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Peace Process

No progress until terrorists disarmed


By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
August 24, 2005

The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon hopes its ?painful sacrifice? of uprooting Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria will bolster the Palestinian Authority in those areas and diminish the influence of anti-Israel terror groups.

?The pullout will lead to a different reality in Gaza. It will only strengthen the PA there,? Defense Minister Sha'ul Mofaz told Army Radio Wednesday.

But Israel was back on the defensive this week after ?Palestinian? terror groups announced they had obtained a guarantee from the PA not to disarm them in accordance with signed peace agreements.

?If the process is going to move forward after disengagement, then we have to see the Palestinians fulfill their road map obligations and disarm the terrorist groups,? Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev told The Jerusalem Post. ?Our position is clear.?

It is a threat Sharon has repeated on several occasions in over the past week.

It is also a threat Israel has made after every major round of concessions to the PLO.

The Palestinian Arabs ?know very well that if they use these guns [we are giving them] against us once, at that moment the Oslo Accord will be annulled and the IDF will return to all the places that have been given to them,? said former-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1993 after recognizing the PLO, surrendering Jericho and most of Gaza, and arming the Palestinian Arabs.

Similar declarations were made following the signing of 1995's Interim Agreement, which awarded six more cities in Judea and Samaria to the PLO.

When then-Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu turned over Hebron in 1997, he pointed to the Ross Note provided by Washington as part of the agreement which ostensibly locked the PLO into honoring its security commitments.

A year after the withdrawal from Hebron, Israel issued a formal list of demands the PLO would have to meet before further concessions were made. It centered on combating terror and ending anti-Jewish incitement.

When later in 1998 Netanyahu was signing away more of Israel's ancient heartland at the Wye River Summit, he declared, ?The Palestinian Authority must fight terrorism in word and deed alike... Unless the Palestinians honor their commitments on the security issue, there can be no agreement.?

Two years later, as the ?Palestinians? unleashed their ?Al Aqsa Intifada? in response to Israel's offer to capitulate to 90 percent of their demands, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak wrote that ?violence is not a substitute for negotiation, and it is incumbent upon us not to reward and encourage such means.?

Upon accepting the US-backed Road Map peace plan, Sharon told the 2002 Herzliya Conference, ?On the basis of lessons learned from past agreements, it is clear to all that Israel can no longer be expected to make political concessions until there is proven calm [i.e. cessation of terror] and Palestinian governmental reforms.?

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