Abbas is terrified of peace
Criticisms, reservations and some compliments can be made over the government's diplomatic conduct up to the point when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas petitions the U.N. for unilateral recognition of the state of Palestine.
A few things could have been done differently to forestall the current situation, in which Israel tensely awaits the decision of Gabon, which will determine the outcome of the Security Council vote. The fate of Palestine hangs on the vote of a former Portuguese slave colony.
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There are things that can still be done. We can delay building starts in Judea and Samaria for an additional 90 days. We can agree to mutually postpone drawing a map of final borders on the one hand and defining Israel as a Jewish state on the other. But it is impossible to ignore the central fact that as much as Abbas rejects terrorism, he also refuses to make peace. He urged Yasser Arafat to torpedo the Camp David summit in 2000 lest Ehud Barak make a real breakthrough proposal on the issue of Jerusalem. He fled for his life from Jerusalem to Ramallah when he saw the generous concessions Ehud Olmert offered him. Abbas is terrified of peace.
On Monday, Minister without Portfolio Ze'ev Binyamin (Benny) Begin (Likud) pointed out that Abbas frequently says in his speeches that his nation has been under occupation for 63 years. Not just since the 1967 war 44 years ago, but since the establishment of the state of Israel.
Where did the Palestinians -- then known as Arabs -- spend all those years under occupation? With their brethren in Lebanon and Syria who escaped there in 1948 at the behest of the Arab Higher Committee? Or as Jordanian citizens in the West Bank until their country attacked Israel in 1967? Or is the bitter truth that Abbas believes the Palestinians living as full citizens in Israel are an occupied people? And all the talk of two states for two peoples is mere blandishments for Israeli ears? Perhaps the other state he refers to is the entity that occupied Palestine?
The fact that some parts of worldwide public opinion question whether Israel is serious about two states for two peoples is understandable. But how is there no shadow of a doubt regarding the Palestinians? Yesterday Kadima leader Tzipi Livni called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stress the critical importance of restarting negotiations with the Palestinians. If Netanyahu succeeds in this endeavor, she said, he will have Kadima's full backing. Livni suspects that Netanyahu doesn't really want negotiations, and that's fine. But she won't say that she suspects Abbas doesn't want them either, and that is not fine.
טעינו? נתקן! אם מצאתם טעות בכתבה, נשמח שתשתפו אותנו