Adapted from an article by Barry Rubin, February 26, 2009
This conflict is not continuing because there is a dispute about the precise boundary line between Israel and a Palestinian state.
The conflict continues because the Palestinian leaders—all of them—are either unwilling or unable to accept Israel’s permanent existence, the end of the conflict, the abandonment of terrorism, and the settlement of Palestinian refugees in a Palestinian state.
Analyze the Fatah Central Committee's membership and the viewpoints expressed by the group’s top leaders. The number who can be called moderates ready to accept and implement a two-state solution stands at about 10 percent of them.
Are there [Palestinians] who voice a moderate two-state solution position and who advocate coexistence? Yes, there are some but they have no organization or power whatsoever [within Palestinian politics.] Moreover, they say so almost exclusively in English to Westerners and not to their own people. To express anything equivalent to Labor or Kadima, even Likud, positions is to risk your life.
-- Schools, mosques, media and other institutions controlled fully or partly by the PA daily preach that all Israel is Palestine, Israel is evil, and violence against it is good. Hardly the most minimal steps have been taken to prepare the Palestinian masses for peace. For example, no one dare suggest that a Palestinian nationalist movement might want to resettle Palestinian refugees in Palestine, not Israel; or that Israel and President Bill Clinton made a good offer in 2000 and it was a mistake to reject it. Or a dozen other points necessary as a basis for real peace.
-- Palestinian public opinion polls consistently show overwhelming support for hardline positions and for terrorism against Israeli civilians.
-- An unyielding historical narrative still predominates that the whole land between the Jordan River and the sea is and should be Arab Palestine.
-- Of course, Hamas governs about 40 percent of West Bank/Gaza Palestinians and opposes Israel’s existence explicitly. The PA and Fatah do not vigorously combat the Hamas world view, except perhaps for its idea of an Islamist state. -- On the contrary, Fatah and the PA put a higher priority on conciliation with Hamas rather than peace with Israel.
....
There’s nothing left or right wing about the above analysis. ... Equally, this analysis doesn’t mean Israel cannot work with the PA on such matters as stability, economic well-being for Palestinians, blocking terrorism, or keeping Hamas out of power on the West Bank.
[However,] as we learned in the 1990s with the peace process and more recently with disengagement, Israel’s actions—no matter how conciliatory and concessionary—cannot make peace when the other side is unwilling and unable to do so. It’s time for the rest of the world to learn this fact.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. Rubin's website is online
at http://www.gloria-center.org.
