Stardate 20020630.1940

(On Screen): The stunned shock of Monday's Bush speech is wearing off, and the Arabs are beginning to realize just what it was that Bush said, and that he really meant it. And they don't like it.

Interviews with top administration officials have been hitting the press, and they're reinforcing the worst possible interpretation of Bush's speech from the Arab point of view. Colin Powell, for instance:

“I worked for 18 months to try to put in place a plan that would allow Chairman Arafat to demonstrate his leadership,” he told CBS “Face the Nation.” “We would have been way along if the violence had been brought down. Chairman Arafat simply did not seize any of these opportunities to bring the violence under control.”

“Moreover, after the Israelis pulled back from the recent occupation ... we thought maybe we have some movement,” said Powell. “What we saw instead were more bombing. Bombing after bombing after bombing after bombing, day after day. Frankly, we also saw continuing indications that there was complicity with the senior levels in the Palestinian Authority.”

“At the moment, we are not dealing with him,” said Powell on “Fox News Sunday.” Asked if the United States would resume contacts with Arafat, Powell said: “I don’t expect so.”

And Condi Rice:

“The U.S. respect democratic processes, but if a leadership emerges that does not deal with terrorism, the U.S. cannot deal with that,” Rice told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” suggesting that the United States would not deal with Arafat even if he were elected in free elections.

“The United States will, of course, respect democratic processes. But the fact is that if a leadership emerges that will not deal with the problem of terrorism, the United States can do nothing to move this process forward,” Rice told NBC.

In other words, yes, Bush really did mean that Arafat specifically was through, and yes, he truly did mean that until the Palestinians stop the bombing and reform themselves, that the US won't deal with them.

The Arabs are responding with word games. If you call a pig a "pigeon", it still won't be able to fly. Unless, apparently, it's an Arab pig. Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher says:

Egypt strongly supports the democratically elected Palestinian leadership and refuses any attempt to outflank it.

We have told all (parties) that we support the will of the Palestinian people as it was expressed in the 1996 elections in which Arafat was freely and democratically elected. Next year's elections announced by Arafat will also prove so.

Of course, it should be pointed out that Egypt itself hasn't had a "free and democratic election" in the last hundred years, so perhaps Maher doesn't actually know what one looks like. In any case, the one in 1996 wasn't such, and it's unlikely that the one next year (if it happens at all) will be either.

More priceless is the response from Saudi intelligence chief Prince Nawaf, brother of the King.

I wonder why the U.S. wants to take such a long shot when we have a readymade initiative that has all the elements of success.

Sorry, that pig can't fly either. Their initiative had no "elements of success"; it was always a non-starter. It was a plan whereby Israel would make drastic territorial and security concessions first in exchange for a pigeon-in-a-poke. Only after making all its concessions would it then discover that the Arabs had no intention of following through with their end of the bargain: the attacks would continue, and the Arab nations would not actually recognize Israel and not truly deal with it as an equal.

But the Arabs were more than willing to pretend that they would so as to try to fool Israel into giving up a lot of things. And they hoped that they could con the US into applying pressure to Israel to make it do so. On Monday, Bush made very clear that he isn't going to be applying any pressure to Israel to force it to make concessions in exchange for pious promises from the Arabs or Palestinians.

What Prince Nawaf is actually saying is, "I wonder why it is that the US and Israel aren't as stupid as we hoped they were."

The most priceless reaction of all is from Arafat himself.

Arafat himself offered on Sunday to meet with Bush “any time, anywhere” to promote Middle East peace.

“I would like to meet President Bush any time at a place of his choice so we can work towards comprehensive peace,” Arafat, speaking by satellite link, told an audience of businessmen and political leaders in the Swiss mountain resort of Crans Montana.

“Of course we are against terrorism, we are making every effort to end terrorist acts, particularly against Israel,” he said in reply to a question.

That doesn't even deserve comment.