In placing the blame for the current violence squarely on the Palestinians, President Bush has come up lamentably short. Replace your leadership, Bush tells the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, the United States does business with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whose bloodied past led an Israeli commission of inquiry to charge him with a level of responsibility for a war crime, deeming him unfit to serve as his country's defense minister. We receive Sharon out of our unshakable commitment to democracy. It suffices that he is Israel's elected leader.
But no such courtesy is extended to the Palestinians.
Elected or not, Yasser Arafat and the current leadership must go. Re-electing it is impermissible. Democracy be damned. Adopt a constitution, President Bush demands of the Palestinians. Israel has never had a constitution. It has a set of laws, some blatantly racist in their assignment of privilege based on religion, but no constitution. We could offer Israel a copy of the U.S. Constitution, except, of course, itrs. Yet he also states that a "Palestinian state is necessary to achieve the security that Israel longs for." A Palestinian state is necessary for Israeli security, but support for a Palestinian state will be withheld until Israel is secure. There is a way out of the stalemate. It is to recognize, and base our policy, on the principle of cause and effect.
The Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory preceded -- by decades, no less -- Palestinian terror attacks against Israel. The occupation and colonization of the West Bank and Gaza are not a response to the terror, but the reason for it. President Bush must understand this simple truth before he can successfully formulate a process to turn his vision of two independent, viable, secure states into reality. Failing that, Palestinians and Israelis alike will be doomed for the remainder of Bush's presidency -- waiting for salvation which never comes.
Abboushi is a director of the Houston chapter of the American Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee.
