Palestinians Don’t Disarm Palestinians

You wouldn’t know it from reading the New York Times, but Condoleezza Rice emphasized four times in an August 17 interview that the “next step” after the Gaza disengagement is dealing with the infrastructure of Palestinian terrorism, because (1) “there is an obligation in the roadmap to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism, not just coexist with it,” and (2) “[a cease fire] isn’t a substitute for the dismantling of the terrorist organizations,” so that (3) the Palestinians are “going to have to do it” because “that’s one of [the PA’s] obligations, and (4) that’s “the answer to the question, what comes next.”

Yesterday, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) released a report on “Abu Mazen Post-Disengagement” -- compiling recent statements by Mahmoud Abbas in the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida.  Abbas’s plan is to work with Palestinian “factions” through “dialogue:”

Regarding the small armed organizations, he said, "All we ask is that they return to their bases, and if they do not do so, we will deal with them in a way that will put an end to the phenomenon [of carrying weapons in public]."

Regarding the large Palestinian organizations, Abu Mazen said, "The dialogue with them will be conducted through the [PLO] Executive Committee and the Palestinian National Council, and in the future, through elections. These organizations want elections, and they are rushing towards change democratically and through party [politics]." He continued, "Fighting among Palestinians is forbidden. . . .

In other words, he won’t even disarm the “small armed organizations.” He just wants them not to carry their weapons in public.  Or else . . . he’ll make them not carry weapons in public.

Abbas is still following the approach he laid out in his September 6, 2003 speech to the Palestinian Legislative Council, in which he explained how he had substituted a cease-fire in place of the “trap” of dismantlement (an obligation the PA had formally accepted four months before):

[T]he roadmap talks about striking and uprooting the factions and we overcome this obstacle too because we will not fall into this trap; we don’t want a civil war . . . .

We reached a truce [between the Palestinian factions] to protect ourselves from a civil war because the alternative is that the authority has to strike; I don’t want to strike.  We made this truce with all the factions and for the first time in the history of the Palestinian people and we said this is the truce and we want to implement it and it was implemented but Israel kept violating it, just like it did in Nablus and other places.  I maintained my relation with Hamas and Jihad and the rest of the factions, especially in Gaza . . . [T]his is the safest way to protect our unity and protect our people from internal fighting; and the truce came which was rejected by the Israelis and the Americans and then it was imposed on them and they were told that there is no other solution although the roadmap, which we accepted, it says that the terrorist factions must be struck and uprooted and we overcome this or we tried to overcome this tragedy in which we could have put ourselves in if we listened to them.

For some reason, the New York Times missed the fact that Rice repeatedly emphasized the Palestinian dismantlement obligation (after all, it’s now been two-and-a-half years since they agreed to do it), and instead spliced together a misleading quote from phrases 1,378 words apart, directed at Israel.

And if the Times didn’t treat Rice’s repeated demands seriously, why would Abbas?