Peace In His Time

"As in any negotiation there will be moments of up and moments of down. But ... we are determined to try to bring lasting peace to this region. We are convinced that despite the difficulties, both leaders, President Abbas and Prime Minister Netanyahu, are also determined to work toward this goal."
"We need the space to negotiate privately, secretly, quietly and we will continue to do that. We have six months ahead of us on the timetable we have set for ourselves and I am confident we have the ability to make progress."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry

"I'm concerned about their progress because I see the Palestinians continuing with incitement, continuing to create artificial crises, continuing to avoid, run away from the historic decisions that are needed to make a genuine peace. I hope that your visit will help steer them back to a place where we could achieve the historical peace that we seek and that our people deserve."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

It seemed from the information that was coming out of the secret negotiations that President Abbas and his negotiators were prepared to accept a land-trade equivalent to the West Bank settlements, carving out part of Israel with majority Arab populations for incorporation into the new Palestinian state. But that was evidently seen as being too accommodating by the PA administration and its negotiating team to the Israeli agenda.

The fiction that all the problems assailing the geography and the states of the Middle East would be resolved only if and when the conflict between the State of Israel and the Palestinians would conclude with a non-aggression treaty resulting in the creation of two states existing side by side, with cooperative trade and economic partnerships, persists. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one manufactured by and for the Palestinians ever resentful of the presence of a Jewish state.

While the Palestinians feel entitled to present all of their demands expecting them to be accepted, they are at the very same time unprepared to surrender any portion of what they feel entitled to for the purpose of satisfying Israeli expectations. They behave as though they have all the winning cards at their disposal and the Israelis have no right to harbour any expectations whatever. And around them both the Middle East slowly implodes, with no input whatever from Israel, the perennial scapegoat.

The very sticking point of the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state illustrates their uncompromising viciousness. What they say is that no Jews, none whatever, will be permitted to pollute by their presence, what is destined to be recognized as land dedicated to the Palestinians as their sovereign state. In no other place in the world would a combatant who had lost numerous violent conflicts behave as though they had achieved their goal.

Nowhere else in the world would a country that had been forced to defend itself time after time from a concerted and collective determination to drive it from its legitimate geographical occupation, be faced with the prospect of surrendering what it had successfully fought for in routing its enemies, as does the State of Israel. To the conqueror, clearly does not go the spoils. The land that Israel successfully defended, its foes routed, its most holy sites liberated from those intent on restraining them from worshiping there should by rights remain in Israel's possession.

Turkey will not surrender land to its Kurdish population for a land of their own; it contests Greece for Cypress, it has launched conflicts against both Greece and the Kurdish militants, it has never admitted its genocide against the Armenians, yet like the rest of the world of Islamic nations, it insists that Israel, whose long heritage in the Middle East cannot be contested, and whose dispersed people in the Middle East diaspora were hounded from their homes, their properties confiscated, be treated like a pariah.

Although 800,000 or more Sephardic Jews were expelled from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and elsewhere on the creation of the State of Israel, while some 700,000 Palestinians fled the conflict inflicted upon Israel in 1948 by a collective Arab army determined to destroy the fledgling country, it was only the Palestinians whom the world and the United Nations recognized as refugees requiring aid, never the Jewish Arabs.

While Israel welcomed the fleeing Jews seeking haven and absorbed them into Israeli society, the Arab Middle East spurned the opportunity to welcome fleeing Palestinians, on the theory that if they remained refugees they would remain as a living reproof to the world, blaming Israel for their condition as refugees. Refugees elsewhere in the world are absorbed and within a generation they are no longer refugees but citizens of other countries.

Only the Palestinians proudly remain refugees, content to live on the welfare and generosity of the international community, adamantly refusing to be responsible for their own welfare and to make their way in the world; self-respect and self-reliance seems a concept completely unknown to their system of values and priorities. They are adept at cadging funds rather than advancing their interests on their own.

And they haven't been disappointed in that area, knowing full well that their 'plight' demands that they be given charity. Knowing also that threats made by the U.S. to withhold funding as was done when the administration of the U.S. attempted to dissuade the PA from directly approaching the United Nations to achieve statehood status were not going to be followed through.

And now, to further hearten the PA, Kerry announced in Bethlehem that the U.S. planned an additional $75-million in aid to help improve roads, schools and other civil infrastructure. To 'boost' public support among Palestinians for the peace process.  Cities and towns that have all the appearances and functions of cities and towns anywhere else in the world are still called "refugee camps" in the long-standing conceit of refugee status for the Palestinians.

The funding that they receive through the international community, the ever-forgiving United Nations, European Union and the United States, has always been partially set aside to bolster the personal fortunes of the PA authorities; from the time of Yasser Arafat to the present. These bribes, intended or otherwise, help the PA to feel entitled to demand anything and everything at any time.

This, from an authority whose legality ran out four years ago and which has never, in the interval to follow, called an election, for the good enough reason that they are aware no election is required if they are to retain their very remunerative positions.