Two States, Yair?
This week at the UN, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid reiterated his support for a two-state solution and, like any good political propagandist, claimed most Israelis agree.
I doubt it after 30 years of murder and mayhem coming from the Palestinians.
Even I get tired of pointing out the duplicity of the PA/PLO, and the Western diplomats that aid them in their quest to wipe Israel off the map. It is mind-boggling that leftists have gotten away with the “land for peace” hoax for three decades. A lot of the blame for this can be laid at the feet of Bill Clinton. In his two terms, if he’d had the moral fiber to say a clear No to the Palestinian leadership, I think the two-state solution con would have died 25 years ago. Instead, he enabled it.
This is a multi-layered problem. On the one hand, we have the international community exerting tremendous pressure on Israel to comply and slice-up the sliver of land they have had since 1948. On the other hand, you have the terrorists on the ground within Israel, including Judea and Samaria. Their constant (and I do mean constant) lethal activities have also put enormous pressure on the Jews. So much so that Israel has to spend a tremendous amount of time developing new and better ways to combat terrorism.
In the last week, Palestinian terrorists carried out five shooting attacks in Judea and Samaria. In one, an Israeli officer was killed.
At three of these locations, IDF military installations were targeted. Terror commanders in Hebron and Nablus were detained; they were planning mass-casualty attacks. It is the smuggling of weapons that is a major part of the problem.
Now, there is something of a rivalry between the Palestinian Authority and the more militant group, Hamas. The latter has been in control of the Gaza Strip since the Israeli pullout in 2005, and the PA hasn’t had an election since the following year (after the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004, Mahmoud Abbas has been “president” of the PA).
So it was this week that PA security forces captured a Hamas commander in Nablus. His capture prompted riots.
This proves what I have thought for a long time: while there are decent Palestinians in the Middle East, the vast majority of them have been radicalized, and not just for 30 years. The Arabs living there (I want to make this distinction, since the “Palestinians” were a political invention largely after the Six Day War) have been duped by their leadership for the last 100 years. At least.
What is most interesting about this latest round of violence is that it comes amid an effort to unify various factions. A Hamas delegation headed by Isma’il Haniyeh just got back from Russia. Another, led by Khalil al-Haya journeyed to Algeria for the same goal. Finally, Hamas announced a resumption of ties with Syria, after years of acrimony over the Syrian Civil War.
I doubt any lasting positive nature will come of this—the Arabs are good at maintaining their internal strife—but it does show a disturbing trend toward uniting against the Israelis.
Abbas spoke at the UN; he had promised an “extraordinary” speech, but it was anything but that. Just more bashing of Israel. But one more component of the Palestinians’ multi-pronged attack was their efforts in New York to get the international community to support their efforts to use only Arab curriculum in their schools (this curriculum has incited violence against Jews for generations).
With so many different kinds of attacks against Israel, it’s still difficult to understand why certain Israeli leaders insist on supporting two states.
It is a recipe for catastrophe.