O LITTLE TOWN OF...AW, CRAP

Israeli forces withdrew from Bethlehem, West Bank July 2, leaving the city of 35,000 in the hands of the Palestinian Authority's revamped security agency. The pullout represented another curve in the Mideast "road map" to peace, the document drafted by the U.S., United Nations and European Union implementing a two-year timeline for the formation of a sovereign Palestinian state with provisional borders by the end of 2005.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas is straddling both sides of the fence. He is appeasing the international arbiters by condemning terrorism but silently supporting groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad by refusing to disband terrorist training centers and arrest members, leaders and clerics. The fact that an ethnicity with such a strong terrorist infrastructure is in control of the birthplace of Jesus Christ should be enough to make most Christians volunteer to join the Israeli Army.

Radical Muslims have made it patently clear that they intend to destroy the "infidels," a group which includes Christians and Jews. Allowing Palestinians ownership of this sacred site is what the book of Proverbs would call "throwing your pearls to swine." And the biggest sow of the bunch, Yasir Arafat, is still at large.