The kilograms of explosive in ETA’s bombs are proportional to the concessions offered up by Zapatero. But it looks like the Prime Minister is willing to offer a truce from the Rule of Law to force a truce in terrorist activity. This is the reason why the chief prosecutor was fired.

 

After deciding not to outlaw the Basque Lands Communist Party, an obvious front for Batasuna, the administration has made a number of pay-offs to try to pry a truce or other such gesture from the terrorists –but it hasn’t succeeded. According to the European Union, Bastasuna, ETA’s political wing, is a terrorist organization and yet it attends and prepares public meetings with complete impunity. The Prime Minister even defended a Batasuna convention, invoking the right to assembly, but which was finally stopped by the courts.

 

The problem is that while the government was trying to negotiate with the terrorists, the Justice department was pursuing and throwing them in jail. This incoherence not only made it impossible to meet ETA’s demands, but continually revealed the administration’s machinations. Fungariño’s removal from the Justice department frees ETA from constant judicial pressure and answers one of the terrorists’ most urgent demands.

 

Nonetheless, the government still has to address two problems before it can move toward its goals. On the one hand, the nation’s security forces will not easily bend to the administration’s desire to offer a truce from the Rule of Law to ETA. On the other hand is France. Our neighbor has become particularly active in arresting terrorists.

 

But the main obstacle is political. Zapatero wants to reach a truce to help him win the next elections, but at the same time, shift as much of the political price as possible into future. Will ETA accept a smaller and delayed payment? There is not a single objective bit of evidence to indicate the terrorist group is thinking about giving up its criminal activities. Instead, everything points in the opposite direction. Moreover, most ETA members think a Catalan-style solution is not worth giving up their weapons.