Posted 6/18/2003 09:57:00 AM by Ocean Guy
How Many More must die?

It will never be too late to work for peace. But, while the US tries to force it's solution du jour upon the situation, too many lives are being lost and ruined. The Road Map to Peace may be a fine map, but it appears to me that the Arabs have a different destination in mind adn a different idea of where and what Peace is than the President has. How many more lives must be ruined and lost while the Arabs wait for us to accept their notion of the Road Map's destination?

Hamas is probably right in thinking it speaks for the Arabs, and is almost certainly correct in it's assessment that the US is miscalculating the degree of Arab support.

Arab countries will not act against Islamic resistance movement Hamas as requested by the United States, the group’s leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi said on Sunday, June 15.

“I am confident that Arab countries would not accept to play such a role demanded by the U.S. and Israel, as they would rather hold to minimum support for the Palestinians’ steadfastness,” Rantissi said in an exclusive interview with IslamOnline.net…

…“Hamas will continue its Jihad, and its military wing still reiterates calls for foreigners to leave all parts of the Zionist entity,” Rantissi added.

The issue that the west in general and George W. Bush in particular needs to understand and address, is that Hamas really does speak for the majority of the Arab world in its stated desire for foreigners to leave all parts of the Zionist Entity.

The idea that non-Arabs must leave the area must be defeated. As long as the west, especially America, continues to play a weak diplomatic game and continues to give hope to those Arabs who want to destroy Israel, the terrorism will continue. Getting the Arabs to realize that we are resolute in our support for a safe, secure state of Israel is our biggest challenge and the biggest obstacle to any real progress.

Forcing, or even by simply asking, the Israelis to make more concessions is seen by the Arabs as a sign of weakness and an indication of wavering resolve. Simply through Israel’s willingness to negotiate and its stated willingness to live with a second palestinian state, the Arabs perceive weakness. We should not let that desire for peace continue to be misunderstood.

As long as we tacitly support the terrorists, we should expect no progress. By not condemning any PA association with terrorists like Hamas, we give our tacit approval. This should be absolutely unacceptable:

As part of a cease-fire package, Abbas offered the militant Hamas a political role in his government, a participant in the Tuesday talks said.

Meanwhile, Arabs continue to kill Jews and Israel continues to defend itself with as little force as possible. How many more must die before we see any real change in the way the situation is handled?

To make any progress towards our view of peace, perceptions must change on the Arab side. Until they perceive that their current path is not working, then Arab intransigence will continue, Arab subjugation of the refugee people they created will continue, and innocents on both sides will continue to die. It’s insanity to expect any change as long as we continue to reward the Arabs by continuing to pressure Israel. As long as our actions send a different message than our words, our words will be ignored. As our words continue to be ignored the frustration will increase. How many more lives must be lost until our frustration drives us into changing our actions?