If Palestinians want an independent state, their new chairman must coalesce forces and disarm terrorists

Mahmoud Abbas' election as the new Palestinian Authority Chairman raised hopes for a democratic Palestine living in peace with Israel.


But unless the newly elected leader fights terrorism, there will be neither democracy nor peace. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suspended contacts after a Palestinian commando recently killed six Israelis in Gaza. In response, Abbas deployed Palestinian police to prevent rocket attacks on Israeli targets and is now seeking a cease-fire with all Palestinian armed factions. A temporary cease-fire might be at hand, and a period of quiet might enable Abbas to negotiate a permanent truce.

In the short term, Sharon might reconsider, but over time, tolerating armed groups other than security forces loyal to Abbas will be the chairman's own undoing. Hamas has already announced that only if Israel accedes to its demands will Hamas contemplate a temporary cease-fire. That hardly qualifies as progress.


Nevertheless, Western officials support this course of action. They are wrong. Dispensing Abbas from his obligations, supporting a cease-fire and asking for Israeli concessions in exchange will not lead to peace. Dismantling Palestinian terror networks is not only indispensable if Abbas genuinely wants to establish a democratic Palestinian state, but also unavoidable if Palestinians will want a state at all.


Democracy is the absence of fear from two threats: tyranny and lawlessness. Tyranny is secret police and arbitrary arrests: Too much state power kills freedom. Lawlessness, by contrast, is the opposite: Citizens cannot safely walk their streets at night, for fear of violent crime, which no state agency is able to prevent or prosecute anymore. Where state power is nowhere to be seen, democracy cannot survive. It was lawlessness and the rise of extremist armed groups that killed democracy in Germany's Weimar Republic in the 1920s. Similarly, it was the eroding power of the state in the wake of sectarian violence and the rise of private armed militias in Lebanon in the 1960s that eventually led to a failed state and civil war. And though tyranny is not unlikely, a Lebanon scenario of lawlessness is a more probable option for the Palestinians. As for that greatly overrated analogy, the Northern Ireland peace process, the delayed decommissioning of IRA weapons was the deal breaker. Why should Palestine be different? No democracy can survive, no peace can emerge, unless the state crushes independent armed groups challenging its sole and supreme authority. The state's inability to assert its power over armed gangs leads to anarchy and failed states. Palestine is no exception.


Those who advocate a cease-fire in the hope that bringing extremists into the political process will turn them into moderates forget the lessons of history. Extremists must first be disarmed: leaving them with their weapons will only allow them to challenge state power and blackmail elected authorities.

That is why a cease-fire is but an illusion, unless Abbas resolves to fight terrorism.


It will not be easy. Terror groups have grown stronger since the intifada began. Abbas' predecessor, the late Yasser Arafat, used terrorism to pressure Israel into more concessions. Convinced as he was that outsourcing violence to a network of terror groups would promote his goals, he willingly let them run amok, thus renouncing the monopoly over the use of force. Four years later, terrorists pose a formidable challenge not only to peace, but even more crucially to Palestinian statehood. Today, terrorists mainly attack Israeli targets. But tomorrow, unless disarmed and forced to recognize that only the Palestinian Authority has the monopoly over the use of violence, they could use their weapons and their militancy to dictate conditions or carve out areas of influence through threats, blackmail and intimidation. They have to be disarmed - not for Israel's sake, but for Palestine's sake.


Democracy cannot tolerate private armies, whether paramilitary units, armed militias, terror groups or street gangs. Their strength, when left unchecked, always led to the collapse of democratic institutions and anarchy. Arafat's legacy has been to abandon Palestine in a state of chaos, at the mercy of terror groups. Abbas' task must be to restore one authority, one law and one army for Palestine. His victory was welcomed as a sign of democratization. But elections will have meant nothing, ultimately, if Abbas cannot impose his authority over Palestinian society. Unless terror groups are disarmed, neither democracy nor peace will emerge from this hopeful moment.