Hey Guys, Hold Down the Gunfire--We're Trying To Give You A State!

Just trying to help out Condoleezza Rice.
After all, no civil war is going to stand in the way of creating a Palestinian state:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that Mideast peace talks should resume despite an outbreak of violence among Palestinian factions.

“It doesn’t help to talk about a timetable, but it does help to talk about a commitment,” Rice said after meeting with world powers for a strategy session on the Middle East.

This of course is refreshingly honest--and true: timetables requiring Palestinian Arabs to gradually fulfill their obligations step-by-step has not worked: too concrete. Much better to go with vague 'commitment'.

And besides, the show must go on:

More than 100 Palestinians have been killed in internal violence since Hamas won parliamentary elections last year and formed a Cabinet. [emphasis added]

Despite that violence, “there’s simply no reason to avoid the subject of how we get to a Palestinian state,” Rice said after a meeting at the State Department with foreign ministers from Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.

But when you think about it, there is a certain consistency to what Rice is saying. If the murder of Israelis by Palestinian terrorists is supposed to be ignored in the interest of Israel and the Palestinians sitting down and making peace, surely the murder of Palestinians by other Palestinians--which has met with no real world outcry--shouldn't make any difference in giving Palestinian Arabs an actual state in which to kill each other. Maybe then the world will start calling it a civil war.

Another interesting point is just how many Palestinian Arabs have been killed by fellow Palestinians. While AP, which makes Reuters look good, claims that over 100 Palestinians have been killed since a year ago, Elder of Ziyon--who has been tracking this statistic comes up with very different numbers:

I'm doing the best I can not to double-count anyone, but as of now, my counts are at 305 Palestinian Arabs violently killed by each other since Summer Rains [the Israel-Hezbollah war], and 100 killed this year.

While AP is claiming 100 deaths for the past year, Elder of Ziyon finds 100 deaths since the beginning of this year alone.

Oddly, Rice gives a condemnation of the killing with the kind of passion we've come to associate with her condemnation of the Palestinian murder of Israelis:

“We expressed our concern about events on the ground in the Palestinian territories. Obviously innocent people are being caught up in this violence and it needs to stop,” she said.

Clearly, neither terrorist attacks nor civil war is going to keep Condoleeza Rice from creating a Palestinian state--and not just any kind of state:

“That said, there is simply no reason to avoid the subject of how we get to a Palestinian state,” Rice said. “The Palestinian people have waited a long time for a state and the Israeli people have waited a long time for the peace and security that would come from having a democratic neighbor.”

Unless Rice is planning on importing a democracy from across globe, the democratic neighbor she is referring to is a Palestinian state.

Once the shooting dies down.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Condoleezza Rice.