Politic?

Israel, a Jewish State in an Arab Geography

"This year is looking to maybe even be a record year."
"It's without doubt due to the fact that there have been changes in the White House."
Hagit Ofran, director, Settlement Watch, Peace Now, Israel

"Israel is bent on entrenching the military occupation and its illegal settlement enterprise, further reaffirming its intentions of displacing Palestine and replacing it with 'Greater Israel'."
"[The] global community [should] hold Israel accountable for acting outside the law before it destroys the prospects of a viable Palestinian state, peace and stability indefinitely."
Hanan Ashrawi, executive committee, Palestine Liberation Organization

"There will be no more uprooting of settlements in the land of Israel."
"We are here to stay."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

A January 26, 2017, photo of new apartments under construction in the Israeli settlement of Har Homa.

It was another Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who had decided to experiment by unilaterally having Israel withdraw settlements and its military from the Gaza Strip. Having done so, it represented an opportunity for Gazans to mount an internal program to build state infrastructure in preparation for assuming future statehood. Instead, armed Palestinian groups wrought havoc and violence throughout the Strip. Until Hamas came in, dispersed their rival Fatah, and imposed Islamist rule. The Hamas charter clear in its purpose; to destroy the State of Israel.

Hanan Ashrawi, a spokesperson and executive committee member for the PLO speaks venomously of Israeli intentions, decrying its hamstringing of the Palestinian Authority to construct a viable state. That state-in-waiting is hugely dependent on the Israeli military to keep Hamas from destroying Fatah's hold on the PA. And veiling the Palestinian Liberation Organization as a group interested in peace and stability is rather a stretch given the violence and death it strewed in Israel, reaching into the global community to kidnap, bomb and hijack airliners and sea vessels to kill Jews.

It was a viciously murderous wing of the PLO (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) that murdered Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. So for the PLO to lecture the world on Israel's failings as a country dedicated to peace and getting along with its neighbour is rather pathetic. An estimated 400,000 Jews occupy about 150 settlements built in the West Bank, with another 200,000 Israelis living in East Jerusalem, part of greater Israel, which Palestinians aspire to gain as their future state capital.

On the other hand, fully 1.7-Million Arab Palestinians live within Israel with full citizenship rights, and thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank travel daily to Israel for employment because the Palestinian Authority is so consumed with slandering Israel internationally and pocketing the funding that comes its way as charity from Europe and the United Nations, it hasn't the time to make the effort to build adequate civil structures that would create employment other than with government.

An Israeli settler holds a flag with slogans at the Amona outpost, northeast of Ramallah, on February 1, 2017.

Most countries independent of one another and fully sovereign but living next to one another, recognize an exchange of people, citizens of one or the other country often travel to live and to work in the neighbouring country. There is no animosity, no threats, no danger from one to the other. Should a Jewish Israeli, on the other hand, happen to wander into a Palestinian West Bank town or city their lives would be immediately forfeit, such is the extent of enmity deliberately cultivated by Palestinians against Jews.

During the Great War, when France and Britain and Russia among the Entente powers were fighting the German-led Central powers and on the Eastern Front the Arabs, subservient to the Ottoman Empire initiated an uprising. At that time too, Zionism began to exert its influence. As the Arabs, with aid from France and Britain, succeeded in freeing themselves from their Turkish overlords, they anticipated being lords in their own lands, even while France, Britain and Italy were occupying powers.

It was in 1918 that Britain informed the Arab leadership of the existence and meaning to them of the Balfour Declaration and attempted to convince Sharif Hussein ibn Ali to accept the Jews as neighbours in a parcel of land dedicated to the Jewish diaspora return to their native heritage geography in Palestine. Arab refusal was swift, and though 100 years have passed, their attitude has been unchanged.

Palestinian leaders have time and again refused to sign peace agreements with Israel that would lead to having a Palestinian state side by side with that of the Jewish state. The agenda is to destroy the Jewish state which they will never recognize, and to regain the land upon which it sits, whereupon the longed-for Palestinian state would arise, triumphant, an intention shielded from international eyes and ears, but well publicized for Arab eyes and ears.

Israel, truth be told, has no negotiating partners. Palestinian leaders who outright refused the UN's offer of partition in 1948, which Israel gratefully accepted, continue to refuse partition.