Why the Israel Palestinian Peace Talks Fail

This is not an article on why the current peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority will most likely fail but about why all of these negotiations have and will forever fail. The common perception is that all that is necessary for there to be peace is for the Israelis to make sufficient sacrifices and surrender sufficient land for there to be peace. The mantra we hear over and over to the point it has become almost a chant that the world leaders recite whenever the Israelis and Palestinian Authority leaders meet is “Land for Peace.” There is actually no amount of land that Israel can surrender which will result in peace or even an agreement with the Palestinians. The simple truth is that there is only one result which the Palestinians are willing to accept, the complete annihilation of the Jewish State to be replaced by an Islamic Sharia State completely free of any Jewish, Christian or any non-Muslim religious group allowed to reside within. There will be protests with this claim which are fully expected.

 

I can hear the protestations already that the Palestinian Authority has been accepting and good to the Christians in their midst as claimed by those very same Christians who place the blame for their troubles with the Israelis where it belongs. The reason that the Christians leaders from within the Palestinian areas in Judea, Samaria and Benyamin have little choice in expressing their preferences; as if they do not blame Israel for their every woe, then the Muslims will lose vindictive destructions upon Christian businesses, churches, homes and people even higher degree than they currently inflict. Explain why in all of North Africa and the Middle East, an area almost exclusively under Islamic rule, everywhere in every location with but one exception the numbers of Christians have been decreasing for decades upon decades. The sole exception where the numbers of Christians has been steadily on the increase is Israel where freedom of religion is a treasured value which is held in high esteem. The Muslim lands are not so generous with their acceptance of those who even follow a branch of Islam which is different from that of the governing preference, let alone any religion other than Islam. If you wish to see what the treatment the Christians would receive under Palestinian rule if they spoke the truth all one need do is look to Egypt at the treatment of the Christians by the Muslim Brotherhood since they were removed from power. There have been days where as many as fifty churches have been completely looted of anything worth taking before being burned to the ground. Also, Christian owned businesses which have also been torched along with Christian homes, all of which have burned solely as the result of Muslim anger and perceived insult resultant to President Morsi being removed. The Christians were victimized and blamed for his removal despite the protests of literally tens of millions of Egyptians against his actions which excluded all except his cohorts within the Muslim Brotherhood. The Christians who used to make up approximately three quarters of the population in Bethlehem before the Palestinian Authority was gifted security and political control over the birth place of Jesus but now only a remnant making up less than ten percent still reside in this holies of holy cities in Christendom. The only part which Israel played in this entire procession of events was to gift control to the Palestinian as a result of the tragic Oslo Accords.

 

There are a number of horrific results from the continuing tragedy called the Oslo Accords. Perhaps the greatest of these has been the requirement on the Israelis to placate those who cannot be placated. We can boil down the Israeli needs to a single item which would be sufficient to destroy any possibility for peace. This one item is probably not one the majority of people would even be able to name, let alone be high on their list as Israel is often chastised for making too many demands and not showing a willingness to do what is necessary to reach a peace agreement. This one item has absolutely nothing to do with the settlements or Israeli towns and businesses that are in areas liberated from Jordanian illegal occupation as a result of the June 1967 War. It does not have anything to do with whether or not Israel will be allowed to retain the eastern half of Jerusalem which they have already made an integral part of Israel placing all of Jerusalem under Israeli political and security rule. This one item is not in reference to Israel being permitted to keep some defensive positions and monitoring stations in the Jordan Valley just west of the Jordan River as an early warning system to detect any attack approaching from over Jordanian space. The one item Israel insists the Palestinians meet is to recognize that Israel exists as the state for the Jewish People. The recognition that Israel is the reestablishment of the ancient Jewish homeland is about as basic an understanding of the real reason the world agreed upon when they setup the British Mandate with the stated intent to establish a homeland for the Jewish people. This was voted upon and established international intent for the creation of a state for the Jews before 1920 which is decades ahead of the horrors of the Holocaust. The claim often made that Israel was established as a guilt offering by a world shocked by the horrors of the Holocaust is so easily proved false it is remarkable that it has survived. The Balfour declaration came in 1917 and by 1920 the entire League of Nations had made the Balfour Declaration an international treaty recognized by the world. There have been numerous conferences and accords made all before World War II and the Nazi horrors which echoed and restated support for the establishment of a Jewish State in the Jewish ancient homelands. So, requiring the Palestinians to simply recognize that Israel is and was established as a state for the Jewish People is far from asking the impossible, yet this is the one point above all others which the Palestinians and rest of the Muslim World refuse to grant. Until the Muslim World can recognize that Israel is the state for the Jews, which is even mentioned in the Quran, there can be no peace and that is as simple as it gets. If the world really wishes to find a path to peace between the Jews and the Muslim World they need to require the Muslim World recognize that the Jews have rights to a homeland and that homeland is located as stated in the Old Testament, the Christian Bible and the Islamic Quran on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea and includes all of Jerusalem, and only after this has been established should they demand that Israel give even more lands to the Palestinian authority.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

A “Thunderbolt” Response to the Foreign Minister

France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius made a statement Saturday claiming a successful outcome to the U.S.-brokered negotiations between Israelis and the Palestinian Authority would be like a “thunderbolt” bringing peace in the crisis-ridden Middle East. Additionally Mr. Fabius claimed, “Even if we speak of other neighboring countries, the dramatic conflict in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, the fact remains that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is one of the issues, perhaps the central one, for the region. In a particularly troubled regional environment, it is even more important that we advance towards peace here. If these negotiations are successful, it will be a thunderbolt for peace…a great stabilizing element. Our support is more necessary than ever. This is the moment when we must make a breakthrough for peace.”  The inferences made by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius in meetings with Palestinian authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas spurred a number of additional comments from the Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, Palestinian Authority Chief Negotiator Saeb Erakat and Chairman Mahmoud Abbas all echoing the hope for peace and stressing what has become a mantra in the news cycle since the restart of the talks of the Palestinian’s positive attitude towards the talks and their “negotiating with good intentions.”

 

The problem with these attitudes is that when the world simply finds some way, even forcibly, to make peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, then the entire world will break out in song and dance and the lion will lie down with the sheep. If only such were true I might join them in their exuberance and seek to do whatever was necessary to bring about such a peace. Do not get me wrong, a peace between Israel and the Palestinians would be wonderful in and of itself, but as far as repairing the rest of the Middle East or even the situations in Syria and Egypt which may soon encompass Lebanon and possibly also Jordan, that would not be affected in the slightest. The entire situation in Egypt had proceeded with no mention of Israel through the entire first year of rule under President Morsi and Israel was not injected into the conversation until after the Egyptian military removed President Morsi from power, and then was only mentioned by the Muslim Brotherhood in an effort to sway popular support behind their attempts to return President Morsi to power. Even they have mostly ceased making that argument as it did not serve their intent and bring the masses of Egyptians rallying to their side. The civil war in Syria has made almost no mention of Israel and there have been no mentions of Israeli involvement outside of the few instances of airstrikes on convoys moving weapons presumably to Lebanon for use by Hezballah. The civil war in Yemen has had no mention of Israel as is also true of the conflict in Libya. If one were to look around the Middle East outside of the areas between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea the one place where there exists references to Israel as being responsible for occurrences outside her borders the sole location seems to be from Turkey and then almost exclusively out of the mouth of Prime Minister Erdogan, and his references are mostly intended to cloud issues and place the blame on Israel and by doing so justify his animosity towards the Jewish State.

 

Let us for a moment pretend that a breakthrough was made or that we are at the point where a peace was forced on Israel by the rest of the world and a Palestinian State now existed. Does anyone honestly hold that by such an occurrence that the troubles in Egypt would suddenly be resolved and the strife between the Egyptian military and the Muslim Brotherhood would be resolved? If that were to be true then please inform us as to who would be the sitting president of Egypt resultant to the peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Would all of a sudden the Egyptian military relent and return President Morsi to power or would the Muslim Brotherhood suddenly back the interim government put in place by the military and agree to self-banishment from Egyptian political affairs and dissolve their Freedom and Justice Party? To believe such is pure folly and even if you did, would such a peace also resolve the multifaceted civil war in Syria? Would the rebels and Bashir al-Assad suddenly be singing Kumbaya and the struggle between the Kurds and the Rebels cease? Would all of the animosities between Sunni and Shiites end simply because the Israelis made peace with the Palestinians? In all honesty, by the words out of Mahmoud Abbas’s own mouth a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians would not even bring an end to Palestinians attacks on Israelis as long as such a peace permitted Israel to remain as being the Jewish State. A more truthful statement is that should Israel and the Palestinians make peace then the world would need to find a new reason to blame Israel for every ill in the world and to continue to claim it is all Israel’s fault. My guesstimate is that such an excuse would be found and echoed around the world within 72 hours, that’s just three short days, and I have my doubts it would even take that long, and the French Foreign Minister could easily be the man who comes up with the new excuse, who knows.

 

Beyond the Cusp