Perverse Incentives

Here’s more on last night‘s big news:

This week, President Bush is expected to wink approval of a plan by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that would start to dictate to Palestinians the land they can have and the land they can’t.

Such a move by Mr. Bush would shatter the historic role of the United States as the primary Middle East mediator, as well as the necessary tradition of treating Palestinians as a peace partner.

To be sure, the Palestinians’ elected leader, Yasser Arafat, has proven to be an unreliable peace-seeker and negotiator, partly because of his inability, perhaps even his unwillingness, to suppress militant groups such as Hamas that send suicide bombers into Israel. His inaction has left Israel little choice but to take unilateral moves to defend itself.

That’s from the Christian Science Monitor. Of course, they can’t help themselves, and had throw this in, too:

But even if parts of the plan proposed by Prime Minister Sharon work well, such as a pullout of Israeli troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip, Bush’s blessing of it would only leave an impression among Palestinians and Arab nations that the US is all too willing to defer the creation of a Palestinian state.

That’s right — no matter how many suicide bombers the Palestinians launch against Israel, no matter how many tunnels they dig under the desert to smuggle banned weapons, no matter how many children they strap bombs to, no matter how loudly they broadcast anti-Semitic propaganda, no matter how much their once-vibrant culture comes to resemble a death cult. . .

. . .well, we’re supposed to just lie there, take it, and let them have their own state, on their timetable, and with their conditions.

Now that is a recipe for losing the Terror War.