need to be explained.

In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal this week, former FBI director Louis Freeh addressed the issue of the Iranian threat to US national security. Calling Hizbullah, "the exclusive terrorist agent of the Islamic Republic of Iran," he criticized the Clinton administration for refusing to apply pressure on Iran after the FBI found that its security services stood behind the 1996 Hizbullah bombing of the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where 19 US airmen were killed. Then, too, the US has accused Teheran of sheltering top al-Qaida terrorists like Said Adel, the network's security chief, and Osama bin Laden's son Saad. Washington further alleges that al-Qaida operatives in Iran directed the May 12 terror attacks against US targets in Riyadh in which 34 people were murdered.

In addition to Hizbullah and al-Qaida, the Iranians also control the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, finance Hamas, and since the Karine-A weapons sale to the PA was concluded in late 2001, Iranian intelligence authorities have been backing and instructing Fatah terror cells as well.

In the aftermath of the May 12 attacks, the State Department suspended its dialogue with the Iranian government and raised its rhetoric against the Iranian regime. And yet, in spite of the clear strategic threat posed by a nuclear armed Iran, the State Department has been spending its energy not playing up the IAEA meeting next month, but in pressuring Israel to accept its road map to establish a Palestinian state by 2005 --just in time for the Iranians to declare that they are vacating their signature to the NPT and possess a nuclear arsenal capable of hitting targets in Israel and Europe.

In a conversation with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon earlier in the week, US President George W. Bush reportedly said he is convinced that PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas is committed to reforming the PA and fighting terrorism. And yet, the day after this conversation, Abbas himself told the Egyptian press that as far as he is concerned, PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, and not he, remains the head of the PA.

In Abbas's words, "Arafat is at the top of the [Palestinian] Authority. He's the man to whom we refer, regardless of the American or Israeli view of him." As well, both Abbas and his new foreign minister, Arafat lackey Nabil Shaath, have gone on record stating that Abbas's government will not take any action against Palestinian terrorist cells.

In an article in The Atlantic Monthly published in August 1992, Robert Kaplan discussed how it came to pass that the US government was caught unawares when Saddam Hussein marched his army into Kuwait in August 1990. By Kaplan's telling, after the Iraq-Iran war ended in 1988, US policy regarding Saddam became vague. With little direction from the White House, Saddam's 1988 gassing of 5,000 Kurds met with little backlash from Washington, as Arabists in the State Department were given more or less free rein regarding US policy towards Iraq. These career Arabists, like then ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie argued that Saddam, while a dictator, had a pro-Western orientation.

As Kaplan noted, "The only Middle East issue that really energized [US secretary of state James] Baker was the one with a domestic political payoff: the Arab-Israeli question." Together with his senior policy aides Dennis Ross and Dan Kurtzer, Baker poured all his energy and leverage into pressuring then prime minister Yitzhak Shamir's government to open negotiations with PLO-backed Palestinians.

Acting in this manner, Baker failed to take note of what Saddam was planning for Kuwait. This, in spite of the fact that in April 1990, four months before the invasion, Chas Freeman, then US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, warned specifically that Saddam was likely to invade Kuwait.

For anyone with eyes to see, it is clear that Abbas's ascension to power in the PA is a farce. The new wave of massacres in Israel and Abbas's declared allegiance to Arafat and Hamas are simply expressions of the obvious: Abbas is not a trustworthy interlocutor and by supporting his sham of reform, the US is supporting the terrorist organizations murdering Israelis as well as their state supporters in Teheran.

There is an old joke about a man groping around on the street at night. His friend approaches him and asks him what he is doing.

"I'm looking for my keys," he responds.

"Did you drop them here?" his friend asks.

"No, I dropped them in the alley across the way. But there's no light in the alley, so I'm looking for them here."

The prime danger to US national security lies in Teheran. The key to the global Islamic terror nexus that stretches across the world is found in the dark allies of Teheran, not in the well lit streets of Jerusalem. Rather than pressuring an ally to reward Teheran's terrorist friends, the US should be using all its leverage throughout the world to prevent the ayatollahs from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The price the US paid in 1990 for ignoring Saddam Hussein in favor of pressuring Israel was the Gulf War. The price it will pay for repeating the mistake with Iran will be a nuclear nightmare.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

"I have been in Israel for two years and have never spoken to someone with views like yours." So exclaimed a senior Western diplomat at the end of a pleasant lunch meeting with me on Wednesday afternoon.

Surprised, I responded, "That's strange. If the results of the last election and recent polling data are any indication of national sentiment, it would seem that many of my views are shared by the majority of Israelis."

Thinking about the conversation later in the day, it occurred to me that the diplomat's surprise upon hearing me explain my views about the road map, about Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), about the need to fight Palestinian terrorism, not reward it was indicative of a larger phenomenon.

Quite simply, it would appear that with respect to this region, there is an institutional unwillingness on the part of Western governments and international media organizations to process information that contradicts their ideological preferences. Because of this, missions have been compromised and bad policies have been adopted.

Let's take an example from afar. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein and his sons have disappeared. Also missing is Iraq's arsenal of chemical and biological weapons.

Here lies a troubling operational failure. It represents a significant threat to US national security and indeed to global security. Undoubtedly, the failure is due to the difficulty of obtaining good intelligence in a society as closed as Iraq was under Saddam.

Still, it has been reported that the US failed for years to accept vital intelligence reports from the Iraqi National Congress (INC), because CIA and State Department officials did not share the political aspirations of INC president Ahmed Chalabi.

For instance, the INC told the CIA in 1993 that a planned coup of Iraqi generals against Saddam Hussein had been exposed to the Iraqi leader. George Tenet, who was then the CIA's point man for the coup, rejected the information and even questioned Chalabi's intentions in reporting it.

When in fact the coup attempt was foiled, Iraqi intelligence officers jeered the CIA by announcing the coup's failure on a CIA radio held by one of the plotters.

There is no way of knowing whether the INC, if properly used by US intelligence gathering organizations, could have aided in preventing Saddam's escape and the disappearance of his WMD arsenal. What is clear is that it was a mistake for the US not to consider factual information simply because of political differences with its source particularly in light of the difficulty of operating in a closed society like Iraq.

In Israel, of course, it would seem that gathering information about what is going on is a simple task. Israelis can speak to anyone without fear. In fact, it would seem that the biggest problem for foreigners is not getting Israelis to speak to them, but getting Israelis to leave them alone.

The same is not true in the Palestinian Authority.

Over the years, credible Palestinian journalists have been arrested and held in jail for months for writing articles critical of the PA. Palestinian civilians suspected of maintaining ties with Israelis are murdered for collaborating.

In a disturbing op-ed in The New York Times last month, Eason Jordan, CNN's chief news executive, described in vivid detail how for more than a decade CNN did not report the truth about Saddam Hussein's brutality, because the network feared that doing so would endanger the lives of CNN's Iraqi employees.

In Jordan's words, "Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard awful things that could not be reported, because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff."

In the PA, there have been countless incidents of harassment of foreign reporters. In the summer of 2001, Newsweek's Joshua Hammer was abducted by Fatah gunmen in Rafah and only released after Newsweek agreed to report their statement.

Italy's state television network RAI had to recall its correspondent Riccardo Cristiano after he apologized to the PA for his competitor's photographing of the lynching of two IDF reservists in Ramallah on October 13, 2000. Several photographers were beaten that day by Palestinians for filming the scene and their cameras and films were destroyed.

In 1998, Yasser Arafat's adviser, Bassam Abu Sharif, told CBS news that the PA would no longer allow it unimpeded access to PA officials and territory, because 60 Minutes had run a segment exposing rampant PA corruption and human rights abuses.

As we have seen from whitewashed reports of PA involvement in terrorist attacks against Israel in the foreign press, these intimidation tactics have been largely successful.

But it is not of course simply a matter of intimidation. Reporting on the brutality of the PA or Saddam's Iraq for that matter is inconvenient for news organizations as well as for diplomats that want the PA to succeed or, until recently, wanted to avert the violent overthrow of Saddam's regime.
Simply stated, why would a reporter whose news organization effectively colludes with the PLO wish to report the PA's brutality and involvement in terrorism?

Why would a diplomat, whose government refuses to acknowledge that Israel is being victimized by a PA-backed terrorist war against its civilians, wish to speak to anyone who demands that this reality be acknowledged and policies updated to reflect this state of affairs?

As David Shipler wrote earlier this month in The New York Times, "An illuminating fact about the Middle East was confirmed last week: It's easy to think up a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without Israelis or Palestinians around to write the text."

The truth that Shipler points to in this article is precisely the point that came to my mind after speaking with the senior Western diplomat. He told me during the meal that his colleagues had applauded his "bravery" in requesting a meeting with me. I spoke only for myself when I met with him and yet, if he has never heard another Israeli who said things like what I told him, not a bit of which struck me as particularly novel, it means that his government, like the members of the Quartet, believes it is possible to force policies on the Israeli government without bearing in mind the concerns of Israeli citizens.

Proponents of the INC argue that if the US had embraced the organization rather than castigating it, INC forces could have destroyed Saddam's regime without the US Army having to fire a shot.

Even if this is not true, there is no doubt that better use of the INC in the period leading up to the US-led invasion could have provided the US with a better intelligence picture than it had when its forces were irrevocably committed to battle.

If CNN and other news organizations had not been willing to trade the truth for access to Iraqi officials, perhaps many of those who rallied outside the White House in opposition to the war would have been outside the White House protesting that the US government was standing by as Saddam tortured his own people.

Then, too, if the foreign diplomatic corps and the international media were willing to trade their access to the PA for accurate reporting on the PA's rampant corruption, human-rights abuses, and institutionalized incitement to murder Jews, the Quartet might never have put together a diplomatic plan that has no chance of success.

The diplomat I met with on Wednesday is an excellent agent of his government. Not only did he seek out an outspoken critic of Oslo like myself, he confided in me that he had even met with Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria.

"Even though I disagreed with everything they said, I didn't think that they were bad people," he told me. "I even reported back home that they were not demons."

And a good thing he told them that. Otherwise, perhaps Israel would now face a demand to not only cease building in towns in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip. We might also have to contend with a demand to hire an exorcist.

Reality trickles slowly into Middle East policies. But one thing is certain. It never goes away just because it is ignored.
 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

In a meeting with Israeli left-wing political activists and Palestinian
Authority cabinet ministers last week, US Assistant Secretary of State for
Near Eastern Affairs William Burns made disparaging statements regarding US
President George W. Bush's political supporters in the US, intimating that
conservatives, Christians, as well as representatives of AIPAC, the
pro-Israel lobby in Washington, lack common sense.

This was revealed in minutes of the meeting distributed by the left-wing NGO
Peace Now that were received by The Jerusalem Post.

In a meeting on May 4 with the 'Peace Coalition' at the US Consulate in west
Jerusalem, Burns spoke for just under an hour with members of the left-wing
lobby group about the Quartet's road map plan for Palestinian-Israeli
negotiations and its chances for success.

The Israeli delegation to the meeting was comprised of Labor MK Colette
Avital, Meretz MKs Yossi Sarid and Ran Cohen, Peace Now chiefs Janet Aviad,
Mossi Raz, and Moni Mordechai, as well as Yossi Beilin.

PA ministers Yasser Abed Rabbo and Ghassan al-Khatib, as well as PA
officials Nabil Kasis, Samih al-Abed, Nazmi al-J'ubi, Saman Khoury, and
Fadel Taboun represented the Palestinian side.

Burns, who held the meeting at the request of the Peace Coalition, was
joined by US Acting-Consul General in west Jerusalem Jeff Feldman. It should
be noted that in the past Burns turned down requests for a meeting with the
right-wing lobby group, the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria
and Gaza. Repeated requests by the council for meetings with US Ambassador
Dan Kurtzer have not even received a response from the US Embassy, according
to Council Spokesman Yehoshua Mor-Yosef.

Although the meeting was closed to the media, according to Peace Now
spokesman Yariv Oppenheimer who distributed the minutes of the meeting, 'Its
contents were not meant to be a secret.'

This view was disputed by Consulate spokesman Chuck Hunter, who expressed
the opinion that the contents of the meeting were in fact meant to be kept
between the participants.

According to the minutes of the meeting, Burns explained that among other
factors that stand to contribute to the success of the road map is the fact
that the US primary elections are set to begin only in October.

It has been widely reported that Bush stands to lose support among his core
voters if he is perceived as pressuring Israel to make concessions to the
Palestinians before the elections.

According to the minutes of the meeting, MK Avital 'expressed reservations
about the US Conservatives, Christians and AIPAC.'

Avital alleged that these constituencies, that are strong supporters of
Bush, 'are lobbying to torpedo the road map and suggested that the Americans
should help us [the Peace Coalition] to express our views to the American
public.'

Following this statement, Avital pressed Burns to discover whether Bush is
determined to move ahead with the road map.

In response to Avital's remarks, Burns is reported by the minutes as
assuring the meeting's participants of the president's commitment to the
plan. Burns then stated his view that 'the common sense of all peoples will
override the Conservative and Christian viewpoints once they see the road
map's potential.'

Although the participants in the meeting represent but a small fraction of
the members of Knesset, according to the meeting, Burns urged the
participants to continue with their political activities 'as new peace
attempts reflects the peoples will and will result in fundamental changes.'

Oppenheimer explained to The Jerusalem Post: 'It is important to us to show
the Americans that there are people here who want peace and that there are
Israelis and Palestinians outside of the government ministries and
decision-making circles.'

At the same time, Oppenheimer admitted that the Palestinian representatives
were in fact official PA personnel.

Hunter, who was preoccupied with Secretary of State Colin Powell's meetings
with PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday when reached for a response
to the meeting, said that aside from noting his view that the remarks were
not meant to be reported 'there is no further comment at this time.'

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

After a 33-year delay, the IDF began distributing war decorations on Yom
Ha'atzma'ut to veterans of the War of Attrition. That war, which until this
past November was never officially recognized as a war by the government,
lasted from June 15, 1967 until August 8, 1970. Its toll was 1,425 IDF
soldiers and officers killed in action and more than ten thousand wounded.

The decoration for service will be distributed to 333,474 IDF veterans who
served in active duty and reserves during that two-front war fought by
Egyptian, Jordanian and Palestinian regular and terrorist forces along the
Suez Canal, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Jordan Valley.

There is no way to overstate the symbolic significance of this belated move
for the bereaved families who lost their sons and daughters during the War
of Attrition.

Yet, aside from the move's moral significance, there is an important
national interest that is served by the government's decision to officially
recognize the War of Attrition as war like the War of Independence, the
Sinai Campaign, the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War and Operation Peace for
the Galilee.

In placing this war on par with the others, the government and the IDF are
signaling that they understand that wars are not necessarily bracketed
moments in time characterized by intense violence carried out by opposing
armies of conventional forces engaged in open battle.

For although there were such battles in the War of Attrition, the war was
mainly characterized by ongoing skirmishes, limited offensives and
counteroffensives, terrorist raids and counter-terrorist raids.

Two years after he launched the war against Israel, Egyptian President Gamal
Abdel Nasser in June 1969 explained its objective. 'I cannot conquer the
Sinai,' he said, 'but I can break the will of Israel by attrition.'

In this simple statement, Nasser exposed the entire doctrine of guerrilla
and terrorist warfare, or what is now, in the aftermath of the September 11
attacks called, 'asymmetrical warfare.'

Israel is no stranger to asymmetrical warfare. It has plagued us since the
advent of modern Zionism. As Nasser stated, its aim is to break our will to
fight in order to compensate for our enemies' inability to defeat us in
conventional arenas.

Terrorism, guerrilla raids, political and economic pressure as well as
psychological warfare are all components of wars of attrition.

While the terrorism causes our citizenry to live in fear and harms our
economy, the psychological aspect of being internationally isolated causes
societal disintegration as the legitimacy of the state is called into
question by Israelis themselves who seek a way out from under the crushing
pressure of the asymmetrical trap.

Just after the Palestinian Authority launched its terror war against Israel
in the fall of 2000, Maj.-Gen. (res.) and now Mossad chief Meir Dagan
explained to me that terrorism is a strategic threat to the State of Israel
because it aims to make it impossible for Israelis to live normal lives and
thus cause the disintegration of society.

In an interview last year, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon
expressed a similar viewpoint. Ya'alon then stated that because the aim of
the Palestinian terror war is to cause the disintegration of our society, it
is the most crucial war that Israel has fought since the 1948 War of
Independence.

Ya'alon said in an interview this week with Ma'ariv that like the War of
Attrition, 'I think that the war with the Palestinians is also worthy of a
war decoration. We have endured two and a half years of continuous war and
when it ends we will address the issue of the war decoration,' he promised.

From these and other statements by our security brass it is clear that those
responsible for safeguarding the security of the state understand that just
because our enemies use explosives, rifles and primitive mortars and rockets
against us rather than tanks and fighter craft does not mean that they are
not fighting a war against us. These statements expose an acute awareness
that we are living in an environment characterized by the presence of war
just as dangerous if not more dangerous to our survival than conventional
wars of the past. The danger is actually higher to a certain degree because
of the amorphous, undeclared nature of these campaigns against us.

As for the conventional threat to Israel's survival, there is no doubt that
Operation Iraqi Freedom degraded this threat significantly. Israel no longer
needs to worry about the specter of Iraqi forces invading the country from
Jordan or Syria. In fact, from the perspective of diminishing conventional
threats, the war against Saddam Hussein was even more significant than the
1979 peace treaty with Egypt because unlike the Egyptian army, the Iraqi
army has been effectively destroyed.

Just as President Anwar Sadat was taking the Egyptian conventional threat to
Israel off the table at Camp David, the threat of terrorist warfare
catapulted to global prominence with the Islamic revolution in Iran. Joining
radical ideology with terrorism, Ayatollah Khomeini signaled that a new
threat to Israel and indeed to the entire Western world was on the rise.

While the September 11 attacks were the most glaring single manifestation of
the threat terrorist wars constitute for open societies like Israel and the
US, it has been clear for years that Iranian and Saudi inspired and
supported global terrorist networks are, next to weapons of mass
destruction, the most significant strategic threat to global security. From
Syria to Lebanon to the Palestinian Authority to Iran and beyond, the most
salient threat Israel faces is ideologically inspired terrorism.

As if to make this point clear to us, the attack at Mike's Place in Tel-Aviv
ten days ago was carried out by Pakistani immigrants to Britain. As Ya'alon
pointed out, 'Two guys with Pakistani origins who have nothing to do with us
are so full of hatred that they are willing to commit suicide in order to
kill Jews. This makes it abundantly clear how destructive the incitement
campaign in Muslim lands against Israel and the Jewish people really is.'

In its actions in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as in its policies towards
everything from the UN to the French and German governments to Saudi Arabia
and Egypt, the Bush Administration has shown that the September 11 attacks
were enough to force the US to define global terrorism as the most dangerous
threat to its national security. It is willing to go after and destroy any
and all threats even if doing so involves alienating its allies abroad.

Then too, in its post-September 11 homeland security legislation and
anti-terror investigations the US has clearly shown that it is willing to
sacrifice certain civil liberties that impede its law enforcement arms'
ability to prevent terrorism and destroy terror networks in America.

Unfortunately, in Israel after two and a half years of a continuous
terrorist war against us, a parallel change in our politicians' thinking has
yet to occur. Although Fatah's terror attack in Kfar Saba was directed from
Iran and the attack in Tel-Aviv was the work of either Al-Qaida or
Hizbullah; while Iyad Bak, the Hamas terrorist who was killed Thursday in
Gaza by an IAF Apache helicopter was involved in setting up Al-Qaida cells
in Gaza, we continue to view the Palestinian terrorist war as something
removed from the global terrorist nexus. By limiting our view to only those
aspects of our strategic landscape that our politicians wish to see, we
receive distorted policy initiatives and decisions that if implemented will
make it difficult for us to fight this war let alone emerge victorious from
it.

Last week for instance Shinui MK Ehud Ratzbani requested that the Knesset's
finance committee slash the IDF's budget to reflect the elimination of the
Iraqi threat. Ratzbani has taken this initiative in spite of the fact that
the IDF is already set to have its budget slashed by 12.5 percent over the
next two years even as the terror threat and the threat of weapons of mass
destruction continues to rise from month to month.

Then too, Interior Minister Avraham Poraz decided some two months ago that
he will not revoke the citizenship of Israeli citizens who commit terrorist
attacks against their fellow citizens. This in spite of the fact that global
and local terror groups are going to great lengths to recruit Israeli Arabs
to their ranks. In so doing, in stark contrast to what is happening in the
US, far from expanding the tools the law places in his hands to protect
Israelis from terrorism and to punish offenders, in the midst of the war,
Poraz is limiting the government's use of already existing law enforcement
tools.

The fact that the government decided to decorate veterans of the War of
Attrition has the potential to be as strategically significant as it is
morally imperative. Yet, while the leaders of our security forces understand
that terrorist wars of attrition of today like the War of Attrition so many
years ago are real wars, our politicians seem not to have received the
message.

Since we are a democracy, our politicians are the ones who must be
convinced to accept our reality. Only by doing so will our security chiefs
and law enforcement officials receive the support they need to enable us to
emerge victorious from this war as we have from all its predecessors.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

In the days immediately following the US military's liberation of Baghdad last month, the anarchy in the streets was a clear sign that the US had succeeded in the first half of its mission in Iraq. Its armed forces had overthrown the terror-supporting dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.

In the weeks since the military victory was achieved, the main question has been whether the US will now do what is necessary to accomplish the second half of its mission: to lead Iraq until conditions have been met to enable the functioning of a democratic government in a country which has no history of participatory democracy.

The US military's arrest Sunday of Muhammad Mohsen Zubaidi, who had proclaimed himself mayor of Baghdad, was a clear indication that the US administration will not allow rogue forces like Zubaidi to compromise its authority.

The manhunt for key members of Saddam's regime, who will be prosecuted as war criminals, is a further indication that the US has full intention of winning the political battle for Iraq's soul with the same single-mindedness with which it won the battle to wrest control from Saddam.

Sadly, the Bush administration is not showing the same leadership in its management of the Palestinians' terrorist war against Israel. Rather, here the situation is comparable to the manner in which the first Bush administration mismanaged its military victory in the Gulf War.

In 1991, Washington allowed Saddam to retain power and even sided with the dictator when, at the recommendation of then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin Powell, the administration enabled Saddam to brutally quell Kurdish and Shi'ite rebellions against his rule in the aftermath of that war.

Limiting its operations to enforcing the "no-fly" zones, the US for a decade allowed Saddam to continue destabilizing the region, amassing prohibited weaponry, terrorizing his citizenry, forging alliances with groups like al-Qaida, and funding Palestinian terrorists.

Here, the US is following a similarly strategically ambivalent and morally questionable policy with regard to its handling of the Palestinian Authority. In orchestrating its policy with the UN, EU, and Russia - the other members of the so-called Quartet - the administration is subordinating its decision-making power to forces that share none of President George W. Bush's convictions on the necessity of fighting terror and encouraging the spread of democracy in the Arab world.

Lest we have forgotten, it was just last year that the UN's special middle east coordinator, Terje Larsen, ignominiously stood before television cameras in Jenin and insinuated that Israel was guilty of war crimes in the IDF's combat operations against terrorists in the UN-managed Jenin refugee camp.

His remarks came at the same time as the UN Security Council debated its resolution to investigate charges not of Palestinian war crimes after terrorists from the PA murdered 130 Israelis in a single month but rather Israel for moving in to destroy terror cells threatening its citizens.

Then too, bringing in the EU ignores the fact that it has been a chief financier of the PA's terrorist war against Israel. Under the leadership of foreign relations czar Chris Patten and Middle East envoy Miguel Moratinos, the EU has transferred $10 million a month to the PA's coffers. This has gone on continuously in spite of the irrefutable evidence that Israel has presented showing the money is being transferred to Fatah terror cells.

When faced with a demand by European parliamentarians to investigate the charges of terror funding, Patten undiplomatically responded that he needed an investigation "like a hole in the head."

In embracing the newly inaugurated regime of Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Arafat's deputy of some 40 years, the Bush administration is accepting a myth of a reformed Palestinian Authority. In so doing, it is expending political capital backing a Palestinian leader who shares none of the president's hopes for a reformed PA that can eventually lead to the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state.

Because of the support he enjoys from the Bush administration, Palestinians see Abbas as a US puppet they derisively compare to Hamid Karzai, the US-anointed president of Afghanistan. And yet, in stark contrast to Karzai, Abbas has not committed himself to waging war against terrorism by actively working to destroy terrorist infrastructure in the PA.

Rather, like Arafat, he suffices with trite condemnations of terrorism, while continuing to define Israel's actions to destroy these infrastructures as morally indistinguishable from acts of mass murder and mayhem launched against Israeli civilians.

Working with the other members of its discordant Quartet, the Bush administration has now adopted the "Road Map to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" as official US Middle East policy. In so doing, the US is undermining its credibility as a nation that fights terrorism by giving a reward to the PA for its almost three-year-old terrorist war against Israel.

Tuesday night's massacre at Mike's Place in Tel Aviv signaled that far from losing their nerve as a result of Abbas's rise to prominence, the terror cells are continuing to innovate.

The two murderers who carried out the attack were brought into the Palestinian terror nexus as British tourists. It is still unclear whether Fatah and Hamas, the groups that claimed responsibility are in fact the responsible parties, but if so, this is the first time these groups have utilized foreigners to carry out attacks for them.

And yet, after this attack and Abbas's meaningless condemnation of it, the Bush administration went forward in officially presenting the road map. This document represents not simply a readoption of the failed Oslo process.

The road map, which at its outset posits that its object is the swift establishment of a Palestinian state, demonstrates to the same Palestinian leaders that have orchestrated the terrorist war against Israel, that not only is there no price to pay for their aggression, they are to be rewarded for it.

After all, unlike the road map, the Oslo agreements never overtly stated that a final settlement would involve Palestinian statehood.

While Israel is obligated by the road map to give tangible concessions in the form of withdrawals from Palestinian towns and freezing of construction in Israeli towns in the territories, the Palestinians are required only to regurgitate the same empty promises to combat terrorism they have been making for 10 years.

Even though the EU and UN have proven that they stand foursquare on the side of the PA in spite of its decision to wage a war of terrorist aggression, the road map, for the first time, grants both, as well as Russia, the role of arbiters who will determine for Israel whether the PA is abiding by its agreements.

There can be but two outcomes to the US determination to push Israel into negotiating with the PA on even worse terms than those that existed under Oslo. In the best case scenario, the road map will go the way of all previous documents from the Mitchell plan to the Tenet plan to the Zinni plan. That is, it will be forgotten in the wake of continued Palestinian aggression. In this case, its memory will serve to continue to militarily and diplomatically constrain Israel in acting to defend itself. The never-ending war of attrition will exact its high human and economic toll on our society. Palestinian terror forces will take heart from any indication that we are losing heart under the strain of their terrorism and work all the harder to find new ways to attack us.

The second possible outcome of the road map is that, in the framework of the fiction of PA reform under Abbas, a Palestinian terrorist state will be established. This state will immediately destabilize the region in a manner similar to the Khomeini and Taliban regimes in Iran and Afghanistan. The security repercussions for the US of a terrorist state next to its chief strategic ally in the Levant will not be long in coming.

The most telling contrast between the US's strategic success in Iraq and its preordained strategic failure in the PA is in the identity of these policies' architects. While Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy Franks are the fathers of the US policy in Iraq, Secretary of State Powell, who led the previous Bush administration down the garden path in Iraq, is the author of the administration's policy toward Israel and the PA.

The abject failure of Powell's strategies in Iraq and the PA has not gone unnoticed in Washington. Last week, the ideological fight between the opposing camps descended into open warfare as former House speaker Newt Gingrich called for a restructuring of the State Department, which he charged is undermining US interests. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage responded by calling Gingrich mentally ill.

Given the shrillness of the debate, there is no doubt that in spite of Wednesday's presentation of the road map, the last word on the matter has yet to be uttered in Washington.

At the same time, in anticipation of Powell's visit next week, the government should brace itself for a confrontation. While it would serve no purpose to descend into the rhetorical gutter with Armitage, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon should make it clear to Powell that while Israel respects the president, we will not fall on our sword to please the State Department.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.