Palestinian Authority 'security' forces. Feel secure yet?
It appears that Israel offered a freeze on government-sponsored construction in Judea and Samaria in return for the Palestinian Authority (PA) returning to talks. The PA rejected the offer, because it did not include eastern Jerusalem and because it only applied to government, not private, construction.
Can we please stop this charade?
Now that the Shalit affair is over, after freed terrorist after freed terrorist has promised to go back to slaughtering Jews, after there has already been at least one attempted terrorist murder in the euphoria inspired by the triumph, it’s time to end the pretense, admit the truth, and begin to implement a completely new approach.
PA officials have made no secret of their admiration for acts of violence and murder against Jewish civilians. They have not stopped inciting their people to do more of them. They have not hidden their program to eliminate the Jewish state. They continue to insist that the world owes them a living and in fact owes them Israel, which they expect to have handed to them on a platter — the sooner the better, thank you.
Israel enables and facilitates this by calling for negotiations with them, allowing them to continue their posturing as a legitimate national entity, indeed, as anything more than a collection of gangs and militias, tolerating the idea that a Palestinian state might be created in the territories, and offering to preemptively surrender Jewish rights.
How many Jews will have to be murdered before the government of Israel can learn the word ‘enemy’ and understand that the PLO and Hamas are the enemies of the state and the Jewish people?
An enemy is someone who wants to kill you. Think of the US and Imperial Japan during WWII. But unlike WWII enemies, Arab enmity does not flow from a particular regime, or geopolitical aspirations thereof. It is pure ethnic/religious hatred which leaves no room for compromise. The relevant difference between the Nazi party and the PLO or Hamas is that the Nazis were better organized and more effective. But there is little difference between their objectives.
Negotiations in this situation can’t bring peace. They are just another part of the complex of military, diplomatic and information weapons that is being deployed against the Jewish state. Talking to the terrorists is in itself a victory for them.
In addition to physically fighting the terrorists, it’s also necessary to explode the false picture of who and what they are and what their goals are. Every time that an Israeli politician takes a Palestinian official seriously, every time Hamas or the PLO are given the slightest legitimacy, it is a victory for them.
Israel should not make any offers to the Palestinians except an offer to help facilitate regime change. Even if such a change did occur, it might be half a century or more before the poison spread initially by Yasser Arafat, who raised an entire generation of creatures corrupted by pathological hate, would lose its potency. And who knows what it would take to attenuate the religious murderousness of Hamas?
Today it’s not realistic to expect peace. The credulous acceptance of the ideas of Oslo, the wishful thinking that replaced simply opening eyes and ears and paying attention to the actions and statements of the PLO, led to the deaths of thousands of innocents. By now, the vocabulary of Oslo has pretty much gone from the conversations of ordinary Israelis, but it still defines (perhaps cynically) the approach of the US and Europe toward Israel.
It is a serious error to humor them. Israeli policy needs to change 180 degrees from the direction of Oslo. Israel cannot survive if it accepts the false premises of the Oslo conceptual scheme, which will bring about a piecemeal surrender to Palestinians who have no intention of letting up on the military and diplomatic pressure. No concession is ever enough, and every rejected Israeli offer becomes the starting point for the next round of demands.
It is remarkable the way the Palestinian Arabs, who have no economy apart from the international dole and no real military power, can successfully chip away at a country like Israel, with its flourishing economy and world-class military. But they are doing it, by combining relatively primitive terrorism with a diplomatic assault that uses the Oslo framework and the language of human rights to leverage the power of the US, the EU, the UN, etc. to squeeze Israel, little by little.
Israel’s government must stop enabling the process. Its diplomacy should send the following message:
- The PLO and Hamas are enemies of the state of Israel. We won’t deal with them except to fight terrorism.
- There is no ‘peace process’ and can be none until the PLO and Hamas are replaced by a regime that ends terrorism and declares that they are prepared to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
- Israel will not cooperate in attempts to ethnically cleanse Jews from areas that were occupied by Jordan in 1948-67. Territorial compromises, if any, will be made in the framework of UNSC resolutions 242/338, which guarantee secure and recognized borders and do not privilege the 1949 armistice lines.
- The Oslo agreements — which were not signed in good faith by Yasser Arafat, whose provisions for modification of the PLO charter and ending terrorism and incitement were never carried out, and which were abrogated by Mahmoud Abbas’ unilateral appeal to the UN — are null and void. The PA that they created is illegitimate.
It might not be possible to change the attitudes of the people in the Obama Administration, for example, who are pushing the one-sided ‘peace process’. But at least Israel can officially end its acquiescence in what some call the ‘piece-by-piece process’.
One of the horrible ironies of Oslo was Israel’s providing weapons to the PA ‘police’, which were then turned against Jews in terrorist attacks. Let’s stop handing them the conceptual weapons — far more dangerous than assault rifles and armored cars — that they are using in their diplomatic war against the Jewish state.
Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Oslo accord, diplomacy, terrorism
It is incredible how far Israel has gone from positions once taken for granted as absolutely necessary for the security of the state. Who would have ever imagined that a Likud Prime Minister is actively preaching a two- state solution and lobbying for the Arabs to enter negotiations in order to get it?
We have been losing the ‘conceptual war’.
Yet to simply walk away from the concept of negotiations is to risk losing the U.S. something we clearly cannot afford to do.
Shalom,
Your last sentence above holds the key to what is happening right now with respect to Bibi.
I don’t think he entertains any serious notions of a genuine peace with the PA, or with a “two state solution” involving the PA as it now exists or could conceivably exist in charge of a new mini terror state at Israel’s doorstep.
He is facing the most anti-Israel U.S. president in history, someone whom I insist is little more than a Saudi-programmed anti-Israel robot. I strongly suspect Netanyahu has very much the same opinion of Obama, but for obvious diplomatic reasons, cannot be open about this.
In the face of the leader of a key ally who is so hostile, Netanyahu has little choice in practical terms but to appear to be in favor of that which he is in fact absolutely against. Obama and Bibi are playing a game of diplomatic “chicken”; Bibi might in fact be willing to risk losing U.S. support under Obama, so long as it occurs in such a way that it is clearly at Obama’s initiative, so he can blame Obama’s malevolence. This will unite the rest of Israel behind him, and will also provoke the ire of considerable pro-Israel segments of the U.S. – such as the very large Evangelical community, plus wealthy would-be Jewish donors to the Democratic Party.
Knowing this, Obama too must play a disingenuous game of seeming for all rhetorical purposes to be Israel’s “friend”, even if in concrete policy terms, he behaves as Israel’s adversary. He’d like nothing better than for Bibi to tell him to f*** off”’; then he’d have the exuse to treat a “defiant”, “ungrateful” Israel as he’d like to, with far less political damage. This situation would place Israel’s supporters here in something of a bind: Do they openly support the leader of a state who has openly snubbed the U.S. president?
So, Bibi pretends to go along, running the clock, until someone more amenable to treating Israel like a genuine ally gets into office here, which seems likely fifteen months from now (but who’s counting…?).
I suspect that when that time comes, Bibi’s tune will change very much to our liking, my friend.