Peace of the Godfather by Sarah Honig February 10, 2005 On the face of it, Mario Puzo's fictional Don Vito Corleone, the Godfather, was a legitimate, respectable businessman - an olive oil importer. He was known as a reasonable man, a negotiator. Indeed, if his negotiating partners "showed respect" and paid up, peace blossomed. The Don above all desired tranquility. If he got his way, he promised to ensure that not a hair on any neighbor's head would be harmed. However, were the other side unwilling to oblige and submit to his eminently reasonable demands, "warehouses were burned, truckloads of olive-green oil were dumped to form lakes in the cobbled waterfront streets." Then came stiffer penalties, like that meted out to the rash wholesaler who "disappeared, never to be seen again, leaving behind, deserted, his devoted wife and three children, who, God be thanked, were fully grown and capable of taking over his business and coming to terms with the Genco Pura oil company." That's precisely how business is done in our region. Don Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is outwardly a respectable statesman, bespectacled, clean-shaven, and with better fashion savvy than mustachio-Yasser, his early-generation predecessor Mafioso. Abbas purports to be a reasonable man, a negotiator, a man of peace - on his terms, of course. And as long as the "mark" - Israel - acquiesces to those terms and makes the required concessions to buy limited cessations of savagery, the Godfather will restrain his hoods. In gangland parlance, this is known as a "shakedown." Police call it a "protection racket." You pay mobsters not to torch your business, break your legs, or take your life. If you fork over what they demand, they protect you - from their own arsonists, bone crushers, and contract killers. You're safe when you satisfy those who threaten you. If at any point you can no longer afford ever-exorbitant demands, they'll let you have it - Corleone style. Tha'ts the nature of the calm that has ostensibly descended upon our proverbial neighborhood. The gangs - be they under cooler-headed leadership or the more reckless bloodlusting variety - haven't been disbanded or disarmed. That would contradict the protection racket's inherent rationale - hudna's logic. The objective isn't to remove the threat but keep it potent, even intensified. That's why Abbas isn't fighting his hitmen but embracing them. They aren't inimical to his interests - they indispensably serve them by keeping the threat viable. Abu Mazen's is the slickest and most sophisticated con ever. Not only doesn't he put his thugs behind bars, he puts them in uniform and issues them weaponry. They now offer "protection" from their own malice, with full official sanction to extort tribute. Otherwise, in their off hours, they'll resume their latent predatory habits. Israel has submitted to a novel way of restoring the rule of law. You not only pay racketeers, you recruit them into police ranks and trust this won't embolden but reform them. You charge their chief with keeping them on the straight and narrow. Elected to represent all powerful crime "families," the new mild-mannered "don of all dons" is invited into FBI headquarters, feted as nonviolence's new hope, and consulted on how to combat his own syndicate. He allays the lawmen's anxiety by promising to put all goons under his own command, keeping them supplied and paid, taking over the property victims have been forced to relinquish and dangling before them the enticement of more evacuated real estate. But prior to all else, they must have tangible evidence that crime does pay, which is why the release of convicted assassins is of the essence. Don Abbas's gangsters-in-waiting must be freed of fear. The law's deterrent must be destroyed by flinging open prison doors. Self-deluding judges may seek to persuade skeptic shopkeepers that the freed felons won't terrorize them again. They'll get the gunmen to sign good-behavior pledges and tell us they missed their targets on the first attempt and hence have "no blood on their hands." Alternatively, they're old and tired. We'll be prevailed upon to forget the oldest and most disabled culprit they ever let loose - Ahmed Yassin. He didn't enter a nursing home. He instigated a bloodbath, until removed from the scene more permanently in a firefight he kindled. The next firefight is only a matter of time. It'll be postponed for as long as Don Abbas and his men are kept merry. They aren't aggrieved folk yearning to be free, but cynical shakedown masterminds in a calculated scheme to win compliance - our compliance. Things may seem comfortably placid right now, but only because they made us an offer we can't refuse - just like the one Don Corleone made to the Hollywood mogul who denied his "godson" a movie role. The powerful producer awoke to find the head of his most prized racehorse in his bed. Just the head.