An Alternate Path to Palestinian Arab Israeli Peace

By now one would think that the world would have realized that the traditional method of forcing negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel were a dead-end making peace unattainable and another route would have been sought. Despite all the claims and blaming of Israel for the failure of these efforts, the truth indicates that it is largely due to Palestinian intransigence and refusals to compromise on even a single item that has doomed all previous efforts. The old tried and failed method of applying pressure on Israel to make ever more grand compromises and concessions only to have the Palestinians to wave all offers aside and claim that there are just a few more concessions they require from Israel before they can make peace will have the same result as have all past attempts of this method. The Palestinians rarely itemize and list their additional demands and they change them making for the appearance of change which is inevitably perceived to imply advancing towards a real and final agreement. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just because the Palestinians choose some different main point to base their rejection upon at each turn does not mean that they have had previous demands satisfied nor does it mean they have moved any closer to reaching a point of agreement. All it is a measurement of is Palestinian refusal to negotiate in good faith and instead to be implementing the standard Arab response to making peace with Israel formed at the Khartoum Conference and known as the “three no’s” which are; no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel. The Palestinians have amended the third point to no successful negotiations with Israel which they view as in keeping with the spirit and underlying themes of the Khartoum Conference.

 

So, what might produce a way around this impasse? Since it should have become evident that there does not exist any combination of concessions or offers that the Israelis could ever propose that would be acceptable to the Palestinians, why not try to approach the whole peace process from the other side, request that the Palestinians provide terms that they would accept and would be willing to offer Israel and work from that end. Of course this approach would require something that had only been in evidence by its absence up to now, honesty and a rational means of judging and endorsing any offers, expectations and efforts concerning all parties involved. It is not helpful in reaching a peace agreement to always blame Israel for every impasse or collapse of the talks and if any blame is aimed at the Palestinians side, always equivocating and adding reasons that Israeli actions were most likely the real cause simply allows the Palestinian intransigence to become set in stone and unmovable. The honesty would be applied upon receiving the conditions and concessions proposed by the Palestinians of the Israelis, and then having the mediating nation’s representatives review and consider whether or not such terms would be even remotely acceptable if demanded of their country in similar negotiations. This could easily be accomplished by simply asking themselves one question and, the difficult part by all appearances, answer if they would even deem to consider, let alone actually accept, the proposed offer if an adversary were to offer them in a theoretical peace negotiation with their country.

 

Follows is a partial list of some of the poison pills which the Palestinians might include in their peace proposals, assuming they would even deign to offer anything and not simply demand that Israel be tasked with making the offers as it is far easier to just say no than it is to draw up an agreement at the risk that the other side might accept them and then be stuck with a resolution by their own hand. The most obvious is one they use repeatedly to end negotiations in the past is the “right of return” for over five-million Arab refugees and their descendants some of which three generations removed from the original refugee. One might recognize the term right of return as the exact phrase and system by which Israel by which Jews to return to their native lands of Israel in what is referred to as making Aliyah. This is one of many terms and historical facts about the Jewish heritage and claims to these lands which the Palestinians have woven their own version out of whole cloth and which much of the world accepts blindly knowing full well they are fabrications and a totally false narrative. Another demand which would be difficult to accept would be the redividing of Jerusalem and retuning all of the Old City including all of the Jewish Holy Sites to Palestinian control which would mean that the Temple Mount and the Western Wall would once again be denied visitation for Jews just as was the case when these areas were under Jordanian control. The Jordanians also guaranteed universal religious rights to visit the Holy Sites for Jews and Christians causing the long years of thirst and hunger for visitation rights where people of both faiths suffered with only a few sparse and individual moments where visitation by non-Muslims was ever permitted by Jordan. The Palestinian promises would be equally empty of any true intent to allow non-Muslims rights to visit their holy areas within the lands they control. The surrender of half of Jerusalem with the high probability of losing the capability for visitation to the Temple Mount and other Holy Sites having actually been offered by the Israelis under the deal proffered by Prime Minister Olmert should be a solid indication that Israel is willing to make very serious and even damaging concessions in order to attain a lasting and real peace.

 

The same was evidenced by the releasing of over seventy-five terrorist murderers and terror planning masters as demanded by the Palestinians during these past negotiations and the sole reason Israel withheld the final release was due to additional demands made by the Palestinians concurrent with threats to blow-up the talks as soon as the final group was released. Almost all of the terrorists released by Israel were serving life sentences or multiple life sentences for their horrific and horrendous acts of murderous terrorism against innocent civilians including women, children, seniors and even in some cases infants. Another demand recently added by the Palestinians about a year ago, which has not received general circulation or even notice, was the rights to hold military exercises with any nation or nations and the hosting of such exercises without any limit on the forces participating as well as unlimited rights to raise and arm a military force to any potential deemed necessary. This demand was expressed as a reaction to the Israeli request that any Palestinian state be demilitarized with their security from any outside attack provided by the Israelis upon any request from the Palestinians. The Palestinians claimed that the sole reason they would require a military and such protection would be from belligerence coming from Israel. Another item which Israel has demanded and been informed by the Palestinians and is completely out of the question is that any agreement be the final and complete end of any disagreements and be considered to end all demands from wither party on the other. The Palestinians demand that they be permitted further grievances and the continued right to continue their resistance to the occupation of the remainder of Palestine. They claim it is their right to continue terror attacks for as long as the state of Israel exists and that they will only end their resistance when all of Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea has been liberated and cleansed of its Jews. This is not a complete list of the grievances perceived and claimed by the Palestinians but should get the point across that the main argument and complaint the Palestinian demand must be addressed is the fact that Israel exists. Placing the onerous responsibility of producing a final and lasting peace agreement on the Palestinians would reveal their complete intransigence, belief in blood libels, and their litany of unappeasable demands which can only be satisfied with the complete eradication of the Jewish State and the casting of Israeli Jews to the corners of the world back into the Diaspora, just as was inflicted by the Romans almost two-thousand years ago and with the identical intent as today’s Palestinians, the annihilation of Judaism as a faith, peoples, and nation from the face of the earth. When this tack also fails and proves absolutely that the Palestinians do not desire peace but the destruction of Israel, then the world must be prepared to accept the One State Solution with the leadership of the Palestinians made to return to their exile as they returned under false pretenses and thus should not be permitted to remain to continue to sew unrest and hatreds.

 

Beyond the Cusp