No Phony 'Cease-Fires' With Terrorism

Charles Krauthammer writes in the Washington Post what the PLO/PA has said for years---that they want Israel, not just the disputed territories.

On May 23, just a week ago, the official newspaper of the supposedly reformed Palestinian Authority carried a front-page picture of the latest suicide bomber dressed in suicide-bomber regalia. It then referred to the place where she did her murdering as "occupied Afula." The town of Afula is in Israel's Galilee. It is not occupied. It is not in the West Bank or Gaza. It is within Israel. If Afula is occupied, then Tel Aviv is occupied, Haifa is occupied and Israel's very existence is a crime.

...His [Mahmoud Abbas, prime minister of the PA] objective, he says, is to persuade the suicide bombing specialists -- Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades -- to accept a temporary cease-fire. This would be a disaster for any prospect of peace. It means that the terrorists who have been hunted down by Israel ever since it finally decided to strike back after last year's Passover massacre would receive immediate sanctuary: time to rebuild, regroup, rearm and prepare for the next, more deadly orgy of violence.

If what Abbas means by peace is that the terrorists just lay low for a while, then it is not a peace of the brave but a peace of the knave.