Shalom Yasser:
I know we have a long history of bad blood between us, and I’m aware you’re miffed about being stuck in Ramallah, but I do want to take this opportunity to let you know how grateful I am for all you’ve done for me.
Since you’ve never had to run in a free election, you may not appreciate the importance of the countless contributions, large and small, by so many people that go into making a winning campaign. I feel deeply indebted to a great many for this week’s victory, but none so much as you, and that is why you are first on my thank-you list.
Without you, Yasser, I wouldn’t have been prime minister in the first place. My political obituary had been written many times over the past 20 years, but you know Israel is the land of resurrection (that’s an old joke here). Even I was beginning to lose hope until you rescued me. That was September 2000, when I pulled a publicity stunt to upstage Bibi Netanyahu.
You’ll recall the attorney general had just announced he wasn’t going to indict Bibi on corruption charges, and that meant Bibi, who’d been abroad getting rich, could mount his political comeback.
I wanted to grab the media spotlight by taking a stroll on the Temple Mount, as is the right of any Jew, to show the right wing that I could be more uncompromising than Bibi. You and your folks over-reacted and started a riot that not only took all attention away from Bibi but further entrenched me with the right and the religious. Thank you.
That led to your stupid intifada. Boy, you sure sunk Ehud Barak’s ship. I warned the Israeli people that he was ready to give away the store, and they weren’t listening to my message — until you unleashed the rioters and the suicide bombers, conveniently making my case and making Barak look like a fool and a loser. Big Time, as my friend Dick Cheney likes to say.
Nobody ever thought I’d be prime minister, but thanks in no small part to you, I not only did it but with the largest margin in Israeli history. And this week, I became the first prime minister reelected since 1988.
Of course I also owe a debt of gratitude to the suicidal Labor Party for being more interested in fighting with each other than in trying to defeat me.
And I am deeply indebted to my friend President Bush, who has stood four-square with me. You deserve a lot of the credit for that, too.
Frankly, Yasser, George thinks you’re a liar, a crook and a terrorist. He doesn’t want anything to do with you, and who am I to disagree?
Bush says he is committed to Palestinian statehood but not as long as you’re around, and not until the Palestinian Authority institutes meaningful security, financial and political reforms. I can go along with that because I know you won’t. And since we all know you haven’t got the brains or guts to find out whether I’m bluffing, I’ve got nothing to lose.
You can’t even control your own Fatah. Yitzhak Rabin warned you that the Hamas and Islamic Jihad were a bigger threat to you than to us Israelis, but you didn’t listen. You thought you could turn them on and off anytime you pleased, while maintaining some “plausible deniability” for their uglier actions.
Well, Yasser, it didn’t work that way. You couldn’t control them even if you tried, which you haven’t done. They will never be able to destroy the state of Israel, but they can destroy you and try to take over the P.A. And when that happens, even your European friends won’t be able to save you, and they won’t be nagging me to make concessions to those religious fanatics who think you’re a secular phony.
President Bush is asking for a 100 percent effort to end the violence, not 100 percent results as I am. But you won’t even give him that. You may say you’re opposed to killing civilians but you don’t do anything about it, and he knows that and so do I. And so do Israeli voters.
The Israeli public is actually much more inclined than I am to support Palestinian statehood, to withdraw from nearly all of the West Bank, to bid adieu to Gaza and remove most of the settlements. So why did they vote for me instead of Amram Mitzna, who feels as they do? Because of you, ole buddy.
You could have had all that two years ago, but you thought making war would get you even more. Instead you wound up with less than you had going into Camp David.
You’re an equal opportunity guy, Yasser. You robbed both your people and mine of the one thing they need if there is going to be genuine peace and reconciliation between us — hope. As long as the Israeli people don’t see a viable Palestinian partner for peace, they’ll vote for people like me, not Mitzna. He’s a fine man, and a smart one, but you leave him twisting in the wind.
Your good buddy Saddam Hussein is, as the first President Bush liked to say, in “deep do-do,” and he’s not going to be able to rescue you. He may be out of a job soon, if my friend George has anything to say about it — and he has a lot to say — and that means you can forget about the $25,000 checks for the suicide bombers’ families and the money and arms he’s been sending you.
It didn’t help your cause when Palestinians took to the streets this month to show their support for Saddam they way they cheered for Osama bin Laden when his Saudi and Egyptian kamikazes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Hang in there Yasser. I need you. As long as you stick to what you’ve been doing, I’ve got a lock on this job. I won’t have to remove a single settlement or give up a single Jerusalem alley. Don’t bother keeping a light in the window; I know where to find you. Keep up the bad work.
Gratefully yours,
Arik
Douglas M. Bloomfield is a Washington, D.C.-based syndicated columnist and a former chief lobbyist for AIPAC.
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