Looking For Peace

"This is an unacceptable situation for us and despite the difficulty of dealing with an individual assailant who is incited to kill Jews, we will act with force and in other ways to harm those who try to carry out attacks."
Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon

"Politically, there is no sign of any hope and on the economic side there is no sign, too. People are frustrated by political groups who failed to bring them independence, so therefore they behave individually."
Jihad Harb, Palestinian commentator

"The terrorist attacks against Israelis over the last few days are a direct result of the incitement and hatred propagated in Palestinian schools and media. We are disappointed that so far President [Mahmoud] Abbas has not condemned these acts of terrorism as one would expect from a partner in peace talks."
Mark Regev, spokesman, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

"We only just started talking about concessions and they immediately got an appetite and they murder Israeli citizens. When we concede, when we hand over territory, they murder us. We have to get this rule into our heads. When we stand strong, even if there are no negotiations, there is quiet."
Israeli Cabinet Minister Naftali Bennett

To all of the above there is truth. It is an unacceptable situation. And there appears to be no solution on the horizon. This is a situation that has been allowed to continue for far too long. In the process, the Palestinians who fled an impending war meant to destroy the newly declared state of Israel, left behind all that they wished to return to. Those that remained had no need to return; they reaped the reward of citizenship.

If the world looked on the situation in a perfectly fair manner, there would be the balance of recognition; that while approximately 750,000 Palestinians fled to find temporary refuge elsewhere than the land they claim means everything to them, 800,000 Jews were expelled, their belongings confiscated by the Arab states that disowned them.

There has never been restitution for those Arab Jews who had lived for millennia in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Libya. They did, however, find welcome refuge in the State of Israel.

Yet the Palestinians insist that the right of return be recognized for the several generations now totalling several millions of those that fled, Arabs primarily from Egypt and Jordan who had lived in what they termed Palestine for a mere century, among the Jews who called themselves the original Palestinians; Arabs migrating to live in the area who outnumbered the Jews but were refused, under the British Mandate and the Arab influence a country of their own.

The Palestinian Authority that grew out of the Oslo Accord, meant to grow into the status of a quasi-self-governing body responsible for the civic well-being of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, was given Israeli government assistance toward achieving a political and social infrastructure for future governance. But what their children were taught in their school curricula was not a path to peace but a tendentious path to 'resistance'.

Palestinians were enjoined to 'resist' and resist they did, encouraged by the Palestinian authorities to give ample evidence of their dissatisfaction. Out of this grew an occupation meant to curtail violence and protect Jews from the hatred of Arabs who were incapable of viewing them as future neighbours. Nothing has changed; agitation from the PA authorities continues; children are reminded that Israel occupies land meant for a Palestinian state; all of Israel.

Israel falls into the trap of forgetting from time to time that the Arab tribal mentality respects firmness, not concessions meant to ameliorate hatred and blame. And when Palestinians see that those who commit grievous acts of violence and who are jailed as a result will eventually see freedom through Israeli authorities agreeing to "good-will" gestures freeing violent criminals, this is recognized as a contemptible weakness to be probed and manipulated.

When murderers are released from Israeli prisons they are welcomed back to their Palestinian community with open arms and celebration, with Palestinian authorities honouring their heroic exploits in bombing civilians at restaurants, shopping malls, in buses and other crowded venues certain to exact maximum damage. They are honoured by street-namings, and institutions named after them.

Their families will have received financial support in gratitude and honour of the perceived sacrifice on behalf of the Palestinian cause that these criminals chose to perpetrate on innocent people, but guilty nonetheless because they are Jews. With the peace talks, as hopeless as they seem, ongoing, there has been a stepped-up incidence of attacks on Jews.

How else to read this resort to violent hatred than as a fairly clear indication that two sovereign states existing side by side will forever be an imaginary otherworld whose reality will never result in a solution freeing two peoples from fear, hatred and violence? Because rage and distrust, antipathy and violence rule the day.