The latest attack in Jerusalem last week shocked a lot of people. Obviously, this was a very unconventional way of carrying out an attack, and in fact, many observers have questioned whether this was a terrorist attack at all. After all, the guy had no connection with any political groups, the Arabs who lived near him said he wasn't that religious, etc. He seemed to simply be insane.
Personally, I also think that it was purely a spontaneous act by an individual with a criminal record, who was very unstable; nevertheless, I also think that this act by an otherwise unaffiliated Palestinian is the reason that a two-state solution simply will not work. By the very fact that it was an individual acting on his own accord, we can derive that the Palestinian leadership, no matter who it might be, does not have enough control over their own people to pass a peace deal. This attack came while no one wanted it: PA President Abbas obviously doesn't want attacks on Israel in order to strengthen his own position in the eyes of Israel and the West and in order to get a permanent solution to this conflict on paper by this year's end, and Hamas also didn't want this attack as we are in the midst of a truce, albeit a shaky one.
That neither major Palestinian group wanted this attack to happen clearly shows that the Palestinian leadership simply does not have adequate power over their own people to prevent them from doing similar things after a peace deal is reached. Who is to say that, if a Palestinian State is erected and Israel and the Palestinians achieve peace, there won't be more crazy individuals who will spoil this peace because they disagree with their leadership's position--and disagreeing with their leadership's position tends to be a very popular thing in the Arab world. If a peace deal is reached and 60% of the Palestinians support the deal (which is a pretty generous estimate), then how can the Palestinians prevent the other 40% from continuing to attack Israel?
This attack clearly shows that the Palestinian leadership is incapable of that. Statistics have repeatedly shown that a large Palestinian majority will not be satisfied with only the West Bank and Gaza as their state; they want all of Israel. That is the major obstacle to a peace agreement in this part of the world. The Palestinian stubbornness and unwillingness to compromise, shown in their rejections of the 1937 Peel Partition, of the 1947 UN Partition,
and at Camp David in 2000, guarantees that a two-state solution will not be enough for them. To steal a line from Alan Dershowitz, "As soon as the Palestinians want their own state more than they want the destruction of the State of Israel, we will have peace."
Unfortunately, Israel cannot make peace with 60% of a population....
5 comments:
You bring up very good points. What I would like to know is what you propose that Israel does? If we cannot have peace with them, then what else is there?
It seems like the only alternative is to wipe out the Arabs from the Middle East or move ourselves.
I have to say i agree with the author very much and believe that the Arab leadership is one of the main, if not the main reason why the Palestinian "situation" has not improved. The Arab leadership and the thought process that this "governing body" has needs to change for anything to be accomplished. There needs to be a radical change in both facilities of life or peace will never be achieved.
I hope and I pray that there will be a Ghandi or revolutionary within the Arab world which sees this idiocy and does something about it. If they don't believe that they can change anything or make better lives for themselves then nothing we do or say will work. No revolution in our history has been accomplished by foreigners or outside ideas, there needs to be a revolution from the inside.
May mashiach come fast already!
The statements made were true, but the example brought to demonstrate those statements was a bad one. According to all the investigations being done on this guy, he was just absolutely unstable. He had no connection to terrorism, no connection to religion, and has a 7 year old Jewish son. He was just insane, and if you're living in Jerusalem, the place to attack the most number of people, Jews or Arabs, is that street. The author should have taken care not to misrepresent this incident, because things like that lead to unnecessary house demolitions.
I agree with Dan. While the points were correct, this incident does little to prove it, since this particular maniac was truly an aberration, of no more political significance than the Israeli drug-abuser who stabbed his father to death in Gilo a few months ago.
So should Israel and its leadership be judged badly because of Baruch Goldstein? That's not a terrible analogy.
But to discuss your larger point, it must be noted that any peace process has to deal with the ideologues and radicals on each side, and that's nothing unique to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I mean, do you think the IRA just wanted to give up its weapons, or that all Serbs and Albanians want to live next to each other in peace?
Israel has its own major problem here with certain members of the settler movement, Kahanists, Avigdor Lieberman, you name it. No peace agreement will satisfy the hard-line settlers or the top brass of Hamas, but it can take away their popular support - if economic conditions improve in the west bank as a result to the point where people can lead normal lives, Hamas's power on the streets will be sapped. Similarly, if the Palestinian issue ceases to be a major threat for Israelis, they're not going to want to hear from the far rightists. Thats the nice thing about peace, as unlikely as it may seem today. It's self fulfilling - but someone has to start.
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