Irony aplenty in Mideast

Editorial

For years, Palestinian activists have marched on Canadian streets, obstructed Canadian campus free speech and tried to drown out pro-Israel events with the chant "End the occupation now!"

This month, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced he would take a step toward doing just that, by pulling out of the Gaza Strip. Yet, despite that Sharon is proposing a major step toward what Palestinians and their overseas allies have been demanding, the entire effort has been dismissed as a scheme to snatch more land in the West Bank. Because, in the image of the "Zionist entity" that now holds sway in most of the world, Israel – without exception – acts in completely bad faith.

Sharon made the withdrawal plan known as the first step in a process he is being forced to undertake unilaterally, due to the fact that, since 2000 (or, arguably, since 1947), there has been no trustworthy leader on the Palestinian side willing to lay down arms and negotiate peacefully.

Ironically, it is Sharon, demonized by Palestinians and their Canadian allies as the most ideological of Israeli leaders, who is in fact the most pragmatic. No grand schemes for Sharon, just a full withdrawal from Gaza and then we'll see how things transpire before dealing with the West Bank.

One suspects the Palestinian leadership doesn't "get" irony, or they would have realized in 1948 or 1967 or 1993 or 2000 that demanding everything will inevitably get them nothing. Irony repeats itself: The Palestinian Arabs of 1947 refused to begin constructing the infrastructure of state, waiting instead for their Arab allies to come in and crush the nascent Zionist seed. A similar all-or-nothing approach led to the resumption of violence in 2000 at the very moment that a Palestinian state was within the grasp of Yasser Arafat and his allies.

Israel's planned withdrawal from Gaza might be seen as the opportunity to finally model Palestinian self-determination to the world; to create a functioning Palestinian Arab state ready to take its place in the world community and, as history progresses, to negotiate in peace with Israel for a fair settlement to West Bank demands.

Except that such incremental steps are (and have always been) anathema to the Palestinian leadership, who envision a triumphal entry into Jerusalem upon the ashes of the Zionist experiment.

Given nobody to negotiate with, Sharon has taken a step that should have been viewed by the world community as a gesture of enormous goodwill. But the world community is so convinced that Israel is an untrustworthy force that this act of territorial sacrifice has been almost universally condemned.

It will be ironic if this moment of opportunity passes because the Palestinians and their allies have finally become completely blinded by their preconceptions of Zionist duplicity. Will this olive branch be rejected too? Will the Arab enemies of Israel again not miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity?

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