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It’s become conventional wisdom that the path to peace between Israel and the Palestinians is a new partition agreement. Israel will leave some or all of the territory conquered in 1967, with or without land swaps; Jerusalem will in some way be divided so that part of it can be the capital of Israel and part of Palestine; the refugees will go somewhere; and a peaceful state of Palestine will be created with or without territorial contiguity. It’s just a matter of working out the details and preventing the ‘extremists’ from wrecking it.

Virtually every ‘moderate’ voice in the world, starting with the Bush Administration — even some Arab states — officially supports some kind of Oslo-like solution along these lines. Only outlaws like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hamas, and Hezbollah oppose it. Public opinion in the West is massively in favor.

Yet it can’t possibly be implemented, at least not for a generation, and anybody who has paid attention to the actions and words of the Palestinian leadership, particularly since the signing of the Oslo accord and its failure, should be able to see this.

Former Israeli Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. (res.) Moshe Ya’alon spoke this week at the Herzliya Conference in Israel, and his words should be required reading for everyone concerned, particularly the diplomats in the US State Department and Foreign Offices around the world.

Some of Ya’alon’s points:

In the [Oslo] accord Israel recognized the right of the Palestinian people to have self determination and recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. The Palestinians, on the other side, did not recognize Zionism as a national Jewish movement and did not recognize the rights of the Jews to a national Jewish country, an independent Jewish state. The Palestinians delayed Israel’s efforts to insist on the Palestinian recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

Indeed, in spite of massive pressure from President Clinton, the PLO covenant which defined Israel as illegitimate and called for its ‘liberation by armed struggle’ was never changed. And today’s ‘moderate’ Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayed refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

This lack of recognition shows that the Palestinians are striving for the disappearance of Israel as an independent Jewish state, or in other words: the Palestinians’ goal is not an Israeli state within the 1967 borders (Gaza, Judea and Samaria) but a Palestinian state on Israel’s ruins. It is important to remember that the Palestinian unification did not come after the six day war, but with the foundation of Zionism. In my opinion, Arafat started a war in September 2000 to escape from the “two state solution” and the de-facto recognition of Israel as an independent Jewish state.

In addition we can see a pattern in Arafat’s war of terror that is very similar to the reaction of Palestinians in previous attempts to divide the land: in 1937 the [Peel] Committee and the “Arab Rebellion”; in 1947 the UN partition plan and the War of Independence afterwards…

…since the beginning of Zionism there was no Palestinian leadership that was willing to acknowledge the right of the Jewish people to an independent Jewish state. In addition, since the beginning of Zionism there was no Palestinian leadership that was willing to accept a Jewish state within the 1967 borders as a final agreement. Under these circumstances there is no way to establish a secure situation with a “two state solution”.

But is it possible that Abbas and Fayed are different? In a word, no. Barry Rubin discusses this in detail in the previous post, “The shadow falling on Israel-Palestinian peace“, but some of the symptoms are 1) their inability to compromise on recognition of Israel as a Jewish state or on a right of return, 2) their inability to confront Hamas or even the terrorists in their own Fatah organization, and 3) their continued tolerance of the campaign of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement coming from every media and educational outlet in the Palestinian Authority.

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I’ve written on several occasions that Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah can’t be expected to make a peace agreement acceptable to Israel or to deliver on one if it were signed. Today Barry Rubin explains exactly why this is true.

Fatah’s Politics Make Peace Impolitic

By Barry Rubin

T.S. Elliot wrote memorably in “The Hollow Men”: Between the idea/And the reality/Between the motion/And the act/Falls the Shadow

In the case of the peace process and all the great ideas for fixing everything in Arab-Israel relations, the Shadow has been Palestinian leaders’ unwillingness–and now also inability–to make a compromise agreement ending the conflict.

Close examination of the movement’s ideology, organization, and structure shows why this is true. Exactly forty years ago, in 1968, Yasir Arafat and Fatah took over. That same year he laid down two principles dominating the movement ever since.

First, in July 1968, he changed the PLO Charter from emphasizing the group was no longer a follower of Arab states but both independent and the struggle’s leader. But at the same time he stated, “We are an extension of the hundred million Arabs.”

It proved hard to have it both ways, though Arafat usually managed the tension adequately. Today, the Arab world’s real support for Fatah–and for the Palestinians generally–is minimal, though many in the West still don’t notice that. Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas recently said, “Our Arab relations are at their best. We do not have any problems with any Arab country.”

Well, not exactly. The remaining backing does not include financial aid (the West pays the bills), direct military involvement, or strenuous diplomatic effort. Instead, it mostly revolves around demanding that the United States solve the problem while the regimes focus on their own real priorities.

Second, back in 1968, Arafat mandated the goal as total victory bringing Israel’s disappearance. Thus, armed struggle was the main tactic intended to “maintain an atmosphere of strain and anxiety that will force the Zionists to realize that it is impossible for them to live in Israel.” Since then, Israel has prospered, the Palestinians have suffered, and Hamas has seized that slogan. But it also remains a central plank for Fatah.

Abbas puts the main emphasis on diplomacy today. But most of his colleagues and constituents are still focused on glorifying violence and insisting on ultimate, total victory. What he can do, or even say, is quite limited.

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UN Watch writes,

As Israel struggles to defend its civilians from deadly Hamas rocket attacks—200 in the past few days alone, averaging nearly one per hour—the Arab and Islamic states have called an emergency “Special Session” of the UN Human Rights Council [HRC] for this Wednesday. Their proposed resolution would invert the simple reality that Hamas and its terrorist allies are deliberately targeting civilians, whereas Israel in its defensive measures takes pains to avoid harming civilians…

The draft resolution circulated by the Palestinians is entirely one-sided. It accuses Israel of “grave breaches” of human rights, and of “incessant and repeated military attacks and incursions.”

Not a word, of course, about rockets, mortars, sniping, planting explosives at the border fence or digging under it, etc. The past few weeks have seen as many as 50 rockets a day hitting southern Israel.

The UN HRC, with a great majority of anti-Israel members, is likely to approve it. Recently, they passed a resolution commending the Sudan for its “cooperation” in solving the problem of human rights abuses in Darfur!

If you believe in the efficacy of such things, you can send an email here to the leaders of Western nations on the HRC.

Probably more effective is writing one’s own letter, as Maurice Ostroff has done, and he has sent it to the prime ministers of Canada, Britain, Germany, France and Slovenia:

January 22, 2008

Motion to be proposed on January 23, at UN Human Rights Council Special Session on Gaza blockade

May I respectfully suggest that your representative on the HRC take the following circumstances into account when participating in the above session.

If the proposers of the motion to end the blockade of Gaza are sincerely interested in the welfare of the Gazan citizens, they can achieve their goal speedily and effectively by addressing the party that really holds the key, namely Hamas. And as Hamas is well disposed to the majority of HRC member states, HRC is in a favorable position to influence that organization.

In the interests of moral integrity, the HRC dare not miss this opportunity to effectively release the Gazans from their nightmare by insisting and ensuring that Hamas put an end to the rocket attacks, whereupon electricity, fuel and other supplies will immediately start flowing into Gaza.

It is completely illogical to expect Israel to refrain from acting to counter the War Crime of rockets deliberately aimed from civilian areas in Gaza, at Israeli homes, schools and hospitals with the declared intention of killing and maiming as many as possible. More than 4,000 rockets have landed in Israel since the pullout from Gaza and it is not due to lack of intent, that none have yet landed on a crowded hospital or school.

The declared intention is to indiscriminately kill and maim as many civilians as possible. If any had had fallen on a school the number of casualties would have been disastrous. In the past few weeks alone, more than 450 rockets and mortars have been launched. If each missile fired had achieved the launcher’s intention, the results would have been a massacre of huge proportions. That this was and remains the intention cannot be ignored and it is only by the grace of the almighty that it has not happened.

Removing the cause of the blockade by ending the firing of rockets would obviously be of greater humanitarian value than cynically adding another vengeful one-sided resolution against Israel while completely ignoring the context in which events are taking place.

Sincerely
Maurice Ostroff

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