[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 172 (Wednesday, December 12, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2261]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  GEORGE WILL ON ``A PLAN FOR ARAFAT''

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, December 11, 2001

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, last weekend was a particularly horrible 
chapter in the on-going strife in the Middle East. In a wave of 
violence, Palestinian terrorist suicide bombers killed 25 innocent 
Israeli children, women, and men as they were going about their daily 
activities--walking in a pedestrian mall and riding a public bus. The 
terrorist organization, Hamas, has taken ``credit'' for these 
deplorable acts. Their targeting civilians of all ages and walks of 
life is part of their cowardly and vicious attempt to destroy the State 
of Israel. Such acts cannot be tolerated.
  Mr. Speaker, George F. Will has written a particularly insightful 
piece in the December 4th issue of the Washington Post. He spells out 
the misguided and dangerous actions of Yasser Arafat and the 
Palestinian Authority which have prevented peace from being attained in 
that very volatile region of the world, and he stresses the need for 
Israel aggressively to protect herself.
  Where hope for a peaceful Middle East settlement once existed after 
the Madrid Conference in 1991 and the Oslo Agreement in 1993, we now 
find an environment of hate for Israel and the United States which has 
been fertilized and nourished by such debacles as the United Nations 
World Conference Against Racism, which was held in Durban, South Africa 
last summer.
  Mr. Speaker, I was present at Durban for this conference, and I fully 
concur with George Will's assessment that this was truly not a 
conference against racism, but rather a racist conference! I have 
rarely seen such anti-Semitic and anti-Israel venom spewed as I did at 
that conference. Because of the level of hatred and the lack of 
fairness, the United States Government walked out of the conference. I 
was greatly disappointed that we had no choice but to walk out because 
this was an opportunity to deal meaningfully with the many problems of 
racism, discrimination, and xenophobia which the world faces. Instead 
of addressing these problems, the conference was hijacked by Arab 
extremists determined to single out and politically punish Israel, our 
only democratic ally in the Middle East.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to read George Will's excellent and 
thought-provoking article, and I ask that the text be placed in the 
Record.

                [From the Washington Post, Dec. 4, 2001]

                           A Plan for Arafat

                          (By George F. Will)

       Coming from the territory for which Yasser Arafat is 
     responsible, terrorists last weekend killed 26 Israelis, a 
     portion of Israel's population that is equal to 1,240 
     Americans. America is projecting power halfway around the 
     world to collapse the Taliban regime because it harbors 
     terrorists. It would be disgusting for America to call for 
     Israeli ``restraint'' and to disapprove if Israel cleanses 
     its back yard of Arafat's Palestinian Authority regime that 
     welcomes terrorists except when, to distract America, it yet 
     again promises to pass a few through the revolving doors of 
     PA jails.
       It is time for a novel approach to the war between Israel 
     and Arafat's Palestinian Authority. The approach should begin 
     with wisdom from a Donald Westlake crime novel mordantly 
     titled ``What's The Worst That Could Happen?'' Westlake's 
     amiable crooks want to rob a Las Vegas Casino, but don't know 
     how. One of them says he has a lot of ideas, but Westlake 
     writes: ``A whole lot of ideas isn't a plan. . . . Ideas 
     without a plan is usually just enough boulders to get you 
     into the deep part of the stream, and no way to get back.''
       The latest U.S. idea is to send retired Marine Gen. Anthony 
     Zinni to pick up the shards of the last idea, which was to 
     send CIA Director George Tenet to implement former Senator 
     George Mitchell's idea for a cease-fire followed by a 
     cooling-off period followed by ``confidence-building'' 
     measures. The idea of the Mitchell plan is that neither side 
     is to blame--neither Israel, which wants to exist, nor the 
     Palestinians who do not want it to; neither the Palestinians 
     who want to plant nail bombs on buses, nor Israel, which 
     would prefer the Palestinians not do that. Rather, a mutual 
     lack of ``confidence'' is to blame.
       There is this much truth in that idea: the Palestinian 
     Authority lacks confidence in Israel's willingness to commit 
     suicide, and Israel lacks confidence that the PA will stop 
     insisting on suicide as part of a ``peace'' agreement.
       The idea behind dispatching Mitchell was to pick up where 
     Dennis Ross left off. (Did you know that Donald Rumsfeld was 
     special emissary to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 1983-
     84? There were many emissaries before him, and have been many 
     since.) Ross's task, which he undertook with the energy and 
     wisdom of a beaver, was to oversee the Oslo ``peace 
     process,'' which turned on Arafat's renunciation of violence. 
     That process has required lots of overseeing, considering 
     that terrorists have killed more Israelis in the eight years 
     since Oslo began in 1993 than in the 45 years of Israel's 
     existence before that.
       The idea behind Oslo was for Israel to ``take a risk for 
     peace''--as though getting on a bus, visiting a pizzeria or 
     disco, and walking down a street are not risky enough for 
     Israelis. Israel would take a risk by yielding something 
     tangible, control of land, for something intangible, Arafat's 
     promises of peace. Israel did that. The current war refutes 
     the Oslo idea.
       The idea behind Oslo was to capitalize on the ``spirit of 
     Madrid,'' an Israeli-Palestinian conference convened in 1991, 
     in the aftermath of the Gulf War. The idea behind Madrid was. 
     . . . Does anyone remember?
       You must remember this. On Aug. 31, Arafat, world's senior 
     terrorist, did a star turn--at one point strolling with 
     America's senior friend of terrorists, Jesse Jackson--in 
     Durban, South Africa, at a U.N. orgy of hate directed against 
     Israel and the United States and bearing an Orwellian title: 
     World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, 
     Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. It was the kind of sewer 
     of ideas that prepares the climate for the sort of things 
     that happened in America 11 days after the conference opened, 
     and what happened last weekend in Israel.
       Now Israel should be as bold in its self-defense as America 
     is being in its. In 1982, Israel drove Arafat and his thugs 
     from Lebanon to Tunisia. He and his thugocracy have earned 
     another expulsion from the eastern end of the Mediterranean. 
     If he cannot control his territory, it is in anarchy and 
     Israel must subdue it. If he can control it but won't, he has 
     earned expulsion under the principle America cites in 
     expelling the Taliban from power.
       If expulsion strikes the U.S. State Department as, well, 
     immoderate, here is a moderate version of the idea. When next 
     the peripatetic Arafat flies off to visit world capitals, 
     Israel should not let him come back: He cannot land in PA 
     territory if Israel does not let him.
       That is more than an idea. It is a plan.

       

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