More importantly, how will the world react? How will the US react? How will Israel react?

Actually, I've already answered my first question -- I've seen some "readers views" postings over on the BBC that have already excused future terrorist attacks:

[Link: newsvote.bbc.co.uk...]

The President has clearly stated the prerequisites to American support of a Palestinian state. There is no "last chance again", at least for Arafat and his klepto-terrorists.

This is a welcome, if overdue, clarification of American policy. Welcome also are warnings - explicit to Syria, and implict to Saudi Arabia - about overt and covert support of terrorist groups.

I had feared that this speech would signal the President's capitulation to the Arabists in the State Department. I was happily mistaken.

My guess is that the Bush foreign policy team did a lot of work in the background to try to get the Arabs on board, either overtly or secretly. Goodness, even Arafat came out with a positive comment on the speech!

The BBC talking point area is a notorious anti-Semitic sespool. I think its the editors, I used to try to post my statements, but they never got through.

As for Arafat, he has no other choice but to agree with it -- he has survived far too many attempts to displace them to them head-on. He will say OK, but in the end he will survive!

Despite my apprehensions in advance, the speech seems remarkably good from the perspective of the usual LGF crowd.

While few of us believe that creation of a palestinian state in the immediate future can do anything but threaten Israel's existence, the speech seems to acknowledge this reality.

In fact, every single one of Bush's assurances to the palestinians and demands of Israel comes with very heavy qualifications. So, while the NYT web site has a banner subheadline "Israel Asked to Halt Settlements and Pull Back Troops", the speech is far more circumspect. It says that Israel should withdraw its troops only "as we make progress toward security" -- not before such progress is made. And it states that only when the palestinians achieve the goals the speech sets out will the U.S. support a palestinian state. The negative pregnant could hardly be more clear.

Similarly, the speech is pretty blunt about stating that the plight of the palestinians is a function of their own terrorism -- no "cycle of violence" talk here.

I don't want to get ahead of myself -- the ultimate significance of this depends on Bush's willingness to stand firm on these qualifications, and we've all seen him vacillate on occasion in the war on terrorism. But on paper, this speech strikes me as a very diplomatic way of saying to the palestinians that until they shape up in concrete, transparent ways, they get nothing.

Anybody disagree?

I find it rather interesting that Arafat has given the speech its most positive review among the Arabic crowd.

Is that what it takes to bring Arafat on board?
Removing him from power and having him surrounded by Israeli tanks?

This seems to be Arafat's way of saying:
"Please send me a helicoptor right away!!
And make sure there is an American flag on the side of it!"

Maybe we should have done this a long time ago.

Oops. Didn't realize this discussion is really taking place in the comments to the prior entry.

well, let's see if this is the last last time. i doubt it. something about 1 billion muslims v. a few million jews makes me think this will never ever end.

The Times website headline (noted by Jonathan) is nothing short of stunning; no one in his or her right mind could have heard Bush's speech and thought that its "kernel" was a call for an Israeli pullback. On the "one last chance" issue, there may never be a truly last chance, and maybe that's all right and good. Perhaps it will never be too late for even the Palestinians to make a decent choice. Bush's subtext --- that the Palestinians have a choice to make, but we are under no delusions about the likelihood of their making the right one --- seems just about right, and certainly consistent with our notions of liberty. Erekat may or may not be correct when he says that the Palestinians have already chosen their leader, but this is Bush's way of saying that they ought to think again, or at least recognize that we are not blind, nor will we pretend to be blind, to the violent and evil choices they have made. I presume the usual critics will whine that this is not a policy, but the absence of one. To the contrary: it may not be a "policy" in the sense of a plan that leads quickly and inexorably to peaceful coexistence, but instead a "policy" in the sense of announcing that we know right from wrong, we can see what's going on, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. It will be fascinating to see how the Arab nations and the Europeans respond (particularly after a week or so has passed), and equally fascinating to see if Bush can hold firm and resist the impulse to pacify out of the other side of his mouth (the Powell side).

You just have to conclude that the New York Times deliberately obfuscates and is not merely thick as a brick.

It took over 250 dead Israelis and hundreds more seriously injured Israelis for the Bush administration to wake up. But then again, Bush has changed his story just as many times since 9/11.

Nathan Sharansky said it well, as long as a dictatoship exists in the Palestinian Authority (whatever PA stands for) there can never be peace.
First a democracy needs to be established before Israel can negotiate any kind of agreement.

It time for all those educated, moderate Palestinian arabs to come out of the woodwork. It's time for all moderate, intelligent Arabs in all the other 21 states to come out of the woodwork. It's time they stood up, spoke out (without fear of intimidation, meaning murder) & formed a viable democratic government capable of reigning in terror. A TALL ORDER indeed. But if they don't have such leaders, then they don't deserve a state and Israel should take over the entire West bank & Gaza and send them all packing.

Above all, the terror must stop. It's time for the Palestinians to make their life or death decision.

Israel can easily accomodate them on the latter.

The NYTimes goal is to make "facts on the ground". It does not matter what the president really said, their agenda is anti-Israeli. Out of the whole speech, the picked one sentence that they liked and made that the news.

Later they will say that the Israelis are not listening to Bush since they did not immediately pull out. That will be folloed by similar op pieces, concerned voices from Europe, the Arab world, etc.

They learned their ways from TASS, the old Soviet news agency. They could manipulate the news with the best of them.

I wonder if Andrew Sullivan will have anything on this in the AM?

BTW, an interesting analysis from UPI...

[Link: www.upi.com...]

This statement is contrary to the advice of Secretary of State Colin Powell and Powell's assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs, William Burns.

...

In intensive discussions over the last two weeks, Burns and Powell argued these matters with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, according to administration sources.

Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld agreed in varying degrees with the assessment of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has deemed Arafat irrelevant and refused to negotiate with him. Indeed, following the terror attacks of Sept. 11 on New York and Washington, Sharon told his Israeli journalists, "Arafat is our bin-Laden."

It nice to see which side Connie was on. She was never mentioned before in the Powell vs Cheney/Rummy fight, so I was begining to wonder.

I think Bush did the right thing to be tough on the terrorists, but see the article on suicide bombers at Stratfor.com. The Palestinians know that a state on the West Bank and Gaza isn't economically feasible. They want to give up their dream of driving Israel into the sea. They want the conflict to continue in order to make the radicals more dominant. Arafat's kind words today may indicate a very long term strategy.

Sorry. I left out a word in my earlier post. Sentence should read: "They don't want to give up their dream of driving Israel into the sea."

"W" also released any prohibition on attack on Syria - when the next attack tied to one of the groups based/assisted by Syria takes place, watch as the Israelis kick the crap out of the Syrians. First Response may be only an object lesson to induce the Syrians to drive them out and leave them hanging but if a second is necessary, that's all she wrote!
Pound for Pound, the IDF could give America a run for its money. Other than the Brits (who are poorly equipted), the IDF is the only force in the World up to our weight and in some ways, they exceed us! Something about the ratio of Generals to Fighters, I suspect. But here also, size does count!

Bossman:

This may be pedantic, but I think the problem is that those governments *do* "reign[] in terror." We would prefer that they reined the terror, instead.

Oscar

The Left media is begining to change the facts of the speech. I'm watching Greta van Sustern ask Barak is Israel is going to do this or if Israel is going to do that.

As far as the media is concerned, all the onus is on Israel.

It nice to see which side Connie was on. She was never mentioned before in the Powell vs Cheney/Rummy fight, so I was begining to wonder

Well, we always knew Condie has very nice legs. Sharon says so. ;)

I have full faith the Pals will bone it, as usual, killing even this last of last chances.

James,

I always liked Connie -- she's smart, cute, she's got nice legs, and she an expert in my homeland. What more can you ask for?

I'd give it about two weeks before the splodeydopes start popping...

It'll take about that long for the Palestinians to convince themselves that Bush didn't mean it, and business as usual is the order of the day.

Then... we'll see what happens.

J.

On the other hand, MSNBC's Brian Williams just referred to the PNA as "the Palestinian entity."

I'm just wondering, about the NYT site. If it did in fact have said headline before, they've changed it and done a 180, its now strictly focused on the Pal's.

Can anyone say when the switch happened or why? You think someone called them and said "what the hell?"

Just wondering.. It's peculiar...

It's now titled "A New Condition for Palestinians Is Set by Bush" whereas it was titled "Israel Asked to Halt Settlements and Pull Back Troops" for hours today, Ben.

If I was rich, very smart and educated and single Condi would me mine. Something about her smile and style of talking that makes me wish for youth, brains and wealth :).

I think it was a deliberate jab by the times at all the noise about a boycott stating:

"Hey, Jews, we still control the headlines, whatcha gonna do bout it?"

I would really have loved to be fly on the wall, well actually a spider, in the editors room.

F**k the times.

If anyone could have come away from that speech having heard any demands on Israel, they are clearly a moron or biased beyind repair.

I think we all agree that Bush needs to back it up.

James: BTW, I wasn't doubting, sorry if I sounded like it. I just didn't understand why they would do the 180, but J Lichty enlightened me. It was indeed a jab, a hey, look what we can still do!

And hell yeah this needs to be backed up. More importantly, we cannot let the UN/EU/etc. hijack this. It has to be the forerunning opinion. If a country speaks against it, we had better remind them who is conducting this show. After all, it was the world that was clammoring for Bush's speech, as was Israel and ourselves.

Ben--
The NYT web site changed their headline at about 11 p.m. EDT this evening. I refreshed my browser right around then and the headline read as it does now, whereas 10 minutes earlier it had the old one described by James.

They also changed the content of the article. It previously read that Bush called for Israel to withdraw eventually to pre-1967 borders, when in fact he called only for Israel to withdraw to "secure and defensible borders." That, too, has been corrected.

I sent them an email about their errors earlier this evening; while I hardly think they made the corrections because of that, I imagine they must have heard from many quarters that their article was just factually wrong.

Brian Williams and crew also repeatedly (mis-) reported that Bush demanded that Israel ultimately pull back to the pre-'67 borders. Sigh.

The NYTimes goal is to make "facts on the ground".

I think Eric has this right. (Except for the "Connie" part. What on earth is up with *that*?) Consider how often it's claimed that UN resolution 242 calls for Israel to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders: it's repeated so often that for practical purposes it might as well be true. In similar fashion, if "Bush called on Israel to withdraw" is repeated often enough, by sufficiently influential people, it will become effectively true regardless of what he actually said.

Someone took a screen shot of the NYT headline almost instantly, knowing that it would never sustain itself.

I think I saw this at Instapundit, but I've been tooling around quite a bit and might be wrong.

I think the NYT "goes to bed" about 11PM, and that's when the next-day's head-line is set. My guess is that they had the previous headline as the "working headline" (presumably based on early versions of the speech, leaks, and their own inclinations), followed by the actual speech, which they acknowledged before they put the paper "to bed."

Here's that screen shot:

ny times

InstaPundit is reporting that the BBC was so miffed by the speech that they suddenly dropped it halfway through. Ha ha.

I have also tried to post to BBC's Talking Point and never got through. I agree the editors must be screening any comments that really challenge some of the nonsense on there.

The scary thing about BBC's talking points is stuff the editors let through! The anti-American and anti-Semitic stuff is horrendous. There is no "multicultural concerns" when it comes to bad mouthing America or Israel.

Either screen both for content or let everything through, I say!

On the press angle, maybe we should try to monitor them to see how they try to change the facts. For example, stating that Israel should return to the 1967 borders, instead of defensible borders. Maybe we can create a study of the way that the media forces the agenda on the public.

Optimistic.. but cautious. Where are the consequences spelled out? We've heard the "Do this...Get that" side of the speech, where's the "Don't do this and?????????" How many more people must be killed? How long do we give them to act? What happens when they act but the actions are FAR short of expectations?

BBC = Wankers.

The CR: I am sure that Honestreporting.com would love to hear from you regarding that subject.

For those of you who do not subscribe to their e-mail alerts, I highly reccomend it.

J,

I was thinking that we should do it -- a network of web watchers like us should be able to pick up a lot of info. If anyone sees that sort of flip in the media, they should post it here or even e-mail me.

That way someone can keep a record and present it to an honest reporting or a similar outfit!

Eric