Posted on 10/15/2003 10:40:14 PM PDT by yonif
All political negotiations with the Palestinians are doomed to end in failure until the Palestinian Authority becomes a democratic entity, American strategist and Pentagon adviser Richard Perle said Tuesday.
"We will not find peace here until on the Palestinian side a democratic entity is established with which one can negotiate. All negotiations before that time will fail," he told the culmination of the three-day Jerusalem Summit, a gathering of leading conservative thinkers from the US and Israel.
An assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, Perle was the recipient the first annual Sen. Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson Award, in memory of the longtime US senator and friend of Israel.
In his address, Perle said that all the issues currently being discussed – including the appointment of a new PA premier and the ongoing debate over land – are superficial and skirt the heart of the problem, which he said is the need to create a "fundamental political, cultural, and social change" in Palestinian society.
Arguing that it is impossible to make peace with a nation that lauds suicide bombers and teaches its youth to hate and wish for the destruction of Israel, Perle said that for the time being Israel has no other option but to depend on its military.
He lauded the October 5 IAF strike on a suspected Palestinian terror base in Syria, saying he hopes it was only "the first of many such messages," and noting that it was in accord with President George W. Bush's declaration not to distinguish between terrorists and terror-harboring states.
"President Bush transformed the American approach to terrorism on September 11, 2001, when he said he will not distinguish between terrorists and the states who harbor them," Perle said.
"I was happy to see that Israel has now taken a similar step in responding to acts of terror that originate in Lebanese territory by going to the rulers of Lebanon in Damascus," he said.
Perle also called the accord reached between Yossi Beilin and other left-wing Israeli politicians and academics and PA officials "profoundly undemocratic," and said such an action would be illegal in the US.
They are full of sh!t, and they fool only themselves, obviously, since neither the USA nor Israel are falling for it.
I think it's pack and move time for the Palestinians, for their own good. When Arafat dies, the different terrorist mafia groups will tear each other apart in a turf war, the police will protect their own personal interests, the innocent people will get caught in the middle, and Palestinian nationalism will never, ever, be united again.
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