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June 16, 2005, © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
 
 President Bush has given away the Israeli store to Palestinian  Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. There's hardly anything else to say about it.
 
 By proclaiming that the new starting point for future negotiations between Arabs and Israelis is the 1949 armistice line, Bush actually took a  more anti-Israeli position than most of the hostile, Jew-hating Arab  states have in recent years.
 
 What is it about Abbas and the Palestinian Authority that Bush finds  so encouraging?
 
 Quite simply, Abbas has not lived up to a single agreement he has  made with the Israelis:
 
      * He has failed to arrest Palestinian terrorists;
 
      * He has refused to dismantle terrorist cells or to seize   weapons from those identified as having attacked Israel;
 
      * He has not only failed to stop incitement, his new schoolbooks  remove all Jewish and Israeli references except those that demonize  Jews;
 
 Asked about his relationship with the terrorist group Hamas, Abbas said: "Hamas is not a threat for us."
 
 Hamas exists to destroy Israel. It does not believe in any  compromise. It has been declared a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.
 
 So, as my friend Hal Lindsey wryly observes, "Helping Hamas can  either get you 20 years in U.S. prison or an invitation to the White House.
 
 Now do you understand why Abbas is not renouncing terrorism or  abiding by any of his earlier pledges? Why should he? Bush has  confirmed that terrorism works.
 
 Bush has adopted the hard-line of the anti-Jewish radicals of the  left and the anti-Jewish zealots of Islam who maintain there are some pieces  of land on which Jews are just not welcome.
 
 He has accepted the hate speech of the Arab extremists as a  legitimate bargaining position. The Arabs say Jews are not permitted  to live within the future of home of Palestine. It doesn't matter  whether they are peaceful civilians who mind their own business. It  doesn't matter how long they have lived there. It doesn't matter that they did not replace  any Arab population in the area.
 
 None of that matters. All that matters is that they are Jewish – and  they have to go.
 
 Not just from Gaza, apparently. But, according to Bush, they need to  go from Judea and Samaria, too – the entire West Bank. Oh, and don't  forget East Jerusalem. No Jews permitted there either – because that  part of the city needs to be returned to the Arabs in accordance with  the 1949 armistice line. The Temple Mount? No way. It belongs to  Muslims only, no Jews allowed. The Western Wall? It's going back to the Arabs.
 
 That's what Bush told the world last week and I'm still waiting to  hear some outrage about it.
 
 There were many of us who doubted that former Secretary of State  Colin Powell really understood the Arab-Israeli conflict. There were  many of us who welcomed his retirement and his replacement,  Condoleezza Rice. I'm beginning to wonder if Powell may have been a  voice of reason within this administration, because there hasn't been  any since he left – at least not
 with respect to the Middle East.
 
 I keep hearing Rice's name mentioned as a possible presidential  candidate in 2008.
 
 I've got news for you. Unless this administration changes its  disastrous course on the Middle East, Rice won't get elected dog  catcher in this country.
 
 What are we fighting for in Iraq and Afghanistan? I thought it was freedom. What are we fighting against? I thought it was Islamic terrorism.
 
 So why are we undermining freedom and supporting Islamic terrorism in  our dealings with Israel and the Palestinian Arabs?
 
 
 Joseph Farah is founder, editor and chief executive officer of WND  and a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host.  He writes a  nationally syndicated column weekly.

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