Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is again playing dumb, publicly asserting that the Palestinians, who can’t even keep from slaughtering themselves, are opposed to the policies of the violently anti-Israel Hamas terrorist organization.
This is really getting old.
Lost among the escalating violence in the Palestinian Authority-controlled territories is the fact that the present situation is the direct result of the Palestinian Arabs democratically deciding that they want the worst of the terrorists among them to be their leaders.
Israel, America, Europe, everybody pressed the Palestinian Authority to allow true democratic elections. And then the general public overwhelmingly elected Hamas.
While most of the mainstream media is extra careful to not label the members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas as terrorists, there are some who refuse to be so “open minded” as to afford the murderers of men, women and children any such courtesy. That minority of journalists, however, is often accused of unfairly slanting the news and driving away the average user with “subjective” language.
Israel’s leadership is making the predictable error of being dragged into a process of thinking it can deal with PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and talk peace with him, while somehow bypassing the democratically-elected representatives of the Palestinian Arabs - the Hamas terrorist organization.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested following talks with her Saudi counterpart on Tuesday that the Arab world has come to a concensus on the need to recognize Israel’s right to exist as the Jewish state.
Either Rice is visiting a Middle East in some parallel universe, or she is severely out of touch with the will of the Arab street.
Again, the international media and many Western government are jumping the gun, and mistaking Hamas’ efforts to secure financial aid as an indication the terror group is suddenly ready to abandon its core positions and live in peaceful coexistence with Israel.
The source of the misguided enthusiasm this time is news of an imminent Palestinian Authority unity government, under the terms of which Hamas appears to be indirectly recognizing the Jewish state.
But it is not peace that is driving this move. Rather it is the crushing economic sanctions the PA has been living under since Hamas took over the government in January. Hamas has seen its popularity plummet after being unable to pay over 150,000 PA employees for the past half year. The group is desperate to secure funds. But certainly not desperate enough to renounce the virulent hatred for and brutal violence against Israel that brought it to power.
Asked by Israel’s Army Radio if Hamas’ implicit acceptance of negotiations with Israel signalled an “end to the conflict,” Hamas government spokesman Ghazi Hamad said Tuesday:
“That’s not what we’re saying. We have no problem accepting a state with the 1967 borders.” However, “We are not willing to recognize Israel. This is our country.”
A day earlier, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told Ha’aretz:
“We would like to have the embargo lifted, but we will not surrender to external dictates and we will not agree to sacrifice the interests and rights of the Palestinian people.”
The left-wing Israeli newspaper also noted that the draft unity government proposal also provides for Hamas to reject any previous agreements between Israel and the PA that it feels do not “serve Palestinian interests.” And while it does call for a halt to acts of terror inside sovereign Israel, the deal gives a green light for continued violence against Jews living in Judea and Samaria.
Unfortunately, the international community, and in particular the mainstream media, continue to see only what they want to see, rather than listening to what Hamas has to say or actually reading the documents that are purportedly forming the base of future peace and stability.
As anti-terror operations in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip draw to a close, Israel is teaching its terrorist antagonists some lessons, but if recent media reports are to be believed, they are not the lessons most would have hoped for.
According to Israel’s largest newspaper (and Egyptian newspapers before that), Jerusalem is prepared to release up to 800 jailed terrorists in return for the freedom of IDF Corporal Gilad Shalit. This after weeks of clandestine negotiations, despite Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s public declarations that Israel would not negotiate with terrorists or succumb to blackmail.
Similarly, rumors are rife of a possible prisoner exchange with Hizb’allah.
Interestingly, both of these prisoner swaps, if indeed they are in the works, would take place after major Israeli military operations sparked by the abductions. Israel could have agreed to and conducted an exchange without going to war in Gaza and Lebanon.
It would seem to defeat justification of going to war (to create a future deterrent) if Israel anyway intends to give the terrorists what they wanted in the first place. And it certainly signals to both Hamas and Hizb’allah that future kidnappings will be worthwhile.
Israel is apparently operating under the misguided assumption that the terrorists will view future kidnappings as too costly because of the men they lost during this summer’s fighting. What Jerusalem for some reason fails to grasp, even after all this time, is that the numbers of men lost in the fighting or gained in the subsequent prisoner swaps are unimportant to the terrorists. What matters is the precedent, the damage to Israel’s morale, and the further deterioration of Israel’s image in the region as a power not to be tempted.
Having been molded by his society’s death cult, a young “Palestinian” participating in a Hamas summer camp looks forward to soon being able to take part in the national pastime of murdering Jews:
“When we grow up, we will attack and kill the Israelis,” 8-year-old Iyad Abdel-Jawad tells a reporter from Agence France Presse.
Hamas officials insist their summer camps exist to give “Palestinian” children a safe place to learn and interact, and are not used to train future killers.
Pictures such as these would suggest otherwise:
For more information on the failure of the “Palestinians” to educate their children for peace with Israel, visit Teach Kids Peace.
Hamas wants Israel to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza, and has threatened to murder more Jews if Jerusalem does not retract its refusal to do so.
Hamas also insists - despite the fact it is the one desperately looking for a truce - that it’s forces are winning the battle in Gaza, and will continue to “humiliate” the Israelis if the IDF is not reined in.
Hmmm, let’s see, 70 dead terrorists (according to IDF estimates) to one dead Israeli soldier. Now who is humiliating whom?
It all seems an odd way to seek a cessation of hostilities. But, that’s the “Palestinians” for you.
For more than a decade Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Authority flaunted the terms of the “Oslo” peace agreements by refusing to combat and end anti-Jewish “Palestinian” terror.
Now the failure of the Western-brokered land-for-peace process has reached all new lows.
Hamas, one of the terror groups the peace process should have made obsolete and put out of business, is today in control of the PA and has ordered its Western-trained Israeli-armed “policemen” to fight the Israelis and protect the terrorists.
How far must this go before those in power admit this whole formula was a mistake and realize that a new course of action is needed?
