WarSclerotic

ASHINGTON – Hours after Secretary of State John Kerry announced that he would meet this week with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz compared anti-Semitic incitement in Abbas’s Palestinian Authority to that of the Nazi regime, and said he didn’t understand why anybody considered Abbas a partner for peace or for conducting a diplomatic process.

Speaking in Washington Sunday about the ongoing attacks against Israelis, Steinitz said that “to speak of Abbas’s part [in the violence] is the understatement of the century.”

“Abu Mazen [Abbas] is the number one instigator in the world against the Jewish people and the state of Israel. In terms of the level of incitement and its intensity, the level of anti-Semitism in this incitement, he is even worse than Arafat,” Steinitz insisted.

“There is a great similarity between the incitement of the Palestinian Authority under Abu Mazen and the incitement of the Nazis against the Jewish people before the Second World War.”

Steinitz said that 18 months earlier he had presented members of the US Congress with evidence of incitement, including PA-sponsored children’s magazines that he said featured positive images of Hitler.

Unlike Arafat, he said, Abbas “is very careful not to be directly involved with terror, not to get his hands dirty or to get caught in a situation like the Karine A” – a boat caught by Israel while smuggling weapons from Iran to Arafat’s PA.

“Out in the world, in English, he speaks against terror, but when you see the basic messages that children under Abu Mazen get daily from the Palestinian Authority, the subtext is very clear: ‘You need to get rid of the Jews, to destroy and erase the state of Israel,’” Steinitz claimed. “Thus I see Abu Mazen as the central guilty party in the current wave of terror.”

Israel’s energy minister insisted that in his upcoming meeting with Abbas, Kerry should not “see [Abbas] as a partner for peace or for a diplomatic process until he completely stops incitement against the people of Israel.

“In the current state of things, you cannot see Abu Mazen as a partner for any positive process as long as there is no dramatic change,” he said. “What needs to be done right now is not to talk about any other subject. The incitement must be stopped.”

Steinitz also lashed out against attempts to establish equivalency between actions by Israelis and actions by Palestinians – and the roles of both governments in the current crisis.

“There is no place for neutrality, objectivity or equivalency,” he said. “When one side incites to terror and murders and praises every drop of blood that is spilled and creates libels that the other side is going to go and destroy the al-Aqsa Mosque, there is no place for symmetry.”

Last week, the State Department faced sharp criticism from Israeli officials – including cabinet ministers – who insisted that comments made by officials from Kerry downward sought to assert equivalency between Israeli and Palestinian actions.

“What I would expect from the Americans and from the international community is to condemn this in the most wholehearted way possible, and to calm in the long term – not just to broadcast a calming message – but to stop this terrible incitement,” Steinitz added.

If international partners fail to address the incitement, Steinitz warned, any attempt to restore calm will only be a short-term fix.

Steinitz dismissed claims that the Palestinian leader’s continued adherence to joint security arrangements with Israel indicated a willingness to pursue peace. Although numerous American and Israeli officials have emphasized that security cooperation had not ceased between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the shadow of the current tensions, Steinitz said Abbas’s continued commitment to joint security initiatives stemmed solely from concerns for his own survival.

Without Israeli security cooperation, Steinitz claimed, “he would fall into the hands of the Islamists like easy prey.”

In his long visit to Washington – a visit that began last week and will continue well into this week – Steinitz has one message to deliver about the Palestinian leader.

“The blood that was spilled in this terror wave is on [Abbas’s] hands,” he admonished. The “time has come [for the international community] to stop giving him ‘discounts.’”