Your Recommendations to Bush Administration
Reader comment on article: To End the [Palestinian] Violence

Submitted by Sam Caspersen (United States), Jan 7, 2003 at 10:48

I very much enjoyed reading your most recent article which persuasively argues that Palestinians are beginning to reject suicide bombing as a viable dispute resolution.

At the end of the article, you make several policy recommendations to the Bush administration. However, I think you have missed the most glaring recommendation which Bush should heed - a recommendation which your article actually implicity supports. Namely, Bush should give a big speech which he says is intended to Palestinian ears (as he did in June 2002). This time he shoudl go further than the June 2002 speech and flat out say that suicide attacks are counter productive to the Palestinian cause and only bring further misery and poverty to the Palestinian people (as you discuss in your article). Sadly, this would be much more effective than some pie in the sky moral plea to not blow up Jewish children. Bush should tell the Palestinian people what Arafat has failed to - that the Palestinians need to deal with the fact that Israel is not going to be driven into the sea, that Israel is not going away, and that the Palestinians' only road to prosperity and, eventually, an independent state, is peacefully accepting Israel's existence. In short, Bush needs to bluntly tell the Palestinians that killing Israeli citizens is contrary to their self interest.

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