UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-moon created a stir last week when, in remarks to the Security Council, he seemed to portray Palestinian terror against Israel as an understandable response to Israeli policies:
Sadly, 2016 has begun much like 2015 ended – with unacceptable levels of violence and a polarized public discourse across the spectrum in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.
Stabbings, vehicle attacks, and shootings by Palestinians targeting Israeli civilians – all of which I condemn – and clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces have continued to claim lives.
But security measures alone will not stop the violence. They cannot address the profound sense of alienation and despair driving some Palestinians – especially young people….
Palestinian frustration is growing under the weight of a half-century of occupation and the paralysis of the peace process….
Some have taken me to task for pointing out this indisputable truth.
Yet, as oppressed peoples have demonstrated throughout the ages, it is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism.
So-called facts on the ground in the occupied West Bank are steadily chipping away the viability of a Palestinian state and the ability of Palestinian people to live in dignity…..
Changing Israeli policies is central to advancing this goal…. Progress toward peace requires a freeze of Israel’s settlement enterprise.
Continued settlement activities are an affront to the Palestinian people and to the international community. They rightly raise fundamental questions about Israel’s commitment to a two-state solution.
Despite the perfunctory wave to the need for the Palestinians to reign in the attacks against Israel, the secretary general’s plain message was that those attacks are unexceptional, even normal, reactions to Israeli provocations and that it is the Israelis, in addition to being the targets of the terrorism, who bore the principal burden of eliminating them, presumably by unilaterally withdrawing from all land claimed by the Palestinians.
Indeed, he more than doubled down in a column in Sunday’s New York Times titled “Don’t Shoot the Messenger, Israel,” wherein he addressed the storm of criticism that followed his earlier remarks and suggested that the critics were simply ignoring history:
[L]ast week…I pointed out a simple truth: History proves that people will always resist occupation.
Some sought to shoot the messenger – twisting my words into a misguided justification for violence…. Nothing excuses terrorism. I condemn it categorically…. As I warned the Security Council last week, Palestinian frustration and grievances are growing under the weight of nearly a half-century of occupation. Ignoring this won’t make it disappear…..”
Twisting his words? Can they be anything other than a “justification of violence” when he describes terrorism as a natural reaction to Israeli policies? Statement of “a simple truth?” Was it made in a vacuum or a politically charged context within earshot of Mahmoud Abbas, who is continually on the prowl for signs of support for his maximalist policy on settlements and borders?
Moreover, the secretary general conveniently ignored the origin of the “occupation” of the West Bank after the Six-Day War. Typically, “occupation” of the sort the secretary general had in mind follows a successful war of aggression in which the victor seeks to retain newly conquered territory.
However, the Six-Day War was not a war of aggression on Israel’s part but rather a successful effort by Israel to beat back yet another Arab attempt at destroying it. In addition, because of the earlier Arab attempts to drive the Jews into the sea, the UN discussions following the Six-Day War focused on the primary goal of fashioning defensible borders for Israel.
Yet the secretary general ignores all this, treating Israel’s continued control of the West Bank as no different from run of the mill “occupation.” This does not mean the Palestinians are any less “frustrated.” But it does mean the onus should be on the Palestinians, not Israel. And that is to say nothing of the fact that Israel has made all manner of offers to relinquish parts of the West Bank.
If the secretary general is really interested in ending Palestinian terror, he should put away irrelevant bromides and focus instead on relevant facts.