Releasing Prisoners -- A Price Too Steep?

Good tidings. Peace talks are set once again to resume after a tediously long hiatus. All previous attempts to start talks between the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority have floundered on the shoals of negativity. The Palestinian Authority insists that Israel is at fault, it would not come to the bargaining table as long as Israel encouraged construction of Jewish settlements on land the Palestinians claim as their own.

In point of actual fact, spoken not to the outside world, but within the Arab world, and particularly within the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians claim the land that the State of Israel sits upon. It has been stated without equivocation long enough, loudly in the cheering ears of the Palestinians and more quietly abroad, but international ears are closed to that reality. So initial talks are underway to reach initial agreement on the manner in which peace talks will proceed.

The Palestinian Authority refusal to engage in such talks as long as Settlement activity continues has been set aside with Israel's agreement to release 104 Palestinians from Israeli jails. There is nothing particularly unusual in Israel releasing large numbers of Palestinian incarcerates, some thousand or so have been released at various times as "good will gestures" to placate the Palestinians or to procure the release of a single Israeli held by the Palestinians, dead or alive.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas has already given notice that, whether or not Israel may be nervous about its security in the event of the creation of a State of Palestine, no Israeli troops, not one Jew, will be permitted to be stationed within the new country. He has, however, insisted and manoeuvred successfully for the release of Israeli Arabs who have committed atrocities against Jews in Israel.

Mr. Abbas clearly represents the best interests of Palestinians and extends that kind courtesy to Arab Israelis, which is to say Palestinian Arabs who have full Israeli citizenship. In many instances Israel would be far better off without the presence of citizens of Arab ancestry. Though many Israeli Arabs are loyal to the country that has given them democratic equality and a voice in the Knesset, many more are not.

But imagine the howls of outrage from the international community were Israel ever to venture a statement similar to that of President Abbas? The release of those 104 Arab prisoners from Israeli jails represents a down payment on the future between Israel and the Palestinians, evidently. This is the United States and the European Union in collusion, and playing hardball by their rules, imposed upon Israel.

Sidelined and ostracized, the international community informing Israel what its borders must be without prejudice and injury of course, Israel has little option in that friendlessly hostile geography but to agree.  And so, murderers of Jewish men, women and children, glorified by the Palestinian Authority as heroic "resisters" must be released as evidence of Israel's "goodwill".

Twenty-six-year-old schoolteacher Rachel Weiss, her children age 3, 2 and 9 months, killed travelling on a bus by a Molotov cocktail will never know that her murderer was a hero and was accordingly released from prison. Nor will David Delarosa, 19, a stranger also killed trying to save them. There was one of Israel's leading historians, Professor Menacham Stern, another victim. There were teachers, lawyers, pregnant women, French tourists.

And then there were also dozens of Palestinians whom it was claimed were collaborators with Israel, also killed. One of the released prisoners was involved in the murder of 15 suspected Palestinian traitors. According to a poll 84% of Israelis were opposed to the release of prisoners, even in exchange for a return to the negotiating table. Their memory is not that poor that they cannot recall other negotiations when Palestinians were assured all their demands would be accepted.

And each and every time that success was dancing tantalizingly before the hopeful eyes of the negotiators, the Palestinian side demurred. Signing a peace agreement with Israel was too daunting, too redolent of "losing", losing face, losing their refugee status and the attention and sympathy of the outside world; above all, losing the need to reclaim the entire territory. "Winning" could only be declared by taking possession of the land Israel sits upon.

"The very notion of Palestinian preconditions before even reaching the negotiating table, to enter a process in which they would be the potential beneficiaries -- is utterly absurd. But when it involves the release of some of the most vicious terrorists of our time, it becomes obscene", wrote Dani Dayan, businessman and chief foreign envoy of the pro-settler Yesha Council, predictably enough.

"I know the negotiations are going to be tough, but I also know that the consequences of not trying could be worse", said American Secretary of State John Kerry whose peripatetic activities have resulted in the current "talks". Tough is how the demands of the Palestinians can be characterized; envisioning the evisceration of a Jewish State that they believe has no business in the Middle East; no heritage, no call to return to what was once theirs.

Neither Jerusalem nor Israel.

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