The 'Geneva accord' is not a treaty

by Charles Krauthammer 
November 28, 2003
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/charleskrauthammer/ck20031128.shtml

Washington -- On Monday, a peace agreement will be signed by 
Israelis and Palestinians. This "Geneva accord" has gotten much 
attention. And the signing itself will be greeted with much hoopla. 
Journalists are being flown in from around the world by the Swiss 
government. Jimmy Carter will be heading a list of foreign 
dignitaries. The U.S. Embassy in Bern will be sending an observer.

This is all rather peculiar: the agreement is being signed not 
by Israeli and Palestinian officials, but by two people with no power.

On the Palestinian side, the negotiator is former information 
minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, who at least is said to have Yasser 
Arafat's ear. The Israeli side, however, is led by Yossi Beilin, 
a man whose political standing in his own country is so low that 
he failed to make it into Parliament. After helping bring his 
Labor Party to ruin, Beilin abandoned it for the far left Meretz 
Party, which then did so badly in the last election that Beilin 
is now a private citizen. 

There is a reason why he is one of Israel's most reviled and 
discredited politicians. He was the principal ideologue and 
architect behind the "peace" foisted on Israel in 1993. 
Those Oslo agreements have brought a decade of the worst terror 
in all Israeli history.

Now he is at it again. And Secretary of State Colin Powell has 
written a letter to Beilin and Rabbo expressing appreciation for 
their effort, and next week he plans to meet with them. 

This is scandalous. Israel is a democracy, and this agreement 
was negotiated in defiance of the democratically (and overwhelmingly) 
elected government of Israel. If a private U.S. citizen negotiates 
a treaty on his own, he could go to jail under the Logan Act. 
If an Israeli does it, he gets a pat on the back from the 
secretary of state.

Moreover, this "peace" is entirely hallucinatory. It is written 
as if Oslo never happened. The Palestinian side repeats solemn 
pledges to recognize Israel, renounce terror, end anti-Israel 
incitement, etc.-- all promised in Oslo. These promises are 
today such a dead letter that the Palestinian side is openly 
bargaining these chits again, as if the Israelis have forgotten 
that in return for these pledges 10 years ago, Israel recognized 
the PLO, brought it out of Tunisian exile, established a 
Palestinian Authority, permitted it an army with 50,000 guns 
and invited the world to donate billions to this new Authority. 

Arafat pocketed every Israeli concession and betrayed every 
promise he signed at Oslo.

It is Lucy and the football all over again, and the same chorus 
of delusionals who so applauded Oslo -- Jimmy Carter, Sandy 
Berger, Tom Friedman -- is applauding again. This time, however, 
the Israeli surrender is so breathtaking it makes Oslo look 
rational. 

A Palestinian state, of course. Evacuating every Jewish settlement 
in new Palestine, of course. Redividing Jerusalem, of course. 
But that is not enough. Beilin gives up the ultimate symbol of 
the Jewish connection and claim to the land, the center of the 
Jewish state for 1,000 years before the Roman destruction, 
the subject of Jewish longing in poetry and prayer for the 
2,000 years since -- the Temple Mount. And Beilin doesn't just 
give it up to, say, some neutral international authority. 
He gives it to sovereign Palestine. Jews will visit at Arab 
sufferance. 

Not satisfied with having given up Israel's soul, Beilin gives 
up the body too. He not only returns Israel to its 1967 borders, 
arbitrary and indefensible, but he does so without any serious 
security safeguards.

Palestine promises to acquire and buy no more weapons than 
specified in some treaty Annex. This is a joke. Oslo had 
similarly detailed limitations on Palestinian weaponry and 
nobody even pretended to enforce them. Last year, a massive 
illegal boatload came in from Iran on the Karine A. What did the 
world do about it? Nothing. 

Today, however, Israel still has control over Palestine's borders. 
Under Beilin, this ends. Palestine will be free to acquire as 
much lethal weaponry as it wants.

And on the critical question that even the most dovish Israelis 
insist on -- that the Palestinians not have the right to flood 
Israel with Arab refugees -- the agreement is utterly ambiguous. 
Third-party countries are to suggest exactly how many Palestinians 
are to return to Israel, and the basis for the number Israel 
will be required to accept will be the mathematical average! 

This is not a treaty, this is a suicide note -- by a private 
citizen on behalf of a country that has utterly rejected him 
politically. That it should get any encouragement from the 
United States or from its secretary of state is a disgrace.