The Fikra Forum published a fascinating poll last week that asked Palestinians for their preferred solution to the conflict with Israel over three different time frames. Queried about the next five years, a plurality chose “reclaiming all of historic Palestine from the river to the sea” as the “main Palestinian national goal”; the two-state solution placed second and the one-state solution third. Moreover, while Palestinians don’t expect this goal to be achieved within five years, they do consider it achievable in the medium to long term: In 30 to 40 years, only a quarter of respondents expect Israel to “continue to exist as a Jewish state,” and in 100 years, only 12 percent of West Bankers and 15 percent of Gazans believe the Jewish state will still exist.
That Palestinians aren’t keen on the two-state solution isn’t exactly news; a pollcommissioned by The Israel Project four years ago found that a hefty 66 percent viewed two states as a mere stepping-stone to a single Palestinian state encompassing all of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Nor is this attitude surprising, given another enlightening nugget from the Fikra poll: Fully 81 percent of West Bankers and 88 percent of Gazans asserted that all this territory “is Palestinian land and Jews have no rights to the land.”
If Palestinians truly believe Jews have no rights anywhere in the land where a Jewish commonwealth existed for more than a millennium, their aspiration to eradicate the Jewish state and replace it with their own is natural: Who would agree to permanently cede half his house to a squatter? The logical response in that situation is to play for time, perhaps even by signing agreements you don’t intend to keep, while seeking a way to evict the squatter completely. And that’s precisely what Palestinians have done, and still are doing.
This, however, has serious implications for how Israel should be handling the Palestinian issue. And on this score, the conclusion reached by Fikra Forum director David Pollock falls far short.
“Given these attitudes about the long-term future, there is good reason to wonder if any ‘final status’ agreement will ever truly be final,” Pollock wrote. Therefore, “in applying the widely accepted principle of ‘land for peace,’ responsible policymakers should pay at least as much attention to practical ways of keeping the peace.”
But that prescription ignores three crucial problems. First, experience shows that once you’ve ceded strategic territory, there are no “practical ways of keeping the peace” if the other side doesn’t want to do so. The peace with Egypt held because Egypt chose to keep it. In contrast, Israeli withdrawals over the last 20 years from Gaza, parts of the West Bank and south Lebanon have produced serial wars, because neither Hezbollah nor the Palestinians had any desire to keep the peace.
This experience leads directly to issue number two: Land-for-peace deals shouldn’t be made at all unless your enemy genuinely wants to make peace, because ceding strategic territory simply makes it easier for the enemy to attack you, and territorial concessions are usually irreversible. So the fact that most Palestinians still aspire to Israel’s ultimate eradication actually makes “the widely accepted principle of ‘land for peace’” completely inapplicable.
Third, however, there’s no reason to think Palestinians would even agree to a final-status deal under these circumstances. After all, there’s no final-status deal now, yet the poll shows an overwhelming majority of Palestinians think they’re on track to achieve their goal of eradicating Israel within a few decades. In other words, they think their current strategy of refusing to sign a permanent peace deal is working, so why would they want to change it?
Indeed, that’s precisely why Palestinians have rejected repeated Israeli offers of a state on most of the West Bank and Gaza: Not only isn’t this their ultimate goal, but they don’t even think it’s conducive to their ultimate goal. The only way they would sign such a deal is if they change their minds and conclude that it would actually further their goal of destroying Israel – in which case Israel clearly shouldn’t be signing it.
All this means that there will not and cannot be a final resolution of the conflict in the foreseeable future. Consequently, Israel urgently needs a long-term strategy for coping with a conflict that has no end in sight.
In an essay in Mosaic earlier this month, I described in detail what such a strategy might look like in four different areas: negotiations, public diplomacy, military action and the home front. But one element of that strategy is particularly relevant to the Fikra poll’s findings: the crucial importance of tirelessly explaining Israel’s legal and historical rights to this land.
As the poll shows, the crux of the conflict is the Palestinian belief that “Jews have no rights to the land.” Palestinians also believe they are succeeding in converting the rest of the world to this view, which merely fuels their conviction that they will ultimately succeed in destroying Israel.
Until both these beliefs change, no solution to the conflict will be possible. And only Israel can make the case for its own rights; nobody else will do so in its stead.
@ bernard ross:
Let’s hope these understandings are better than the ones he has had with Obama, who for seven years has manipulated him like a marionette.
I’ve been sayiing for a couple of years that BB has “understandings” with the GCC and that those understandings explains his odd decisions and MO over the last few year. Every day they are letting more come out of the closet.
As early as October 2000, Thomas Friedman – when he could still be lucid on his analysis on the Middle East – wrote in the New York Times: “To think that the Palestinians are only enraged about settlements is also fatuous nonsense. Talk to the 15-year-olds. Their grievance is not just with Israeli settlements, but with Israel. Most Palestinians simply do not accept that the Jews have any authentic right to be here.”
Fifteen years later, the Fikra Forum poll shows that Palestinian thought has not only persisted but has been entrenched and radicalized. Credit for that “unity of purpose” is due to Palestinian indoctrination in their education system and to their relentless propaganda worldwide. Compare that to the total absence of any coherent Israeli education system and you understand why we are in this predicament.
Before Israel adopts an “urgent long-term strategy,” it should first RESTORE THE TRUTH: the truth about our inalienable rights to the Land and, at the same time, the truth about the inversion of reality that has been the staple of Palestinian propaganda since day one. These are two facets of the same issue and should be treated together.
CILR have been active in promoting these ideas for the past several years. For a condensed summary exposé of the problem, please see this presentation, which shows:
– The incompatibility of a genuine peace with the prevailing Palestinian narrative;
– The rise of the Palestinian cause to the level of a quasi-cult worldwide;
– The clash of bogus Palestinian claims with Israel’s established legal rights;
– The need to withhold any new peace proposals until falsehoods are widely exposed;
– And finally, a suggestion of a two-prong action for Israel’s public diplomacy.
If Jews do not actively settle and take title on land they say is theirs–whatever the justification –the land is not theirs.
If it is theirs, annex, transfer the squatters and be done with it–with the blessings of the International Community as they have more important issues to worry about.
@ efirub:
These so called palestinians are no more no less than “SOUTH SYRIANS” that was their name before they started to invent the story about being palestinians. As you said, the only Palestinians were the Jewish population.
CASE FOR ISRAEL: JEWS HAVE MULTIPLE RIGHTS TO THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
For People who are uninformed, or misinformed by Arab propaganda.
1. This land was given by G-d to the Jewish people, forever. You can believe it or not, but this is acknowledged by all three monotheistic religions. The people, who deny this, deny their own holy books and interpreted them the way it is politically convenient for them.
2. It is the Land where the Jewish Nation was born and where Jews lived continuously for more than 3000years.
3. The Land of Israel and specially Jerusalem is the core and heart of the Jewish Nation. (Heart of Arabs is in Arabia.) Torah mentioned Jerusalem 669 times. Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran even once and the story that Muhammad “traveled” there (to Jerusalem) in his “sleep” was invented later by other people and was politically motivated. Muhammad has talked about a furthest (uttermost) Mosque and did not mention Jerusalem. There was no and could not be a Mosque in Jerusalem in that time because no Muslims were there, Jerusalem was [then] a Christian-occupied city. Muhammad verse was revealed about 622, Muhammad died in 632. Jerusalem was conquered by Muslims in 637 and mosque was built in 672-691.
4. The Koran clearly says that this Land belongs to the Jewish People. Anybody who goes against it, is against Koran and Islam. The Children of Israel: “Dwell securely in the Promised Land…” (The Koran, The Night Journey 17:104). Koran clearly states (Sura 5:21) that God granted the Land of Israel to the Children of Israel and ordered them to settle there.
5. Israel respects all religions, historical and cultural heritage (Arabs do not respect any religions and cultures and try to destroy them or claim it is theirs).
6. Israel developed this land as a real owner (Arabs not only did it not develop it in the past but also on many occasions try to destroy it, like destructive excavations on Temple Mount, like arsons of forests, which were planted by Jews instead of desserts and swamps. Arabs behave this way because subconsciously they know – this Land is not theirs. It was waste Land before Jews started to rebuild it. The real indication of true ownership of the Land is the one who turned it from waste land to today’s modern Israel.
7. The Land of Israel is very small and possession of it by Arabs will not change or improve one-bit the situation of Arabs, but for Jews it is only the place. (Jews have only one small country and the Arabs have 22 countries with vast territory and resources).
8. Arabs have same religion, culture and language in all of these 22 Arab countries. Arab countries can easily absorb Arab refugees that were the result of Arab aggression.
9. Is this justice: to deny the Jews of their tiny homeland, and to give it to Arabs who already have tremendous territory? Supporters of this in Europe and other places – where is your decency, moral and common sense?
10. Arabs expelled more than 800,000 Jews from Arab countries, who lived there long before Arabs captured these lands from indigenous people, and brutally destroyed their religions and cultures. All Jewish properties in Arab Countries were confiscated. Give these properties to Palestinian refugees (hundreds billions of dollars) and their problems will be solved.
11. “Palestinian refugees were created by Arab countries when they proclaimed genocidal war against the Jewish State and have asked the Arabs of Palestine to leave for convenience to accomplish the genocide. (All these are documented facts).
12. Where is justice for “Palestinian” Arabs who have been kept in refugee camps for more
than 60 years, denying them citizenship by their Arabs brothers and keep them as second class citizens and incite them against Israel? Why did the State of Israel absorb all Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Arabs don’t? Arab countries should admit their deeds and grant the civil rights to their brothers and help them from what Arab countries stole from Jews.
13. Palestinian Arabs have the right to live on the Jewish land as loyal, peaceful citizens but if they choose to deny the Jewish rights and declare the goal to destroy the State of Israel, they lost the right to live on this Land.
14. Palestinians are invented people, and invented with only one goal to destroy the State of Israel and would never call themselves “Palestinians” otherwise. The Arab language even does not use a sound “P”. They start to call themselves “Palestinians” not earlier than late 1960s and started to propagate actively this idea after 1967 war. Before, they vigorously rejected this name because in their mind it has belonged to Jews. They try, by adapting this name, to prove they are indigenous people for this Land. They are not. Most of “Palestinians” migrated here from multiple Arab countries in the end of 19th century and later, when Jews started to rebuild their Land. Therefore, their claims being native people are false. Everybody has rights to call themselves whatever they want but not to use this as a goal and means to terrorize and destroy others. They have the rights to live on this Land only as a peaceful and loyal citizen. Everybody who denies Jewish rights on this Land automatically lost the rights to live here.
15. Israel, against all odds, survived and won all wars that Arabs initiated and Israel has all rights to keep the Land which she possessed in defensive wars (these wars prevent genocide of Jews by Arabs). Arab countries should pay for consequences of their actions.
It is neccesery to provide condense and
clear material that can explain to uniformed or misinformed by Arab propaganda the real situation
about Jewish rights for the Land o Israel. I believe that most people shape their opinion without
knowing real facts. It is very difficult for an ordinary person to extract real information from the stream of thousands of articles, books and news, which often are deliberately misconstrued. And I believe that the distribution of real facts in compressed, clear from can tilt the scale of the world opinion in Israel’s favor. People talk about Jewish rights, “Palestinian” rights, but the parties don’t have the same rights. Palestinian Arabs have right to live on the Land of Israel as a peaceful loyal citizens and can’t deny the right of others. If they cann’t, they should leave.
The only solution is transfer with financial incentives o by force. It is no other way.
Ominously for the Palis, this article could have been written in 1967. These Jew haters will eternally wallow in their own squalor maliciously anticipating the conquest they will never achieve.
More important than making a case to others, and explaining to others, is making a case to Israel and then acting in unity as if Jews DID have a right to all of Israel.
If Israel does not ACT as if it has a right to its own historic homeland then no one else will believe any explanations or arguments that Israel itself fails to believe or act upon.
Hence, Jews must be settled in YS, there can be zero tolerance for anti semitism and abuse of Jews in Israel; there can be zero tolerance for so called allies declarations of illegal or illegitimate Jewish settlement in eretz yisroel; there can be zero tolerance for euros and US interfering in YS; BDS and boycott advocacy in Israel must be a crime of incarceration…
Unless Israel acts there will be no movement forward and Tel Aviv will become as threatened as YS, and no feeding YS to the muslims will keep the crocodile away from Tel Aviv..
France attempts to attract back talent from Israel.
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/france-attempts-to-attract-talent-back-from-israel-1441712304-lMyQjAxMTE1MzAwODEwMTgzWj
How can they attract Jewish talent when they can’t offer security for their Jewish population.
France attempts to attract back talent from Israel.
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/france-attempts-to-attract-talent-back-from-israel-1441712304-lMyQjAxMTE1MzAwODEwMTgzWj
How can they attract Jewish talent when they can’t offer security for their Jewish population.