According to a Kol Israel report on Saturday, PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat has told U.S. House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, on a visit to Jerusalem with a group of 36 Democratic Congress members, that by the end of the peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Jerusalem will remain a unified city.

On Wednesday, Hoyer told a press conference in Jerusalem that Erekat had talked to him about “the necessity to live together with mutual respect.”

“I asked whether the [Palestinian] school curriculum would comport with that objective,” Hoyer said, saying that Erekat had indicated “that they had not done so perfectly, but he believes they are working on that and trying to get to that objective.”

Regarding the status of Jerusalem, Hoyer said Erekat had not specified what kind of sovereignty would be applied to Jerusalem, nor if it would be unified as a Jewish city.

Hoyer, and the majority of the U.S. Congress—according to the Whip—believe in significant alterations of the 1967 borders. He told Kol Israel that he believes the Palestinian right of return may only be realized within the future Palestinian state.

Meanwhile, Palestinian political analyst Abdel Majid Sweilam has told AFP: “The talks are doomed to failure. There’s no chance for success.”

And Israel’s scheduled Tuesday release of the first third of the group of 104 Palestinian terrorists imprisoned before the 1993 Oslo accords, would fail to appease the Palestinian public or convince them that the talks are serious this time, Sweilam said.

Palestinian analyst Hani Habib agreed: “The Palestinian street isn’t interested in, and doesn’t think it’s affected by, what happens in the peace process,” he told AFP. “The average Palestinian citizen has grown accustomed to years of there being no talks, and is more interested in their own wellbeing. The only elements of Palestinian society interested in the big (peace) issues are the politicians and the media.”

Under pressure to restart talks with Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, Israel has diverged from its refusal to accede to Palestinian preconditions and agreed to free 104 Palestinian terrorists from its jails. It’s a mistake. Israel should withstand the pressure and say no. Why?

Because it makes a mockery of justice – and inflicts unimaginable pain on families of the victims – when multiple murderers walk free. It also boosts the standing of terrorist groups; encourages the kidnapping of Israelis for the purpose of extorting the release of further terrorists; demoralizes Israeli counter-terrorism personnel who risk life and limb to capture these murderers; erodes Israeli deterrence to vanishing point when the most bloodthirsty murderers know they are likely to be freed early; and, above all, results in the subsequent murder of additional Israelis by terrorists freed under such deals.

In short, we’ve been here before and the results have been tragic. The Almagor Terrorist Victims Association (ATVA) disclosed in April 2007 that 177 Israelis killed in terror attacks in the previous five years had been killed by terrorists who had been previously freed from Israeli jails.

An earlier ATVA report showed that 123 Israelis had been murdered by terrorists freed during the period 1993-99. Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan has observed that the terrorists released in the 2004 Elhanan Tenenbaum prisoner exchange deal caused the death of 231 Israelis.

In agreeing to this morally unjust, tactically unwise, strategically harmful, militarily hazardous and life-endangering unilateral concession, we see the profound and purposeless erosion of Israeli will.

In the past, Israel at least scrupled not to free those with “blood on their hands” and demanded the return of living Israelis, however lopsided the exchange. In July 2008, however, Israel agreed to release to Hizbullah a gruesome murderer, Samir Kuntar, and four others prisoners in return for merely the corpses of two kidnapped Israelis. In August 2008, Israel freed 198 jailed terrorists, including two with blood on their hands and 149 others guilty of attempted murder, as a “confidence-building measure.”

In October 2009, Israel freed 20 Palestinian terrorists – not for a life or a corpse, but for a video of a kidnapped Israeli. And in October 2011, Israel freed 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds of convicted terrorists, in exchange for a single kidnapped Israeli serviceman, Gilad Shalit, leading Hamas’s Khaled Meshaal to crow that “This is a national achievement for the Palestinian people…we promise the rest of the Palestinian detainees to liberate them…. Those released will return to armed struggle.”

On this occasion, however, Israelis cannot even take refuge in the consolation that they freed a loved one, retrieved a corpse or even obtained a video. They cannot even say that they exacted any concession from the PA. To the contrary, Mahmoud Abbas just reiterated that he will not permit “the presence of a single Israeli – civilian or soldier – on our lands.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu is not unaware of the danger; to the contrary, he once warned against the very thing he now intends to do. In his 1995 book Fighting Terrorism, Netanyahu observed that refusing to release terrorists was “among the most important policies that must be adopted in the face of terrorism.” With this release, he erodes his credibility by dishonoring his pledge to withstand Palestinian preconditions.

U.S. pressure alone explains Netanyahu’s decision, not some valuable quid pro quo. How else to account for a decision opposed by 85 percent of the Israeli public and the Shin Bet head, Yoram Cohen? The Obama administration has not expressed a new determination to see Iran cross no red lines in its march to a nuclear weapon. Obama has not altered his earlier negotiating baseline of an Israeli return to the 1949 armistice lines. Abbas’s goal of a judenrein Palestinian state has just been reiterated, not withdrawn.

Those trying to make sense of the decision speak of Israel keeping the U.S. on board in dealing with Iran – which suggests that Israel has lacked this all along. The idea that the U.S. needs some Israeli concession to unify its Arab allies against the Iranian nuclear threat is in any case absurd, given the imploring of Arab leaders for Washington to deal with the problem, as revealed by the Wikileaks documents.

On 28 July, Jonathan Tobin asked, at Commentary, if the U.S. would release terrorist killers as a precondition for talks – the measure Secretary of State John Kerry was demanding of Israel.

A couple of days later, in an almost supernaturally handy turn of events, we had the answer: yes.  The U.S. did exactly that at the end of July, agreeing to release five Taliban terrorists we’ve been holding at Guantanamo, in order to jumpstart the initiative – mainly ours – for talks with the Taliban.

Daniel Greenfield points out at FrontPage that in June, the Taliban offered to exchange U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl for the five Taliban at Gitmo.  The Haqqani network of the Pakistan Taliban has been holding Bergdahl since late June or early July of 2009, shortly after he went missing close to Pakistan’s northwestern tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan.

But the Gitmo Five were released without an exchange for SGT Bergdahl taking place.  This will have to be a blow to his family in Idaho (not to mention a blow to Bergdahl).

It will also be another blow to U.S. credibility, already on the ropes.  It certainly dents the credibility of detention as a deterrent to terrorism.  Kenneth Roth, director of Human Rights Watch, had a hilariously timed oped in Friday’s Washington Post online in which he argued that the Obama administration should declare that the “war against al Qaeda” – yes, that al Qaeda; the one that has our embassies shut down across the Muslim world this weekend – is over.  Instead of acting on a war footing and killing terrorists, says Mr. Roth, we should be going with President Obama’s own expressed preference to “detain, interrogate, and prosecute” them.

Now, I have been a critic myself of Obama’s overreliance on drone killings as a method.  And detention and interrogation, while important for intelligence gathering, are not methods of deterrence, nor is prosecution.  I don’t argue for them as a substitute for drone attacks.

I’m getting those points out of the way so we can focus on what matters here, which is that detention is as close to meaningless as makes no difference, if we’re just going to turn terrorists loose anyway, to everyone we might have a yen to have “talks” with.  The Obama administration, just a few days before his oped appeared, provided Kenneth Roth with a conversation-stopping answer to his proposition that we should kill less and detain more.  The answer leaves Roth in the dust:  whether we stop killing terrorists or not, we should release the ones we have detained in order to get terrorists to have talks with us.

I guess, technically, there would be a purpose for detaining a few from time to time, on the assumption that we may want to have talks with their comrades in terror in the future.  This kind of preemptive hostage-taking is gang-and-guerrilla behavior, of course.  The degrees by which the mode of thinking shifts from “responsible statesman” to “mob boss” are not subtle here.

In any case, we can reassure Mr. Roth that the U.S. ended the war on terror in 2009.  Perhaps that’s not the same thing as the “war against al Qaeda,” but in the latter regard, Roth would do well to try and keep up:  al Qaeda has been “decimated” and has been “on the path to defeat” for a year or more, according to the Obama administration.

The die seems to be cast; we can at least hope that God really does watch out for fools, drunks, and the United States, because our president certainly isn’t doing it.  Given the reigning jumble of confused soundbites and incoherent actions that now masquerades as U.S. policy on the global threat of terrorism, we may justly ask, with our former secretary of state: what difference, at this point, does it make?

In the past month, Egypt has arrested 90 people in the Sinai, 7 of them Palestinian Authority Arabs. Egypt has also killed 60 armed people in the Sinai, of which 30 were Palestinian Authority Arabs.

In addition, Egypt destroyed 38 underground fuel tanks, according to EgyptIndependent.com.

28 of the tanks stored 634,000 liters of diesel fuel, and 10 tanks held 2,600,000 liters of gasoline. An additional 300,000 liters of diesel were seized before reaching Gaza, along with their fuel pumps.

These various actions were part of the Egyptian army’s war on terror in the Sinai.

There was no world outcry on the killing of 30 Palestinian Authority Arabs.

What we call people matters.

After making aliya in November 2009, one of the first news articles I recall reading was a Jerusalem Post report titled “90 Fatah terrorists ‘pardoned’ to bolster Abbas.” The prime minister then was Binyamin Netanyahu, who went on to further incentivize terrorism with the Shalit deal.

On the latest 104 terrorists to be freed by Netanyahu, I have seen some shocked reactions along the lines of “This isn’t the man we elected.” Seriously? This would be like a tennis fan in the 1980s acting surprised to see Stefan Edberg go to the net or John McEnroe throw a tantrum.

The vileness of Netanyahu’s latest action was matched only by its predictability. There’s a point where being clueless becomes obnoxious, particularly when it results in nationally suicidal electoral behavior.

Some bloggers who have condemned the terrorist releases display a different problematic habit. Here are three examples:

• “Bibi is making a mockery of our justice system.”
• “Nothing exemplifies Israel’s looming civic disaster quite like Bibi’s recent announcement to free terrorists.”
• “Shame on you Bibi Netanyahu. Shame on you for your fecklessness and lack of courage and backbone.”

I agree with all of the above, but the informal reference to Netanyahu undermines the writers’ intention. When you call someone by a nickname, how offensive and damaging can his acts really be?

By contrast, this informality doesn’t appear in Frimet Roth’s assessment of the latest releases. I don’t think that is coincidental. A mother doesn’t tend to call the man who freed the murderer of her child “Bibi.”

Years ago I wrote extensively about human rights abuses and anti-Semitism in Cuba, my work being cited by people including a National Book Award winner and a multi-Grammy Award winner. The apologists for Cuba’s despotic regime often refer to Fidel Castro by his first name. Several opponents of the regime have done likewise, unwittingly perpetuating the sympathetic attitudes they seek to reduce.

Like Cuba, Israel is a small country with an informal culture, and over time nicknames in Israel have become widespread—thus for example “Bogie” Ya’alon, “Buji” Herzog, “Arik” Sharon, and the prime minister. This implies endearing social warmth on the one hand, but excessive informality can also beget coarseness and cloud moral clarity—like using a man’s nickname in the context of him freeing our brothers and sisters’ murderers.

The man who expelled 8,600 Jews from Gush Katif and empowered Hamas is no Arik to me.

The man who tramples on justice and tells the world that Jewish blood is cheap is no Bibi to me.

The next time you’re about to call the prime minister by his nickname, consider the bereaved families whose pain he has increased. Consider how you would feel if you were one of them. Does “Bibi” still seem appropriate?

The Palestinian Authority has labeled Jewish Home party chairman Naftali Bennett, other unnamed Israeli officials and 600,000 Israeli Jews as “terrorists” after he said that real terrorists “should be eliminated and not freed.”

“The definition of terrorism completely applies to many Israeli politicians who defame Palestinian prisoners especially those jailed before the Oslo Accords,” the PA foreign ministry said, according to the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency.

The foreign ministry also defined  a terrorist as anyone “who occupies the lands of another people and displaces them by force and settles in their place.”

The PA statement in effect says that I, and another 600,000 Jews, are terrorists.

That is what we get for Bennett having the nerve to say what all other normal politicians, except  Avigdor Liberman,  think to themselves but won’t say out loud, that “terrorists should be eliminated, not freed.”

Bennett made the remark in the wake of the Cabinet decision to support Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s request to please  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry  and chairman Mahmoud Abbas and free 104 terrorists responsible for the murders of Israeli soldiers and civilians, including the elderly and children.

He also had the audacity to remind people that as an Israeli elite combat officer, he had “killed many Arabs and… never had a problem.”

Israeli soldiers are not supposed to kill. It is immoral in the eyes of the international community. To kill someone who tries to kill you is disproportionate force.

And how about those terrorists who do kill?

The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated they cannot possibly be terrorists because they are “strugglers for their freedoms.”

Israel put them behind bars, turning the freedom fighters into prisoners. In the past, Israel has freed thousands of these freedom fighters, hundreds of whom have returned to struggle for their freedom by murdering more than 550 Jews.

It is not clear for what freedom they are fighting, unless it is the freedom to kill.

The Inner Cabinet late Sunday afternoon voted 13-7 to free 104 terrorists who were convicted and jailed before the Oslo Accords in 1993, but the decision does not necessarily give blanket approval to free Israeli Arabs who are on the list.

A mini-Cabinet, packed by ministers on the side of Prime Minister Binymain Netanyahu, will decide which terrorists can be freed in four stages stretching over a period of nine months.

Two ministers, Limor Livnat and Silvan Shalom, both of the Likud party, abstained.

Voting with Netanyau were:

– Likud ministers Yuval Steinitz, Moshe Ya’alon and Gideon Sa’ar;

– Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid, Yael German, Yaakov Peri, Shai Piron and Meir Cohen;

– Yisrael Beiteinu’s Sofa Landver and Yitzchak Aharonovitch; and

– Tzipi Livni and Amir Peretz of Livni’s HaTnuah party.

Likud ministers Gilad Erdan and Yisrael Katz voted against the government, as did the three Jewish Home ministers – Uri Ariel and Uri Orbach – and Yisrael Beiteinu ministers Yair Shamir and Uzi Landau.

Livni said the Cabinet should free the terrorists “for the sake of the future,” meaning the resumption of direct talks this week with the Palestinian Authority.

Likud Minister Yisrael Katz replied, “Releasing terrorists is a mistake, just like the building freeze was a mistake. There are ministers sitting here today who supported the building freeze and claimed it would lead to negotiations, and we have seen how far it got us. In six months, it will be clear that freeing terrorists will not bring us anything except  to worsen out situation in the region, and in the international community.”

Jewish Home chairman, Minister of Economy Naftali Bennett, voted against the government of which his party is a coalition member. “We used to free a terrorist in exchange for a soldier,”  he said, “After that, we freed terrorists for the return of the bodies of soldiers, Now, we free hundreds of terrorists in exchange for a process. We are teaching the world that everything is for sale.”

The Palestinian Authority terrorists who firebombed an Egged bus in the Jordan Valley in 1988, killing five and wounding five, made sure the wounds would be as painful as possible.

Juma’a Adem and Mahmoud Kharbish mixed glue with the gasoline, causing the flammable liquid to stick to the skin of the victims, two of whom were American-Israelis Sandy Bloom of New York City and her husband Dov of Pittsburgh.

These terrorists, among 104 who Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu wants to free, cruelly murdered a mother and her three children, an IDF soldier who tried to save them, and severely wounded five people, including the Blooms.

They were walking free at the time they firebombed the bus, after having been previously jailed for attacking Jews with Molotov cocktails.

They will go free again following Sunday’s Cabinet approval of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s request to contradict his stated policy not to resume talks with the Palestinian Authority if it insists on pre-conditions, such as freeing convicted terrorists who have maimed, wounded and killed hundreds of Jews.

The Egged bus in 1988 was travelling from Tiberias, on the shores of the Kinneret, to Jerusalem. On board were Eliezer Weiss, her wife Rachel, and their three young sons.

Eliezer escaped alive. His wife and children died in the flames, and an Israeli soldier who tried to save them also did from smoke inhalation.

Dov and Sandy Bloom were living at the time at Kibbutz Maaleh Gilboa, overlooking the Jordan Valley and where they made aliyah in 1979 as part of a Bnei Akiva group from the United States. They were on the bus for a vacation and ended up in the hospital for five weeks for severe burns.

The terrorists struck at night Bloom told the Jewish Press.

“We left their children with the grandparents at the Kibbutz. We were on the bus when there was a flash and a boom,” he continued. “Within a second, we were covered with a flammable liquid and were burning up. The terrorists threw several firebombs, and one of them smashed through our window.

“The flammable liquid spilled on us, and we later found out that the terrorists mixed glue with the gasoline to cause more pain and more severe burns.

“We managed to get off the bus, and two passengers who were in the army, helped out out the flames, which inflicted second degree burns on both of us.”

The Blooms were rushed to Hadassah Hospital. It was five weeks before Dov and Sandy could leave. “We also spent years of painful recuperation with more operations and skin grafts,” Dov Bloom added.

The Blooms cannot fathom how the Israeli government can release the Palestinian Authority Arabs who murdered six others and tried to murder them.

Dov said Saturday night that the prosecutor was contemplating requesting the death penalty for the terrorists but eventually settled for life sentences.

A life sentence in Israel, unless you are Yigal Amir, usually means early release with plenty of years ahead. For terrorists, those years are not always filled with helping old ladies across the street and going to a mosque. Sometimes they mellow. Sometimes they revert to killing Jews.

“I am horrified at the thought these murderers will be walking free again,” Bloom told the Jewish Press. “Politically, it is extremely unwise to offer one-sided concessions to the Palestinian Authority, which is offering no concessions. This flies in the face of Netanyahu’s promises that ‘if you give, you will receive something in return.’

“This undermines the Israel legal system.”

Sandy Bloom recalls that when the terrorists were convicted in court, they flashed the “V’ sign for victory.

What victory?

“They are happy to kill Jews,” she answered.