Abbas sinking lower

Editorial

In advance of a visit to the Middle East by American Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, the "moderate" Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has launched into an anachronistic incitement to violence.

Already reaping the whirlwind of a generation of incitement to violence turned inward, the Palestinian people are suffering economic and social deprivation brought about as much by the failure of their leaders to see beyond violence as by the detested scapegoat that is Israeli occupation. Having created a generation or more of Palestinians reared on rocks and rockets, Abbas, once seen as the moderate who might find a middle ground to peace, has reverted to the language of his predecessor, the unrepentant terrorist Yasser Arafat.

Apparently seeking to extend an olive branch, if that is the correct metaphor, to the relatively extremist Hamas, Abbas urged his people to turn their guns outward.

"Our rifles, all our rifles are aimed at the occupation," Abbas said, in a turn of phrase that was reiterated on Palestinian media later by senior government officials and Abbas allies. Palestinian TV's senior anchor noted that "the occupation" began not in 1967 (which is the moderate message Palestinians beam outward) but in 1948 (which is the unequivocal message taught to every Palestinian grade schooler).

Stirring the pot of millions of Palestinians deemed, by a unique definition, "refugees," Abbas declared: "We send our greetings to our brothers in Jordan, in Syria, in Lebanon," and added, "our hearts and our hands are open to all Palestinians."

He also said, "We will not give up one grain of [land] in Jerusalem."

Abbas's latest incitement to intolerance, violence and total rejection of Israel will be defended by his friends as rhetoric required for internal political consumption. Clearly, the hate-filled language is geared at building bridges of intolerance with Hamas, the potential ally for a unity government.

But it is notable, as usual, that such generosity of spirit on the part of Western observers is universally reserved only for Palestinians. Every act and word of incitement spewed forth by generations of Palestinian leaders has been excused by international apologists as an unfortunate reality of internal political necessity. Such accommodation to domestic necessity is never, ever extended to Israel, which is granted no such leeway.

Having weaned a society on violence against Jews, with no preparation for peaceful co-existence with its neighbor, Palestinian leaders are now attempting to keep a lid on a roiling populace whose only understanding of political power comes from the barrel of a gun. As the violence turns inward, in an incipient civil war, the president plays the only hand he thinks the uncontrollable rage of his people will understand: don't aim inward – save your bullets for the Jews.

A dozen years after the start of the "peace process," this is what the evolution of Palestinian democracy looks like.

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