Over the past few months we've been witness to a very interesting string of events. One in which not only have the Palestinians refused to negotiate, but they've been supported by the current American administration in this refusal. Yet somehow, the majority of the world continues to blame Israel for an impasse in "peace" talks.
And much like the American administration of the past few months, most of the world is blaming Israel for this impasse due to their refusal to agree to yet another building freeze, even when the first one was wasted by the Palestinians, and even though there have never been any preconditions for holding talks, not to mention a one sided precondition in which only Israel was required give a one-sided concession as large as determining borders.
And of course, the whole point of the peace talks is to set borders and determine what land will fall within Israeli sovereignty and what land will fall within Palestinian sovereignty and where the parties can build, as stipulated in UN Resolution 242 which determines that "every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force." This phrase is interpreted by all parties as meaning that final borders are a matter of negotiation and agreement. So from Israel's perspective, the Palestinians are trying to bypass negotiations, so why on earth would Israel agree to give one of the central concessions to Palestinians with nothing in return, before negotiations have even started?
Now that its clear that the US can't guarantee that Israel won't be pressured into another building freeze (in fact, making it perpetual and permanent), we're now witnessing another troubling development, the Palestinians walking away from negotiations when they don't get what they want. Mahmud Abbas is taking a page out of Yasser Arafat's playbook. In the year 2000 under the auspices of Bill Clinton the Israelis and Palestinians met at Camp David where Ehud Barak made the most far reaching proposal the Palestinians had received. An offer that was meant to lead to the end of the conflict.
Yasser Arafat didn't accept the agreement, nor did he reject the agreement and state what aspects of it were unacceptable to him. No, he walked away without so much as giving an answer, without trying to negotiate, and started the second Intifada shortly thereafter, releasing hundreds of Hamas terrorists from Palestinian jails that went on to murder more than 1000 Israelis.
Mahmud Abbas has taken this one step further. He is stating that without receiving this major concession before negotiations even start, he's refusing to negotiate at all. In fact, demanding that the American's negotiate with Israel on his behalf. Because apparently in Mahmud Abbas' mind the Palestinians have no obligation to negotiate with Israel, or make any concessions. They're demanding that America force Israel into one sided concession after one-sided concession.
I mean, can you imagine? He's the one refusing to negotiate and then expects that the full force of the United States of America be brought down upon Israel and dictate to Israel the outline of a one sided agreement? How can you have a negotiated agreement between two sides when one completely refuses to negotiate? Is this a peace partner? Is this a country that will normalize relations?
But it gets worse. Not only has Mahmud Abbas adopted the Arafat tactic of walking away from "negotiations" without making a single concession, expecting the world's superpower to negotiate on its behalf, it seems he's also adopted the next step of Arafat's strategy, waging war on Israel.
On December 9th, 2010, the Palestinians threatened to 'cancel all security commitments to Israel'. And not only are they threatening to "stop coordinating its security with Israel, in response to the US's official announcement that peace talks have failed," they are also "considering canceling its other commitments to Israel, including the Oslo Accords and the Road Map, which demand that terror organizations will stop."
Think about it, the Palestinians, not having achieved what they want through peaceful negotiations, are now threatening to "cancel" all previous commitments. They are threatening to stop preventing terrorist organizations from actively planning and killing Israelis, sound familiar? To me it sounds just like the period after Yasser Arafat walked away from Camp David, with the extra kick of breaking all their commitments and bringing an end to any pretense of being interested in coming to an agreement with Israel.
Yet there is now an even more troubling development. It seems that this entire charade that is the latest round of "peace negotiations," in which the Palestinian Authority has manipulated the American administration (apparently willingly) into forcing Israel to making one-sided concessions to Palestinians as the Palestinians refuse to negotiate at all is nothing but a smoke screen for the Palestinians real intentions. They have been working covertly in the international arena to get other nations to unilaterally recognize a "free and independent Palestinian State in 1967 borders."
They're working around their commitment of not making a unilateral declaration of independence (because they've committed to negotiations through the Oslo accords)," by having these nations recognize them.
But the real question is, will the world community reward the Palestinians for refusing to negotiate? Is world opinion so biased against Israel that they really believe that it is Israel's refusal to continue to give Palestinians further one sided concessions the cause of the failure of the peace process, and not the Palestinians outright refusal to negotiate? Unfortunately, we in Israel believe the answer is yes. The vast majority of the world, including most European nations will support the Palestinians in their breaking of all previous agreements, and will openly support their unilateral declaration of independence, even in the face of their blatant refusal to negotiate, and they will indeed continue to blame Israel.
Why? Does it really matter any more? Economic and political interests, sympathy with the underdog, latent anti-Semitism? All it will do is show the Israelis that any further concessions are futile, that the world really is out to get them, and that no matter what they do they will always be portrayed as the bad guy.
If the world chooses to reward Palestinian intransigence and refusal to negotiate with recognition and the abrogation of all their previous agreements, Israel will also no longer be bound by these agreements. Israel will also take unilateral steps. Of course, the international community will further attempt to vilify Israel, as the letter signed by former senior European leaders that call for sanctions on Israel over its refusal to obey international law, and portray it as a criminal shows us.
Not only that, but apparently these European leaders of yesterday have decided that they can determine the outcome of peace negotiations by proposing that "the EU announce that it will not accept any unilateral changes to the 1967 border that Israel carried out against international law, and that the Palestinian state would cover an area the same size as the area occupied in 1967."
What happened to UN Resolution 242 where final borders will be decided through negotiations between the parties? I forgot, when it comes to Israel, UN commitments are worthless, as we saw when UN forces abandoned their posts at the Rafiah crossing between Gaza and Egypt when Gaza was overthrown by Hamas. And as we see today that in spite of UN guarantees that Hezbollah would be disarmed as a condition for Israel to agree to a ceasefire, they have been rearmed to the teeth by Iran.
The sad fact of the matter is that Israelis are used to it.
But it should be remembered that the more that the Palestinians refuse to negotiate with Israel, the more that the American administration tries to force Israel to make further one-sided concessions, and the more that the international community tries to vilify Israel and support the new Palestinian Jihad to wretch their independence from Israel without having to make a single concession, the further the chances of any real agreement being reached. Indeed, most Israelis that were one time doves and believed there could be peace have become disenchanted. We no longer see any peace partner, and we feel the world is against us.
And in a world that is falling apart, where that purveyor of human rights China has become the world's only superpower, with the US shakes its finger as North Korea indiscriminately shells its southern neighbor, where the US economy is on the verge of collapse as the Federal Reserve prints money to no end, and where the Euro block is also on the verge of collapse, the last thing the world needs now is for the ever smoldering tinderbox of the middle east to flash up. Unfortunately it seems the world thinks they can keep it under control by forcing Israel's hand and giving the Palestinians free reign. We in Israel can only hope that the world wakes up to the fact that these "truths" they've been so convinced to believe by the American administration such as the lack of an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians being the main source of instability for peace are patently false, much like we discovered through the Wikileaks releases. Or that enabling the Palestinians to refuse to negoitate or having the US negotiate in their place is a viable means of achieving a lasting peace between the Palestiains and Israelis. But us in Israel, we harbor no false illusions.
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