What kind of peace are the Palestinians proposing?

10 year old cartoon, as relevant today as it was then

A reader of my blog by the name of “Reality” left an excellent comment on my previous post about releasing Palestinian murderers for “peace”, which I will reproduce here (with some editing and formatting, plus added links in order to support Reality’s statements):

I’m so angry I could spit! In the USA terrorists and murderers are made to sit on death row for years, and sometimes the death penalty is meted out.

Here (in Israel)  G-d forbid we’d do something so “in”- humane.

Here they go to “jail”  – which I put in quote marks on purpose, since how many murderers in the rest of the world are allowed TV; academic studies – on the victims’ and taxpayers’ dime – to get their first or 2nd degree; conjugal visits … you name it.  Call it a downsized hotel if you want. (Edited to add: the terrorists even receive salaries from the Palestinian Authority while they are in jail, funded by foreign aid donation).

If the authorities would bring in the death penalty none of this would happen.

But another thing I don’t understand (I know I’m just a stupid layman who gets to vote) is if the other “peace” partner wants these terrorists out so much, have these questions been asked of the Palestinians?:

1. Why ask for the terrorists’ release? For what purpose ,as the Palestinians will have to feed them,find “jobs” for them, etc.
2. Why do the Palestinians continue to give the released terrorists heroes’ welcomes? Surely that explains their way of “peaceful” thinking.
3. Why do the Palestinians name public places, schools and institutions after terrorists? In order to make sure the next generation continues in their footsteps?
4. Why do they give extremely sensitive jobs to Arab terrorists (see the overseer of the Patriachs Cave (Machpela) who killed six Israelis and wounded many others).
5. Would America release the terrorist behind 9/11? Or behind the Marathon bombing?
6. Why do the Palestinians not have to give Israel anything to prove their good intentions? Is it because they don’t have any?
7. Would any MK let out a terrorist who’s killed one of their family members?
8. Have the powers that be thought how many more “price tag” events would take place? What would they prefer? Anarchy? Perhaps riots of the kind we’ve seen throughout the Arab world?
9. Why is it OK for an Arab to kill, sit in jail for a couple of years to be “rehabilitated” and then let out, but not a Jew? Not to mention Jonathan Pollard!
10. Are the Arabs throughout the Arab world releasing Jewish prisoners who haven’t murdered but are in jail on theft, drug charges, you name it (perhaps murder too)? If not why aren’t they part of our negotiating demands?

These are my questions – perhaps someone can explain all this to the regular “guy on the street ” voter.

Most of Reality’s questions are obviously rhetorical, but the rhetoric is supported by facts (read the links above) and the bitterness and the sense of glaring injustice are entirely justified.

The points raised force us to ponder (for the umpteenth time) exactly what kind of peace are we negotiating with the Palestinians who demand – and receive – such outrageous preconditions?  Their actions and statements in recent days do not inspire any confidence in Israelis at all.

For example, PA “President” Mahmoud Abbas threatened that “all options are open” if the peace talks fail. What kind of peaceful intention is that?! How does threatening violence or lawfare persuade the other party to talk peace? Of course that is also a rhetorical statement of my own. We know that the Palestinians are not really interested in peace – although it appears that the world is always taken in (or pretends to be) by the Palestinians pseudo-peaceful statements.

Compounding Abbas’ implicit threats was the statement by MK Ahmed Tibi – yes, he is an Israeli and a member of the Israeli legislature. He is NOT  a Palestinian by nationality, yet behaves as if he is Abbas’ deputy. Tibi declared that the failure of the peace talks would bring about a third intifada. Once again, we have the threat of impending violence hanging over our heads if we dare to not arrive at a satisfactory – for the Palestinians that is – conclusion to the peace talks.  These are mafia tactics, not the behaviour of normative diplomacy.

And let’s imagine for a rainbow-painted moment that peace indeed broke out. How would this rosy scenario look?  Palestinian Media Watch shows us, courtesy of a minister in Mahmoud Abbas’ cabinet, that any peace treaty would be no more than a temporary “hudna” – a ceasefire modeled on Muhammad’s Hudaybiyyah Peace Treaty on the way to total victory:

On the eve of the renewed peace talks with Israel, PA Minister of Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash said in his Friday sermon that when PA leaders signed agreements with Israel, they knew how to walk  “the right path, which leads to achievement, exactly like the Prophet [Muhammad] did in the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah.” Al-Habbash’s sermon was delivered in the presence of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and was broadcast on official Palestinian Authority TV.

The Hudaybiyyah peace treaty was a 10-year truce that Muhammad, Islam’s Prophet, made with the Quraish Tribe of Mecca. However, two years into the truce, Muhammad attacked and conquered Mecca. The PA Minister of Religious Affairs stressed in his Friday sermon that Muhammad’s agreeing to the Hudaybiyyah treaty was not “disobedience” to Allah, but was “politics” and “crisis management.” The minister emphasized that in spite of the peace treaty, two years later Muhammad “conquered Mecca.” He ended his comparison by expressing the view that the Hudaybiyyah agreement is not just past history, but that “this is the example and this is the model.”

Since the signing of the Oslo Accords, there have been senior PA officials who have presented the peace process with Israel as a deceptive tactic that both facilitated the PA’s five-year terror campaign against Israel (the Intifada), and which will weaken Israel through territorial compromise that will eventually lead to Israel’s destruction.

Arafat also compared the Oslo Accords to the Hudaybiyyah agreement:

Read the rest of the article for a long depressing list of Palestinian personalities who have made the same comparisons. How on earth is Israel expected to make peace, or even talk peace, with such desperate liars?

Michael Widlanski in the Algemeiner demonstrates to us the self-deception of the Hawks, Doves and Ostriches as play their power games in the Middle East peace industry which holds within it extreme danger for Israel:

Apart from the fact that the EU (which is a witness to some Israel-PLO agreements) is essentially prejudicing, intervening in, and violating the process it is supposed to support, there are three little problems with the “Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process.”

● Palestinian: The Palestinians are not really a national group in any sense, but only sets of clans and tribes without a real self-image, historical heritage, or any real desire for self rule. “Palestinians” are now divided between Hamas, the PLO and others. Hamas swears to kill all Israelis, while the PLO does its swearing in private.

● Process: Palestinian leaders are working on the “process” of dismantling Israel. Their “negotiating” begins and ends by imposing schedules for Israeli pull-outs and freeing convicted terrorists. The PLO-Hamas idea of nationhood is a zero-sum game that begins and ends with dismembering Israel.

[…]

● Peace: When PLO leaders talk “peace with Israel”, they do not mean a peace of tranquility but only a transitional “stage” that will become a graveyard peace.

[…]

Western doves –Israelis, Americans, Europeans — who devoted much of their careers to supporting Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas have had mixed results.

[…]

Though some doves were honored in diplomatic councils and in the media, often, their political careers died with the false promise of a phony peace. Shimon Peres still pushes the PLO as a peace partner. He is feted by the likes of Bill Clinton and Barbra Streisand. But after signing with the PLO, Peres never won another election, because Israelis think the accords with the PLO were a mistake.

Hawks, however, proved they were right about much of the strategic analysis: making concessions to Arab regimes and organizations is a very risky gamble […]

● The Peres vision of PLO-Israeli peace actually ushered in the worst decade of terror in Israel’s history, with more than a thousand murdered;

● Ariel Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and his immoral and illegal eviction of 10,000 law-abiding Israelis led to terror, rocket warfare on Israel’s cities, and internal dislocation for hundreds of Israeli families. This is something Israelis now think was a huge error, even a sin.

● Many doves who pushed for “sacrifices for peace” such as withdrawal from Gaza also pushed hard to force Israel to withdraw its army and its citizens from the Golan Heights. Just imagine what Israel’s strategic position would be if it had listened to the doves and had ceded the Golan Heights to the bloodthirsty Assad regime.

As the EU again scolds Israel or Obama-Kerry ask for Israeli concessions, we should heed Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir’s warning against “salami tactics” by Arab states and Western powers pressing Israel to slice off pieces of herself, her hard-won land and security for promises that often turn out to be pure baloney.

I’m not sure any of the above answers Reality’s questions, but they should certainly force all of us, and most of all the political echelon, to stop and think before agreeing to give even one grain of sand to the Palestinians.

A final rhetorical question though. If it is so clear to us, why is it not clear to the politicians? And if it is clear to them, why are they even considering dealing with such treacherous parties – and then having the temerity to call such negotiations “peace talks”?!