Column: No compromise with terrorists

Experience has shown that appeasement of terrorists is both futile and foolhardy. By flagrantly violating the most basic moral precept--respect for innocent human life--terrorist groups and governments that actively support them have placed themselves outside the realm where negotiation is a plausible option. The Sept. 11 attacks, Bali bombings and the Moscow hostage crisis have shown that force is the only viable method of stopping adversaries who have utterly devalued life, even their own. Regrettably, it appears that the one exception to this rule that the United States had kept after Sept. 11-negotiation with the regime of Yasser Arafat--is growing more and more untenable.

At the outset, I want to stress that the only long-term solution to the Palestinian question must be political in nature, culminating--as President George W. Bush has argued--in a viable, independent Palestinian state. There are clearly officials in Arafat's government who believe in peaceful coexistence with Israel. However, recent events have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that the man whom the world expected to be the first leader of this state simply cannot be trusted. As someone who has long viewed Arafat as a noble if flawed freedom-fighter, I have to admit that this view is now fundamentally wrong. With his words as well as his deeds, Arafat has shown himself to be an impediment to a conclusive peace settlement.

The most common claim against Arafat is that he does not do enough to stop terror attacks by Islamic militant groups against Israeli civilians. This is an important point, but we can give the Palestinian Authority the benefit of the doubt by accepting its explanation that it cannot stop every single suicide bombing by Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. Fair enough. The truly shocking charge of which Arafat is unquestionably guilty is that his own political movement condones, funds and even carries out acts of violence against civilian targets.

This movement, called Fatah, is the dominant faction in the broader Palestine Liberation Organization, which Arafat has headed for decades. Its armed wing is the Tanzim, within which there is a small and relatively young terrorist unit that calls itself the al-Aqsa Brigade. It was added to the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist organizations earlier this year, for carrying out attacks against Jewish settlers in the occupied territories and civilians--Jewish and Arab alike--within Israel's 1948 borders, which Arafat claims to respect.

A particularly glaring example of the brutality exhibited by the Brigade came Nov. 11, when one of its gunmen opened fire in Kibbutz Metzer, a farm in northern Israel. He entered a home, killing the mother and her two young children before shooting dead two more civilians. Then, on Nov. 28, the day of the Kenyan hotel bombing, two Brigade gunmen shot dead six civilians in Beit Shean. Even for a region that has grown accustomed to violence, these attacks shock the conscience.

Arafat, as is his custom, issued generic statements with disapproval of such cold-blooded murders, but he qualified it by arguing that the crimes were caused by a cycle of violence that Israel perpetuates. Now I will be the first to criticize a number of excessive tactics used by the Israeli military, but to blame such atrocities on anything besides the attackers' depraved ideology verges on the ridiculous. Nothing done by the government of Prime Minister Sharon could possibly justify the killing of innocent civilians, just like U.S. foreign policy can never rationalize Sept. 11. It is irresponsible of Arafat to suggest that deliberate murder of civilians is a legitimate tactic of resisting oppression. He rightly condemns Israeli actions that result in deaths of innocent Palestinians but fails to recognize that there is a moral distinction between accidental "collateral damage" and premeditated slaughter of innocents.

Moreover, if the claim of responsibility came from Hamas or a similar group, we would not hold Arafat directly responsible. But the al-Aqsa Brigade has always been an integral part of his Fatah movement. It boggles the mind that this authoritarian leader--to put it mildly--does not have the ability to control his own followers. It is true that he does not supervise Hamas and Hezbollah, but he is unquestionably the paramount leader of the Brigade. When his own organization attacks civilians inside Israel's 1948 borders, his feeble press releases just don't cut it anymore.

The Bush administration has offered a sensible "roadmap" that Israel and the Palestinian Authority need to follow to finally resolve this conflict by 2005. Both sides certainly have much to do, but when the White House seeks a resumption of security cooperation between them, it is important to keep in mind that Arafat has thus far proven incapable of even taking the minimal step of halting senseless Fatah violence. Before his police forces--which are more or less interchangeable with the Tanzim--confront other militant groups, they need to take the basic step of disarming and arresting the terrorists within their own ranks. Right now, it does not appear that there is political will in place to do even that.