WHO'S LEFT? :

Bush Calls for New Palestinian Leaders : President Urges 'A Practicing Democracy' for Palestinians (Washington Post, June 24, 2002)

President Bush, revealing a long-awaited new Middle East policy, called on the Palestinian people this afternoon to choose new leadership, as a step toward coexistence with Israel and eventually the creation of a Palestinian state.

"Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership, so that a Palestinian state can be born," said Bush, who was flanked by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in the humid Rose Garden. "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror."

This is just absurd on its face. We may disagree with them, but to be a modern Palestinian patriot is to take up arms agaist Israel. Since there is no official state of Palestine that makes you a de facto terrorist. The standard the president laid out requires a Palestinian David Ben-Gurion which they don't seem to have produced. Meanwhile it would bar a Menachem Begin and, the Palestinians will likely mention, Ariel Sharon, not to mention that it would have barred Yitzak Rabin's mother. It would also bar (more appropriately) Gerry Adams from his seat in Parliament--raising the question of why the Irish terrorist scum are okay but not the Palestinian scum.

The situation is inexact but, suppose that the Brits had told us after Yorktown that we could have our own country so long as no one who had fought against the Crown led our government. Is that an offer we could have accepted?

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 24, 2002 6:30 PM