From Bad to Worse
The Oslo accord--and the four-power road map agreement--called for an end to terrorism. This, instead, is a manifesto for terrorism. It does not require that the Palestinian Authority dismantle terrorism but just the opposite. It calls for continuing violence and for "popular resistance" against the Israeli occupation "in all its forms, places and policies," and "by all means," language long recognized as code for terrorism and as legitimizing the murder of Israelis. Nor does it restrict terrorism to the West Bank but only suggests that terrorism be focused in the West Bank, without precluding Palestinians from carrying out terrorist acts against Israel inside its pre-1967 borders.
Most critically, it advocates the right of return for some 4 million Palestinian refugees, as they define themselves today, the descendants of the 700,000 Arabs who fled during the 1948 war primarily at the behest of their own leaders. These refugees, under the new Palestinian manifesto, are now proposed to be returned to pre-1967 Israel, virtually putting the Jews into a minority in their own country--the very situation that the United Nations ruled out in deciding the original partition of Palestine.
Tragically, this document and the violence in Gaza have undermined the domestic support for the main program of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (whom Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah compared, unhelpfully, to Neville Chamberlain). That program--known as realignment--contemplated a dramatic withdrawal from roughly 90 percent of the West Bank. Today, 49 percent of the Israeli public opposes the realignment plan and only 38 percent supports it. It is clear that Israeli withdrawals and concessions have brought about not Palestinian moderation but just the opposite. It is equally clear that the proposed realignment of the West Bank's borders will now simply create a new battle line, just as the disengagement in Gaza created new battle lines. A withdrawal from the West Bank would put Hamas within range of Israel's main population centers and infrastructure, raising the fear that a rocket launched from the West Bank could hit the country's most densely populated areas, like Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Ben-Gurion airport. Israel cannot even begin to contemplate exposing its citizens to such peril. It will have to review its concept of the strongest defensive line.
It is more clear than ever that the core of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute stems not from Israel's unwillingness to compromise but from the nature of its adversary; and that the desire among Palestinians to eliminate Israel is too powerful, the adherence to violence too pervasive, to overcome. Most fair-minded observers share the Israeli conclusion that there is no Palestinian partner for peace. As the leading Egyptian paper, Al-Ahram, pointed out: "The Palestinians must be aware by now that they can no longer count on Arab help, economically, politically, or militarily . ... Arab nations have had enough ... of the slogans and rhetoric that have gotten us nowhere. ... The Palestinians have lost Arab backing both on the official and nonofficial levels." And the CEO of the Arab News Agency Al Arabiya wrote, "Was the result worth all the damage it caused?"
The Middle East equation today could hardly be more stark or depressing. It reveals once again that Hamas and the Palestinians, now joined by Hezbollah, armed and financed by Iran, wish to get rid of Israel. This will be a "long war" in which victory will be the culmination of a series of unavoidable catastrophes.
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