Terrorist organizations should not be welcome in Washington, D.C. - by Stephen M. Flatow

The shutdown of the PLO office was ordered just days before the 25th anniversary of the Oslo accords. The entire premise of those accords was that Yasser Arafat and the PLO had sincerely forsaken terrorism and were committed to living in peace with Israel.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
12 September '18..

The U.S. government has cited a number of perfectly valid reasons for shutting down the Washington office of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, including the PLO’s refusal to negotiate with Israel and its anti-Israel efforts at the International Criminal Court.

But the simplest and most obvious reason is this: The PLO is still a terrorist organization, and terrorists have no place in our nation’s capital.

The shutdown of the PLO office happens to have been ordered just days before the 25th anniversary of the Oslo accords on Sept. 13. The entire premise of those accords was that Yasser Arafat and the PLO had sincerely forsaken terrorism and were committed to living in peace with Israel.

It was on the basis of that premise that Israel withdrew from all of Gaza, as well as the portions of Judea-Samaria where 98 percent of the Palestinian Arabs reside. It was on the basis of that premise that Israel released thousands of imprisoned terrorists and permitted the Palestinian Authority to create a de facto army known as the Palestinian security forces. And it was on the basis of that premise that the United States began giving the P.A. $500 million each year.

If Arafat was genuinely committed to peace, why didn’t he just shut down the PLO? Why did the PLO need to continue to exist, now that there was a Palestinian Authority with its own territory to govern? Nobody asked that question. Nobody demanded the disbanding of the PLO. Big mistake.

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