Caroline Glick mercilessly skewers the Bush administration for encouraging the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the acceptance of Hamas as part of the equation:
Gone is the president’s strong rhetoric from three years ago about US support for Palestinian statehood being conditional on the transformation of Palestinian society into a democratic, liberal, terror-fighting society. The Bush administration has been pushing Israel to arm the PA security forces in spite of their overt connection with terror cells. The Bush administration has refused to back Israel’s opposition to Hamas participation in the July legislative elections despite its links to al-Qaida. The Bush administration has insisted that Israel hand over the homes of the Israelis set for expulsion to the Palestinians, in spite of the fact that this means Israel will be handing their homes to the same terrorists who have been shooting and bombing them for the past four-and-a-half years.
If the Bush administration had not made the intellectually unsupportable decision to refuse to accept that the Palestinian war against Israel is a crucial front in the global jihad, the president and his advisers would no doubt be asking Sharon some very hard questions right now.
Israel’s planned withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria present a tangible threat to US national security interests from both military and psychological warfare perspectives.
On the military level, one of the core principles of the US counter-terror strategy is to deny terrorists sanctuary. Yet Gaza and northern Samaria are both poised to become new operational bases for global terror organizations.
During his negotiations with the terror chiefs in Cairo in March, in the presence of Syria’s foreign minister, PA chairman and US favorite Mahmoud Abbas invited the leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command to relocate from Damascus to Gaza after Israel withdraws. How does this square with the US strategy to bar terrorists from receiving shelter?
I wish someone would explain where Glick errs in her indictment: “Wake up Washington!” See also the related Jerusalem Post editorial: “Abbas’s cubes.”
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