By J. Zel Lurie
DELRAY BEACH, Florida — Last July Secretary of State, John Kerry, conceived a peace baby to be delivered in nine months.
The gestation period was full of turmoil. Mr. Kerry devoted an extraordinary amount of time to move the parties to negotiate until agreement. He spoke to Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestine Authority, no less than 34 times and to President Benjamin Netanyahu almost twice as many. Conferences occurred in various capitals of the world that Mr. Kerry was visiting.
One of the chief obstacles to peace has been the Israeli Housing Minister who doubled the number of units constructed in 2013 to 2,543 units according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics which was twice that in 2012. In 2014, the number of new units has hit the jackpot.
According to the New York Times, no less than 13,000 were under construction when the peace baby was still born on April 29th.
Tzipi Livni accused Uri Ariel, the minister of housing, of sabotaging the peace.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was unwilling to hamper Mr.Ariel. The announcement of reconciliation between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas which calls for the destruction of Israel and its charter gave him an easy out and he ended the negotiations.
The purpose of this column is not to place the blame for the temporary failure of peace. I say temporary because everyone agrees that the status quo is not sustainable. A few days after the end of the negotiations, Netanyahu told his cabinet that they would have to find a way to evacuate close to 100,000 Jewish settlers who have built homes outside of the barrier fence which Israel has erected.
The purpose of this column is to contradict the common belief that the entry of Hamas into peace negotiations makes them impossible.
This is the second or third time that the PLO and Hamas have signed an agreement. All of the agreements were similar. They call for a new government of technocrats not affiliated with either faction which would prepare for long overdue elections within six months.
All the previous agreements were sabotaged by Hamas which feared it would lose the majority of delegates to the Palestinian Parliament which they had won in the previous election many years ago. Actually, they won a plurality of the votes not the majority, but they acquired a majority of the delegates.
I don’t know what the current agreement says and how if anything it differs from previous agreements, but I suspect that Hamas has been cowed by economic strangulation and Israel’s military force. Its fulminations that it would never recognize Israel are just rhetoric.
Actually, it deals with organs in the government of the Israel that it will never recognize on an almost daily basis.
Elections were due many years ago. They were not held because of the division between Hamas and the PLO. If and when they are finally held, a united Palestinian people can negotiate an agreement with Israel under the aegis of the United States.
The entry of Hamas in the negotiations makes peace, which must come eventually, possible. Unfortunately, it won’t come in my lifetime. {Editor’s note: the author is a centenarian)
Meanwhile, the cooperation between Israel and Palestinian security forces continues. The bubble which surrounds the Israeli people (which includes my daughter, granddaughter, great-grandson, and great-granddaughter who will arrive at the end of June) remains firmly in place.
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J. Zel Lurie, who is over 100 years old, has had a long and distinguished career as a journalist in Israel and the United States. He lives in retirement in Delray Beach, Florida.
The Hamas charter still calls for Israel’s violent total destruction, as do all the Palestinian media, schools, mosques, etc. The U.S. State Department has named Hamas as a terrorist organization, and Hamas’ record of violent activities confirms that it is clearly is a terrorist organization.
The Gaza example has already shown us how Hamas makes “peace” with Jews: Recall that Israel uprooted and evacuated all the Jewish communities living in Gaza; Israel gave up every inch of Gaza, and Israel even left behind beautiful greenhouses that could have enriched the Arab population of Gaza. Hamas came in, destroyed the greenhouses, threw its rival Fatah terrorists off buildings, and then used Gaza as a rocket launching pad for thousands of rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and civilian targets. Hamas’ attacks are continuing. Hamas’ rockets kill and wound Israeli men women and children, target, destroy and damage Israeli homes, schools, hospitals, etc. Israeli hospitals in southern Israel have had to build wings underground because Hamas targets them.
The real reason there is no peace is because the goal of both Fatah (the party of the Palestinian Authority) and Hamas is Israel’s total annihilation – not peace.
The issuance of building permits for a few Israeli housing units in Jerusalem suburbs (areas that would clearly fall within Israel in any peace agreement) is NOT an obstacle to peace.