Herbert Zweibon

Even as President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon pose rhetorically as leaders in the no-holds-barred fight against terror, on the ground they pursue the policy of appeasement.

Jerusalem Post editor Caroline Glick sums up the situation: As for Sharon’s policy, she writes, "on a psychological level, the images of an Israeli retreat from Gaza and northern Samaria will be footage for jihadi recruitment videos for years to come...there can be no doubt that, as attractive as watching helpless hostages getting beheaded may be to potential recruits, the spectacle of Hamas and Fatah flags being foisted onto Israel homes in Gaza and Samaria is even more alluring. And footage of Jews attacking one another as Israel comes apart at the seams will also serve the terrorists' purposes wonderfully well."

But the impact on the United States will also be devastating. As Glick notes, the President has been persuaded by "the know-it-alls from Washington to London to Riyadh...that the Palestinian terror war against Israel has no connection to the global jihad being launched by the likes of 'real' terrorists, such as Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Zarkawi."

In fact, the two are intimately bound up. In Cairo in March, Glick reminds us, "PA chairman and U.S. favorite Mahmoud Abbas invited the leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine--General Command to relocate from Damascus to Gaza after Israel withdraws. How does this square with the U.S. strategy to bar terrorists from receiving shelter?"

Al Qaeda itself, in anticipation of Israel's retreat, is setting up shop in Gaza. In FrontPageMagazine.com P. David Hornik quotes a Jerusalem Post report by Khaled Abu Toameh citing PA security officials who say a new terrorist group called Jundallah ("Allah's Brigades") with close ties to Al-Qaeda has started operating in Gaza. U.S. counter-terrorism officials have testified that Hamas is merging with elements of Al Qaeda.

The Administration response? More pressure on Israel, more money for the PA; a fulsome White House welcome for Mahmoud Abbas with President Bush heaping praise on him for "rejecting violence” and calling on Israel to retreat to the 1949 borders (any changes "must be mutually agreed to," i.e. will not happen). This is despite the fact that nothing has changed under Abbas: there is the same vicious incitement in the media; terror organizations flourish unchecked; Abbas himself just prior to his White House junket called the creation of Israel “the greatest crime in human history” and has used the ceasefire to upgrade the PA's terror capabilities. The President even ignores Abbas's direct spit in the American eye. On May 1 Al-Khayat Al-Jadida, a newspaper Abbas controls, declared: "Blessing to Saddam Hussein the faithful, the legal President of the Republic, on the occasion of his 68th Birthday...We wish him...to free the Arab nation from [U.S.] foreign imperialism."

As Caroline Glick writes, "What will happen to the Arab democrats from Baghdad to Damascus to Beirut to Riyadh when they are force-fed footage of mosques being built on synagogues in Gush Katif 24/7?....Will they be willing to stick their necks out when they see how America lets Israel, its ally, lose?....It is impossible to sustain an argument that...Israel's withdrawal from Gaza will do anything other than strengthen the cause of global jihad and Arab authoritarianism. Unfortunately, until the U.S. abandons the contrived belief that what happens to Israel has no connection to what happens to the U.S., it will be unable to see -- and thus thwart -- the dangers that await it."