The U.S. administration took a welcome step Friday when it added five organizations from the Middle East to the list of terrorist groups covered by a post-Sept. 11 financial crackdown. The new additions included three groups based in the Palestinian Authority — Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; one Lebanese organization, Hezbollah; and the PFLP-General Command, a Palestinian group based in Damascus.
But the administration’s reaffirmation of these groups’ terrorist status makes its attitude toward the states that host them all the more puzzling. Since Sept. 11, the Bush government’s declared policy has been that states are responsible for the actions of terrorist groups to which they give aid and comfort. This is precisely the rationale for its month-long bombing campaign in Afghanistan: Though the Afghan government itself has never attacked America, it is guilty of sheltering an organization that has. Yet in the Middle East, the administration has not only refused to apply this doctrine, it has also tried to prevent others from doing so — up to and including Congress.
Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Authority all provide the terror organizations they host with complete freedom of operation. In the Authority’s case, its president, Yasser Arafat, has made no effort to arrest or disarm members of terrorist groups, nor has he in any other way tried to impede their almost daily attacks on Israeli citizens, despite having pledged to do so in no fewer than five signed agreements with Israel. On the contrary, these groups play an integral role in the Authority’s regime. Arafat regularly consults with the leaders of Hamas, the “loyal opposition,” on government policy, while the PFLP is an official member of Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization.
Similarly, Lebanon has permitted Hezbollah to take up positions along the length of the Israeli border, from which the organization periodically launches attacks on Israel. This is in direct defiance of a U.N. Security Council resolution that required Beirut to impede such attacks by instead deploying its own army on the border following Israel’s pullout from south Lebanon. The United Nations certified Israel’s withdrawal completed almost 18 months ago, but the Lebanese army has yet to move into the area.
Yet neither Lebanon nor the Authority appears on the administration’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, and Syria, which is on that list, is nevertheless being courted for America’s anti-terror coalition.
This is not mere passivity. With respect to the Authority, the administration has actively opposed efforts to apply the doctrine of state responsibility. Not only did it sharply condemn Israeli incursions into Palestinian territory that were aimed at capturing terrorists the Authority had refused to pursue itself — the precise justification America gives for invading Afghanistan — but also it successfully fought a bipartisan bill introduced in Congress earlier this year that would have mandated sanctions against the Authority, should it continue to harbor terrorist organizations.
The proposed legislation would seem to accord perfectly with the administration’s stated policy of penalizing states that give aid and comfort to terrorists. Yet on Sept. 28, the Senate bowed to a direct request by Secretary of State Colin Powell that it freeze the bill, which had passed the House and was expected to pass the Senate shortly. Powell told the Senate that while the administration wants the Authority to fight terrorism, it believes the right way to achieve this goal is through negotiations.
Given that the administration devoted all of four weeks to negotiations with Afghanistan before declaring that military pressure was the only option, it may seem strange that it is unready to approve even nonmilitary sanctions against the Authority after eight years of talks have failed to end its support for terror. But White House spokesman Ari Fleischer has an answer. The difference, he explained on Oct. 23, is that the United States never signed an agreement with the Taliban, but the Authority has signed one with Israel. In other words, having paid the requisite lip service to opposing terror, the Authority is now free to aid and abet it with impunity.
The idea that signing an agreement buys you lifetime immunity from the need to honor it, seems like an excellent recipe for turning all signed accords into worthless scraps of paper. It is hard to believe that is really what the Bush administration had in mind. But unfortunately, it is difficult to justify an inconsistency as glaring as that between America’s Afghan and Middle Eastern policies without resorting to such contortions.
It might be easier if the administration simply adhered to its own stated policy of holding states (or proto-states) responsible for the terrorists they harbor. Judging from the list of organizations that it published Friday, the Middle East would be an excellent place to start.