Awaiting Palestinian Acceptance of Peace and Mutual Security

"We see the reaction from the Palestinians, we see the reaction of a wide range of Arab states which have sided with the Palestinians in rejecting the plan."
"This, obviously, makes one think about its feasibility."

Dmitry Peskov Kremlin Spokesman

"We've informed the Israeli side ... that there will be no relations at all with them and the United States including security ties."

"Trump asked that I speak to him by phone but I said 'no', and that he wants to send me a letter ... but I refused it."
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas

Mahmoud Abbas speaks at the Arab League meeting in Cairo on Saturday

(Photo: AFP)

"The experience over the past fifty years has shown that without agreement among all sides, no peace plan has the chance to succeed."

"The U.S. plan challenges many of the internationally agreed parameters: the 1967 border, as agreed by both parties, with a state of Israel and an independent, viable state of Palestine, living side-by-side in peace, security and mutual recognition."

"We share the commitment to a two-state solution and respect for international law."
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrel

An Arab League emergency meeting to discuss US President Donald Trump’s peace proposal, at the league headquarters in the Egyptian capital Cairo on February 1, 2020. (Khaled Desouki/AFP)

Yesterday, the last day of January 2020, the 22-member Arab League of Nations met to discuss the Trump Peace Plan and to hear an address by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. The League saw fit to unanimously reject U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial Middle East plan,are being “unfair” to Palestinians. They felt moved as well to state they would plan “not to… cooperate with the US administration to implement this plan.” 

This, when after decades of negotiations, fruitless every one, failed to move the Palestinian Authority leadership to agree to a plan they would find commensurate with their demands, simply because every time their demands were accepted, they would find fault, and increase their entitlements and when those too were finally met, they declined to validate any such plan as being quite satisfactory enough to influence them to lay down their arms and dedicate time, energy and funding to creating a civil state that would meet the needs of Palestinians while living in peace with their neighbours.

Israel was established as a Jewish state, finally realizing the dream of the diaspora to return to their  heritage and turn desert into an agrarian miracle. This, they did, while at the same time having to establish a military presence capable of defending the state and its citizens from repeated attempts by Arab states to destroy the nation's presence. Each one of those violent efforts failed, each time leaving Israel in a stronger defensive position.

Palestinians burn cutouts of U.S. President Donald Trump, State Secretary Mike Pompeo, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 'day of rage' protests across the West Bank, November 26, 2019. AFP

Arab states, forever at war both externally and internally, riven by corruption, by sectarian and tribal enmity, managed to accomplish little to bring their populations into stable economies outside of those oil states the world economy supported in search of an energy source. The Palestinians, portraying themselves as everlasting refugees on the world stage found support among the Arab States but no willingness to absorb them as citizens save for Jordan which fought a bloody conflict against Yasser Arafat's PLO, driving them out of Jordan and into Lebanon.

Jordan occupies the greater part of what was meant to be portioned to a Jewish State through the Balfour Declaration, which Britain had seconds thoughts of, when it sought to appease the Hashemites of Arabia, after Britain had 'given' the House of Saud control of what became Saudi Arabia. Two-thirds of the population of Jordan is Palestinian, the rest Hashemites from Arabia. What was left was apportioned by the United Nations as a Partition Plan between Palestinian Jews and Arab Palestinians.

Syria and Iraq, two of Israel's deadliest state enemies disintegrated into sectarian violence with no end in sight, creating a monumental refugee crisis, and a greater humanitarian plight with the state murder of hundreds of thousands in a situation where it became problematical in distinguishing the actions of Islamist terrorists with those of state military actors themselves. Lebanon's fractious relations between Christians, Druze, Sunni and Shiites led to its civil downfall and the current situation where the Iranian proxy terrorist Hezbollah now is the tail that wags the dog.

At least 10,000 Palestinian protesters marching against Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip have clashed with Israeli soldiers and border police at the Israeli Qalandiya checkpoint, between Jerusalem and Ramallah.  Picture: AFP/Getty

While Israel continues to flourish in every index of human accomplishments, creating a vibrant and creative society where democratic equality of all its citizens -- Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze -- contrasts sharply with those of its neighbours -- the Arab and Muslim (Iran) communities in the Middle East continue to face moral and civil crises, mired in corruption and violence. Among them the ongoing rise of Islamist terrorism wreaking horrors both there and in the West.

Advances in medical research, bioscience, on the defensive military arms front, on technology and food sciences advance the Israeli economy as well as the world order in shared progress such as desalination, agribusiness, medical research and computer sciences. Israel sends out its emergency response teams to give aid to other nations recovering from floods, landslides, wildfires and earthquakes, as well as giving expert aid in arable water solutions and agricultural best-practices.

IDF strikes terror targets in Gaza after rockets fired at Israel

Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia lent itself to nurturing the aspiration so al-Qaeda to attack Western values in symbolic deadly attacks, which culminated in the World Trade Towers aerial destruction. Sunni Islam bred terrorist groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and ISIL and its countless offshoots, while Shiism gave birth to the 'Party of God' which has responded to Iran's orders in Syria and Yemen, destroying lives and creating mass homelessness, where bombing hospitals and suicide-bomb-attacks exemplify the virtues of jihad.

Until countries like Egypt's, Saudi Arabia's and the Gulf States' encounters with Turkish and Iranian hostile threats created sufficient trepidation to slant their perspectives toward the one nation that has proven itself a beacon of hope for the future and whose military is dedicated to its nation's protection and perseverance as theirs failed to. It is Islam that nurtured and created the Muslim Brotherhood, a viral threat both to established Middle East states and the West.

Palestinian women, one holding a picture of Hamas movement chief Ismail Haniyeh, attend a mass rally marking the 32nd anniversary of the founding of Hamas on December 14, 2019, in Gaza city. (AP/Khalil Hamra)

The PLO, Fatah and Hamas share a 'victim' hatred of Israel and all things Jewish; above all the existence of a Jewish state dominating a heritage geography of Judaic historical, Biblical establishment, even while they exude a deadly hatred for one another as regional rivals prepared at any given time to commit the other to the grave while each seek 'martyrdom' for their people. Both boast that they love death for it reunites them with Allah and the Prophet Mohammad, rewarding them with 'virgins'. What they really love is conflict irrespective of whether it leads to victory.

Israel's preoccupation is shielding its population from death, for there is no love there for the Grim Reaper at the behest of Islamist jihadists. The death fetishists of jihad think of death as a gift they prepare as IEDs, wrapped as presents and party balloons to entice the children of Israel to play with them and flirt with jihad-delivered death. Western supporters of the Palestinian 'cause' avoid any censure of those they champion as 'victims' who 'resist' the 'occupation', a narrative that has served the Palestinians well in demonizing Israel.

It is past time for a peace engagement to be introduced free of the now-predictable Palestinian reaction of rejection. One that will be implemented however it comes about, still permitting the Palestinian authorities to engage in its details and ask for changes rather than demand Israel's removal from what they insist is Palestinian territory; a complete reversal of historical and current reality but typified in Islamist ritual of destroying all evidence of the pre-existence of rightful residency and artifacts and portraying them as their own.

Hamas members

(photo credit: REUTERS)