Wednesday, the US Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee postponed indefinitely its vote on the White House's nomination of Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes to the board of directors of the federally mandated and financed United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC.

The Senate committee's tabling of the nomination of a scholar to a think tank is in itself a small story. After all, it can be argued, no lives are at stake, and no government contracts large or small hang in the balance.

If it so desired, the White House could override the Senate's inaction by appointing Pipes to the think tank's board while Congress is in summer recess. This would not be unprecedented.

President Clinton side-stepped the Senate on a number of occasions during such recesses when he appointed ambassadors and federal judges who would otherwise have had their appointments buried in the Senate. And yet, the White House is not expected to act in this manner. Rather, it is expected to disengage and essentially allow Pipes' nomination to wither on the vine.

Pipes, a renowned scholar of Islam and the Arab world who heads the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, is the bane of the existence of Arab-American terrorism apologists and radically anti-American Middle East scholars. These detractors understand the importance of Pipes' unapologetic and intellectually-anchored attacks on radical Islam and the threat such radicalism manifests both to Islam itself and to the US.

These terrorism apologists, heavily concentrated in high-profile organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Council on Public Affairs, and the Middle East Studies Association among others, launched an intellectual and public relations war against Pipes years ago. This war was intensified after the 9/11 attacks when millions of Americans woke up to the stark reality of the malignant force of radical Islam on US national security.

In the aftermath of the attacks, Pipes, who had been warning of this threat for over a decade, suddenly rose to national prominence. Pipes's detractors rarely debate the actual issues that he raises. Rather, they ignore the inarguable substance of his claims and seek to smear his reputation by resorting to the gutter tactic of launching an unrelenting stream of ad hominem accusations of bigotry and war mongering against him.

In nominating Pipes to the previously obscure US Institute of Peace, the White House was making an important statement. It was saying that it recognizes that in the war on terrorism, no less than in the Cold War, the intellectual foundations and rationales guiding the war effort are in many respects as important, if not more important for eventual victory, than the military battles. If the US is not able to intellectually discredit its enemies then it will not long sustain the will to fight them on the military battlefield.

In backing away from Pipes's nomination when it found itself exposed to baseless Muslim allegations of racism, the Bush administration is following the pattern of policy inconsistency that has marked its path since it entered office. Writing this week of this inconsistency as it relates to the president's domestic agenda, commentator George Will argued that "the administration's principal objective may be to avoid fights about cultural questions."

As if to prove the salience of this inconsistency, last week, The New York Sun published an article about a new advisory group formed by the State Department at the beginning of the month to guide US public diplomacy towards the Arab and Muslim world. The group, which is charged with recommending policy initiatives, "will report its findings and recommendations to the president, the Congress, and the secretary of state." Given its mandate, it should be noted, this new panel is infinitely more influential on US policy than the board of directors of the Institute of Peace.

Disturbingly, the group's members share none of Bush's expressed commitment to bringing freedom to the Arab world but rather have argued for years that Israel is to blame for the instability in the Arab world and the terrorism that emanates from it.

The group's chairman, former ambassador to Syria Edward Djerejian, has for over a decade been a firm advocate of appeasing Arab dictatorships, generally at Israel's expense. Djerejian has often issued public apologetics for Arab rejectionism and for Palestinian terrorism, which he claims are a result of Israeli foot-dragging in negotiations.

With Secretary of State Colin Powell's approval, Djerejian appointed as members of his group people like John Zogby, Shibley Telhami, and Stephen Cohen who have distinguished themselves as some of Israel's harshest critics among American intellectuals and consistent foes of those who propose democratization of the Arab world.

So, as the White House backs away from Pipes's appointment rather than contend with the political outcry from terror apologists masquerading as civil rights activists, the State Department announces the formation of a policy group filled with appeasement of tyranny specialists masquerading as public diplomacy experts.

But does any of this really matter? In the vast scheme of things, what is the importance of a board of directors here or an advisory group there? Perhaps all that stands in the balance here is a highbrow intellectual debate.

Unfortunately, this is far from the case. The question of the nature of the war the US is fighting is critical to determining whether or not the US is adopting strategies capable of winning the war. The intellectual split between Pipes and Djerejian and the policies their views prescribe could not be starker. Pipes and his intellectual allies view the war as a cultural battle which pits Arab fascists and Islamic totalitarians against their own people as well as against Western democracies.

Djerejian and his fellows view the war as a conflict between helpless and pitiable masses led (happily) by exotic and oil-rich Arab leaders and what they perceive as Western imperialism best manifested in Israel.

In Pipes's formulation of the struggle, the US must be firm and unapologetic in its war against these regimes and their guiding ideologies. In Djerejian's view, the war will end when the US sacrifices Israel and in so doing shows the desert sheikhs and their wretched masses that the US has nothing against them. The view adopted by the White House of the nature of the war then has enormous implications for the strategies adopted in fighting it.

As if on cue to show the consequences of Djerejian's approach, this week Newsweek published an article that exposed an apparent Bush administration cover-up of suspected Saudi governmental collusion with the 9/11 terrorists. Omar al-Bayoumi, a suspected Saudi agent, met with two of the hijackers in 2000 right after he left the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles. He paid their apartment rent for two months and is suspected of having arranged for them to receive Social Security cards and flight training in Florida.

The administration is currently insisting that 29 pages of Congress's 900-page report on intelligence failures that preceded the 9/11 attacks be expunged. These 29 pages deal with Saudi involvement in the attacks. Powell, Djerjian's political patron and close friend, is one of the administration officials most associated with the Bush administration's policy of backing the Saudi government. The backing continues unabated in spite of the fact that Saudi citizens have provided al-Qaida with the bulk of its funding and soldiers.

As well, Powell and his associates have succeeded in convincing Bush to reverse his policies regarding the Palestinian Authority. Whereas a year ago, Bush conditioned US support for Palestinian statehood on the emergence of a new Palestinian leadership "untainted by terrorism" and on Palestinian democracy, today Bush is meeting with Arafat's deputy of 40 years in the Oval Office.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Bush administration's new great white hope for Palestine, has consistently stated that he will not dismantle terrorist organizations. Rather than disavow his leadership in light of his intransigence and extremism, the administration follows in the footsteps of the previous two administrations. Bush embraces this Palestinian thug and his corrupt and terrorist cronies and does so while pressuring Israel, a key and stalwart US ally, to make dangerous concessions to terrorism.
Israel is today being pressured to withdraw its troops from Palestinian cities and release murderers from jail in the empty-headed hope that doing so will magically transform Abbas from a terrorist to a peacemaker.

In contrast, in Iraq, where Pipes's belief that tyranny must be defeated has been adopted as policy, the US is making progress in establishing the foundations of democracy and political stability in a land where such notions have never been allowed to take root. This successful, robust, and deeply moral policy was over the past decade firmly and publicly opposed by the members of Powell's advisory group as well as by Powell himself.

As Democrats and Europeans yammer vacuously about the fact that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction have yet to be found, they not surprisingly ignore the real weakness of the Bush administration's strategy of fighting the war on terrorism. The most damaging aspect of the administration's policy is that it is weakening its chance of winning the war by refusing to consistently apply the proper intellectual foundations of the war to its policies.

The longer the Saudi government is allowed to infect the Arab and Islamic world with its totalitarian message and money, the longer US national security will remain at risk. The longer the Palestinians are rewarded for their terrorist war, the longer they and their sponsors will serve as a source of instability and chaos in the region.

The Senate's tabling of Pipes's nomination is a small yet vital test of the administration's resolve. Unfortunately it seems that the administration is intent on failing this test.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Last week saw the first official mosque opening in Granada, Spain since the Spanish Inquisition. Just after the mosque opening ceremonies concluded, 2,000 Muslims from all over Europe converged on the town for an Islamic conference. There participants were told that the aim of Muslims in Europe is to overthrow the capitalist system.

According to the BBC, Spanish Muslim leader Umar Ibrahim Vadillo told the conference that Muslims should stop using Western currencies like the dollar, the euro and the pound and instead use a gold dinar. By doing so, Vadillo promised, the Muslims would cause an economic collapse of Western economies so overwhelming in its scope that it would make the 1929 stock market crash look like a minor event.

Also addressing the conference was German Muslim leader Abu Bakr Rieger. He told participants that as Muslims in Europe they must not bend in their religious practices by adapting them to European values or traditions. In Germany itself, radical Islamists dominate the leadership of the Muslim community.

Last April, French Muslims voted to give radical Islamists 14 seats on the new 50 seat national council of French Muslims. The group around the moderate imam of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur won only two seats on the council. In an interview with UPI this past week, US terrorism expert Michael Radu explained that half of the young Muslims in France "reject the French identity. They see themselves not as Frenchmen but as Muslims."

Commenting on the increasing radicalization of French Muslims, French Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy said late last month, "It is irresponsible to ask whether Islam is compatible with our republic, because if you say no, what do you do then?"

Last week too saw the publication of an article by MK Azmi Bishara on the Arabic Media Internet Network Web site. The article, "Deciphering the hodna (sic.)" was distributed by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

In his article, Bishara explains that the Palestinians must not fall into a US-Israeli "trap" with their cease-fire. He argues that the US and Israel are attempting to cause a split between a Palestinian leadership and the terrorist organizations. Referring to the Palestinians as "we," the Israeli MK Bishara warns that the Palestinians must not allow for the "resistance," (as he euphemizes terrorist attacks on Israelis), to be separated from the negotiations.

Bishara argues that the Palestinians should not accept US financial assistance because it will turn the people "against the resistance, and will function simply as a way of encouraging Palestinians to give in to US and Israeli demands." Bishara continues, "There can be little hope for justice and steadfastness in Palestine if the resistance recedes from its place in public life, and if the population is held captive by those who oppose the resistance in principle."

In using the metaphor of a people held captive, Bishara is arguing that any Palestinian leadership that combats terrorism and accepts Israel is by definition illegitimate.

Finally, Bishara warns that a cease-fire by terror groups is liable to reduce their allure to young Palestinians who might decide to get a job instead of becoming human bombs. In the Israeli parliamentarian's words "Unless the Palestinians are determined to continue the struggle, the cease-fire may simply disrupt the resistance and discourage the young from joining its ranks.

"Those who join the resistance do so because of the existing momentum. Political militants have reason to fear that the cease-fire may weaken the momentum of the resistance and disrupt the link between the resistance and the youth who might have provided it with new supporters."

So Bishara, who as an MK is sworn to uphold the laws of the State of Israel, is advising the Palestinians not to give up terrorism. He is advocating that the Palestinian terrorists and PA leaders work together to formulate a consensual strategy that "coordinate[s] on matters of peace as well as of resistance."

This of course is not the first time that Bishara has gone public in his support of the Palestinian annihilationist war against the country whose laws he is sworn to uphold. We recall Bishara's presence at Hafez Assad's memorial ceremony in Syria in 2001 where he stood next to Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah who had recently ordered the kidnapping and murder of three IDF soldiers stationed inside of Israel and the abduction of Israeli businessman Elhanan Tenenbaum. Standing next to Nasrallah, Bishara called for continued war against Israel.

At the UN's anti-Semitic orgy in Durban, South Africa in August 2001, Bishara led the charge against Israel, which he constantly alleged is a racist, apartheid state. His own party calls for the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state. In short, Bishara uses the organs of Israeli democracy to subvert and delegitimize the right of the Jewish people to self-determination. At the same time, he publicly makes common cause with Israel's declared enemies who themselves make no bones about their intention to use genocidal means to destroy the country.

The problem with Muslim minorities in Israel and in other Western democracies is not that they do not wish to assimilate per se. There are many examples of ethnic and religious minorities, like ultra-orthodox Jews for instance, who wish to live happily and peacefully and separately from the larger national majorities in the countries where they reside. The Black Hebrew sect in Israel, like the Amish in Pennsylvania, are other examples of minorities that live peacefully while separating themselves off by tradition, lifestyle and belief from the rest of their countrymen.

The problem with Muslim and Arab minorities in Israel and other Western countries is that increasingly their leaders are not calling for separation from the majority culture. Rather they are calling for the overthrow by a mixture of violence and subversion of the majority culture. The aim of men like Bishara and Vadillo and Rieger is not to live as a separate minority group but to destroy the cultures of the countries they live in and to replace these ways of life with their own. That is, these leaders stand opposed to the right of the Jews to be Jews, the French to be French, the Americans to be Americans and the Germans to be Germans. In the name of Palestinian nationalism or Islamic purity, these men wish not to ensure their minority rights but to overturn the majorities' right as free peoples' to self-determination.

For Israel, the problem of Arab rejectionism and the demographic challenge this rejectionism raises is more acute than anywhere else in the world.

This is so because the radical Arabs and Muslims themselves have made Israel the first target in their war against Western culture and civilization. It is also true because of the numbers themselves. Without Judea and Samaria and Gaza's 3.5 million Palestinians, twenty percent of Israel's population is already Arab.

For years Israel has been alternating between denying the problem and mishandling it. Israel's leading doves argue that Israel must establish a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza immediately because if Israel does not do so it will be swallowed up by the growing Palestinian population on both sides of the 1949 armistice lines. But in so arguing, these self-styled demographic experts never stop to consider that such a state is most likely to simply exacerbate the problem.

The Palestinian state they so wish to establish will have no economic independence. Its citizens will continue to flock to Israel for work. The Palestinian state will have open borders with Jordan and Egypt and these populations will inevitably flock to Israel for work as well.

In 1995, just a year after the Palestinian Authority was established in Gaza and Jericho alone, Israel was already swamped with 50,000 Jordanians who entered the country on visitors' permits to the PA and stayed on illegally in Arab villages in the Galilee.

As well, there is an acute problem of defeatism in the ranks of Israeli policymakers. The New York Times columnist and friend of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, William Safire felt it necessary to devote his latest column to blasting President Harry Truman for his recently unearthed diary which included a virulently anti-Semitic rant from 56 years ago. While Safire understands that anti-Semitism, even that expressed over a half century ago, cannot be brushed aside or go unanswered, Sharon himself apologizes for and accepts PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas's current anti-Semitism.

In an interview with FOX News this week, Sharon was asked how he felt about the fact that Abbas devoted his doctoral thesis to denying the Holocaust. Sharon replied, "Well, I think Abu Mazen (Abbas) is a courageous man. He never hesitated to express his views in the past. Look, we have to remember, Abu Mazen is a Palestinian. He's not a member of the Zionist movement."

But that is precisely the point. For the Palestinians to be credible partners for peace with Israel they must become Zionists. For peace to hold, the Palestinian leadership must accept Israel's right to self-determination as a Jewish state. In the same vein, for Arab and Muslim minorities in the West to flourish in their adopted homes, they must be willing to accept the right of the peoples of the countries they live in to self-determination.

That the demographic threat to Israel is real cannot be ignored or denied. As a democracy, Israel, like other Western countries must contend with the matter at hand without shirking. But adopting a plan that is one part denial and two parts stupidity only worsens the situation. There is likely no silver bullet to solving this problem. But that simply means that limited remedies must be considered.

For instance, Arabs in Israel should be encouraged to assimilate. They should be allowed to do so. Arabs willing to speak Hebrew and serve in the IDF and live at peace within the Jewish state should be embraced by all Israelis.

But at the same time, those who openly advocate and demand the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state should enjoy no immunity from prosecution for treason, abetting terrorism, sedition and similar offenses. In a democracy, all citizens have the right and indeed the duty to demand equal opportunity and liberty. But in granting these rights, all nation states also have a right to demand that their peoples' right to self-determination be respected.

Orignally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations this week distributed an op-ed under the title "A Muslim wakeup," that was published on Wednesday by The Christian Science Monitor. The author, a self-proclaimed Muslim political activist in New York named Ahmed Nassef, railed against the "anti-Jewish bigotry" which he admits is ubiquitous in the Arab world today.

Nassef, you see, does not hate Jews. He likes Jews or at least some Jews. He has a Web site called MuslimWakeUp.com and the most popular feature on his site, he writes, is one called "Hug a Jew."

The feature involves interviews of American Jews who discuss "their work in support of civil liberties and social justice." These good Jews then get their pictures taken receiving "big bear hugs" and the photographs are displayed proudly on the home page. How nice. Finally, in Nassef we may have come across a politically active Muslim who publicizes his love for the Jewish people.

Well, not exactly. While Nassef doesn't approve of the sermons in mosques in places like Jordan that call for jihad against Israel, he understands them. You see, according to Nassef, "For many Muslims today, the government of Israel has become synonymous with the Jewish people."

"This phenomenon is complicated," he continues, "by the fact that Israel invites this association by calling itself a 'Jewish' state." What is more, he carries on, "Israel is as much a 'Jewish' state as Iran is an 'Islamic' state." But not to worry, help is on the way, because Nassef tells us, "Just as thousands of Iranians are calling for more freedoms, scores of Israelis are actively demanding an end to their government's occupation of Palestinian lands."

One can hardly fault the Conference of Presidents for getting excited about Nassef's column. It isn't every day that a Muslim publicly embraces Jews. On the other hand, it is reasonable to come away from a reading of the column not to mention a perusal of his Web site, which features articles like "Apartheid Israel: A South African's perspective" with a sense of discouragement and revulsion.

This is because the only Jews Nassef likes are the Jews who say that the Jewish people has no right to self-determination in our native land. The only Jews worthy of a hug by Nassef are the ones who reject Israel's right to exist.

Nassef's argument with the jihadists over Jews is analogous to the difference between the Russian czars and the Nazis. While both agreed that Jews deserved to be oppressed, the czars just subjugated the Jews and forced us to live in ghettos and every so often let the Cossacks loose on us. The Nazis enslaved us and exterminated us.

By sending out Nassef's op-ed, the Council of Presidents appears to think that we should take note when a Muslim makes a public gesture of tolerance. But is that what Nassef is doing here?

By saying that Jews shouldn't be slaughtered in the name of Allah, Nassef is taking a half-step away from jihad. At the same time, taking this half-step doesn't bring Muslims any closer to accepting the Jewish people. Taking this half-step away from a genocidal war against the Jewish state doesn't bring us a half step closer to peace. All Nassef is doing by hugging his "right-thinking" Jewish friends is letting us all know that Islamic totalitarianism is not the only source of the Muslim world's rejection of the Jewish people's right to freedom and self-determination.

When reading Nassef's column it was hard not to think of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas's speech at Aqaba last month. There, standing before the cameras, he took a half step. He acknowledged "Jewish suffering throughout history." He even said that terrorism is immoral. But he didn't say that the Jews are a people and he didn't say that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. He also didn't say that that terrorism is a crime and that terrorists must be punished for their crimes. In fact he said they should all receive "get out of jail free" cards.

For making his speech of half steps, Abbas has been rewarded generously by Israel and the US. Israel has agreed in principle to the establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip. Working toward that end, Israel has given Abbas money and territory and freed terrorists. In addition, Israel has already begun to throw Jews out of their homes in Judea and Samaria.

For its part, in exchange for Abbas's half steps, the US is for the first time transferring money directly to the Palestinian Authority. This it does in spite of the fact that Abbas and his security chief, Muhammad Dahlan, were the two Palestinian leaders next to Yasser Arafat most responsible for turning the PA into a kleptocracy during the Oslo days. As well, the Bush administration is sending a never-ending stream of functionaries to Israel to pressure Israel to be more forthcoming in abiding by Abbas's demand to free Palestinian murderers, transfer territory, and destroy Jewish homes.

And what has Israel received in return for its embrace of Abbas's half steps? This week IDF Intelligence reported that Hamas, Fatah, and Islamic Jihad are exploiting their self-declared three-month respite from mass murdering Jews to mobilize new recruits for the job of human bomb.

They are also spending their time, energy, and resources replenishing their stores of weapons and ammunition.

For their part, Abbas's security officers have been working overtime to steal Israeli vehicles to replenish their depleted vehicle pools. Most sought after are new jeeps, just off the boats in the port of Eilat. According to an Israeli police source, "As Israel's relations with the Palestinians warm up, the pace of jeep theft will also rise."

Abbas has shown that he was absolutely serious when he said that he will take no action against the terrorist infrastructure. He has also proven that he can be completely trusted to demand that Israel free all Palestinian terrorists from prison and that he will not accept measly releases of those who were merely indirectly involved in the murder of Israelis. Abbas can also be counted on to continue to demand that millions of Palestinians whose grandparents left Israel in 1948 be allowed to move to Israel.

Israel can implicitly trust Abbas, in short, to take no step that will irrevocably place the Palestinians on the path to true peace and reconciliation with Israel.

At the same time, Israel can be sure that the meaningless half steps that Abbas has taken will be met with recrimination and denunciation by his boss Arafat. Arafat, who gave a lovely speech chock-full of half-steps in 1994 when he received the Nobel Peace Prize, can be counted on to make Israel and the US appreciate Abbas's half steps and feel pressure to continuously heap prizes on him for ostentatiously taking them.

The most disconcerting aspect of all of our self-flagellation in response to meaningless gestures of tolerance is what it says about our national psyche. In loudly extolling the spit being spat in our faces by the likes of Abbas and Nassef as rain, we are showing a wounded psyche in need of serious psychotherapy.

We quickly need to find a way to understand that people whose acceptance of us is conditioned on us divesting ourselves of all vestiges of self-respect are not our friends or partners. We need to search deep within ourselves to find the voice that says that we have rights as a people to live in freedom in our land and that anyone who wishes for the Jews to hug them must first accept us for who we are. Indeed, we must find the courage after absorbing so many years of hatred and rejection to stand up for ourselves and be proud of who we are.

As for our American friends who so wish to see us finally living at peace with our neighbors, it would serve them well to remember why they like us to begin with. It isn't our willingness to make "painful concessions" for peace with our sworn enemies that has drawn them to us. The root of our friendship with America is our willingness to stand up for ourselves and defend our principles and our rights. The reason that America wants Israel to have peace is because it thinks that a country based on such principles as freedom, democracy, hard work, and loyalty should be accepted by its neighbors. America understands that our neighbors have more to gain by being friends with a society like ours than we have to gain by making concessions to societies like theirs. As Israel's friend, America should be telling Abbas that his half-steps are worthless.

As the representative of the Jewish people, the government of Israel should be wiping Abbas's spit from our faces and telling him that he will receive no concessions - painful or otherwise - and certainly will not receive statehood until after he makes irrevocable full steps toward accepting Israel as the Jewish state. And our government should do something else as well. It should review the world leaders it has hugged and determine whether these people are worthy of the Jewish state's embrace.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

As the government debates how to implement the various stages of President George W. Bush's Road Map for a Middle East Peace, Tourism Minister Benny Elon is preparing for what he believes is the predestined failure of the road map.

Son of retired Supreme Court justice Menachem Elon, a former head of a yeshiva, and a resident of the West Bank town of Beit-El, Elon laments what he describes as the Right's historic failure to recognize the importance of diplomacy and international law and discusses the steps he is taking to change the situation.

To brace for the day after, Elon has formulated a plan that he believes will represent a viable alternative to the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, he described the cease-fire among Palestinian terror groups as a trap that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "is either falling into it or leading us into."

What do you mean by the Right's failure to recognize the importance of diplomacy?

This is something that the political Right in Israel has never done and has never been willing to understand. We have undervalued the media. We have undervalued the importance of diplomacy and international law. Our way has always been to set up facts on the ground. But we found in the Sinai, in Yamit, that the facts we put on the ground with our settlements can be wiped away without a trace by the stroke of a pen signing a diplomatic agreement. The same can easily be the lot of all the settlements.

We need to battle for people's consciousness. This is something that Yossi Beilin and his crew of suits understood with Oslo. Rabin got stuck after the 11th round of negotiations on the Madrid plan in Washington. Beilin was waiting in the wings with Oslo. Of course he had all the advantages. He had money and EU and UN backing. We don't have that and never will. All we can do is work here in Israel and in the US to try to build grassroots support. When the road map explodes we'll be waiting with our alternative plan, ready to execute it on a moment's notice. That is what I am working towards.

Just like Sharon shows disdain for international law with the wall of separation so the ideological Right ignores it with the settlements. The only way to defeat the regime of the UN and the World Court is through the US government. We see that the only force strong enough to stand up against this regime is America. And the only way to influence America is through grassroots support in the US public.

We will never have international support. When America stands with the regime of international law and the world media, it is the strongest force in the world. We cannot fight it. It isn't that I don't believe in the settlements. I do with all my heart. But for the enterprise to survive, we need to gain legitimacy in the minds of the people here in Israel and in America.

The plan I have worked out recognizes that the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan will be a source of instability and continuous warfare in the region. It calls for a solution that is logical, humane and viable. (See Elon Plan below)

So how are you working to advance your plan?

I believe that the power is in America. If Jordan sees that my plan is being taken seriously in the Congress and the Senate, then they will approach it seriously. And if the Israelis see that the Americans are taking it seriously then they will take it seriously. The key is there.

Here the press is closed to me. In America the Christians are willing to listen. When I go to the Congress and meet with Tom Delay or Sam Brownback, I am coming at the request of their constituents and supporters and these men take me seriously. The Christian Coalition is highly supportive. I am closely tied to Pat Robertson and Gary Bauer and others as well. And they have a lot of power.

Yes, but doesn't it trouble you that all your support is coming from Evangelicals? There is a debate within Jewish circles whether it is reasonable to enlist the support of Christians.

I find it ironic that the Jews most opposed to cooperation with the Christians are largely non-observant. Among observant Jews, there is a question of whether to accept money from the Christians and I think that is a valid question. I too am very sensitive about this subject because if you receive money then you owe the person who gave it to you. I try not to accept any money from them. But the same is true of accepting money from Jews.

I think there is an even stranger coalition. I think the strangest coalition is found in Hyde Park, London. There you find human rights activists and feminists standing shoulder to shoulder with reactionary Muslim groups that hate human rights and enslave women. The only thing they have in common is their hatred for America and Israel.

I think the problem is that the liberal political groups that always said they were pro-Israel now see that the biggest Israel supporters are on the Right. They rail against our Christian friends because they feel threatened that the Christians are undercutting them by supporting Israel more strongly than they do.

How can you be going to America to sell a plan that stands against the policy of the government you serve in?

You are right. I have a serious problem. Sharon gave Bush legitimacy for a two-state solution that involves the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. This is an idea that flies in the face of Bush's religious beliefs as a Christian and against the national security interest of the US to achieve stability in the Middle East. You cannot blame Bush. It was Sharon's doing.

I am playing a very risky game here. These people need to know that I am respectable and that Sharon will accept this plan down the line. So I am in a trap. This plan will only be viable after the road map explodes. I say to them that only when everyone sees that the road map is a road trap and only when they smell that it is road kill will Sharon accept my plan.

Yes, but less than three years after Oslo we have returned to precisely Oslo. Nothing changed at all. The war made no difference. Oslo exploded and then was brought back. Why will anything be different with the road map?

It is true and it is very frustrating. But I think it is because the leaders of the ideological Right failed to learn how to operate in the diplomatic arena. I hope we have learned our lessons and will be able to organize properly this time. When the road map fails, I hope we will be able to make the case that there is already a Palestine west of the Jordan where 80 percent of the population defines itself as Palestinian and that Israel cannot and will not accept a situation where we have to solve the problem of the Palestinians west of the Jordan River by ourselves. I hope we will be able to engage the public to make the conceptual switch to understanding the reality on the ground. That is what I am working towards. That is where my efforts are.

Going back to the "trap" you believe Ariel Sharon "is either falling into... or leading us into," what trap are you talking about?

The Arabs' whole strategic thesis is built around the concept of a phased plan. It is a logical program that is built around the credibility of a leader whom the people believe in. They believe that he can say one thing and mean another and by working this way he leads them phase after phase to their objective. Arafat has been that leader and that symbol. He played the game with them. He would say he was making peace but what they knew to listen for was when he told them that they would conquer and rule the mosques and churches of Jerusalem. Arafat has been leading this plan since he announced it in 1974. The only time he strayed from the plan was at Camp David with Ehud Barak. Then he apparently lost his self-control and since then he has been moving back to his phased plan.

Yes, well Sharon has been working to marginalize Arafat.

Yes, and here I think that Sharon is absolutely right. I think that the personality question of Arafat, the threat that he personally poses here is real. The entire concept of the phased plan for the destruction of Israel is based on the people's trust in Arafat as a leader. They trust him to do the right thing strategically so they forgive him for seemingly making peace moves towards Israel on the tactical level. But recently I have been becoming very worried.
 

I think that we are critically underestimating Abu Mazen. It is true that Abu Mazen is not the charismatic leader that Arafat is. But he is more sophisticated than Arafat. If he actually succeeds in achieving a hudna [temporary cease-fire] with the other terrorist factions, and the hudna says that Sheikh Yassin and the others stay quiet for three months and then he is able to have them extend the cease-fire for another three months, then at the end of six months they get a Palestinian state. According to the road map, at the end of six months they get a state with temporary borders.

The plan is extremely simple and [also] very sophisticated. All they need to do is wait a little bit and they get everything they demand without making a single concession to Israel.

How do you think he is selling his idea to the terrorist organizations?

I think he is telling them to sit tight for just six months. If they do they get a state with UN recognition as well as US and European recognition. Now the UN and EU will recognize their sovereignty over all of the territories, over all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. The question of settlements will not be one for negotiation but Israel's dispute with the regime of international law.

It isn't the same as the situation in 1999 when [then prime minister Binyamin] Netanyahu countered Arafat's threat to declare independence unilaterally with his threat to unilaterally annex parts of the territories. And for his part, Abu Mazen gives them this deal and says, "Take it if you want. If you don't - fine, keep killing Jews and I won't stop you anyway."

The option of annexation, Abu Mazen can argue won't be available to Sharon. Because as opposed to the situation in 1999, here he would be working in accordance with an internationally sanctioned plan. He can claim not to have breached any agreement. Sharon, not Abu Mazen will be accused of breaching the agreement if he annexes territory. So Sharon has no sanction against the Palestinians.

That's the whole danger of the trap. It is so simple. It's the timetable that works in favor of the hudna. The Arabs are under constant pressure to kill. So they cannot stop for too long. The beauty of the hudna is that they only need to stop for a little while. Because of this I am very worried. It is possible that Sharon thinks that the Arabs won't be able to restrain themselves even for a day - like it was with [US mediator General Anthony] Zini in 2001. First Zini asked for a week-long cease-fire. Then he went down to three days. Then he went down to one day and Arafat couldn't deliver.

It's because of the road map that I blew up at Sharon. I feel that he is sacrificing our security. I know that he and I see differently on the question of the Land of Israel. I cannot depend on him for Judea, Samaria and Gaza. And I know we read the Bible differently, so I have no expectations from him on these issues. But I do have expectations from the prime minister when it comes to security. And here I think he has failed us.

Have you talked to him about these concerns?

I talk to him all the time and he always tells me, "You'll see it will be all right." He told me he sent [Dov] Weisglass (the prime minister's bureau chief) to Washington to reach an agreement with the Bush administration that the road map will be tested for a month or six weeks. If it doesn't work, he will have a green light to move ahead in Gaza as he did in Judea and Samaria in Operation Defensive Shield. That means, to go into all of the cities and camps and to destroy all the terrorist cells and infrastructures.

So I look at this hudna and I think that Sharon is falling into a trap. Either he really believes that the Arabs won't be able to restrain themselves or he is purposefully moving towards a goal that is very dangerous. He is saying, okay, so they get their Palestine but in the meantime I have my wall of separation. He is saying, "I am creating facts on the ground and I can do anything I want on my side." And of course he also has his wall of the east side.

So he's saying if they want what is in between my walls, they can have it and call it a state. That's the 45% of the territory that he is willing to give them and he is doing it without the UN and without negotiations. That is Sharon. That is how he operates. He disdains international law and agreements and just creates facts on the ground. But I say that this is all nonsense. He is wrong.

The regime of international law is very serious and very powerful.

Well, you have put out a plan. What do you think we should be doing?

Yes, I have a plan but my plan can only be considered after the road map fails. Before that happens no one will listen to it. But it is also a question of how you define the road map's failure. Will it be assessed only after they have a Palestinian state with temporary borders and they restart their onslaught and we have to go into a real war with them? Or will it be a failure before such a state is established?

The real question that emerges from what you are saying is whether the government will sit back and accept the hudna or demand that the Palestinians implement their first basic commitment on the road map which is to physically dismantle the terror organizations.

This is what I view as my role in the government, but so far I have failed. So far Sharon has blocked me. He doesn't want a discussion in the cabinet about whether to freeze our implementation of the road map pending such action by the PA.

So, do you think that you will leave the government over this?

I see no advantage to leaving the government. The government is where the power lies. I have [MK] Aryeh Eldad to get up at the podium at the Knesset and scream. I have to sit in the government. There I have a potential coalition to work with to do things. There is Mofaz, and Netanyahu and Limor Livnat and maybe even Silvan Shalom. That's the only chance we have. That we can get a coalition of ministers to block him in forming the Palestinian terror state.

Yes, but to what end? Sharon says he wants a Palestinian state. The public backs him. The public doesn't want a stalemated solution. Netanyahu lost the race for Likud leadership in a landslide. The Likud voted for Sharon even though he said that he is for a Palestinian state. The Likud won 38 mandates in the election and the National Union that stands opposed to Palestinian statehood won only seven seats. What do you have to offer, then, that the public is willing to buy?

That is the exact question. My plan is based on the understanding that a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River is a failed proposition. Such a state will have no economic viability. It will have no territorial contiguity. It will be a destabilizing force that will immediately work to undermine Israel and Jordan by force and political subversion. And it will have international legitimacy in the UN to do so. Until 1988 both Jordan and every Israeli government understood this.

My plan is based on a regional solution that recognizes the fact that Jordan is Palestine. The only way to solve the problem with the Palestinians is to reduce it to a border dispute between two already existing states - Israel and Jordan. If we can reconceptualize the way we view the problem then we can solve it. It moves from an existential conflict to a territorial border dispute like Alsace-Lorraine.

I understand that the public here will only be willing to accept this after the road map explodes as Oslo did after Camp David. In the meantime I am trying to plant the seed in the public's consciousness, here in Israel and in America.

The Elon Plan

The PA

Immediate dissolution of the Palestinian Authority, a non-viable entity whose existence precludes the termination of the conflict.

Terror

Israel will uproot the Palestinian terror infrastructure. All arms will be collected, incitement will be stopped and all the refugee camps, which serve as incubators for terror, will be dismantled. Terrorists and their direct supporters will be deported.

Jordan

Israel, the US and the international community will recognize the Kingdom of Jordan as the only legitimate representative of the Palestinians. Jordan will once again recognize itself as the Palestinian nation-state.

In the context of a regional development program, Israel, the US and the international community will put forth a concerted effort for the long-term development of Jordan, to rehabilitate its economy and enable it to absorb a limited number of refugees within its borders.

The territories

Israeli sovereignty will be asserted over Judea, Samaria and Gaza. The Arab residents of these areas will become citizens of the Palestinian state in Jordan. The status of these citizens, their connection to the two states and the manner of administration of their communal lives will be decided in an agreement between the governments of Israel and Jordan (Palestine).

Refugees

Israel, the US and the international community will allocate resources for the completion of the exchange of populations that began in 1948, as well as the full rehabilitation of the refugees and their absorption and naturalization in various countries.

Normalization

After implementation of the above stages, Israel and Jordan (Palestine) will declare the conflict terminated. Both sides will work to normalize peaceful relations between all parties in the region.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

In an interview with the Palestinian Authority's television station shortly after he was named prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas was asked how he thought he would be able to make a deal with Israel given what the interviewer referred to as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's anti-peace stand.

Abbas responded by explaining that Sharon does not operate in a vacuum. He argued that the Israeli people could be counted on to force Sharon to make a deal that will be acceptable to the Palestinians.

More than telling us anything interesting about Sharon or Israeli democracy, this statement revealed much about who Abbas is and the strategy he is implementing from his lofty new post as the Bush administration's favorite son of the Palestinian terrorist revolution. What Abbas said is quite simply a neat encapsulation of the entire doctrine of terrorist and guerrilla forces that war against democratic societies. It is a doctrine that he, like the PLO's chief strategic partner Saddam Hussein, has propounded for years.

Generally speaking, terrorist and guerrilla warfare doctrines are founded on the psychological manipulation of the enemy's society. Aware of his inability to destroy the enemy through conventional military force, the guerrilla or terrorist leader bases his strategy on two central and interconnected tenets.

First, he contends that continuous and seemingly random attacks on civilian populations and military personnel will grind down his enemy's society to the point where that society will lose its will to fight back. If a belief in the existence of a "cycle of violence" takes hold in the victimized society, then terrorist violence will be justified as simple and crude - yet not unwarranted - responses to the victim society's military "provocations" against the terrorists.

Our society's willingness to accept that last month's bus bombing in Jerusalem was a Hamas response to the attempted assassination of Abdel Aziz Rantisi is case in point. No matter that such an attack takes weeks of planning. No matter that Hamas attacks us every day. When Hamas claimed that the massacre of 17 Israelis and the maiming of another 50 was in response to the operation against Rantisi, our media duly reported the claim and many even supported it.

As is known to all Israelis, over the past three years we have rearranged our lives and constricted our living space and habits in an attempt to minimize risk of death by terror. We go out less and to fewer places. We ride on buses only as a last resort. This narrowing of our public space is a testament to the terrorists' success in making us doubt our government's ability to protect us. The sense of futility and hopelessness of fighting terror is a vital component of the terrorist's plan to break our will to destroy him.

At the same time, the monstrosity of random acts of murder against civilians being what it is, the natural, moral, and instinctive response of the victimized society is to call for the total destruction of the terror or guerrilla forces and the transformation, by military means, of the society that supports them. Thus, imposing a sense of vulnerability on a democratic society, while necessary, is insufficient to break its spirit. So the terror and guerrilla ideologue fights a parallel battle for victory.

The second premise of terror and guerrilla leaders is that when fighting a democratic society, it is necessary to make their enemy doubt the morality of his stand against them. The moral disorientation of the victimized society is absolutely necessary for a terrorist strategy to succeed.

Through a concerted campaign, the terrorist or guerrilla leader must frame his rhetoric in a manner that calls into question whether the targeted society is really being victimized at all.

If it can be argued that the murderers have a legitimate grievance against the targeted society, then it will likely follow that in spite of the barbarity of the campaign being waged against it, members of that society will begin to argue that it is futile, and indeed immoral, to fight back.

Once that argument is won, the terrorists have won their war. The democracy will capitulate.

Over the past week, the front pages of US newspapers have honed in on two stories: the Iraqi guerrilla war against US and British forces and the Palestinian terror war against Israel. While the angles from which the reporters approach the two stories are different, their essence is strikingly similar.

In contending with the continued and escalating hostilities in Iraq, the Bush administration finds itself, after two years of unapologetic rhetoric and a successful, wildly popular military campaign against Saddam Hussein, suddenly on the defensive. Its enemy, the not so marginal remnants of Saddam's regime and their Arab terrorist partners, is implementing a war strategy against the US and British forces taken directly from the Saddam-Abbas playbook.

Militarily, the coalition forces are under constant attack by mobs, snipers, suicide bombers, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades. These attacks, together with sabotage of Iraqi infrastructure, work to demoralize the coalition forces stationed in the country. Newspapers are filled with accounts of the frustration of soldiers who find their attempts to bring stability to Iraq stymied. As tensions rise in the terrible heat, soldiers communicate a sense of anger and helplessness that makes their countrymen wonder why their armies can't simply come home.

Statements by the Iraqis who criticize the coalition troops and demand their immediate withdrawal compound this sense of doubt.

Politically, the fact that Saddam remains at large also casts a pall of doubt as to the actual success of the campaign to oust him. Repeated failure to capture or kill him mars the US public's sense of pride and invincibility against weaker Third World dictatorships.

The fact that the US has so far been unsuccessful in locating any of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction has been highly destructive to the American and British publics' sense of justice and serves to undermine the moral justification of the war itself. This past week, media polls indicated that a majority of Americans believe that the Bush administration misled them - wittingly or unwittingly - about the threat emanating from Saddam's regime.

When taken separately, all the components of the Iraqi campaign against US-led forces in Iraq are a cause for distress and ambivalence regarding the importance and necessity of the continued fight. But when seen from the perspective of the terror and guerrilla doctrine, long adopted by Saddam, it all makes sense.

Saddam and his loyalists knew they were no match for the coalition forces, so they stole what they could, headed for the hills, and allowed the remnants of their brainwashed forces to launch what resistance they could muster. Even during the campaign, those Iraqi forces that did engage coalition forces made constant use of terror and guerrilla tactics to exact casualties.

Now that US and British forces are hunkered down in static locations, it is easier to kill them. As peacekeepers, they are forced to come into daily contact with Iraqi civilians. As American and British soldiers, they want very much for those civilians to appreciate what they are trying to do for them. They are easily demoralized when confronted by mobs.

For his part, Saddam understands that to continue to energize his own forces, he must remain at large. As long as there is the possibility he will return, those loyal to him will not put down their arms.

Finally, with hindsight, it makes perfect sense that in the year-long run-up to the US led invasion, Saddam would find a way to either destroy or hide his WMD arsenal. Preventing the US and Britain from being able to present that arsenal to their publics is key to eroding their societies' belief in the morality of the war and thus demand the swift exit of US and British forces from the country.

Winning a war against a terrorist enemy is perhaps the most difficult victory for a democratic society to achieve. It requires a deep-seated and resilient belief in its values and, in Israel's case, its very existence.

Both Israel and the US have been built around our core values of human decency and our ideals of a just and moral society. Both countries' military prowess is a direct result of our understanding that these values are worth fighting for. For both Israel and America, power exerted in defense of these values is power morally exerted.

Both Israeli and American societies must now think carefully about how we are allowing the subversive poison of terrorist war doctrine to infect our sense of justice and indeed our sense of our own identity.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.