By Ira Sharkansky
JERUSALEM — Recent headlines have featured calls by an IDF General and the US Secretary of State, saying that Israel and Palestine must begin a political process in order to deal with a cycle of violence otherwise likely to get worse and last for a long time. Some in their chorus express a fear of a great regional conflagration, as if that is not already underway to the north and east.
Kerry has returned to the mantra popular with the Israeli left, i.e., a failure to agree on a two-state solution will leave us with a one-state solution with chronic bloodshed.
Dealing across such an intellectual and cultural divide, represented by the Grand Mufti and the many Palestinians who accept his nonsense, is equivalent to designing an aircraft with someone who doesn’t believe in gravity, or trying to predict the weather with someone who doesn’t accept notions of a round and rotating earth, and the prevailing winds associated with such matters.
- Much of the recent violence has been individual, done by young people with no connection to a political movement
- Mahmoud Abbas has moved between incitement and urging quiet on his people, talking about Palestinians rights, Israeli violence and occupation, and saying that Palestinians will lose more than they gain if an intifada develops and brings a major Israeli response
- Abbas and his cadre have little standing in the West Bank; few listen to them
- Hamas is doing what it can to fan the flames in the West Bank, even while Palestinian and Israeli security forces are cooperating in arresting Hamas personnel in the area
“But there has to be some alternative to doing nothing or doing everything. It needs to be an alternative that at least tests Palestinians to really control some territory — and creates some hope that the two communities can separate securely. And it has to involve Israel at least stopping all settlement-building in the heart of the West Bank, in the areas long designated for a Palestinian state. Some 70,000 of Israel’s 400,000 settlers now live in those areas, and it’s making any separation increasingly impossible.”
“But fewer and fewer can understand why (Israel) puts so much energy into explaining why it can’t do anything, why the Palestinians are irredeemably awful and why nothing Israel could do would affect their behavior. I truly worry that Israel is slowly committing suicide, with all the best arguments.”
Israelis are by no means nonchalant, but Palestinians have more to worry about.
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Sharkansky is professor emeritus of political science at Hebrew University. He may be contacted via ira.sharkansky@sdjewishworld.com
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