“The deal is widely expected to include Israeli concessions towards the PA. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently said that the Palestinian Arab issue will be part of a normalization agreement”.
What have the Palestinian Arabs ever done to deserve concessions? Why are they always treated like children and so much less is demanded from them than would be demanded from anyone else? Have they proved in any way they can be trusted?
Concessions have been made to the Palestinian Arabs and were grabbed with both hands with NOTHING in exchange. In fact nothing changed and the same old terrorism, except worse with more weapons and support from the likes of Iran. More attacks, political attacks and repetitive vicious malignments and vilifications around the world and media, and constantly at the United Nations, even if they are not full members. The same arrogance, pleadings, begging, shall I mention the continued “Pay for Slay”?
The refusal to move in any direction or make the slightest concession. Every extraordinary offer by Prime Ministers Barak and Olmert was refused, declined rejected, rebuffed, repudiated and spurned. Nothing moved or moves the so-called KGB invented “Palestinians” and no one does anything about it.
Oslo proved to be a huge disaster that still haunts Israel and from which it cannot extricate itself. In a different world the PLO would be packed up and shipped back to Tunisia. Arafat and his thugs should have been left to rot in Tunisia, but instead the Israeli left under Shimon Peres and his over-zealous lapdog, Jossi Beilin, conjured up the plan which rescued Arafat from pending obscurity whilst twisting Prime Minister Rabin’s arm. Having Clinton in the background didn’t help either.
The story goes that Arafat arrived at Israel’s border in a Mercedes Benz and the Israeli security sent a message to Rabin that Arafat seemed to have grown taller. It was found that he was sitting at the back of the vehicle on one of his terrorists who he was trying to smuggle into Israel and who, I believe, was arrested by the Shin Bet. Arafat also had arms in the trunk of the car he was trying to smuggle in. So much for trust from the very beginning.
The naiveté of Peres and Beilin was quite incredible, and still is. Peres was a seasoned politician who had lived through Israel’s War of Independence and every war and everything since. He played a major role as Director of the Ministry of Defense. He had lived through the initial Fedayeen terrorist attacks before they morphed into the Palestinian Liberation Organisation thanks to the Soviet KGB.
How could he have been so naïve? How could anyone in Israel be so naïve?
For Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership, the Oslo process has always been a strategic means not to a two-state solution - Israel and a Palestinian Arab state in the "West Bank" and Gaza - but to the substitution of an Arab state for the state of Israel. This remains the case today. So what concessions should be made to the Palestinian Arabs and why?
Saudi Arabia is determined to secure a military pact requiring the US to defend the kingdom in return for opening ties with Israel and will not hold up a deal even if Israel does not offer major concessions to the Palestinian Arabs in their bid for statehood, as they define it. In doing so, Saudi Arabia will neutralise the Iranian threat which is both military and religious. After 1,400 years, the split in Islam has come to this. The Lord certainly moves in interesting and mysterious ways.
If the so-called "Palestinians" have any relevance, it is not to Israel, the USA, Saudi Arabia or the Sunni Arab world. Their “relevance” is only to Iran as surrogates to attack not only Israel, but also the Sunni Arab world and more. From Iran’s perspective, they will use and abuse the Palestinians to fight Israel to the last Arab and the Palestinians in their stupidity will oblige.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is insisting on some commitments from Israel to show he was not abandoning the Palestinian Arabs. The “demand” for a two-state solution is a mere sop to placate the Sunni Arab states and set them at ease. At least he asked and tried. A two-state solution is completely out of the question and unrealistic.
If any concessions are made to the Palestinian Arabs, and this must be a BIG IF, there must this time be a demand for reciprocal concessions and some substantial give from the them, which must be monitored and policed and, if broken in the slightest, will immediately be cancelled and withdrawn without any further negotiations. This will be and must be entirely at Israel’s discretion and applied. It is more than time to treat the Palestinians like adults and demand they act accordingly.
In short, a significant sword must be held over the Palestinian Arabs' heads with the Palestinian Arabs clearly understanding they have to comply and running in their usual cry baby routine to the United Nations, the International Criminal Court or any other world body will not help. If they break their commitments, they and the world will know about it.
It is time for the Palestinian Arabs to grow up. In all the years of fighting, terrorising, random murders and sabotaging Israel plus their “great” contribution of airline hijackings, what have they achieved? What have they built? Have they built a country in Gaza or in Area A? In reality they have built nothing. They have been spongers, parasites on the world and for various reasons, which includes anti-Semitism, Europe has endlessly financed them as has America.
As American administrations change and the Democrats take over, so laws are broken and ignored and huge funds are sent to the Palestinian Arabs, all of which have contributed enormously to Arafat dying a billionaire, Mahmoud Abbas becoming a multi-millionaire if not a billionaire with a palace in Ramallah. All the heads of Hamas et al are billionaires…. and their people continue to suffer and live in squalor and in poverty.
What is there for their male youth to do? They grow up with no other ambition than to become a terrorist. Their hormones and testosterone raging in a restrictive and backward tribal, religious and medieval culture. To the Western world the idea of being rewarded as a “martyr” with seventy two black eyed virgins is ridiculous and shows just how restricted, controlled and deprived their lives amongst their own are. Is Islamic paradise one continuous orgy? How pornographic and limited can they get?
Financing the Palestinian Arabs ad nauseum only achieves more terrorism. This has been going on far too long without any demands for civilised sensible results. What has happened to the concept of teaching a man to fish? The solution is to force the Palestinian Arabs into modernity. Force them to create and build a normal society on their own with a functioning economy and opportunity for all to make a decent living. It is beyond time they acquired themselves decent leadership and joined the civilised world.
Western youth are imbued with ambition to establish themselves, build businesses, careers, families etc. What have the Palestinian Arab youth to look forward to in their cultures, in their living areas, in Gaza? Nothing!..... Except the machoness, aggression and the madness of terrorism, joining Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, PFLP, Lion’s Den and a myriad of sub-groups all increasingly armed, sponsored, used and abused by Iran. There is nothing except death in becoming a “martyr”, no matter how much brainwashing comes from the mullahs.
So we come back to our original question, what have the Palestinian Arabs ever done to deserve concessions? Have they shown the slightest reliable promise to do anything or create anything when their sole misguided ambition is to destroy Israel, chase the Jews into the sea and then what? Go on sponging off the Europeans and Americans whilst threatening them and hating them? And when they have through their stealth invasion of Europe destroyed and turned that continent into the hell holes they come from, what then?
David Hersch is Chairman of SAIPAC, the South African Israel Public Affairs Committee. Former chairman of the South African Zionist Federation (Cape Council) as well as a former national vice-chairman of the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF). He is also former member of the South Jewish Board of Deputies (Cape Council). Retired businessman and broadcaster.