President Bush and Peace in Our Time

President Bush came out yesterday with what was touted to be a major statement on Middle East peace.

Essentially, it boils down to yet another version of that old hit song: bribe the so-called `moderate' Palestinians to do what they've agreed to do since Oslo but have no capability or intention of doing, and lean heavily on the Israelis to provide tangible assets that weaken their security in exchange for meaningless guarantees.

Only this time , the baksheesh to the Palestinians is bigger than ever - almost half a billion dollars, with assurances that there's lots more where that came from - and there's a more sinister context involved, with consequences to the US that are much more likely to hit closer to home and result in more serious consequences than simply a bunch of dead Jews when the bottom falls out.

For starters, Bush is offering the Palestinians $190 million outright . This is money that was offered to them as a bribe 18 months ago in exchange for free elections - except the Palestinians used their democratic choice to go with their natural inclinations and elect Hamas, so the money was held up because of US laws about funding terrorists. Now that Abbas has kicked Hamas out of his cabinet and taken over the rule of his west Bank fiefdom after the Hamas takeover of Gaza, the money is Fatah's for the asking.

The next slice o' cake Bush approved is $228 million in loans to help Palestinian-owned businesses -a blatant bribe to the Fatah oligarchy, since almost all Palestinian owned businesses, from the local falafel stand on up are either owned outright by them and their families or pay tribute, mafia-style, for the privilege of doing business. And finally, the president wants to give Fatah $80 million to `reform their security services' or in other words, replenish Fatah's arsenal to make up for all the American weapons and ammunition they left in Gaza while running away from Hamas.

Do the math - that's $498 million more of your tax dollars into this rathole, with the promise of more if the Palestinians actually "match their words denouncing terror with action to combat terror. ... arrest terrorists, dismantle their infrastructure, confiscate illegal weapons...stop attacks on Israel, and .. enforce the law without corruption.."

President Bush is backing an historically losing horse when he bets the farm on the likes of Abbas and Fatah to become the new model for `Arab democracy'. The president has been shoving money at the Palestinians and `bolstering Abbas' ever since Abbas took over, and he has very little to show for it.

What's more, It's difficult to imagine why President Bush should have expected anything. Abbas, after all, was Yasir Arafat's trusted assistant and partner in crime throughout the Oslo years, and has done absolutely nothing to implement the Palestinians' original commitments since taking over after Arafat's death.

Even the most degenerate gamblers usually read a racing form to figure some kind of odds before betting at the track.

Throughout his reign, Abbas has never jailed a single terrorist or done a thing to end the genocidal hatred towards Israel promoted in the Palestinian schools, mosques and media. Actually, he's never even taken terrorists like the al-Aksa Brigade and the Tanzim off the Fatah payroll, let alone done anything about Hamas until they threatened his stranglehold on power.

What's more, the entire corrupt Fatah old guard, some of the most shameless, parasitic thieves in modern history remain firmly entrenched. They've enriched themselves and done nothing to improve the lives of the people they were supposedly `leading'. Whatever money they're given will go into European bank accounts, fancy villas and continuing to fund the War against the Jews.

Does the president somehow not realize why Hamas got elected in the first place and why Abbas' hold on power is so tenuous? Or that to the average Palestinian, President Bush's words about `democracy' sound profoundly hypocritical after the US just did its best to aid and abet a coup by its chosen `moderates' against a government the Palestinians themselves elected?

If the Palestinians want to elect a terrorist, Islamist government to represent them, they have every right - just as we have every right not to give them a dime, notwithstanding the current occupant of the White House and his desire to prove to his Saudi `allies' how even handed he is when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict .

And speaking of funding Islamic terrorism - if the Iranian and Saudi backed negotiations to get Hamas and Fatah back in bed together are successful, as they're likely to be, where does the president imagine all the US money and arms we're lavishing on the Palestinians will go? Or whom they will be used against?

In another surprise move, the president also implicitly endorsed the Saudi-backed `peace' ultimatum, the so-called Arab League Initiative, which calls for an Israeli retreat to the pre-1967 indefensible borders - or, what Israeli diplomat Abba Eban famously called the `Auschwitz lines' - and an unlimited `right of return' to swamp what's left of Israel with Palestinian `refugees -in an exchange for unspecified `normal relations.'

Even without flooding Israel with Arab refugees, the pre `67 borders means we are talking about a country only nine miles wide at its narrow midpoint, surrounded by hostile enemies with missile arsenals supplied by Iran that can now hit any part of the country.

The president actually referred to this as a welcome first step, and called for Arab nations to build on this by "ending the fiction that Israel does not exist, stopping the incitement of hatred in their official media, and sending cabinet-level visitors to Israel."

That's about as likely as the Arab nations actually resettling the Palestinians in the 22 countries they control. `Sacrifices for peace', after all, are only supposed to come from Israel.

Aside from the implicit racism this endorses in making even more of the Middle East Judenrein - free of Jews - it has some interesting implications for the war we're engaged in against Islamic fascism.

The West has been down this road before, weakening an ally, especially one plagued with a weak, malleable government so that we could placate our enemies. It was a destructive move that cost the West dearly then, as it will now.

It appears that we've come full circle from `You're either with the terrorists or with us' to `you can be with the terrorists and still be with us. How much money do you need?'