The virulent propaganda that Abbas has espoused (including equating Zionism with Nazism and denying the Holocaust) is now the hallmark of the Arab world and a primary tool in the global campaign to discredit Israel.
Even if it were somehow possible to overlook Abbas’s past, we would still be left with a man who probably will never truly accept Israel’s right to exist. At present, no current Palestinian leader would dare repudiate the ‘Right of Return,’ especially as a prelude to negotiations, because it would be political suicide (or worse) and because every current Palestinian leader believes this clause to be the central component of national redemption.
Abbas and his ‘reformist’ clique continue to cling to the classic Palestinian narrative of victimhood that envisions complete redemption at the expense of Israel. Furthermore, the political movement he represents wrote the book on modern terrorism, a practice it continues to utilize, unabated, through proxies such as the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. It is a movement that views ‘peace’ as merely tactical, a means to an end – Israel’s end.
Despite protestations from Washington, nothing has changed in the Palestinian psyche that points to a breakthrough. Mahmoud Abbas is merely a kinder, gentler (and better-groomed) Yasir Arafat, with all the rejectionist trappings of his boss.
Even Ehud Barak’s foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, confesses in his Camp David post-mortem, “…the Palestinians don’t want a solution as much as they want to place Israel in the dock of the accused. More than they want a state of their own, they want to denounce our state” (Ha’aretz Friday Magazine, Sept. 14, 2001).
Up until now the Palestinians could be divided into three camps: The truly conciliatory – a tiny and frightened minority – who honestly envision a two-state compromise that recognizes Israel; the pragmatic-rejectionists who call themselves moderates but ultimately subscribe to Arafat’s ‘phase plan’ of dismembering Israel piecemeal via selective diplomacy; and the overt rejectionists who refuse to mask their goal of destroying the Jewish state.
There is no guarantee that the Palestinians will ever be able to accept Israel’s existence, internally or institutionally. Faced with a demand for some type of de facto repudiation of the ‘Right of Return’ as a litmus test, the Palestinian leadership will no longer be able to hide in the pragmatic rejectionist camp. They will be forced to choose between those who truly want peace and those unable to temper their violent, maximalist ambitions for the sake of humanity.
By insisting on this explicit form of recognition before negotiations begin, Israel will never again fall prey to a Trojan-horse peace process that heaps concessions on its foes while naively overlooking their uninterrupted campaign to dismantle the Jewish state.
Two states for two people must mean just that – no disingenuous clauses that will torpedo Jewish independence. The EU, UN and Russia must recognize that the Palestinians are not the only people who want a viable state – so do the Jews. If President Bush went to Aqaba last month just to talk about this outpost or that outpost, or to argue over which ‘militant’ to arrest and which to rehabilitate, he might as well have stayed home and sent Anthony Zinni in his place.
The principal obstacle to peace continues to be the Arab world’s rejection of Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state. The road map, already a cheap imitation of earlier failed peace initiatives, will go nowhere until the administration truly internalizes and subsequently promotes Israel’s need for this specific, concrete recognition. The Arab world’s tolerance of terrorist organizations such as Hamas (as exemplified by the Jordanian ambassador’s comments cited above) is a by-product of this ambiguity concerning Israel’s international status.
