New York Times: No Homework For Abbas

With Olmert's--and President Bush's--terms drawing to a close, everyone seems to have a job to do.

Well, almost everyone.

Under the guidance of The New York Times, Olmert will be be one busy fellow:

There has always been a wide gap between what Mr. Olmert understands about the need for a peace settlement and what he has done about it. Merely meeting the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, for periodic talks is not enough.

Without jeopardizing its security, Israel could take important steps to improve the lives of ordinary Palestinians and give them a real stake in peace. In his remaining weeks or months in power, Mr. Olmert could burnish his legacy, and the prospects for an agreement, if he announced a full freeze on expansion of Jewish settlements and reduced the number of roadblocks in the West Bank that are strangling the Palestinian economy.

Apparently the New York Times has declined to reveal to her readers everything that Abbas has done in the interests of peace so far. In fact, there is not a word about the PA's well known incompetence and corruption--no, it is Israel's security measures that doom the West Bank economy. When the Times writes about the need for "drawing permanent boundaries that give Israel defensible frontiers," one wonders what the Times would consider sufficient for Israel's security.

But Olmert is not the only one who is going to be busy:

Those now maneuvering to succeed Mr. Olmert also need to behave responsibly. Two of the main contenders — Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni from Mr. Olmert’s Kadima Party and the Labor Party leader, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, favor a two-state solution. The other two — Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz, also from Kadima, and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud Party leader and former prime minister — do not. They need to think again. [emphasis added]

At least until they agree with The New York Times.

Even President Bush gets homework:

providing a lot more support, encouragement and, yes, pressure to get the Israelis and the Palestinians to do what is necessary to move toward a peace deal.

And what about...Abbas?

Mr. Abbas’s position is complicated by the fact that his government controls only the West Bank. The Gaza Strip, where about a million and a half Palestinians live, is in the hands of Hamas.

Yes, pity poor Mr. Abbas--if only he could extend his sure hand into Gaza to provide the guidance and governance that he has given the West Bank. But Abbas gets no homework.

True, there is work to be done:

Negotiating a deal will require enormous political courage — for both the Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Among the many fraught issues are: drawing permanent boundaries that give Israel defensible frontiers and the Palestinians an economically viable state; finding a way for both states to claim Jerusalem as their capital; and compensating and resettling Palestinian refugees in the new Palestinian state.

But Abbas is not found lacking; he faces no individual criticism and there is nothing required of him--other than receiving Israeli concessions with open arms.
While everyone else is given individual assignments--Abbas is the teacher's pet of The New York Times.

No mention of requiring him to stop honoring terrorists who murder Israelis, such as when the PA daily honored the murderer of the yeshiva students or when a soccer tournament was named for the terrorist who opened fire on a Bat Mitzvah.

Joel Mowbray notes a number of recent statements by Abbas that worry Congress--but apparently not The New York Times. It seems there is little that worries the Times, certainly not Hamas:

The militant group is currently observing a ceasefire with the Israelis. But it does not acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, condones terrorism and refuses to be bound by past agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. A way must be found to help turn Hamas into a legitimate and acceptable negotiating partner.

The New York Times declines to list the new concessions that Israel would be required to provide for the honor of having such a negotiating partner. From the description given by the Times, one would think that no more rockets were being fired from Gaza--which of course is not the case. Rockets are still being fired from Gaza: some by Fatah, Abbas' group.

The title of The New York Times editorial is "The Peril of an Israeli Transition."
A greater peril is the insistence of a peace agreement with the incompetent and corrupt PA, which can barely control neither the actions of its terrorist members while alive nor its affection for their martyred terrorists when they are dead.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Abbas and New York Times.