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The Washington Post
A War And Then A Wall
By George F. Will
Friday, August 17, 2001; Page A23
Among reasonable people, who are now impervious to the diplomats' anesthetizing
imbecilities about "preserving" the Middle East "peace process," there
is a crystallizing consensus: Israel needs a short war and a high wall.
To understand the context of such thinking, consider what USA Today's
Jack Kelley saw at the Aug. 9 terrorist bombing that killed 15 at the
Jerusalem pizza restaurant. Kelley was 30 yards away when the terrorist
detonated a bomb packed with nails:
"The blast . . . sent flesh flying onto second-story balconies a block
away. Three men were blown 30 feet; their heads, separated from their
bodies by the blast, rolled down the glass-strewn street. . . . One woman
had at least six nails embedded in her neck. Another had a nail in her
left eye. Two men, one with a six-inch piece of glass in his right temple
. . . tried to walk away. . . . A man groaned. . . . His legs were blown
off. Blood poured from his torso. . . . A 3-year old girl, her face covered
with glass, walked among the bodies calling her mother's name. . . .
The mother . . . was dead. . . . One rabbi found a small hand against
a white Subaru parked outside the restaurant."
As with the June bombing that killed 21 at a Tel Aviv disco, children
were not collateral victims -- they were the targets. Abdallah al-Shami,
a senior official of Islamic Jihad, celebrated "this successful operation"
against "pigs and monkeys." That is a familiar rhetorical trope among
those whom the calamitous Oslo "peace process" cast in the role of Israel's
"partners for peace." In yet another of the constant violations of the
Oslo requirement to stop anti-Jewish incitements, this was a recent broadcast
from the moral cesspool that is the official television station of Yasser
Arafat's Palestinian Authority: "All weapons must be aimed at the Jews
. . . whom the Koran describes as monkeys and pigs. . . . We will enter
Jerusalem as conquerors. . . . Blessings to he who shot a bullet into
the head of a Jew."
Al-Shami boasts that "no border restriction will stop" suicide bombings.
It is time to test that proposition, which surely depends on where the
border is and what precedes the establishment of it. Arafat's Palestinian
Authority, in brazen violation of the Oslo undertaking to abandon violence,
has chosen to wage a kind of urban guerrilla warfare against Israel.
But Israel is skilled at combating such warfare. And now Israel should
show that it, not Arafat, will dictate the intensity of the conflict.
A short war -- a few days; over before European and American diplomats'
appeasement reflexes kick in -- should have four objectives. First, to
kill or capture those terrorists (and those who direct them) whom Arafat
has permitted to remain at large, in violation of his Oslo undertaking
and of his promise to CIA Director George Tenet after the disco bombing.
Second, to destroy the Palestinian Authority's military infrastructure
built up in violation of detailed Oslo restrictions. Third, to destroy
other physical infrastructure useful to the Palestinian Authority, including
all newspaper and broadcasting facilities.
Fourth, and most important, to define, with finality, Israel's borders,
around which a wall should be built. All of Jerusalem should be within
the wall. Israel's seizure of the Palestinian Authority's East Jerusalem
headquarters, Orient House, which has been constantly used for political
activities forbidden by Oslo, should signal the end of all talk about
the indivisibility of Jerusalem.
The State Department, that brackish and bottomless lagoon of obtuseness,
where Secretary of State Colin Powell has gone native with disgusting
speed, will respond with the rhetoric of moral equivalence -- "both sides"
must stop "the cycle of violence" -- to whatever Israel does in self-defense.
On Tuesday the department sank to self-caricature when it denounced as
"provocative" Israel's brief incursion into the West Bank in pursuit
of the perpetrators of suicide bombings.
It is instructive that the assault against Israel was not slowed by the
intervention there of former senator George Mitchell, whose achievements
in Northern Ireland are just now proving similarly illusory. Under his
promptings, the IRA -- like the Palestinian Authority, a terrorist organization
masquerading as a normal political entity -- made various false promises
about "decommissioning" arms, abandoning violence, etc. Like Arafat,
IRA leaders say the continuing violence is committed by entities beyond
their control.
Mitchell cannot be blamed for failing to reconcile irreconcilables. But
blame, and complicity in murder, attaches to all those who willfully
refuse to recognize the limits of diplomacy and the duty of active self-defense
other articles by George F. Will
A Feast of Retreats
Talking Peace With Thugs
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