Cancel the “Peace Process”
Associated Press: Israel won’t break off peace talks because of a Palestinian attack in Jerusalem that killed eight students studying the library of a rabbinical seminary, an Israeli official said Friday. Israel will push ahead with talks “so as not to punish moderate Palestinians for actions by people who are not just our enemies but theirs as well,” the Israeli official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the government had yet to make an official announcement.
Associated Press: Israel won’t break off peace talks because of a Palestinian attack in Jerusalem that killed eight students studying the library of a rabbinical seminary, an Israeli official said Friday. Israel will push ahead with talks “so as not to punish moderate Palestinians for actions by people who are not just our enemies but theirs as well,” the Israeli official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the government had yet to make an official announcement.
Fully agreeing that Hamas, Fatah’s al Aksa Martyrs Brigade, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, et al. pose a threat to Palestinians as well as to Israelis, it would make much more sense to stop all presumed “peace talks” until the radicals have been defeated and defanged. Talking to Abu Mazen while Hamas and offshoots of his own Fatah (the shooting didn’t have the hallmarks of Hamas or Hezbollah) are conducting open warfare against the State of Israel is akin to talking to the White Rose while Hitler is running the ovens. It may intellectually be more pleasant, but it ignores where the power and the dangers really lie.
The Palestinians certainly have suffered and are suffering from the failings of their own rotten terrorist leadership. But if you believe there are masses of Palestinians who long for liberation from Hamas; who believe Israel is a legitimate and permanent part of the Middle East; and who want nothing more than to share in the political freedom and economic advancement that association with the region’s only full-fledged democracy and liberal society could bring, we respectfully disagree.
It is perfectly possible for Palestinians to want to be left alone to work and raise their children, and at the same time wish for their government to kill Jews. That, in fact, is the message of the Palestinian legislative elections that brought Hamas to power in the first place. Fatah had proven so thoroughly corrupt that, absent Arafat’s mythic presence, people simply couldn’t vote for it. On the other hand, both Fatah and Hamas believe the creation of Israel was a mistake by the international community. Both believe it needs to disappear – through negotiated salami tactics or by armed revolution, it doesn’t matter. The Palestinians voted on domestic policy, not the “peace process.”
There were Palestinians out there yesterday engaged in celebratory gunfire and passing out sweets; they are out there every day that Israelis die. Yeshiva students, children, fathers, soldiers, it doesn’t matter who they were in life – dead Jews are an occasion for Palestinians to hand out treats to children. There are Palestinian mothers who talk about giving their children to martyrdom as an act of religious faith. There are Palestinian fathers who turn on the TV and let their children watch the Hamas bunny eating Jews.
These are not moderate people. These are people sucked into a vortex of ever increasing anarchy, death-worship for themselves and others, poverty, misery and radicalism. “Negotiating” with their “representatives” won’t help them or Israel. If the Palestinian territories have become a disaster for their own people and the source of naked aggression against Israel, the better course of action would be to cancel the “peace process” until the “war process” has been addressed – whether by Israel alone or by the international community.