1. The Arab world has never come to terms with Israel’s existence within any set of borders whatsoever and is still seeking the destruction of Israel and its population.
2. Any Palestinian state, regardless of who rules it, will produce escalated violence, terror and warfare in the Middle East. It will seek war with Israel and not solutions to the economic and social problems of its citizens.
3. The only reason Arafat and the PLO ever wanted control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was to use them as bases for attacks on Israel. This is the only real use to which they will be put by any future Palestinian state.
4. The bulk of the Palestinian population has lived outside Israeli “occupation” for years, and their “liberation” from Israeli “occupation” only produced terrorism, mass murders and radicalization.
5. The instability of the Middle East is not caused by Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands but by PLO occupation of Israeli lands.
6. There was never in history an Arab Palestinian state.
7. The Palestinians have no legitimate claim to the right to set up their own state. It is doubtful whether they ever did have such a right, but even if they did, they forfeited it thanks to decades of terrorism, savagery, mass murders and barbarism.
8. Palestinians are Arabs. The Arabs already rule 22 states. There is no reason why they should be entitled to a 23rd. Creation of a 23rd Arab state in the West Bank and Gaza will escalate Middle East violence and world terrorism.
9. The Middle East conflict cannot be resolved through endless exhibitions of niceness and restraint by Israel. Israeli niceness, restraint, and goodwill gestures are interpreted by the Arab world as weakness and as signs that the Jews, like Paul McCartney’s old band, are on the run.
10. The Palestinians are not mistreated by Israel, but are poorly treated by the PLO/PA.
11. The only Arabs in the Middle East with any semblance of civil rights are those who live under Israeli rule. Israeli Arabs are the best-treated minority in the Middle East and are treated far better than are Arabs living in Arab states.
12. Oslo has radicalized and Nazified most Israeli Arabs, who now identify with and openly support Arab parties and politicians who call for violence against Jews and the destruction of Israel.
13. There are no Arab democracies and no support for democracy among significant minorities within the Arab world.
14. Israeli assassination of Palestinian terrorists is in fact a substitute for retaliation in kind against the Palestinians for bombings of Israeli children and other civilians. The alternative to such assassinations is bombings of Palestinian civilians.
15. Israeli settlements are the “mine canaries” of the Arab world. There is no reason why Jewish civilians should not be free to live in peace within Arab countries truly seeking peace with Israel, just as Arabs live at peace within Israel and within the United States. The attitude of the Arab world in general and of the PLO in particular toward such “settlements” is indicative of their attitudes toward Israel and Jews in general. If the Palestinians are not seeking peace with the Jews – and they are not – then the real problem is that Israel has built too few settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
16. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that does not deal with Islamist terror through wholesale massacres of the people in whose midst the terrorists operate.
17. There is an inverse relationship between the material comfort of Arabs living under Israeli rule and political moderation. The better off they are in a material sense, the more violent and radical they are. More generally, Arab radicalism and terror are positively correlated with
comfort and education and wealth. Bin Laden and his people are filthy rich. There have been no undernourished Palestinian suicide bombers.
18. Palestinians endorse terrorism and violence against Jews by large majorities, as do Israeli Arabs.
19. There are no visible Palestinian public figures who oppose violence, terror and Islamist fascism. There are no Palestinian “moderate” leaders, only a few Palestinian fascists who, like Hanan Ashrawi, speak English well and elegantly.
20. There is not and never has been a Palestinian “peace movement.”
21. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are for all intents and purposes wings of the PLO, regardless of who actually serve as the day-to-day commanders.
22. Asking Arafat or Abbas to arrest terrorists is like asking Osama bin Laden to arrest those responsible for September 11.
23. Peace cannot be achieved by pretending that war does not exist.
24. The Israeli Left is responsible for the bloodshed in Israel. The Israeli Left rescued the PLO from oblivion in the early 1990’s, armed it, and allowed it to become entrenched in the suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
25. The only peaceful terrorist is a dead terrorist.
Steven Plaut is a professor at Haifa University. His book ‘The Scout’ is available at Amazon.com. He can be contacted at [email protected]
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