Negotiating with Terrorists

In last night's Republican debate, there was a question about negotiating with terrorists and we heard a rather consistent mantra that the USA should never do that. The context for the discussion is the prisoner swap engineered by Israel with Hamas in which Israel got back one soldier who had been held captive for five years in exchange for release of over 1000 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom were terrorists. President Obama has also paid lip service to the idea of not negotiating with terrorists, although he certainly has no problem with negotiating with state sponsors of terrorism -- witness the fruitless attempts by the US to negotiate with the Iranians. All of this refusal to negotiate seems like so much hypocracy, however. Just think of it this way: one of the biggest terrorists in the Middle East used to be Yassir Arafat. Arafat was responsible for starting the Intifada which amounted to a sustained terror attack against Israel in which hundreds, if not thousands, were killed. Arafat and his Al Fatah movement were responsible for terror attacks either singly or in concert with other groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Many remember the hijacking of the cruise ship Achile Lauro during which the terrorists killed a passenger when they threw a disabled American overboard as a warning to the rest of the passengers; this was a joint operation between Arafat's group and the Popular Front. Even though Fatah has been a terror group for years, the American government has pressured Israel for a long time to negotiate with it. Obama has done this directly and I am sure that each of the candidates in the GOP debate would endorse such negotiations. In other words, these folks are demanding that Israel negotiate with terrorists.

I am sure that some of you will think that Fatah used to be a terror organization but that after the Oslo accords in 1994, Fatah renounced terror. That sounds good, but the trouble is that it is not true. The Intifada began in 2000, long after Oslo. Indeed, during 2000 the Israelis offered a settlement to Arafat at Camp David in which the Palestinian leader got something like 98% of everything he wanted. Arafat refused and launched the terror campaign instead. In other words, Israel has already seen the "results" of negotiating with terrorists. Arafat simply could not agree to any settlement without losing control of many of his supporters who have no intention of agreeing to anything with Israel.

It would be nice if American politicians were realistic in their discussion of negotiations with terrorists.