The Show Must Go On

Israeli first graders lie on the floor of their classroom during a drill simulating a warning siren for incoming rockets in the southern city of Ashkelon March 3, 2008. Israeli troops pulled out of the Gaza Strip on Monday after a U.S. appeal to end days of fighting that killed more than 100 Palestinians, and rescue peace talks.  The Hamas Islamists who control the coastal enclave declared "victory" and vowed to continue firing rockets into Israel, launching one into Ashkelon shortly after the troops withdrew, wounding one person. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

Moshe Arens, writing in Haaretz today:

The victory parades in Gaza as soon as the Israel Defense Forces withdrew were only to be expected. Like Hezbollah in the Second Lebanon War, whoever gets in the last barrage of rockets is the victor in the eyes of Middle East spectators. And not only in their eyes.

It was another blow to Israel‘s deterrence. All the talk about the damage that has been inflicted on Hamas does not begin to equal its perception that it has won its contest with the IDF and the encouragement it will draw from this to engage in further attacks against Israeli civilians.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni met with the press Monday and described how important the “peace process” is.  It is so important it does not matter if the Palestinians do not meet their obligations; it is so important it must continue even if they are no longer expected to meet them; and it is so important that literally nothing can affect it:

We could have waited on the first phase of the Roadmap forever, waiting for the Palestinians to give an answer and to act against terrorism, but we decided to promote the peace process. . . .

I said clearly in Annapolis, as I said in Paris, that the success of this peace process depends on the determination of the leaders of both sides not to let the goings-on outside of the negotiating room enter the negotiating room. . . .

I met with Abu Ala the same day there was a suicide bombing in an Israeli mall in the Negev, in Dimona, in which one Israeli was killed. Some members of the government coalition called on me to stop the negotiations because it’s not wise or it doesn’t represent the interests of Israel to continue negotiations under terror.

And last week I had two meetings with Abu Ala — one on Wednesday, the same time when I received the information that an Israeli was killed at the Sapir College campus near Sderot. And the next day we had another meeting, on the day of the funeral. . . .

And stopping the negotiations is against the Annapolis understanding. I think that cessation of negotiations is a mistake. I think that it shows weakness, of course, but I think that it shows Hamas that by using terror they can control, from Gaza, the acts of the legitimate government and Abu Mazen in Ramallah, and more. . . .

So, clearly, I don’t expect Abu Ala and Abu Mazen to support Israel’s acts. I am not trying to push my luck. I really understand the sensitivity. . . .

I know that they cannot control the Gaza Strip; I know that. I don’t expect them to control the Gaza Strip, I don’t expect them to change the situation in the Gaza Strip, unfortunately, but this is the reality, and we decided to live with this reality.

The “peace process” is a “negotiation” with Palestinian “leaders” who are unable to implement anything they promise, who failed to implement what they promised before, and who have yet to dismantle even their own “loosely-linked” terrorists, but the process must continue while Palestinian rockets fall on Israeli cities, and Israeli strikes against Palestinian terrorists must cease lest the process not go on, because the show must go on.