Rice’s Speech to AIPAC

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave an excellent speech at AIPAC yesterday, worth reading in its entirety.  The portion that got one of the largest rounds of applause was this:

“[T]he United States looks to a future and has a vision of a day when Israel is no longer the sole democracy in the Middle East. (Applause.) This aspiration shapes the very heart of our approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well. For four years, President Bush refused to meet with Yasser Arafat. (Applause.) He did so because Arafat valued neither Israel‘s security nor his own people’s liberty. (Applause.)

There were those who ridiculed this principled decision as if the refusal to negotiate with a man who aided and abetted terrorism somehow revealed a lack of concern for peace.  America and Israeli had tried before to gain peace where democracy did not exist and we are not going down that road again. (Applause.)

Secretary Rice also made an incisive point about democracy in the Arab world:

We measure our success in the democratic revolutions that have stunned the entire world: vibrant revolutions of rose and orange and purple and tulip and cedar.

The destiny of the Middle East is bound up in this global expansion of freedom. . . .  The people of this region are expressing ideas and taking actions that would have been unthinkable only one year ago.

Some in the Arab media have even asked why the only real democracies in the Middle East are found in the "occupied lands" of Iraq and the Palestinian territories. . .

But there are significant differences between the “real democracy” in Iraq and in the “Palestinian territories.” 

In Iraq, millions of voters risked death to vote in competitive elections that served as a rejection of terrorism and established a new government wholly divorced from the past.  They did not elect Sadaam Hussein’s second-in-command, nor leave his party in control of the government.

In the Palestinian election, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) ran essentially unopposed.  The opposing political force (Hamas) did not compete, and the opposing candidate within the ruling Fatah party (Marwan Barghouti) was forced not to run. Abbas neverthless allowed himself to be carried on the shoulders of terrorists, promised to support positions that are non-starters (the “right” of return), and publicly rejected the obligation in the Road Map to dismantle terrorists networks (not just promote a “cease fire” that can be called off once new Israeli concessions end).

In her speech yesterday, Secretary Rice also got sustained applause for this statement:

The Palestinian Authority must advance democratic reform and it must dismantle all terrorist networks in its society. 

We’ll see.