Perspectives of Reality and Entitlements

Amazing. "Right-wing" Israelis are depicted in a photograph burning a Palestinian kefiyyeh in anger and the impression given by the description and their actions and their identification is one of utter condemnation. Their offence is unforgivable, mocking the most visible token of Arab dress, protesting the release of 'prisoners' held by the 'occupied' forces of the State of Israel.

And then there is the contrasting version of events, quite different from the Israelis' sense of being stricken at the release of Palestinians resulting from an agreement to release them as a 'good will gesture' leading to the resumption of peace talks. And while Gaza prepared itself to celebrate the restoration of six of their members freed from prison, two rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza.

Israeli youths wear keffiyehs, traditional Palestinian scarfs, as right wing Israelis demonstrate against the release of 26 Palestinian prisoners on October 29. Photograph by: Uriel Sinai, Getty Images

And there they are, scads of photographs of jubilant, triumphant Palestinians, families whose sons are finally being released from incarceration. Their joy is palpable through the photographs. It is not only mothers, wives, daughters, sons, cousins who are celebrating, playing joyous music, setting off celebratory firecrackers, handing out sweets in celebration of this wonderful event, but so too is their government parading itself proudly as the instrument by which they have managed to free prisoners.

And those photographs are of great happiness that the wicked Jews have finally relented, and after years of punishing incarceration, agreed to release the poor Palestinians who are heroes to their countrymen. Their crime is not that they are 'right-wing', nor that they burned the Star of David, or the Israeli flag, though they've done that too, but that they, each and every one of them, murdered Israelis by malevolent design, young and old.

Released Palestinian prisoner Mohammed Sabbagh, second left in white, surrounded by militants and relatives, greets the crowd upon his return to his home in the West Bank refugee camp of Jenin after his release Wednesday.  Photograph by: Mohammed Ballas, AP

These are the returning heroes. Their plight is one that the outside world appears to have sympathy with. The anguish of the surviving members of a family whose dear ones were murdered by Palestinian terrorists balanced against the joy felt by the members of a family whose dear ones have been released from prison where they were sentenced to be incarcerated as punishment for planning and carrying out atrocities.

The man who took the place of Chairman Yasser Arafat, who found ongoing reasons why the PLO could never accept the presence of the State of Israel on land the Palestinians deemed their inalienable own, and which they insist the Jews illegally took from them on the pretense of it representing their heritage, and the curse of the United Nations ruling the land divided between Jews and Arabs, extols the virtues of "resistance", Palestinian-speak for terrorism.

Peace is not possible so long as there is even one terrorist prisoner still in an Israeli prison, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas declared on Tuesday night. "All 104 prisoners [that Israel has agreed to release] will be released, but the real joy will only come when all Palestinian prisoners are released. We undertake to continue the efforts to release all prisoners until they return to their homes", he exulted; the Palestinian Authority committed to efforts ensuring all terrorists serving time in Israeli jails be freed.


"Today is a day of joy for the family and for all of Palestine. My brother is a freedom fighter and we are proud of him and we thank the president for his effort to get him out", declared Tayser Shubair, whose brother Hazem had been jailed since 1994 for causing the death of an Israeli. Somehow, it escapes the imagination of Palestinians that peace could be achieved between the two countries, that they could learn to live in peace, side by side, with no rancour and violence, like decent civilized peoples.

They have for far too long been fed the fantasy of having full rights to possession of all the lands they claim, as Palestinians, to own by right of habitation. Overlooking historical fact that the first Palestinians were Jews. Their intention is to destroy Israel, and their activities to that end, and to continue to cause grief and prostration among Israelis is provoked by their governments, by both Fatah under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in Gaza, which encourage them to believe they will one day take full possession of the entire land, absent Israel.

The peace talks currently ongoing are destined to go the way of all previous such peace talks. For the simple reason that there remains an undercurrent of destroying any possibilities to arrive at an amicable settlement between the adversaries because every time Israel reluctantly agrees to ever starker demands, those demands continue to grow and expand and become more painful, to the extent of realization that their purpose is to destroy the potential environment to achieve peace.

The official line for public consumption outside the Middle East is that the Palestinians are fighting for 'independence', while the Israelis are loathe to grant it to them. That vaunted independence is as near to hand as surrendering the more outrageously impossible demands of the Palestinian Authority to the reality of accepting some measure of sacrifice on both sides.

Yet the PA insists it has the right to impose all conditions of a peace settlement,  uniquely endowed with an entitlement that will lead them to prevail in their final goal.