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Peace Process

Where are the peace partners?


By Ryan Jones
June 28, 2004

The nearly four-year-old Oslo War notwithstanding, Israel’s realization that it does not have a partner for peace in the “Palestinians” has failed to sink into the mindset of the West.

Europe and the United States still choose to believe that the Palestinian Authority and the people whose lives are subjugated to it desire peaceful coexistence with the only sovereign Jewish entity on the face of the earth.

But what exactly would lead anyone to believe this? Ten years ago, a war-weary Israeli Jewish population and an ignorant West could almost be forgiven for falling prey to Yasser Arafat’s deception. A decade of PA noncompliance and an ever-growing list of terror victims should have remedied that indiscretion, however.

And if those evidences were not enough, a new “Palestinian” public opinion poll this month revealed that a majority of those the Jews are expected to share their ancient homeland with still seek the eradication of Israel.

Seventy-five percent of the 1,197 Arabs polled from June 4-6 believe Israel is withdrawing from the Gaza Strip because terrorist violence has driven it out and the Jews fear more casualties.

In other words, the “Palestinians” are starting to believe they can beat Israel through a careful combination of violence and diplomacy.

That their talk of “peace” is nothing more than the other side of their double-edged sword was confirmed when 61 percent of respondents said the terrorist murder of Israel’s Jews should continue, even if Prime Minister Ariel Sharon implements the greatest Israeli concession yet by evacuating Gaza.

Since 1993, Israel has handed over to the PA administrative and security control of every major Arab population center in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip (98% of the local Arab population). But what has the PA done for Israel? Where is the reciprocity?

Thus far, the PA has repaid Israel’s goodwill by stoking the flames of violence until the scourge of Islamic terrorism reached a peak over the past four years, and by allowing the formation of numerous illegally armed terrorist organizations bent on murdering as many Jews as possible.

Is the peace process to be a two-sided affair of compromise and cooperation, or is Israel simply expected to capitulate and provide the Arabs through diplomacy what they were unable to win in war?

Hopefully the past decade has taught discerning observers that the latter is in fact true.

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