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Posted on 07/14/2003 8:01:11 PM PDT by forty_years
As Democrats continue to try to bring down the presidency of George W. Bush by focusing myopically on sixteen words in his last SOTU address, we are treated today with what is the real state of affairs in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Few things point more vividly to the desperate condition the Palestinians are in and from which they must extricate themselves before freedom and independence can be theirs.
For freedom to be theirs, however, they must first free themselves of the terrorists in their midst, of the fanatical anti-Jewish hatred of their school curriculum, and of the thugs who do the remorseless bidding of Arafat and Co., known politely as the Palestinian Authority (PA). If the PA is to have any standing in the world, and it must if it is to be deemed serious about its movement for national liberation, then it must put the quietus on Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Hizbollah, and other terrorist groups first. As the Bush plan dictates: no end to terrorism, no deal. Compromise stops there. As long as Arafat and his fans, the Europeans, interfere, the less likely there will be peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Hey, I thought the Europeans wanted peace?
Being responsible for one's own freedom has to come from the people themselves who elect, or follow, the right leadership that understands compromise, not fanatical dreams of eliminating Israel. This is especially true if the majority of Israelis want what the Palestinians should want: a state of their own. That is, their own state existing peacefully alongside an Israel that remains intact.
Facing the choice—the one between going along with leadership that will condemn the Palestinians to the status quo or one that leads them to self-determination—means, of course, the real possibility of bloodshed among Palestinians themselves, between those who favor terrorist tactics and targets and those wanting to rid themselves of murderers and negotiate with the Israelis. The terrorists are not going away like spurned lovers never to harass or stalk again.
Nope. They plan to stay. And they plan to kill. With them still roving the landscape they offer no hope to a people long used to having no hope at all. Not with the leadership they have been dealt with and with the West, including the United States, having appeased their terrorists for so long. But for all the sins of the West and as cruel as it sounds, only the Palestinians can shape their own destiny by ridding themselves of the homebred violent forces that will undo any real progress toward Palestinian statehood. Look at it this way, no one wants the Israelis to be the ones to clean up shop, least of all the Israelis.
Which means, in a way, that the Palestinians are on their own. They have to do their own work in bringing about the leadership that will lead their people to freedom. Not some messianic mediocrity like Arafat or thugs with support from Tehran like Hizbollah. If there is a critical enough mass of Palestinians who force the hand of the terrorists, it will be by no means pretty but absolutely critical in the Palestinian people's rightful claim of national self-determination.
According to the poll linked above, it appears a majority of Palestinians in the occupied territories, whose predecessors once lived in what is now Israel would, upon the establishment of a Palestinian state, choose to stay put or go to Jordan or Lebanon rather than return to Israel from which their ancestors were exiled. No doubt that was a terrible injustice but giving Israel back to four million of their descendants is not negotiable. It would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
Remember, Israel is NOT the United States. It never intended to be and is not presenting itself as such. It is not a land open to immigration from any and all ethnic groups. Whether or not one is a Zionist it is fair to claim a national identity for the Jews, when the Arabs have 22 currently and eventually, one hopes, 23. As things stand and will remain, Israel occupies 1% of the Middle East. The Palestinians can rightfully have their nation state even as Palestinians have kinsmen living in other Arab nations where they are currently treated as second class citizens.
Which means that Palestine will be for the Palestinians, not for the Jews, nor, for that matter, Christians from abroad who have a yen for the Levant. Palestine will no more be the U.S. than Israel is. To recognize this requires compromise.
What is that compromise? It is conceptually simple but, concretely, extremely difficult for the Palestinians: giving up terrorism and recognizing Israel has the right to exist. It also means recognizing that terrorism will not win and Israel is here to stay. Don't like it? Tough. More terrorism will only make matters worse for the people terrorists claim to represent. Yet they never had their kinsmen's interests at heart in the first place. If they were to win, they would persecute their own the way the Taliban did, the way the PA currently does even before there is any liberation, being tied as it is to a palsied dictator and terrorist and his terrorist allies.
It is a mantra worth repeating: terrorism no longer works after 9/11. Also, Bush doesn't tolerate terrorism too well. He is not the equivocator of Clinton, Bush First, Reagan (with respect to Islamism), and, of course, that doozy of appeasers, Carter. That's why Hamas wants to take Bush on. They want a fight. For murderers like them seek their enemies' aggression to justify their own and go out in a blaze of infanticidal glory.
A horrendous rite of passage awaits the Palestinians if the "peace process" turns out to be what it probably will become: a "war process" fought among the Palestinians themselves until, with the aid of Israel and the U.S. who would only be too happy to help, they scour away the rot that threatens both Israel and future Palestine.
The protesters pelted Khalil Shikaki, the director of the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research, with eggs, smashed computers and assaulted the nine staff members on duty. A female worker was treated in hospital for her injuries. "This is a message for everyone not to tamper with our rights," one of the rioters said.
A cadre of Palestinians wants things to be what they've always been for their leadership: fanatical, murderous, and uncompromising. Such is the way of extremists. Does one negotiate with a Timothy McVeigh? Yet one could with a Mandela. Not knowing the difference embarrasses the ignorance of the terror-appeasing Left and their unlikely cohorts on the far Right. Even Mandela himself no longer knows it, wedded as he has been to Arafat's propaganda. A whole swath of progressives forgot, exactly, how movements of national liberation are to be fought if one takes the noble examples from the 20th century. But anything goes now days, and for quite some time, if the ones seeking liberation are deemed justified in killing children deliberately.
There will be chatter about how one can't impose values on a foreign culture. To do so will be judged cultural and moral "imperialism." Yet who inspired Martin Luther King? An Indian practicing an entirely different religion. Certainly differences will exist between cultures but there are immutable values that do not bend. If the Palestinians do not learn them they will sink deeper into the torpor and horror of their existence. Our heart should go out to them, but not to excuse those who murder innocents in their name.
With Israel willing to negotiate even after the debacle of Camp David 2000, whose failure was the result of the unresolved dispute over the Palestinian right of return, and Sharon being the first Israeli leader to use the O word, the Palestinians will have to do their share, even as the burden on them is far, far heavier than on the Israelis. It is they, after all, who don't have a homeland to call their own. But only they can claim it if they acknowledge Israel's right to exist and renounce terrorism.
The former acknowledgment seems to be implied by 90% of the population indicating they would opt to stay put after independence. The latter is iffy. Today's thuggish shutdown of a democratic process—non-state manipulated poll-taking—reveals the Palestinians to be at a cross-roads. Which fork will they take? The one that leads to a revolution for national liberation from within, achieved through bringing about the right leadership? Or the other leading to more of the same that has Arafat thumb his nose at Barak and instigate the second uprising, which has left more dead on both sides than ever should have died?
Nuff said.
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