And then there is the question of democracy. Ahead of the January 30 elections scheduled to be held in Iraq, some 126 political parties have registered to run. Some are Islamists. Some are crypto-Ba'athist. Some are Iranian backed. But many of them are regular political parties that want to earn power and a piece of the pie through the democratic process.
When asked about the possibility that elections be delayed until the civil war has subsided, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, speaking at a conference at Sharm e-Sheikh this week, vowed that in spite of the violence the government would hold elections as planned. In his words, "our very credibility is really on the line."
Zebari made this statement because the Arab leaders present at the conference, like their counterparts from the UN and France, were all pushing for Iraq to delay the elections. The conference itself was almost scuttled due to the French demand that the terrorists fighting in Iraq also be allowed to send representatives, as if the international community shouldn't choose sides between the terrorists who until a week ago were running slaughterhouses in mosques and apartment buildings and the soldiers sent in to destroy them. So it is now the Iraqis themselves who are standing up to the so-called international community in demanding to be allowed to become a democracy while fighting terrorism.
The Arabs, like the UN and France, are worried. If the Iraqis pull off the elections and a democratic representative government is established early next year, then their entire policy rationale is done for. Their calls for maintaining the status quo of terror-supporting autocracies in the Arab world that refuse to accept Israel but control the world's largest oil reserves will be rendered obsolete.
In a call of desperation on Wednesday, Zarqawi sent out a whiny-voiced tape recording on the Internet in which he slammed Muslim leaders for not joining his fight against the Americans. In his words, "Men have lost their virility; maybe it's time for women to pick up the fight."
Unfortunately, even as US President George W. Bush gives full-throated support for the establishment of a terror-fighting Palestinian democracy, the lessons of the Iraqi experience seem lost on one and all as they approach the question of who should now lead the Palestinians in the wake of Arafat's death.
For the past four years, every time Israel or the US has demanded that the PLO leadership take action against terrorists, the Palestinians, from Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas to Ahmed Qurei and down the line, have refused, claiming that they will not fight against their brothers and that there will not be a Palestinian civil war. Now, with Arafat dead, we see the foreign policy elites from Jerusalem to Washington to Europe and the UN buying into the notion that the only "legitimate" Palestinian leaders are those who have been active in terrorism and who support the view that Israel must be destroyed by hook or by crook.
Arafat confidant Abdel Bari Atwan, the editor of the London-based Al Quds al-Arabi newspaper, admitted this week to The Jerusalem Post that after signing the Oslo Accords in 1993, Arafat told him, "The day will come when you will see thousands of Jews fleeing Palestine. I will not live to see this, but you will definitely see it in your lifetime. The Oslo Accords will help bring this about." And so we have an admission that the entire peace process was a hoax.
Is it possible that Arafat hoodwinked not only the Israelis but also his closest underlings in the PLO? Is it possible that Mahmoud Abbas, his presumptive replacement ? who this week held talks with Hamas to the applause of US Secretary of State Colin Powell and vowed that there would be no peace until four million foreign-born Arabs are allowed to freely immigrate to Israel ? did not know that peace process was, in the words of the late Palestinian "moderate" Faisal Husseini, "a Trojan horse?" No, it is not possible.
While Israelis, like the Americans and Europeans, apparently think they have no power to force a regime change among the Palestinians, the fact of the matter is that their pining after Palestinian terror chiefs has given the Palestinian leadership license to become more extreme.
Ahmed Qurei told the US consul in Jerusalem last week that he wants to bring the Fatah's Aksa Martyrs' Brigades terror group into the "reformed" Palestinian official militias. The State Department reacted by declaring that, for the first time, they would be giving $20 million in direct aid to the Palestinian Authority. It should be noted that the Martyrs' Brigades have carried out more terrorist attacks than either Hamas or Islamic Jihad. And, as Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz noted last year, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are no more religious than Fatah. Since 2002, Fatah's main supporter, as is the case with Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah, has been Iran.
The Israeli media, which has an even greater left wing bias than the US mainstream media, has been leading the charge to have Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, who is now sitting in jail for five terrorist murder convictions, released from prison so that he, the "voice of the Palestinian street" can run for the Palestinian presidency. Barghouti won their hearts by virtue of his gutter Hebrew which he used for years to sweet talk Israeli journalists and left wing politicians at the same time that he was plotting the mass murder of their countrymen. In response to the press campaign, his lawyer announced Thursday that he will run for the Palestinian presidency from prison.
Finally, at the Palestinian Legislative Council's memorial ceremony for Arafat on Tuesday, Abbas, Qurei and Rouhi Fatouh, Arafat's official place warmer, together pledged to be loyal to "Arafat's legacy." Could they have been any clearer?
And so, those who would wish for a true and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians gaze longingly at Iraq. If the experience there has shown anything, it has shown that it is possible to topple terrorist regimes and it is possible to build the organs of a democracy in the Arab world. Why are Iraq's lessons lost on the Palestinians?
Caroline B. Glick is the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post and the senior Middle East fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC.