SOME POTENTIAL FOREIGN POLICY LESSONS — first, this report on Arafat and The Wall:

Palestinian businessmen have made millions of dollars supplying cement for Israel’s controversial wall with the full knowledge of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader and one of the wall’s most vocal critics.

A damning report by Palestinian legislators, which has been seen by The Sunday Telegraph, concludes that Arafat did nothing to stop the deals although he publicly condemned the structure as a “crime against humanity”.

The report claims that the cement was sold with the knowledge of senior officials at the Palestinian ministry of national economy, and close advisers to Arafat.

It concludes that officials were bribed to issue import licences for the cement to importers and businessmen working for Israelis.

No wonder he gets along so well with Jacques Chirac:

When French presidents invoke “the national interest,” often as not it means they’ve cut a deal they’d really rather not explain. But when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan came courting President Jacques Chirac in Paris last week, hoping the ever-reluctant French would back Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, the cash-and-carry policymaking was right out front.

As one senior Turkish official told NEWSWEEK, the intention was to “spread a package of economic benefits” before Chirac that “France could not reject.” Sure enough, Turkish Airlines announced it would purchase 36 Airbus planes worth more than $1.5 billion. Erdogan also hinted he might be in the market for France’s big-ticket nuclear technology. And just as surely, after years of implicit opposition and fence-straddling, Chirac suddenly decided that support for Turkey’s candidacy suits “the national interests” of France.

Perhaps we should switch our foreign policy approach to a mixture of bribes and beheadings. It seems to work.