Mr. President, please don't be sweet-talked into abandoning your friends. True, Arafat is gone. But his hate-filled legacy lives on. The two Abus now running the show still insist that Israel commit national suicide by absorbing millions of real and fudged refugees. They repeatedly state that they will accept no less. The first Abu , Mahmud Abbas, stated this yet again clearly in his early December 2004 visit to Lebanon. Bombing buses brings bad press, so it's better to destroy Israel "democratically." That's why he and the second Abu, Ahmed Qurei', and others refuse to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish State. The same end, but via different means. Other Palestinian Arab leaders have said similar things as well and call any "peace" moves with the Jews merely a Trojan Horse. The "peace" they all envision is just a temporary hudna, the "Peace of the Quraysh" the Prophet Muhammad permitted until he gained the strength to deliver the final blow. Nice words, Mr. President, cannot change these sad realities. Back in April, you had the courage to publicly state the basic ingredients for a true peace between Arab and Jew in the Middle East: Arab refugees would have to settle in the projected new (and second ) Arab state to be created within the original 1920 borders of Palestine. And Israel would not have to return to the U.N.-imposed armistice lines--and you used those very latter words--which simply marked the point where hostilities came to an end after Arabs invaded a reborn Israel in 1948. Like in later wars Arabs launched against Israel, the United Nations did nothing to stop the Arab attempt on Israel's life. It got involved only after the Jews turned the tables in order to limit Arab losses. And that's how those armistice lines were formed. Israel was never meant to be a nine-mile wide rump state, but that's how those earlier armistice lines left it until June 1967...a constant temptation to its enemies. Starting with Egypt's blockade of Israel--a casus belli --the war that then erupted backfired big-time on the Arabs, and Israel found itself in the disputed territories. As I'm sure you are aware, Jews owned land and lived in Judea ( Judean =Jew) and Samaria until they were massacred by Arabs in the 1920s. Those lands weren't known as the "West Bank" until British imperialism made its presence in the 20th century, and purely Arab Transjordan -- created itself in 1922 from 80% of the Mandate for Palestine Britain received on April 25, 1920 -- annexed the "west bank" of the Jordan River after the 1948 fighting, making it off limits to Jews.

Saying Jews have no rights in places like Hebron (where Jewish history dates back some four thousand years) is like claiming that if China conquered the Vatican, then Catholics would no longer have rights there. The world would not know of the significance of places like Hebron on the "West Bank" if not for the Holy Scriptures of the Jews. And tell me, please, if one million Arabs can live as citizens without fear in Israel, then why is it that Arabs insist that lands where both peoples have historical ties must be made Judenrein?

The League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission documented massive waves of Arab settlers from other countries coming into these very territories during the mandatory period to take advantage of the economic development going on because of the Jews. Many other Arabs had arrived just a bit earlier during the latter 19th century with the invading armies of Muhammad Ali and son, Ibrahim Pasha, of Egypt . More "native Palestinians." Arafat himself was Egyptian, and Hamas' "patron saint," Sheihk Izz-ed-din al-Qassam, was from Ladeqiyah, Syria.

Now think about this...

So many Arabs were recent arrivals into the Mandate that when UNRWA was created to deal with the Arab refugee situation, created as a result of the invasion by a half dozen Arab states of Israel in 1948, it had to adjust the definition of "refugee" from the prior meaning of persons normally and traditionally resident to those who lived in the Mandate for a minimum of only two years prior to 1948. Also keep in mind that for every Arab who was forced to flee the fighting that the Arabs started in their attempt to nip a nascent Israel in the bud, a Jewish refugee was forced to flee Arab lands into Israel and elsewhere...but with no UNRWA set up to help them. 

U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 emerged in the aftermath of the Six Day War. Despite how Arabs like to tell it,  242 did not call for Israel to return to those suicidal, pre-'67 armistice lines. It called, instead, for the creation of secure and recognized borders to replace those Auschwitz lines.

I've heard, Mr. President, that you once said that some Texas driveways were longer than the width of Israel at its waist. Please remember this. And remember that the two Abus have told Hamas that both of their end goals remain one and the same. Indeed, with Sharon's controversial Gaza withdrawal (which I can reluctantly support under the proper conditions), Arabs see their destruction in phases scenario playing out nicely.

That's why, Mr. President,  you must not abandon Israel as it attempts to arrive--once again, despite Arab rejectionism--at a fair and reasonable compromise with those who still wish it destroyed, one way or another.

For the Gaza withdrawal to have some chance of succeeding to do more than simply giving terrorists free reign to smuggle more arms into the land to kill more Jews, or allowing Egypt, once again, its millennial invasion route into Israel proper, then you must stick to your April recipe.

Notice, please, that the vast majority of Israeli settlements have been built on strategic high ground areas designed to provide precisely what Israel is entitled to under Resolution #242... a somewhat adequate, yet minimal, increased buffer from those who would destroy it. Other nations--including our own--have demanded far more from their defeated foes.

Once again, 242 states that any eventual Israeli withdrawal was to be linked to the establishment of secure and recognized borders. Many of those now demanding Israel to forsake this have conquered nations and acquired territories hundreds or thousands of miles away from home in the name of their own national security interests. As just a few of many examples, your friend Tony Blair's Britain's Falklands War comes to mind as well as our own actions in Panama.

As has been repeatedly quoted over the decades, legal experts such as William O'Brien, Eugene Rostow (one of 242's architects), Arthur Goldberg, and others have stated that the non-apportioned areas (the West Bank in particular) of the Palestinian Mandate were open to settlement by all residents of the Mandate, not just Arabs.

That Arabs disagree is not a shock. They don't believe Jews have rights in any part of Israel.

Keep in mind that most of the almost two dozen so-called "Arab" states were themselves conquered and forcibly Arabized from non-Arab peoples like Berbers, Copts, Kurds, Jews, black Africans, and others.

Think about what is happening in the Sudan, as just one of many examples, as this essay is being written. By the way, that Arab genocidal war against black Africans has been going on for decades, with millions killed, maimed, turned into refugees, enslaved, and so forth. Until very recently, have you noticed the world's deafening silence over this, while the hypocrites brought Israel to court because of a fence erected to prevent Arabs from blowing apart its kids? 

A few years ago, President Clinton pushed Israel beyond the limits of sanity and reasonable compromise at Camp David 2000, and Israel was subsequently pressured by its closet friend to forsake the promises of 242 at Taba. As it turned out, the Arabs were exposed as a result of this episode to any reasonable observer. And as any fair observer already knew, settlements and occupation were not the issue. Israel's very existence-- regardless of size --was and still is. Again, refer to the opening paragraphs above.

So, while other nations (including our own) have conquered, manipulated, and/or taken over territories thousands of miles away from home in the name of their own national security interests, microscopic Israel was expected to forsake even minimal territorial adjustments to give it some semblance of a strategic buffer. Israel was pressured to make one-sided concessions to a PLO/PA which was willing to settle for nothing less than Israel's disappearance.

The Palestinian Authority of the two Abus still shows "Palestine" in its school books, on its websites, maps, insignias, and so forth encompassing all of Israel as well as the disputed territories. Palestine is to exist in place of Israel--not along side of it. Refer, again, to Abbas' recent comments in Lebanon.

Mr. President, please keep all of this in mind since your "moderate" Abu friends are still demanding the same things but coating them with sugar.

The Middle East may actually have a chance to truly advance into a new era now. Your support of Israel in the face of Europe's and others' cowardice has been wise and admirable. But you must stick to what your heart told you was fair back in April.

The steps towards peace must be taken cautiously, and--as in most other conflicts (especially ones in which aggressors launched wars and lost)--there must be a meaningful territorial component to the compromise. Arabs have lived in a milieu of bloodlust of Jews, and this must be taken into account in allowing the latter an adequate buffer from those who take pleasure in deliberately targeting and killing Jewish mothers and their children.

Demanding, as just one other example, that Israel's major airport remain hostage to Arab gunners, rockets, missiles, and mortars is something you would not expect of others... So why Israel?

Mr. President, I believe that you feel that justice does not demand that the security of the one tiny, resurrected state perpetually-victimized Jews finally got to once again have must not be sacrificed for the Arabs' 22nd or 23rd one...and second one within "Palestine."

Please do not let others lead you astray.