For too long, the citizens of the Middle East have lived in the midst of death and fear. The hatred of a few holds the hopes of many hostage. The forces of extremism and terror are attempting to kill progress and peace by killing the innocent. And this casts a dark shadow over an entire region.

For the sake of all humanity, things must change in the Middle East. It is untenable for Israeli citizens to live in terror. It is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation. And the current situation offers no prospect that life will improve. Israeli citizens will continue to be victimized by terrorists, and so Israel will continue to defend herself, and the situation of the Palestinian people will grow more and more miserable.

My vision is two states, living side by side, in peace and security. There is simply no way to achieve that peace until all parties fight terror.

Yet at this critical moment, if all parties will break with the past and set out on a new path, we can overcome the darkness with the light of hope.

Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership, so that a Palestinian state can be born. I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror.

I call upon them to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty.

If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts. If the Palestinian people meet these goals, they will be able to reach agreement with Israel and Egypt and Jordan on security and other arrangements for independence.

And when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors, the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state, whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East.

In the work ahead, we all have responsibilities. The Palestinian people are gifted and capable and I'm confident they can achieve a new birth for their nation.

A Palestinian state will never be created by terror. It will be built through reform. And reform must be more than cosmetic change or a veiled attempt to preserve the status quo. True reform will require entirely new political and economic institutions based on democracy, market economics and action against terrorism.

Today the elected Palestinian legislature has no authority and power is concentrated in the hands of an unaccountable few. A Palestinian state can only serve its citizens with a new constitution which separates the powers of government.

The Palestinian parliament should have the full authority of a legislative body. Local officials and government ministers need authority of their own and the independence to govern effectively.

The United States, along with the European Union and Arab states, will work with Palestinian leaders to create a new constitutional framework and a working democracy for the Palestinian people. And the United States, along with others in the international community, will help the Palestinians organize and monitor fair, multiparty local elections by the end of the year with national elections to follow.

Today, the Palestinian people live in economic stagnation, made worse by official corruption. A Palestinian state will require a vibrant economy, where honest enterprise is encouraged by honest government.

The United States, the international donor community and the World Bank stand ready to work with Palestinians on a major project of economic reform and development. The United States, the EU, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are willing to oversee reforms in Palestinian finances, encouraging transparency and independent auditing. And the United States, along with our partners in the developed world, will increase our humanitarian assistance to relieve Palestinian suffering.

Today, the Palestinian people lack effective courts of law and have no means to defend and vindicate their rights. A Palestinian state will require a system of reliable justice to punish those who prey on the innocent. The United States and members of the international community stand ready to work with Palestinian leaders to establish, finance and monitor a truly independent judiciary.

Today, Palestinian authorities are encouraging, not opposing terrorism.

This is unacceptable. And the United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure.

This will require an externally supervised effort to rebuild and reform the Palestinian security services. The security system must have clear lines of authority and accountability and a unified chain of command.

America is pursuing this reform along with key regional states. The world is prepared to help, yet ultimately these steps toward statehood depend on the Palestinian people and their leaders. If they energetically take the path of reform, the rewards can come quickly. If Palestinians embrace democracy, confront corruption and firmly reject terror, they can count on American support for the creation of a provisional state of Palestine.

With a dedicated effort, this state could rise rapidly, as it comes to terms with Israel, Egypt and Jordan on practical issues such as security. The final borders, the capital and other aspects of this state's sovereignty will be negotiated between the parties as part of a final settlement.

Arab states have offered their help in this process, and their help is needed.

I've said in the past that nations are either with us or against us in the war on terror. To be counted on the side of peace, nations must act. Every leader actually committed to peace will end incitement to violence in official media and publicly denounce homicide bombings. Every nation actually committed to peace will stop the flow of money, equipment and recruits to terrorist groups seeking the destruction of Israel, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.

Every nation actually committed to peace must block the shipment of Iranian supplies to these groups and oppose regimes that promote terror, like Iraq.

And Syria must choose the right side in the war on terror by closing terrorist camps and expelling terrorist organizations.

Leaders who want to be included in the peace process must show by their deeds and undivided support for peace.

And as we move toward a peaceful solution, Arab states will be expected to build closer ties of diplomacy and commerce with Israel, leading to full normalization of relations between Israel and the entire Arab world.

Israel also has a large stake in the success of a democratic Palestine. Permanent occupation threatens Israel's identity and democracy. A stable, peaceful Palestinian state is necessary to achieve the security that Israel longs for.

So I challenge Israel to take concrete steps to support the emergence of a viable, credible Palestinian state.

As we make progress toward security, Israel forces need to withdraw fully to positions they held prior to Sept. 28, 2000. And consistent with the recommendations of the Mitchell committee, Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories must stop.

The Palestinian economy must be allowed to develop. As violence subsides, freedom of movement should be restored, permitting innocent Palestinians to resume work and normal life. Palestinian legislators and officials, humanitarian and international workers, must be allowed to go about the business of building a better future. And Israel should release frozen Palestinian revenues into honest, accountable hands.

I've asked Secretary Powell to work intensively with Middle Eastern and international leaders to realize the vision of a Palestinian state, focusing them on a comprehensive plan to support Palestinian reform and institution building.

Ultimately, Israelis and Palestinians must address the core issues that divide them if there is to be a real peace, resolving all claims and ending the conflict between them.

We must also resolve questions concerning Jerusalem, the plight and future of Palestinian refugees, and a final peace between Israel and Lebanon and Israel and a Syria that supports peace and fights terror.

All who are familiar with the history of the Middle East realize that there may be setbacks in this process. Trained and determined killers, as we have seen, want to stop it.  

Yet the Egyptian and Jordanian peace treaties with Israel remind us that, with determined and responsible leadership, progress can come quickly.

As new Palestinian institutions and new leaders emerge, demonstrating real performance on security and reform, I expect Israel to respond and work toward a final status agreement.

With intensive effort by all of us, agreement could be reached within three years from now. And I and my country will actively lead toward that goal.

I can understand the deep anger and anguish of the Israeli people. You've lived too long with fear and funerals, having to avoid markets and public transportation, and forced to put armed guards in kindergarten classrooms. The Palestinian Authority has rejected your offered hand and trafficked with terrorists. You have a right to a normal life. You have a right to security. And I deeply believe that you need a reformed, responsible Palestinian partner to achieve that security.

I can understand the deep anger and despair of the Palestinian people. For decades you've been treated as pawns in the Middle East conflict. Your interests have been held hostage to a comprehensive peace agreement that never seems to come, as your lives get worse year by year.

You deserve democracy and the rule of law. You deserve an open society and a thriving economy.
You deserve a life of hope for your children.

An end to occupation and a peaceful democratic Palestinian state may seem distant, but America and our partners throughout the world stand ready to help, help you make them possible as soon as possible.

If liberty can blossom in the rocky soil of the West Bank in Gaza, it will inspire millions of men and women around the globe, who are equally weary of poverty and oppression, equally entitled to the benefits of democratic government.

I have a hope for the people of Muslim countries. Your commitments to morality and learning and tolerance lead to great historical achievements, and those values are alive in the Islamic world today. You have a rich culture, and you share the aspirations of men and women in every culture. Prosperity and freedom and dignity are not just American hopes or Western hopes, they are universal human hopes. And even in the violence and turmoil of the Middle East, America believes those hopes have the power to transform lives and nations.

This moment is both an opportunity and a test for all parties in the Middle East: an opportunity to lay the foundations for future peace, a test to show who's serious about peace and who is not.

The choice here is stark and simple, the Bible says, "I have set before you life and death, therefore choose life." The time has arrived for everyone in this conflict to choose peace and hope --- and life.

THE TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE, GOVERNMENT
(David Basch) 

"Dennis Ross is part of the propaganda apparatus of the state department and perpetrates the fiction that a-pie-in-the-sky new democratic Arab state on Israel's territory will live in peace with Israel rather than democratically vote to destroy Israel."

"A timely Israeli policy of effective action would have Israel enter into the Arab controlled areas FOR KEEPS."

"This will ... make the Arabs realize that what they have been doing is self-defeating since they will have come out with less than before and with no prospect of ever having a new irredentist Arab state as a base for further war to destroy the Jewish state."

"Mr. Too Little, Too Late, Sharon, fails to properly conceptualize Israel's needs in order to create proper Israeli war aims to serve the long term interests of the nation...."

Note the belated action of Sharon to "temporarily hold" Arab controlled areas in response to the suicide bombings. This may work to stop the enemy for the moment as Arafat temporarily calls his terrorists off, but the enemy will be back in business the day after, having once again lost nothing meaningful. Sharon was urged to take over Arab areas months ago and has only now belatedly responded. But this "too late" policy is "too little" and won't succeed in curbing an enemy that seeks Israel's destruction.

Sharon also declares that he wants Arafat removed so that he could then acquiesce in the establishment of a Palestinian state. But Arafat represents his Arab followers and a new Arab leadership will carry out the same murderous anti-Israel policy. So, as usual, Sharon is in this embarking on another policy that is fundamentally ruinous to Israel. While he rightly decries the Arab savagery, also to be decried is his ineffective response that makes Jewish deaths even more tragic. Sharon thereby shows himself to be another of the failed Israeli leaders delivering Israel to defeat and irrevocable destruction. I hope I err in this judgement.

Why does a smart guy like Sharon miss the obvious? He may be doing so as a result of personal characterlogical failures that trump rational thinking. It may well be that Sharon is an egotistical and shallow technocrat who thinks he is wiser than everyone else hence reduces all problems to the limits of his competence. He seems to dream of less things than there are in heaven and earth. Without a deeper understanding, he embraces the half baked concepts fed to him by liberalism, a way of "politically correct" thinking that accepts many nonsensical ideas, such as the universal right to self-determination. The Arabs are smart enough to take advantage of such openings in the thinking of their enemies so as to steal the lands of others.

Self-determination, aside from sounding good, has no essential validity. Though it is honored in liberal societies, it is nowhere put into practice, certainly not in Arab lands. And while the U.S. may seem to honor this lunacy -- as did self declared liberal Jack Kemp, a former U.S. Congressman and candidate for Vice President, on television last night on Fox -- just let the masses of Mexican residents of the southwest of the U.S. try to claim such self-determination for their New New-Mexico and watch the sparks fly.

But because Sharon is dedicated to his secular religion of liberalism and its half-baked universalistic ideas that sound as nice as they are wrong, he considers the Arabs to rights to Israel's lands and that whatever the Arabs already control is to be theirs forever, even though they got such control under the false pretenses of an Oslo process and pose a grave danger to Israel within such holdings.

If you need further confirmation that this is Israeli government policy, Alon Pinkus, spokesman for Israel, made it clear a few nights ago with Brit Hume on a Fox news program. Pinkus explicitly stated Israel's intention to accept a Palestinian state and this entails Israel's acceptance of the permanence of an Arab nation on Israel's lands. This Arab nation will be a perpetual danger to Israel and threat to peace.

As result of Sharon's commitment to a new Arab nation, Sharon authorizes Israel's armies to execute only a "temporary" takeover of Arab controlled territory. Sharon proposes in a lull in the carnage against Israel to again give up these Israeli lands to the Arab killers. The Arabs will of course resume the killing and their successful war against Israel since this is their way. They will not stop this behavior until they succeed or are defeated. Israel is today a shambles and is at the pleasure of an Arab enemy who can turn its savagery on and off at will and holds Israel's safety and security in the palm of their hands.

I note also that on the Fox network on the very next night appeared Dennis Ross. He is now called a Fox News Consultant but he still serves his old bosses in the U.S. State Department. When he was with Clinton, Dennis did much to enable the Arabs to make the immense gains that enabled the current carnage in Israel. Consistently, Dennis still advocates the U.S. State Department policy of Israel's surrender to the Arab residents of the unalloted portions of the Mandate of Palestine whom he assumes are a "people" -- just like the "people of New York" are a people -- and to whom nationhood is owed, as well as the fruits of a non-existent history of ownership of Jerusalem.

Since rights to nationhood were not conferred to the Arab residents of the Mandate of Palestine, nationhood having been reserved only for the Mandate's Jewish residents in deference to the long Jewish history in connection with the land, then such new Arab national rights must be assumed to derive from the fictitious universal right to self-determination. Dennis is now part of the propaganda apparatus of the state department and perpetrates the fiction that a-pie-in-the-sky, new democratic Arab state set up on Israel's territory will live in peace with Israel rather than democratically vote to destroy Israel.

Since all of earth's lands are already nationally assigned, a universal right to self-determination also entails a similar universal right for the owners of such lands to hold on to their possessions and to resist the submerged would-be national communities. The two alleged "universal rights" obviously would cancel each other and, invariably, it is military force which decides the issue, with in many cases the assistance of interfering outside parties determining the outcome. In the case of Israel and her governments of liberals, they have chosen to recognize and champion the right of the submerged Arab community, NOT ISRAEL'S RIGHT TO RESIST THIS CHALLENGE. Therefore, this submerged Arab community, dedicated to Israel's destruction, can't lose. Not opposed, it will eventually win and will go right on to relieve Israel of the rest of her lands.

Israel's rights to her lands given by the original Mandate of Palestine and the fallacy and fiction of the concept of self-determination makes it evident that Israel occupies no Arab lands, but holds the lands of the Mandate of Palestine as her right -- reduced of course by Britain having carved out with Jewish approval the Arab state of Jordan from what were these lands mandated for the Jewish people. Therefore, when Israel now enters Arab controlled areas, it is merely exercising control of Jewish national lands over which the Geneva convention has no jurisdiction since this convention does not apply to the internal lands of nations as is this situation, though suicidal Israeli governments in their obsession with being the most liberal in the graveyard have acted as though the Geneva Conventions apply, betraying the rights of Israel's people.

The punch line of this discussion is that a timely Israeli policy of effective action would have Israel enter the Arab controlled areas FOR KEEPS. To make this "for keeps," the hostile Arab populations must be removed. While this should have come about through a timely and effective Israeli policy of Arab transfer -- not the proposed policy of transferring Jewish people from their homes that has been the usual -- the way it is now, this transfer policy will have to be modified into a policy of compressing Arab populations, forcing Arabs in strategic areas to relocate to larger Arab areas to create smaller perimeters for Arab enclaves that can be more easily monitored and these dangerous enemies controlled by Israeli defensive armies. "Transfer" is a time honored policy that was used by the Western allies for German ethnics after World War II in the name of peace in Europe. What was right and moral for the allies is no less right and moral for Israel to safeguard the peace in her land. Instead, Israeli governments propose that "transfer" be applied to the Jews of the Israeli territories.

Transfer of Arabs would be the most effective way to respond to Arab savagery and, in a moral world, would be supported by righteous nations. Carrying this out would make the Arabs realize that their savagery will have been self-defeating since they would come out with less of a foothold than before and without the prospect of ever having a new, irredentist, Arab state as a base for further war to destroy Israel.

Sadly, the policy of Israel's government remains not to create the conditions for the long-term protection of the Jewish State. Instead, Israeli governments, sworn to the falsehoods of the enemy's propaganda, merely serve as interim administrators of Israel's lands until the land is turned over to the self-determinating Arabs. The Arabs, practicing no such nonsensical doctrines of self-determination for others, will then determine the Jewish fate by throwing the Jews that remain alive into the sea.

Mr. Too Little, Too Late, Sharon, fails to properly conceptualize Israel's needs so as to create proper Israeli war aims to serve the long term interests of the nation. As long as Israeli leaders do not do this, Israel's responses to Arab attacks must be forever too little and too late. By the time Israel's obsessed liberal leaders grasp the reality that the Arabs have not the slightest intention of ever living with a Jewish state and, therefore, must be transferred if Israel is to ever control her borders and achieve peace, so much will have been done to empower the implacable Arab enemy that it will be too late to save Israel -- a victim of leaders who have doomed Israel to tardily carrying out ineffective policies. A change of government and policy direction is needed in Israel at once.

June 18 was another day of agony for Israelis. Palestinian statehood would put an end to Israel's suffering -- along with its existence.Seconds after he boarded a Jerusalem bus, a Palestinian aptly named Mohammad al- Ghoul exploded a nail-studded bomb, killing himself and 19 passengers, mostly students. It was the 69th suicide bombing since the Palestinians began their bloody march toward sovereignty 21 months ago.

Shrapnel from the blast ripped through flesh and bone. Rescue workers collected body parts in the street. In a recent poll, 67 percent of Palestinians said they expect such unspeakable evil to pay political dividends. The latest carnage has delayed President George W. Bush's anticipated speech outlining his proposal for a provisional or interim Palestinian state.

Since such an entity has never existed before, no one can say exactly how it would function. Would it have transitional control of its borders and limited power to import armaments from Iran and sign treaties with Arafat's friend, Saddam Hussein?

In the past, Bush has cautioned that statehood can only come after the slaughter ceases and democratic reform -- the first ever in the Arab world -- takes place. Still, Secretary of State Colin Powell and others are pushing the president to pick up his pom-poms and act as a cheerleader for Pal State.

When Washington talks about statehood for terrorist enablers, it sends an unequivocal message to ghouls great and small: Keep those body bags coming in and handsome dividends will accrue. In truth, if the carnage ended tomorrow, if an Arab Gandhi were somehow elected to lead the Palestinian Authority, if Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Arafat's Tanzim militia linked arms and sang "Kumbaya," a Palestinian state would still be a raging cancer consuming Israel.

The Palestinians have never given up their dream of conquering all of the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

The Palestinian people is a myth concocted for this purpose. In a 1977 interview with a Dutch magazine, PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein admitted, "The Palestinian people does not exist." Zahir explained that there are no inherent differences between Syrians, Jordanians and Palestinians. "Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism."

As a sovereign state, Jordan can't demand Ramallah and East Jerusalem. As a so-called dispossessed people, the Palestinians can. Two days after he shook hands with the late Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn in 1993, Arafat set forth his strategy in an interview on Jordanian television: "Since we cannot defeat Israel in war, we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine and establish a sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel."

That death stroke will be preceded by the total militarization of the Republic of Jihad -- the docking of a Karine A a day -- and Katyusha rocket attacks against Israel's narrow waist (with 70 percent of its population and 80 percent of its industrial base).

Instead of a 40-mile border with Jordan, Israel will have a 200-mile long border with Arafatistan. (The better to infiltrate you, my dear.) Jerusalem will no longer occupy the high ground of the hills of Judea and Samaria. Instead of coming at the Israeli Defense Forces on the heights, Israel's enemies will be entrenched there.

Poised on its border with Palestine, Syrian tank columns could reach the Israeli heartland in less than an hour. Over Palestinian air space, troops from the other Arab states could rapidly be transported to the front.

Israel and Palestine living peacefully, side by side (and the suicide bombers shall lie down with the victims), is a dream of diplomats disconnected from reality. A provisional Palestinian state would be an interim, but irreversible, step toward the abolition of the Jewish state.

One: Peace trap

From the Jerusalem Post:
CAROLINE B. GLICK's Column 
 

It must be said: There is no peace process. Yasser Arafat, who is the declared commander of Fatah-Tanzim, the proud perpetrator of Wednesday's kamikaze attack on babies and grandmothers in Jerusalem, and the enabler ofHamas, which perpetrated Tuesday's massacre in the capital, is a terrorist and a murderer. The Palestinian Authority is not simply a regime that "cavorts with terror," as US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice gently put it last week. It is a fascist regime that defines terror and isdefined by terror.

Today, nine years after the inauguration of the Oslo process and 21 months into the official Palestinian Authority jihad, there are no credible voices for coexistence in Palestinian society. Even Palestinian leaders considereddoves that rarefied group of Jerusalem aristocracy which includes such luminaries as Sari Nusseibeh and Hanan Ashrawi cannot find it in their hearts to recognize that life is an immutable right. In their much publicized (and EU financed) declaration of opposition to terrorism published in Wednesday'sAl-Quds newspaper, these Palestinian peaceniks only condemned the murder of civilians within Israel's pre-Six Day War borders which exclude both the Gilo and French Hill neighborhoods where this week's attacks took place. The full-page ad, which was condemned by the PA, was also silent on the barbarityof suicide bombings.

Stipulating that the first requirement of peaceful coexistence between Israel and the Palestinians is Palestinian recognition of all Israelis' right tolife cannot be viewed as an unreasonable demand. And yet, we see to our revulsion and amazement, there is no Palestinian constituency with any legitimacy or power that recognizes this natural right. Therefore, it is clear today that for the foreseeable future, there will be no peace with thePalestinians.

What remains shrouded in ambiguity is the fact that the Oslo process was not a "peace process." The Oslo process was an agreement process. Its final goalwas not to produce peace, but rather to produce agreements in the name of peace. And it was successful for a time in producing agreements. This fact was clear from the very beginning. On the very day that Arafat signed the Oslo Accords with prime minister Yitzhak Rabin on the White Houselawn, he gave a speech, aired on Jordanian television in which he invoked the decision by the Palestine National Council made at Rabat in 1974 calling forthe phased liquidation of Israel. Israel remained silent because our government wanted agreements. To this day, the PLO has not clearly amended its covenant calling for the destruction of Israel, in spite of the fact that doing so was to be a precondition for all negotiations.

Accepting the distinction between the never-existent peace process and the still throbbing agreement process is crucial for understanding Israel's predicament. And, of course, understanding this predicament is the firstnecessary step to finding a way out. Oslo's architects claimed and continue to claim that the goal of the process is to bring peace, but the simple truth is that this assertion is adistortion of reality. Peace can never be a concrete policy goal because peace is not concrete. Peace is an aspiration, a dream, or a state of reality for the lucky. Peace is not a policy, and it is not a policy goal in any real sense.

Israel, as a rational, moral, free, and democratic state naturally aspires to peace. However, as a country surrounded by autocratic, bellicose regimes, in need of an external bogeyman to justify their existence to their oppressedcitizenry, Israel will get no peace from its neighbors. Although Israel has signed peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, Israel has no peace with those nations. Egypt spends a quarter of its GDP on its military. Its official press and religious authorities have demonized Israel to such a degree thatIsraeli physicians must be flown to Cairo to treat sick Israeli diplomats because Egyptian doctors refuse to care for them. And so, relations with Egypt would be rightly characterized as a cold war.

Israel's close relations with the Hashemite minority regime in Palestinian - dominated Jordan are not the result of the 1994 treaty. Israel has been Jordan's strategic partner at least since the IDF saved theHashemite regime from a PLO coup in 1970, and, some would argue, since even before the establishment of both states. It could be reasonably argued thatthe peace treaty, bringing these relations to the attention of rank-and-file Jordanians who reject Israel's right to exist, has weakened rather than strengthened Israel's partnership with Jordan. Today, our relations are susceptible to public calumny in Jordan that simply did not exist before.

At any rate, Israel's status vis- -vis Egypt and Jordan did not improve much after peace agreements were signed from what it had been previous to their signing. That is, the agreements in and of themselves did little to transformrelations in any positive way.

Policies and strategies are geared towards the achievement of tangible goals. Since the inauguration of the Oslo process, Israel's governments, either by design or by default, have subordinated all of Israel's interests to the goalof achieving signed agreements with Arafat. Prior to Oslo, Israel's policy, like that of most peace-loving nations, was to do everything in its power to achieve security. Israel's unbending waragainst terrorists aimed to provide personal security for its citizens from mayhem and murder. And Israel's preemptive military doctrine and advancedarms industries were cultivated to ensure its strategic security from the threats posed by our neighbors' military capabilities.

Israel's pre-Oslo goals were rational and achievable, if sometimes only at great cost. Israel's success at deterring its neighbors from waging war against it and in providing decent security for its citizenry in spite of itsenemies' high motivation to kill and terrorize was not inconsiderable.

Then came Oslo, with its delusion that peace is a policy, and security disappeared from our lives. We armed our sworn enemy and gave it the means to transform Palestinian society from a nascent, if violent and petulant,democracy, into a fascistic, jihadi lunatic asylum with an open-door policy for homicidal Islamikazes, who ecstatically massacre us as we sleep, eat, go to work, go home, and shop.

We are told by the policy wonks in Meretz that there is no military solution. We are told by the president of the United States that while we have a rightto self-defense, we must be careful to prevent the "path to peace" from being blocked. Debates on television talk shows range from the pros and cons of having the Europeans, the UN, and the peace-loving Egyptians come in and enforce a "peaceful solution," to the inevitability of this loss ofsovereignty. When we build walls, (which will only allow the Palestinians to operate with greater immunity), we are reviled by the US State Department for harming prospects for peace, and threatened by the Palestinians, who claim we have no right given our commitment to achieving agreements to defendourselves.

The problem with all of these statements and discussions is that they are addressing the wrong issue. Since Oslo, all debate on national policy has been subordinated to the dictate that we must all profess our dedication topeace as a strategic goal before getting a seat at the table. Every policy and every decision, has been judged from the prism of whether it advanced attaining Arafat's signature on a dotted line, or distanced such an event. Still today, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Defense Minister BinyaminBen-Eliezer protest expelling Arafat and retaking territory in Area A. Their aversion to these actions is based on the proposition that such actions by the IDF will make it harder to sign an agreement with Arafat or with one of his successors who will be equally respectful of our right to life.

For Israel to extricate itself from the intolerable situation in which we have found ourselves these past 21 months, it is imperative that we change the premise upon which our national debate is being being carried out. Peaceas a policy aim must be expunged from our national dialogue. Instead, we must anchor our national discourse on the rational pursuit of security. All political, diplomatic, and military moves by the government must be based on the litmus test of whether or not such moves enhance or degrade Israel'ssecurity. In this way, we will open the national debate to a wellspring of grounded and worthy ideas that have been silenced for the past decade because they aim at achieving security, not agreements with the PLO.

All Israelis dream of peace, because peace is a dream. All Israelis demand security, because without security we cannot live our lives. This demand is fitting and appropriate, as protecting our lives is the primary task of ourgovernment.Today we shake with rage and pain at the sight of so many precious livesblotted out. Our despair has reached such proportions that we cannot even muster the hope that protesting against our wholesale murder will do something to end this atrocious reality. Instead we sit at home, stare at the carnage on television, and pray.Our prayers will only be answered when we wholly and completely reject the perverse notion that peace is a tangible aim for policy, and return to the rational determination that the provision of security at all costs is theprimary responsibility of our leadership.