Yesterday the Jerusalem Post published an editorial entitled “A Gathering Storm:”
As attention is increasingly focused on the drama of disengagement, the unraveling of the Palestinian Authority is quietly proceeding apace. A quick survey of events of the last week or two is at once shocking and depressing:
Security chief Muhammad Dahlan is openly warning of a "third intifada."
PA Foreign Minister Nasser Al-Kidwa [nephew of Yasser Arafat], in defiance of the road map and Mahmoud Abbas’s promises to confiscate weaponry, has declared the right of all Palestinian groups to maintain their arms "until the end of the occupation."
Hamas is expressing its willingness to join a "unity government" with Fatah after upcoming elections, delayed by Abbas because of Hamas’s electoral strength.
The leader of Islamic Jihad has declared "the calm is over," and joint statements by the terrorist groups say they will soon resume their attacks.
The PA has responded by imploring the assorted militias to maintain calm so as not to interfere with disengagement, begging the question of what will happen after the Israeli withdrawal.
Former GSS chief Avi Dichter, considered the optimist compared to former OC-General Staff Moshe Ya’alon, says the PA has not been lifting a finger against terrorism and opposes the handover of further cities to Palestinian security control.
In attempt to curb anarchy, the PA will not collect weapons, but has resumed executions of alleged "collaborators" and murderers, after cursory military tribunals with no right of appeal. Meanwhile, Fatah has just admitted that some previous victims of "collaborator" executions were innocent.
Two suicide bombings have recently been foiled by Israeli security forces, and warnings and attempted attacks are on the rise.
Smuggling of weaponry from Egypt to both the West Bank and Gaza is rampant, with every indication being that the terrorist groups are using a period they have defined as less than a cease-fire as an opportunity to rearm and regroup for the next round.
The temptation to see all these events through the prism of disengagement should be resisted. Some see this gathering storm as an argument to cancel or postpone that operation, others for proceeding as planned with greater determination. But there is a separate, more important, question from whether disengagement will make it easier or harder to deal with an unraveling Palestinian "partner."
There is the obligation of both Israel and the international community to reexamine the decision to place all its eggs in the basket of Mahmoud Abbas and its notion of what it means to support Palestinian moderation and reform.
The hard fact is that Abbas is not only failing, but also that most trends are in the wrong direction: toward more rearmament, toward denial of previously accepted obligations, toward increasing power of terrorist groups, and away from creating conditions for true democratization through the rule of law.
While some argue that Israel could be helping by removing more checkpoints and releasing more prisoners, what Dichter says of such "experiments" is sobering: "It’s impossible to jump from the Shalom Tower without a parachute every time and say: ‘Wow, we crashed.’"
Perhaps it is time to consider the possibility that Abbas’s rule has suffered not from too little help but from too much. How surprising is it that Abbas moves further and further away from the key task demanded of him by the international community — confiscating weapons and dismantling the infrastructure of terrorism — when international assistance to him only increases as the situation deteriorates?
The claim that Hamas would be worse cannot be allowed to absolve Abbas’s PA of its minimal requirements and obligations. In fact, as in the time of Yasser Arafat, the worst situation is not Hamas control, but a PA that serves as a fig leaf for what is increasingly an anarchic terror state.
Whether the goal is saving disengagement or preparing for the day after, the time to force the PA to confront terror is now.
The title of the Jerusalem Post editorial is of course the same as Volume I of Winston Churchill’s monumental history of the Second World War. The theme of that volume, stated on its cover page, was:
How the English-Speaking Peoples
Through Their Unwisdom
Carelessness and Good Nature
Allowed the Wicked to Rearm
Churchill describes the period before World War II as “a sad story of complicated idiocy in the making of which much toil and virtue was consumed.”
[S]trict enforcement at any time till 1934 of the Disarmament Clauses of the Peace Treaty would have guarded indefinitely, without violence or bloodshed, the peace and safety of mankind. But this was neglected while the infringements remained petty, and shunned as they assumed serious proportions. . . . The crimes of the vanquished find their background and their explanation, though not, of course, their pardon, in the follies of the victors.
More than two years ago, the Palestinian Authority committed itself in the Road Map to “sustained, targeted, and effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure” — a process that was to be completed by June 2003.
All sorts of sophisticated reasons have been advanced for ignoring the PA’s repeated failure — and announced unwillingness — to do so: Abbas is too weak, he needs more money, he needs concessions, he needs to show the Palestinians he can produce results (concessions), he needs more time, he has a better way, he needs reassurances from Bush, he needs blah blah blah.
Meanwhile, the state of Hamastan is being created in Gaza. It is a sad story of complicated idiocy.