Unsavoury Political Realities

"President Abbas specifically wants to have a clear-cut answer on whether Israel is ready to end its occupation and give Palestinians freedom in their own state or not."
"The need to identify a time period for the withdrawal of Israel from Palestinian land has never been greater."
"We are explaining to them [United Nations] our pain and our problems in order for us and for the Israelis and for the region to live in peace and security."
Majdi Al Khaldi, top diplomatic adviser, Palestinian Authority

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas political leader Khaled Mashal (Photo: Reuters)

Ah, and that's just the problem. Peace and security. Israel doesn't have it. Israel has never enjoyed peace and security. The Jewish state has repeatedly been violently assailed by her neighbours in a vicious tangle of antipathy to the presence of a nation of Jews living within a geographic enclave of Arabs and Muslims. The Arab League has a problem with a Jewish state which they like to speak of as an 'apartheid state'.

It is not Israel that separates Jews from Muslims, Christians from Kurds and Druze, but the Arab states themselves. Israel has absorbed almost a million Palestinians, giving them full citizenship, able to vote their member-choices into the Israeli parliament (Knesset), where they may serve in the military and where a member of the Supreme Court of Israel is an Israeli Palestinian. The Palestinian Authority plans, should it reach nationhood, to erase all traces of Jewish presence in their state.

And this is precisely what the surrounding Arab states did when the State of Israel became a reality; all the Arab Jews who had lived in various countries of the Arab and Muslim Middle East for thousands of years were expelled, their properties expropriated, persona non-grata. They numbered around 800,000; a greater number than the original 600,000 Palestinians who fled Israel in 1948 as the Arab armies advanced to destroy the fledgling Jewish state.

No Arab Jews have sought to mount violence against those who expelled them. Since that time, one conflict after another has seen Israel stubbornly ensconced, and her neighbours defeated in their purpose. And then Hamas was formed as a branch of the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, whose sole purpose was and remains the destruction of Israel. So much for peace and security which the Palestinian Authority claims they require, but continue to inflict upon Israel anything but.

Although Palestinian Arabs living within Israel as citizens, given the choice would not, in the majority elect to live within a new Palestinian state -- preferring to remain where they are, as citizens of Israel, in the prospect of carving territory out of the West Bank where the Jewish settlements would become part of Israel and the Arab-majority populated areas of Israel would be transferred to a new Palestinian state -- the majority of West Bank Palestinians would vote for Hamas, not Fatah.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (Photo: EPA)

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has stated he is fed up with 'Israeli foot-dragging" on progress toward an independent Palestinian state. This is a state that would prefer to choke on its own bile rather than agree that Israel is a predominately and purposely Jewish state whose right to exist is beyond question and should be beyond 'resistance'. The 'resistance' that the Palestinians claim is their right to practise against an 'oppressor' is, in reality resistance to the existence of the State of Israel.

Israel was not made an occupying power by choice, but by necessity. With the last of the conflicts resulting in its victory against those arraigned against it, Israel succeeded in taking the Gaza Strip and Sinai from Egypt, and the West Bank and east Jerusalem from Jordan both of which occupied those areas (with the exception of the Sinai peninsula) illegally when Britain's departure left a vacuum they swiftly filled. In world history it has always been the vanquished who languished under the victor.

There is not a country in the world that has voluntarily surrendered its geography acquired through its reaction against a violent assault upon its geographic integrity and right to exist, yet Israel is expected to do just that. Israel exchanged the Sinai with Egypt for peace. The Palestinians do not and perhaps cannot give Israel the peace it requires in exchange for its agreement respecting the many demands of the Palestinians, given its alliance with Hamas; the very existence of Hamas mitigates against peace.

But of course it is not only Hamas, a terrorist group recognized as such by most civilized Western countries, but the PA's own Fatah party that remains a threat to Israel's existence, along with other terrorist militias, all of whom burnish the ambition to destroy Israel. Hamas demands as a condition of a 'hudna', a period during which a ceasefire would be recognized, albeit temporarily, that Israel commit suicide by opening the border crossings, permitting the creation of a Gaza airport and seaport, and the release of Hamas terrorists from its prisons.

Israel would do all these things if it could be assured that no more conflict would erupt with attacks by Palestinian terrorist groups. There are no such assurances that would be forthcoming; indeed, Islamic Jihad, Hamas and Hezbollah, among others, state with no equivocation they will never surrender their weapons to become other than terrorists. Demilitarization, then, is not an option for them, and suicide is no option for Israel.

And nor is Mahmoud Abbas overly fond of Hamas and its leaders who have planned on a number of occasions to assassinate him as a hindrance to their future plans. "Unity has terms. This situation [unity government] does not represent any kind of unity. If Hamas does not want one authority, one law, one weapon, we will not accept a partnership with it", stated Mr. Abbas of the umpteenth attempt to meld Fatah and Hamas into a shared leadership of the Palestinian Authority.

"With every passing day [of the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza], more blood was shed. Is this the victory they talk about? Regrettably, I can only say the results are tragic", he sneered of the statement by Ismail Radwan, that Mr. Abbas' comments "contradict the spirit of the new partnership and play down the victory of the resistance."

A vast majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip consider Hamas to be the winner of the summer's conflict, with the group receiving a significant boost in popularity, according to a new poll.

Well, in fact, yes, that is the victory referred to. And a poll of Palestinian opinion consolidates that 'victory' belief:

The findings, published Tuesday by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), show that 4 in 5 Palestinians surveyed believe Hamas won the Gaza war, while only 3% believe Israel came out the winner. A similar majority see Israel as responsible for the outbreak of hostilities.
Around two-thirds believe the ceasefire agreement satisfies Palestinian interests, while 94% were satisfied with Hamas' military performance in confronting Israeli forces. In an evaluation of the performance of various Palestinian actors, the PA and Abbas received 36% and 39% positive ratings respectively, while Khaled Meshaal and Hamas received 78% and 88% respectively.