This is a guest post by Daphne Anson who analyses the Palestinians’ and Israel’s enemies’ true intentions: the destruction of Israel. Rejectionism and dissembling peaceful intentions whilst always finding a reason to blame Israel and further demonise it have characterised the conflict. Ramping up the rhetoric and turning the screws on negotiations, demanding more and more and delivering nothing.
Mahmoud Abbas’s recent demand that as part a prerequisite to returning to negotiations Israel suspend building in East Jerusalem when this was not even part of the original 10 month moratorium is typical of Palestinian tactics.
Originally posted at http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2010/11/still-crazy-after-all-these-years.html
“We plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. . . . We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem”, declared Yasser Arafat. “Peace for us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all-out war, a war which will last for generations.”
“Our goal is the total liberation of Palestine and any Palestinian who wants less is a traitor”, the President of the PLO Women’s Organisation told an American reporter in 1980. And that same year PLO spokesman Mahmud Labadi observed (Al-Jumhur, Lebanon, 3 October 1980): “Let us not forget that every political achievement opens new vistas for the military alternative.”
Leading Fatah activist Abu Iyad, disclosed in a press interview in 1981: “Even after we establish a state in part of Palestine, we shall continue to struggle for the unification of all Palestine within a secular democratic state, and the struggle will not be undertaken only through political means.”
More recently, in September this year, as reported by the Palestinian newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the Palestinian Authority’s envoy in Lebanon, Abdullah Abdullah, observed “that the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, which have started in Washington, are not a goal, but rather another stage in the Palestinian struggle… He believes that Israel will not be dealt a knock-out defeat, but rather an accumulation of Palestinian achievements and struggles, as happened in South Africa, to isolate Israel, to tighten the noose on it, to threaten its legitimacy, and to present it as a rebellious, racist state. He noted that Israel faces international isolation with doubt cast on its legitimacy, because of its actions and the war crimes which it has carried out. He added, ‘Many Israelis in senior positions are afraid to travel to European countries lest they be put on trial for their crimes.'”
That the endgame for the Palestinians remains the end of Israel is suggested by of the results of a face-to-face survey of Palestinians conducted this October for the New Israel Project by the pollsters Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. There were 854 Palestinian respondents, comprising 538 residents of the West Bank and 316 Gazans. 38 percent of respondents agreed proposition that “Violence only hurts Palestinians and the days of armed struggle are over”, whereas 56 per cent of respondents agreed that “We will have to resort to armed struggle again”.
60 per cent of respondents agreed that “The real goal should be to start with two states but then move to it all being one Palestinian state”. By contrast, a mere 30 per cent agreed that “The best goal is for a two state solution that keeps two states living side by side”. A paltry 12 per cent supported the latter proposition “strongly”.
66 per cent agreed (42 per cent strongly) that “Over time Palestinians must work to get back all the land for a Palestinian state”. By contrast, just 23 per cent agreed that “Israel has a permanent right to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people”. 55 per cent agreed that “A Palestinian state should be run by Sharia Law”, whereas 35 per cent agreed that “A Palestinian state should be run by civil law”.
Thus, a majority of Palestinians are willing to accept a two-state solution as a way station en route to a single state – in other words, the elimination of Israel and its replacement with a single Palestinian state – this goal to be achieved through both negotiations and violence.
In a magnificent speech at Bar Ilan University in June last year, just two months after taking office, Bibi Netanyahu spoke eloquently of his quest for a just and lasting peace with the Palestinians.
The question is, however – are the Palestinians genuine partners for a genuine peace?
See also http://www.mideastweb.org/netanyahu_june_14_speech.htm