By Isaac Yetiv, Ph.D.
LA JOLLA, California — Recently, a good number of American Jews, self-declared pro-Israel Zionists, wrote Israel P.M. Netanyahu a finger-wagging letter, asking him “to make painful concessions and sacrifices” to the Palestinians to achieve peace. This was not a discreet expression of opinion, permitted to anyone, but a public admonition full of reproach. It is not only an undue interference in the affairs of another state but it betrays an arrogant ignorance of international affairs and of recent history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is a cynical display of chutzpah because if this “advice” is implemented and proved lethal, other people will pay with their lives.
I do not ascribe any malevolent intent to the writers; I chalk it up to their lack of knowledge and also to what is called in Israel “the Jewish complex” (” Hatasbikh hayehudi,”) as defined by Prof. Zeev Barlev: ” The Arab pathology is to blame others for their problems; the Jewish pathology is to blame ourselves for their problems.” I hope the following narrative will enlighten them and de-complex them, and also serve as a rebuttal to the professional Israel bashers and to the powers-to-be.
Albert Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” The century-old Arab-Israeli conflict provides a vivid and tragic illustration of this observation. In the last 65 years since the establishment of Israel, a dozen of U.S. presidents, Democrats and Republicans, have relentlessly devoted time, effort, and money to bring “peace” to the area to no avail. More than a dozen of Israeli Prime Ministers from the Left and from the Right offered substantive concessions to reach a modus vivendi with their neighbors without success. The “peace process” saw many “processors” and special envoys, and conferences at Camp David, Taba, Madrid, Annapolis. Various programs and methodologies have been tried (Quartet, Road Map, Land –for-Peace, Two-state solution etc.), and all came to naught.
Why? I submit this is because the good-willed interveners have been working under false assumptions, like a doctor who misdiagnoses a disease and follows a course of treatment totally inept and useless, even harmful. For decades we have been cajoling, indulging, humoring the Arab rulers with blatant diplomatic hypocrisy and a lot of money. This has only radicalized their masses, made Iran the hegemon in the Gulf, and sprouted tens of terrorist organizations.
Today, two years after the Orwellian misnomer “Arab Spring” has turned into an “Islamist winter”, the geo-political situation in the Middle-East has changed radically, to the worse. Egypt is led by the Muslim Brotherhood, an impossibility two years ago; Libya still uncertain but strongly vulnerable to the same; Syria in an atrocious civil war that has already killed 70,000 of its own people and probably will fall in the hands of extremist Islamists after the defeat of Assad; Jordan teetering on the brink of a similar fate, and Lebanon no better.
Add to the mix an already radical Islamist Iran harboring ominous nuclear ambitions and sponsoring with millions of petrodollars two ruthless terrorist organizations, Hamas and Hizballah, and you will see that the Israel-Palestine peace is now a Don Quixotic dream of dilettante politicians impervious to the dictates of reality. And still, the American Secretary of State, like all his predecessors, believes he can “square this circle” and succeed where others have failed under much better circumstances. But from his first contacts with the local political leaders, it is clear that he hasn’t done his homework. Asking more “concessions and sacrifices” from Israel when its newly formed coalition is less amenable to oblige, and not asking anything from the Palestinians, not even their acquiescence to “direct negotiations without preconditions,” doesn’t seem a smart formula for “peace.”
Had he taken the trouble to prepare himself, Kerry would have discovered that the Palestinians are not “ready, willing ,and able” –yes the three of them–to sign on the dotted line. He had only to listen to P.M. Fayyad, considered a “moderate” by America, who demanded “the right of return of the 1948 (!) refugees” to Israel proper , not to the future Palestinian state– a prospect tantamount to the dismantling of Israel–, and also the freeing of all Palestinians in Israeli jails, including those convicted of multiple murders. Or to President Abbas , also a “moderate,” praising the killers of women and children as “heroes” and saluting the arch-enemy of Israel, Haj Amin El-Husseini, a collaborator of Hitler in WW II.
Secretary Kerry could also learn from visiting a Palestinian school where the children are being prepared for the conquest of all of Palestine in a war of Jihad against the infidels, “sons of pigs and monkeys”….or a mosque, or a summer camp with the same indoctrination of the youth, the leaders of tomorrow. He should also watch Palestinian official government TV praising suicide attacks and calling for expelling the Jews from Beer Sheva and Yaffa, and Jerusalem, and Tel-Aviv for that matter, all “occupied territory.” Or look at all the maps in all venues, government issues, showing “P A L E S T I N E” covering the whole area , West Bank and Israel included. No mention of Israel, an existing and thriving democracy, member of the UN, a military power and a beacon of science and technology. This is reality.
Is that a profile of a people who want to live “side-by-side in peace with its neighbor Israel?” And even if, by magic or divine inspiration, the leaders of the West Bank agree to negotiate the “peace of the brave” in a give-and-take mode, and present their people with a chance to prosper from their association with Israel–a prospect they know is real– they will soon become the “traitors” and targets for assassination by all the miscreants mentioned above. This is why they don’t dare to do it and they continue to kick the can down the road, “blaming others for their problems,” and making impossible demands.
Arafat himself, after Camp David in 2000, rejected President Clinton’s and P.M Barak’s very generous offer, and said that, if he signed, he will be drinking coffee with Yitzhak Rabin (meaning “assassinated.”) Barak and Clinton “improved on the deal” in Taba : still nyet. Olmert , later, practically sold out with new concessions: same rejection by Abbas. Sharon cleaned Gaza of Jews, civilian and military : this only led to Gazastan and to thousands of rockets against Israel. And this was before the “Islamist winter” and the jihadists in power.
It behooves the US State Department and the European chancelleries to adopt Reagan’s attitude of “benign neglect” of the Israel-Palestinian problem , thus saving political and financial capital, and to prepare themselves to confront the real dangers from Iran and the jihadi regimes, the fomenters of trouble and sponsors and exporters of terrorism. Because if these are allowed to produce a nuclear weapon, the next terrorist act will not be perpetrated with a pressure-cooker.
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Yetiv is a freelance writer and lecturer based in La Jolla. He may be contacted via isaac.yetiv@sdjewishworld.com