OLMERT AND ABBAS MAKE A DEAL

The brilliant CAPTAIN'S QUARTERS:

Olmert has decided that the best way to break the logjam is to essentially subsidize Fatah. The Israelis will almost certainly ensure that Abbas controls the cash that flows into the PA, and Abbas will use it to strengthen his own position, especially in terms of the upcoming elections that Hamas has pledged to boycott. Fatah will once again control all aspects of the PA, and presumably Abbas will then begin negotiations in good faith on the other issues in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

This solution suffers from a lack of historical perspective. It's understandable to think that Abbas is a better solution that Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh, but the truth is that Abbas wasn't much of a partner for peace before the rise of Hamas, either. Fatah belonged to Yasser Arafat, who also turned out to be an unreliable partner and an unrepentant terrorist. Fatah groups actively attack Israel alongside Islamic Jihad and Hamas at the moment, and Israel will now transfer a fortune to the same leadership that controls the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

How is this progress?

It isn't. It's false hope which delays the inevitable. Peace comes through victory. Always has; always will. One side dictates terms to the other; end of story. CQ continues:

Israel would have been better advised to allow the various factions to fall into civil war in the territories. For one thing, when they fight each other, they don't have time to kill Israelis. More importantly, dealing with any of these terrorist organizations only ensures that terrorists will endure as Palestinian leaders.

It keeps more rational and pragmatic leadership from rising out of the dissatisfaction of Palestinian misery, a misery entirely self-inflicted by their insistence on selecting terrorists as their representatives. Hamas, Islamic Jihas, and Fatah have no one whom the Israelis can trust for peaceful co-existence -- and that being the case, Israel has no obligation to send them a single shekel, especially since the PA has backed out of the Oslo agreement that established the payments in the first place.

Israel's enemies must be defeated before there can be peace. Appeasing the enemy does not defeat them. It emboldens them.