By Jonathan Spyer

Israel’s announcement of a willingness for peace talks with Lebanon is one of the early fruits of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent visit to the region and her unexpected visit to Lebanon. French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s recent visit to Lebanon and upcoming visit to Israel is also crucial here.

In the wake of the recent Doha agreement, the US is keen to bolster the position of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and the March 14 movement of which he is a part.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

How long did we hear the “international community” and Palestinians piss and moan about Israel’s occupation of Gaza? Israel gave peace a chance in 2005 by pulling all its settlers and soldiers out of Gaza. What has the Jewish state gotten in return expect proof that the Palestinian leadership’s mantra is, “It’s never enough; we want ALL of Israel!” From the AP:

… Israel’s blockade was imposed in an effort to pressure Hamas to stop attacks from Iranian-backed militants, who have been bombarding southern Israel with rockets and mortars for seven years.

The rate of fire increased after Israel pulled its troops and settlers out of Gaza in 2005 and stepped up further last year after Hamas wrested power from forces loyal to moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose government controls the West Bank. …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Jimmy Carter wants Israel to give peace a chance with Hamas, but the former president has, to put it mildly, selective perception (i.e., he looks the other way when Palestinians commit abhorrent crimes against humanity). Hamas today showed its true colors again. From the BBC:

The armed wing of Hamas has admitted that a massive explosion in the Gaza Strip on Thursday was caused by militants preparing an armed operation.

Seven people, including a four-month-old baby were killed in the blast, in Beit Lahiya, in the north of the strip. …

The [Hamas] statement said six members of the brigades were killed in the blast, as well as the four-month-old baby of one of the militants.

About 50 people were wounded, among them 15 children, Palestinian medics say. …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

The stupidity and overzealousness of Islamist terrorists doesn’t make them any less dangerous. Case in point, the “Toronto 18, which was busted during a massive police sweep in the summer of 2006.” The trial of the idiotic would-be murderers in now taking place in Brampton, Ontario. It turns out that this group was planning to hit Ottawa, not just Toronto, and had American friends planning to cause mayhem in Atlanta. Here are some highlights from the testimony:

Fearing his days were “numbered” and his arrest imminent, the alleged ringleader of a homegrown terror cell wanted to forge ahead and build explosives to carry out a “mission” that included an attack on Ottawa, a Brampton court was told yesterday.

“I’m just gonna go all out with the mission call, man, like fully all out,” he is overheard saying in an electronic intercept. “If we had more money, guy, I would have just strapped up, like, as many people as possible. … ‘Cause this is tense.” …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ popularity has increased over his rival Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. This is according to a poll “conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR),” and reported by the Jerusalem Post (see summary below). Is this good news? There is a popular misconception that Abbas (Fatah) is more “moderate” than Haniyeh (Hamas), and Abbas would be better for peace with Israel.

Abbas’ Ph.D. thesis and subsequent book was entitled, “The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism” (Holocaust denial). Abbas was one of the founding members of the PLO/Fatah, a group which terrorized Israelis for decades. He had great influence over the 1993 Oslo deal, which led to the “most sustained wave of Palestinian suicide bombings in Israeli history.” The Palestinian Authority never lived up to its Oslo commitments. Also note that:

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By Barry Rubin

Clearly, the conduct of negotiations by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government with Syria, the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas, has an Israeli political dimension. Yet it is easy to misunderstand this relationship.

Olmert’s unpopularity and personal involvement with strong corruption allegations give him an incentive to conduct such talks. His basic argument is: I’m engaged in such important efforts to achieve peace as to render unimportant all these other petty issues. Stop distracting me.

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By Jonathan Spyer

At this past Sunday’s cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert issued a public statement relating to the revived negotiations with Syria. The talks, the prime minister wished to assure us, were “serious” and would be conducted with “all due caution.” All the ingredients familiar from peace processes past were present in Olmert’s statement: the gravitas; the quiet sense that history is presenting us with a chance that must not be missed; the necessary discretion. However, in the manner now familiar from Olmert’s tenure as prime minister, what we were presented with was the form of something, without its content.

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By Barry Rubin

“If you have tears, prepare to shed them now…
Oh, what a fall was there…
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down.”

–William Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar,” Act 3, Scene 1.

May 21, 2008, is a date–like December 7 (1941) and September 11 (2001)–that should now live in infamy. Yet who will notice, mourn, or act the wiser for it?

On that day, the Beirut spring was buried under the reign of Hizballah.

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by Asaf Romirowsky*

A few days ago an Israeli air strike killed a member of a Palestinian missile team that had been firing rockets from Gaza. Now the United Nations has come out with an unusual statement of bewilderment and utter shock as the truth has come out. The dead man, Awad al-Qiq, was a U.N. employee and headmaster of a top prep school in Gaza. He was also the chief rocket-maker for Islamic Jihad.

Mr. Al-Qiq — not surprisingly, a science teacher — worked for one of the schools run by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Now that he is out of the rocket business, the employment of such a “respectable” individual by the sole U.N. agency devoted to Palestinian refugees deserves an explanation.

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By Barry Rubin, Asaf Romirowsky, and Jonathan Spyer

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

On the surface, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) seems a humanitarian group helping Palestinian refugees. In reality, it actually helps destroy the chance of Arab-Israeli peace, promotes terrorism, and holds Palestainians back from rebuilding their lives.

Unique in history, UNRWA’s job is to keep Palestinian refugees in suspended animation–and at low living standards–until they achieve the goal set for them by the PLO and Hamas: Israel’s extinction. In the meantime, their suffering and anger is maintained as a weapon to encourage them toward violence and intransigence.

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By Barry Rubin

While America’s secretary of state devotes her time to doomed Israel-Palestinian talks and America goes ga-ga over a candidate whose main foreign policy strategy is to talk to dictators, still another crisis strengthens radical Islamists and endangers Western friends and interests.

William Butler Yeats said it best: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere, The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst, Are full of passionate intensity.”

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by Jonathan Spyer

The recent events in Beirut pose a simple, fundamental question: Who rules in Lebanon?

The answer proposed by Hizbullah last week is that the government of Fuad Saniora and Saad Hariri is to be permitted to hold the formal reins of administration - on condition that they well understand the inherent limits of their position. Most important, any attempt to interfere with the Iranian-created and Iranian- and Syrian-sponsored military infrastructure in the country will result in a swift, disproportionate and bloody response.

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By Bill West*

Lately, we hear much from supporters of detained ex-University of South Florida computer engineering professor Sami Al-Arian, who pleaded guilty to (was convicted of) the Federal felony violation of providing assistance and support to members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist organization. Al-Arian was sentenced to 57 months prison time for his crime. He was also ordered to be deported from the United States at the completion of his criminal incarceration.

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by Jonathan Spyer

Whatever the Israelis offer, Syria won’t give up its alliance with Iran, which allows it to punch above its weight in the region.

With attention in the Middle East focusing on the US congressional hearings regarding a possible Syrian nuclear programme, the Syrian newspaper al-Watan made a surprising announcement last Wednesday. According to the newspaper, Israel, via Turkish channels, had in the previous 24 hours expressed its willingness to exchange the entirety of the Golan Heights area for peace with Syria.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Jimmy Carter once again has demonstrated his strident anti-Israel bias, stating this weekend that, “I think someone should be meeting with Hamas to see what we can do to encourage them to be cooperative and to find out what their attitude is.” This is Hamas’ attitude, as collected from its own TV broadcasts by PMW:

My message to the loathed Jews is that there is no god but Allah, we will chase you everywhere! We are a [Palestinian] nation that drinks blood, and we know that there is no blood better than the blood of Jews. We will not leave you alone until we have quenched our thirst with your blood, and our children’s thirst with your blood. We will not leave until you leave the Muslim countries.

Is Carter naive enough to think that a terrorist group like Hamas will change its stripes to spots and become a genuine peace partner for Israel? Or is his bias against Israel so strong that he is willing to overlook the fact that Hamas’ “founding charter commits the group to the destruction of Israel, the replacement of the PA [Palestinian Authority] with an Islamist state on the West Bank and Gaza, and to raising ‘the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine’ [including Israel]?”

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