Insurmountable Differences

"To glorify the murders of innocent women and men as heroes is an outrage ... How can he say that he stands against terrorism when he embraces the perpetrators of terrorism and glorifies them as heroes?
"I'm wondering what a young Palestinian would think when he sees the leader of the Palestinian people embrace people who axed innocent men and women -- axed their heads or blew them up or riddled them with bullets. What's a young Palestinian supposed to think about the future?
"This is not the way to achieve peace."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

What's a young Palestinian to think? Surely Mr. Netanyahu knows better than to ask that rhetorical question. A young Palestinian will think, of course, that everything is taking its ordained course. A young Palestinian will nod in acknowledgement of the fact that there are martyrs who are finally being permitted to return home because of the successful insistence of the Palestinian Authority that those whom Jews label as murderers, convicted from their crimes of homicidal intent, are heroes.

Those young Palestinians have themselves been groomed from an early age, both in their homes and certainly in their schools through the curricula designed by the Palestinian Authority to teach them that the Jews represent foreign usurpers who forcefully took Arab land meant to be their heritage in perpetuity. Land that must by any and all means required, to be returned to the Arab Palestinians, for they were taught, there never existed at any time, Jewish Palestinians who inherit that ancient land.

"We, the Palestinians, are under the Israeli occupation. Israel is taking our land and giving it to Jewish settlers. This is the only reason we don't have peace here ... Netanyahu is trying to divert the attention from the real reason to a fake one."
Wasil Abu Yousif, Palestinian official

The fake one is the need for Israeli authorities to remain ever vigilant over the very real prospect of continued rocket and suicide attacks from Palestinians against Jews. If the settlement of the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis had been as important to the Palestinians as they claim, previous offers would have been accepted to achieve a state-by-state solution to the current and ongoing conflict.

This is a conflict on the one hand of continual attacks, and on the other, of continual response to those attacks. It is a conflict comprised of conniving and incitement to 'oppose' the presence of the oppressor; the state that must resign itself to ongoing attempts to foil attacks against its citizens. And in those attempts be viewed as an occupying force. An occupying force whose presence in disputed areas would not be there were it not for the need of self-protection.

Israel, pressured to heed the United States' peace envoy, Secretary of State John Kerry, and the 'roadmap' for peace, agreed to the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for an agreement from PA President Mahmoud Abbas (who urges 'resistance' upon Palestinians, against 'occupation') to continue with negotiations toward a two-state solution to the conflict between the two and to refrain from citing the presence of the West Bank settlements as reason to cut off negotiating contact.

"I know that you're committed to peace. I know that I'm committed to peace, but unfortunately, given the actions and words of Palestinian leaders, there's growing doubt in Israel that the Palestinians are committed to peace", commented Mr. Netanyahu to Mr. Kerry. The longstanding practise by the Palestinian Authority of paying out awards to the families of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons found guilty of committing atrocities against Israeli citizens a case in point.

The honouring of Palestinian "martyrs" who have taken Israeli lives while sacrificing their own in the effort, by naming squares and streets and buildings in their honour, is hardly conducive to good and meaningful relations between geographic neighbours. The encouragement through public utterances, television programs, story books and school curricula to Palestinian children to consider themselves future martyrs for the greater glory of returning the whole of 'Palestine" to the Palestinians yet another telling indication of motivations not for peace but continued conflict.

But the situation doesn't stop there. It goes on interminably with the insistence of the Palestinian Authority and its negotiators that the 'right of return' be recognized. While the reality of Israel representing a Jewish state is not to be recognized. Even though a future Palestinian state has been firmly designated as a state for Palestinians only; no Jewish presence will be allowed under any circumstances in contrast to the Palestinian Arab presence and citizenship in Israel itself.

The Palestinians feel entitled to claiming East Jerusalem as their heritage, and as the site for their future capital, as part of their future state. Entirely depriving Israel of its ancient heritage in its most sacred Judaic sites within the Old City, off limits to Jewish worship under Jordanian rule before the 1967 war when Israel took the geography from the last combined Arab assault against Israel. And even now, off limits to Jewish worshippers even under Israeli rule, lest Muslim orthodoxy be outraged.

And here's a telling little item; tentative negotiations and agreement has been reached to carve out portions of the West Bank where Jewish settlements exist to incorporate them into greater Israel. While compensating areas of majority-Muslim enclaves within Israel are to be carved out for inclusion into a nascent Palestinian state. A seemingly reasonable solution to what is seen as encroachments by Jewish settlers onto future Palestinian land.

So why is it that the Palestinian Arab populations of those areas are so resistant to such a move that would deprive them of Israeli citizenship and deliver unto them Palestinian citizenship?