TruthNews Commentary, June 26, 2002

As we predicted on Monday when President Bush presented his long-awaited Middle East peace plan, he was immediately assailed for what he did and did not say. The Palestinians and their supporters in the Israeli peace camp purported to be upset at the thought of getting rid of Yasser Arafat. But some of Israel's supporters also expressed dismay at the speech. For example, Daniel Pipes, one of the most cogent analysts of Middle East affairs, accused Bush of "rewarding terrorism," and said that Bush "should have told the Palestinians clearly and unequivocally that their 21-month campaign of violence against Israel is unacceptable and must conclude before any discussion of rewards can be started."

Much of what Pipes says is valid, but let's put this into perspective. The President is not a newspaper columnist or the founder of CNN with the luxury of saying whatever he wants. As the leader of the Free World, every word he says is analyzed in capitols around the world for nuance and meaning. One would wish that ex-president Bill Clinton would have remembered this when he was discussing his underwear on national television.

Bush, however, is not Clinton, and his words on Monday were carefully considered. Yes, he said a few things we didn't like; for example saying that "consistent with the recommendations of the Mitchell Committee, Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories must stop." The borders of Israel have never been set except by ceasefire, and Jordan and Egypt were both willing to sign peace treaties with Israel without trying to reclaim the West Bank or Gaza Strip. In addition, as we pointed out on Monday, the phrase "consistent with the recommendations of the Mitchell Committee" means that the violence has to stop first before Israel is obligated to do anything else. We should also point out the Israel has accepted the recommendations of the Mitchell Committee, including the freeze on settlements.

But despite what we would consider the diplomatic niceties of Bush's speech, he got his point across. Without ever mentioning Arafat by name, Bush made the price of Palestinian statehood clear: "Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership so that a Palestinian state can be born." Matthew Kalman, writing in USA Today, said that "Israelis and Palestinians listening to President Bush's new Middle East policy statement Monday agreed on at least one point: The speech was blunt and undiplomatic."

The charge that the promise of a Palestinian state is a reward for terrorism does not hold water. Bush called for the Palestinians to "elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror." He called for them to "build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty." Finally, "when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors, the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East." These conditions, along with the call for "leaders not compromised by terror," amount to a demand for close to unconditional surrender on the part of the terrorist cabal that currently rules the Palestinian autonomous areas. While we would have wished that the terrorists had been forced to surrender unconditionally, this would require greater military force than the "unity" gov

If nothing else, Bush has put to rest the idea that he's a lightweight cipher doing the bidding of Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to the New York Times, Bush himself inserted the sentence calling for the removal of Mr. Arafat as a precondition to Palestinian statehood. As Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said in an interview with the Jerusalem Post last week, "This policy hinges largely on the President's will, which has held fairly steady." Powell, surprisingly, says that he's comfortable with Bush's decision to call for Arafat's removal. Powell told the New York Times that he told Arafat that "the direction in which they were moving had to change in a very fundamental and strategic way, and we had to see that if he wanted the United States to be a partner in this moving forward." Powell added, "To be blunt, we haven't seen enough of that." Apparently, Powell has gotten fed up with the Nobel Peace Prize winning terrorist's lies, denials, and broken promises.

The conclusion to Bush's speech has gone almost unnoticed by the press. Quoting from the Bible (Deuteronomy 30:15), Bush said, "I have set before you life and death; therefore, choose life." Bush concluded, "The time has arrived for everyone in this conflict to choose peace, and hope, and life." The unspoken alternative, of course, is "death and destruction," a suitably Biblical ending to those who would continue to curse Israel.