This week saw Yasser Arafat's heirs, PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei and PA Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, on a junket to Syria and Lebanon where they labored to shore up their base of political support. In Syria, the Palestinian "moderates" met with dictator Bashar Assad and his underlings and agreed to coordinate their positions in future negotiations with Israel with him.
That base covered, they went to meetings with the senior terror chieftains who make their homes in Damascus: Ahmed Jibril, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine ? General Command; Nayef Hawatmeh, head of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Khaled Mashaal, head of Hamas; and Ramadan Shalah, head of the Islamic Jihad.
Reinforced from their meetings ? where, according to Shaath, they discovered that between the "moderate" leaders and the arch terrorists, "There are no differences over the objectives" ? the three went for visits in UN-run internment camps falsely referred to as Palestinian refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon. There they promised that they will never give up the demand for the unlimited immigration of these foreign-born Arabs to Israel in the framework of a peace treaty.
At the same time as they were running around in the terrorist capitals of the Levant, the U.S. announced that it would for the first time be providing the PA with $23.5 million in direct budgetary aid to make it easier for the Palestinians to conduct elections in which these three moderates will be elected.
Unfortunately, no one of any consequence seems to think it at all necessary to call attention to the fact that in order for Abbas and his colleagues to shore up their legitimacy in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, they have moved to build alliances with the most overtly extreme and violent forces in the region. Even as America is now openly admitting Syria's major role in leading and financing the terror war being perpetrated in Iraq, no one has cast aspersions at Western supported Palestinian leaders who just declared their fealty to Assad and his terrorist vassals.