The 'Peace Process': Helping Hamas - How Delusory Diplomacy Advances the Cause of Terror

Americans, your secretary of state has been in Israel for the eighth time this year. The usual stuff is going on—plans afoot for mass releases of jailed terrorists, Israeli communities getting relentlessly shelled with only token military responses while Ehud Olmert waxes rhapsodic about “two states living side by side in peace and security.”

This time it was Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad who raised a demand that Israel release no less than 2000 of the 12,000 Palestinian security prisoners that it holds as a “bold move” ahead of the still-unscheduled Annapolis conference. The well-mannered Fayyad—who holds a PhD in economics from the University of Texas at Austin and has worked at the Federal Reserve Bank and the World Bank—is viewed by eager peace processors as someone who just has to fit the cherished image of the “Palestinian moderate.”

But there he goes, demanding a mass freeing of terrorists so that Israel can prove its peace mettle while getting absolutely nothing in return, not even a solitary “gesture” such as the freeing of its kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit.

What to do? Question Fayyad’s moderation and peace credentials? No, the answer is . . . comply!

... The moral of the story is that when an ostensibly conservative U.S. administration pursues a fictitious peace process based on liberal shibboleths of even-handedness and Palestinian virtue and moderation, the losers are Israel and Middle Eastern stability and the winners are the terror organizations and their patron the Tehran regime, which is successfully orchestrating the real “process.”