More craziness: The spectacle of an American Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, propping up the Holocaust-denying Palestinian Authority leader, Mahmoud Abbas, in the strategic dismemberment of Israel wrought by the mystifying old general Ariel Sharon. The Israeli move includes not only the destruction or dismantling of 25 Israeli settlements and the relocation of 9,000 Israelis, but also the disinterment and reburial of 48 Israeli graves. Horrific, yes, but not crazy. The threat of Muslim desecration of Jewish graves in the Gush Katif Cemetery is too real for Israel to allow the dead to remain where they rest. In 1948, Muslim armies captured the Mount of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem and turned tens of thousands of Jewish tombstones into construction material for roads, buildings, even latrines.
Six of the 48 Gush Katif graves belong to residents murdered by Muslim terrorists. Five of them may well belong to members of the Hatuel family -- a mother and four daughters -- who were shot to death last May at close range by Palestinian terrorists. They had been driving to a rally against the withdrawal, their car bumper sticker reading "Uprooting the Settlements, Victory for Terror."
Certainly, the terrorists see the withdrawal as victory -- although not ultimate victory.
Jamal Abu Samhadaneh, commander of the Popular Resistance Committees, a Palestinian terror network behind (among other things) the 2003 attack in Gaza on a U.S. diplomatic convoy that killed three Americans, is already planning Intifada 3. "We will transfer all our fighting methods and capabilities to the West Bank," he told The Jerusalem Post. "The withdrawal will not be complete without the West Bank and Jerusalem, which is even more precious to us than the West Bank."
Not surprisingly, Abu Samhadaneh is wanted by Israel. But he's also wanted by the Palestinian Authority, he says -- to become a senior official in its Military Intelligence Force.
There may be a peculiarly Middle Eastern logic to all this, but it's not one we seem able to understand.