by Jonathan S. Tobin
The issue of incitement is at the center of the discussion now because U.S. President Donald Trump has decided it is important.
For the Israeli Left,
talk about Palestinian incitement is nothing more than an excuse
invented by the Right to avoid peace. The same largely applies to their
views about the Palestinian Authority's payments of more than $1 billion
in just the last four years in salaries to imprisoned terrorists and
their families.
The PA's ongoing
efforts to inculcate new generations in the ideology of hate that has
driven the century-long war on Zionism is itself a barrier to peace. It
also ensures that any effort to end the conflict will run counter to
notions of Palestinian identity that are inextricably linked to that
war.
But if you believe that Israel's chief objective must be to achieve a separation from the Palestinians and an end to its presence in the West Bank and east Jerusalem regardless of what happens or who governs a Palestinian state, you view the issue differently. If you think separation is the only way to preserve a Jewish majority in the Jewish state and to protect both Israelis and Palestinians from the burden of the occupation, statements of support or even subsidies for those who commit violence are side issues or distractions that obscure the big picture.
But if you believe that Israel's chief objective must be to achieve a separation from the Palestinians and an end to its presence in the West Bank and east Jerusalem regardless of what happens or who governs a Palestinian state, you view the issue differently. If you think separation is the only way to preserve a Jewish majority in the Jewish state and to protect both Israelis and Palestinians from the burden of the occupation, statements of support or even subsidies for those who commit violence are side issues or distractions that obscure the big picture.
Yet opponents of the
Netanyahu government are making a big mistake when they downplay these
issues. Though they doubt the motives of those who point out what the
Palestinian Authority have been doing and even agree with PA President
Mahmoud Abbas' assertion that both sides incite, they are missing the
point. A failure to address these questions has been the Achilles' heel
of the Left ever since the Oslo Accords were signed. Doing so is not
only political poison, it also sends the wrong message to Palestinians
who they insist are, against all evidence, viable partners for peace.
The issue of incitement
is at the center of the discussion now because U.S. President Donald
Trump has decided it is important. Trump was sufficiently ignorant of
the history of the conflict and how the PA operates that he actually
seems to have believed Abbas' assurances about not supporting incitement
or payments to prisoners that the PA leader made during their initial
White House meeting.
But when the Israelis
pointed out to him that Abbas was seeking to pull the wool over his
eyes, and backed it up with video evidence, he didn't like it. More than
that, he rightly understood that this lie was an obstacle to achieving
the unlikely diplomatic triumph he craved.
That led to Trump
reportedly pounding the table and accusing Abbas of being liar when they
met in Bethlehem. Since it would be difficult for Abbas to suddenly
alter the nature of what is published in PA newspapers or viewed on PA
television to mollify Israeli or Western sensibilities, let alone cease
payments to the very same terrorist prisoners who are lauded by
Palestinians as heroes, Trump's insistence on these points was no small
controversy.
The Left deplores
Trump's embrace of this issue and puts it down to a clever strategy
implemented by Netanyahu. But if that's all they think there is to it,
they're repeating the same mistakes that ensured the failure of peace
talks in the past. In the 1990s, both the Clinton administration and
Labor-led governments saw PLO leader Yasser Arafat's words and actions
as merely fodder for domestic Palestinian political consumption. But the
result of that policy was not only to convey to the PA that it could
transgress with impunity; this spirit of complacency also materially
contributed to the collapse of faith in the peace process once
Palestinian actions moved from words to bombs in the Second Intifada.
The Left's problem is
not just that serious observers understand the implications of
incitement and material support for terror and that not enough people
share their belief that Israeli actions are as bad or worse than those
of the Palestinians. Nor are most Israelis likely to be persuaded to
view actions of self-defense undertaken by their government as morally
equivalent to the PA's support for terror. Just as important is that a
Palestinian leader who felt constrained to engage in behavior that
engendered such deep mistrust among Israelis would be unlikely to muster
support for an end to the conflict among his own people, even if he
wanted to make peace.
Despite repeated
Palestinian rejections of peace offers, advocates of a two-state
solution still cling to the belief that it is Israel that is inventing
conditions designed to ensure that negotiations will fail. But if their
goal is to create a genuine consensus behind peace, then rather than
lament Trump's criticisms of Abbas, they ought to hope he will succeed
in getting the PA leader to stop the incitement as well as the prisonr
payments. If Netanyahu's opponents continue to refuse to take this issue
seriously, they will have no one but themselves -- and the Palestinians
-- to blame if they continue to be marginalized and peace remains a
remote dream.
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=19169
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