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

 

Plesner Committee Drafting New Tal Law Dissolved by Netanyahu

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Monday scrapped the Plesner Committee, tasked with drafting a replacement for the controversial Tal Law. The committee was in response to a ruling by the Supreme Court striking down the Tal Law removing the longstanding deferment for Hareidim from serving in the IDF or perform public service as other providing they were in full time Torah study, forcing a replacement be found by July 31. This initiated a response from Kadima party chairman, Vice Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz, threatening to quit the government if Netanyahu did not follow through with the committee’s recommendations. Mofaz was quoted saying, “I reject the announcement of the prime minister and pledge my full support to Plesner’s committee. The committee was formed by all the parties together, and its unilateral dissolution by the prime minister does not obligate Kadima (to comply. These recommendations are) the basis for any real attempt to fix the historic problem of the unequal burden. If the prime minister chooses not to go in that direction, the national unity government will end.”

This is likely how this story will be presented along with the seeming mandatory references to Prime Minister Netanyahu and his heavy handed, dictatorial style of leading his coalition. Never mind that MK Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu Party walked out of the committee over their refusal to even address a recommendation that Arab Israelis also be included in required IDF or public service the same as the Hareidim as both have similar deferments. Add that Habayit Hayehudi (Hebrew for “Jewish Home”) also decided that they were being shut out and ignored as they also believed that the committee should be at least looking at universally equal treatment under the new law. Shas and United Torah Judaism Hareidim religious parties’ representative Attorney Ya’akov Weinroth also withdrew from the committee though his motivations were considered suspect as he might have been insistent on a new version that would be a carbon copy of the struck down Tal Law. There was an obvious problem with the make-up of the Plesner Committee from the beginning and from this writer’s perspective it did not come down to as much the dictatorial imposition by Prime Minister Netanyahu than it was the attempts to dictate every iota of the new law by the Kadima leadership in the committee and Shaul Mofaz, the leader of Kadima who likely interpreted the mandate given by Benyamin Netanyahu as a license to lord over the committee and write whatever law he pleased while ignoring any input by other Parties’ representatives assigned to the committee. This may be the beginning of a fraying of the coalition as the nationalist and religious parties are not going to ever form a cordial relationship with the liberal members in Kadima. It might even get to a point where the strengthening of the coalition by merging Kadima will lead to Yisrael Beiteinu and numerous of the other current members will depart over the necessary catering that will be required to keep Shaul Mofaz and the Kadima Ministers content. Such an exodus would completely defeat the entire move of folding Kadima into the coalition and could lead to total collapse.

There is one result of dissolving the Plesner Committee which might turn out to be a blessing in disguise. This has presented Prime Minister Netanyahu with a golden egg in the form of Kadima Head Shaul Mofaz threatening to pull Kadima out of the coalition. The first and most obvious result would be to allow him to make good on his threat and continue with the narrower coalition that includes a more homogeneous combination of parties. But the most likely advantage would be for Prime Minister Netanyahu to call Shaul Mofaz’s bluff and once again announce that he plans to call for new election should Kadima depart the coalition. Such a threat would silence Shaul Mofaz as he is fully aware that with new election Kadima loses half of their seats in the Knesset and such a loss is not something Shaul Mofaz desires or could survive. Such an occurrence might very well cause a vote of no confidence by the membership of Kadima and a new election to choose a new party chairman. Sometimes it is best not to scream too loudly in public when the soapbox you’re standing on has broken boards and is about to collapse.

Beyond the Cusp