Posted 8/14/2003 02:49:00 PM by Ocean Guy
Pretenders

An editorial in today's Jerusalem Post is on the money.

In the real world, two Israelis were killed in separate suicide bombings yesterday. It is time to stop playing "let's pretend." The road map, in both its conception and implementation, is based on the presumption that if we, the United States and Israel, pretend hard enough then reality will follow. It is not working.

In his June 24 speech last year, US President George W. Bush cut through decades of "let's pretend" when he erected two pillars of moral clarity: first that Arafat must go, and second that the obstacle to a Palestinian state is not Israel, but Palestinian tyranny, corruption, and terrorism.

Since then, the Bush administration has let these pillars crumble, while pretending that they still stand. Rather than the "new leadership, uncompromised by terror" Bush demanded on June 24, we are pretending that Yasser Arafat is gone, and that Mahmoud Abbas is untainted by him.

We need to stop pretending that the Arabs want peace. We need to stop pretending that the Arab-Israeli conflict is separate from the war on terror. We need to stop pretending that ANY Israeli concessions will be enough to satisfy the Arabs. We need to stop pretending that the Road Map is a genuine plan for peace. It's time for some honesty, brutal honesty.