The new Israeli prime minister still has to contend with the
Palestinians. Since the process of dealing with them was
started by President Clinton over seven years ago, every
prime minister, Right or Left, has been forced to deal with
them by the press of world opinion and the momentum of the
events that has made the Israeli dialogue with the
Palestinians take on a tremendous, virtually irresistible,
force in today's world.
It must be said of the Palestinians that they have shown
patience and consistency. Even if some of the documents that
they signed may have had ambiguous readings, the
Palestinians have spoken consistently about their
willingness to use violence and aggression and their
insistence on a rigid set of demands: a state of their own
that includes all of Yehuda, Shomron and Gaza, as well as
Yerushalayim, and their full "right" to live wherever they
want including the State of Israel.
The Palestinians have displayed not a bit of flexibility and
willingness to compromise, and whenever they speak of
progress in talks with Israel it means that Israel (under
Barak and Foreign Minister Ben-Ami) has shown some new
willingness to come closer to meeting their demands. They
are patient and display no sign of feeling pressure to reach
an agreement now or ever. They never acknowledged any
"window of opportunity" while U.S. President Clinton was in
office (and in fact criticized him the minute he left) and
seemed totally oblivious to the repeated pronouncements of
Israeli prime minister Barak that there were deadlines for
reaching an agreement. They appear to have all the time in
the world.
Barak's foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, declared that if
they only had a little "quality political time," they could
complete an agreement. Though uttered at the height of the
recent electoral campaign, Ben-Ami has consistently
maintained that an agreement with the Palestinians is
achievable Real Soon Now.
Yet the stark truth is that no agreement is possible unless
Israel makes all the concessions and gives the Palestinians
all that they want -- and even then an agreement is not
guaranteed. Unless and until Israel is willing to allow
upwards of a million Palestinians to settle within the Green
Line, there is no hope of an agreement. As of now, even the
Left is unwilling to agree to this, since it will clearly be
the end of the State of Israel.
Moreover, the Palestinians vow that they will continue to
murder Jews until their demands are met. Most of them say
this quite openly. Just last week the GSS arrested six
members of Force 17 and charged them with the murders of
more than seven Jews, including Binyamin Zeev Kahane and his
wife, Hy"d.
These veteran terrorists are part of Yasser Arafat's
personal troops, under his direct command and control and
not part of any other element of the complex and convoluted
Palestinian military establishment. They operate only under
his personal orders. If they were involved in terror, it
means that the authority behind them is responsible, namely,
Yasser Arafat.
Perhaps it can be debated whether to shake Arafat's hand or
to talk to him as long as his hand-picked troops are
murdering. But the truth should be clear and well-known. It
is undoubtedly true that one who refuses to acknowledge what
is going on runs the greatest risk of fooling himself.
