Lest anyone be too viscerally dismissive, the fusion of genocidal intent with genocidal capacity is now almost within reach of several states anxious to excise the “Jewish cancer” from the Dar al Islam, the world of Islam, in the Middle East.
There remains a special and continuing urgency regarding Iran, which is making steady and final progress toward nuclear weapons capacity despite so-called sanctions from the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Further, President Obama has accepted the rules constraining a “moderate” Palestinian Authority. The PA and its associates are distinctly obligated to refrain from incitement against Israel.
Going back even to the legal antecedents of the current peace process, the Interim Agreement (Oslo 2) stated, in Article XXII, that Israel and the PA “shall seek to foster mutual understanding and tolerance and shall accordingly abstain from incitement, including hostile propaganda, against each other….” In the Note for the Record, which accompanied the Hebron Protocol of January 15, 1997, the PA reaffirmed its commitment regarding “Preventing Incitement and Hostile Propaganda, as specified in Article XXII of the Interim Agreement.” Substantially familiar if more general reaffirmations can readily be found in the current Road Map.
(Continued Next Week)
Louis René Beres, strategic and military affairs columnist for The Jewish Press, is professor of political science at Purdue University. Educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971), he lectures and publishes widely on international relations and international law and is the author of ten major books in the field. In Israel, Professor Beres was chair of Project Daniel.