Construction of hatred

Editorial

We sometimes hear that the Middle Eastern psyche is very sensitive and that slights that Euro-Americans do not detect can be face-slaps to the pride of the sensitive Middle Easterner. But, it turns out, Americans have feelings, too.

Though it seemed petulant of American President Barack Obama to leave Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stewing alone for dinner last week, it was no less petulant than the actions of Netanyahu’s junior coalition partners who undermined bilateral relations with an ill-timed construction announcement. While the construction of 1,600 homes in a Jewish east Jerusalem neighborhood is a red herring in the larger scheme, a halt to settlement construction is a cornerstone of Obama’s Mideast policy. Obama’s capitulation to the ludicrous idea that the construction of homes is an impediment to peace is nonsensical. Still, the announcement was ill-timed, to put it mildly, and it is hard to see it as anything but provocative.

The planned construction that sparked this dispute is in a Jewish neighborhood of east Jerusalem, which should remain Israeli regardless of future events. This puts the issue in a different light for two reasons. If there is a disagreement about whether east Jerusalem is part of Israel proper, then negotiations are going to be a lot longer and more challenging than the Obama administration expects. Most Palestinians know that Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem will remain Jewish. But if, as the complaining over construction there suggests, some actually expect east Jerusalem to be handed over to a future independent Palestine, then why wouldn’t 1,600 new homes be a welcome addition to the area? There will inevitably be a settlement to this conflict and inevitably some areas where Jewish settlements now exist will come under Palestinian jurisdiction. In theory, the construction of new homes in these areas will create assets for a future Palestinian state. In reality, of course, as was seen after Israel evacuated Jews from Gaza, the nihilism of Palestinian nationalism tends to result in the destruction of anything and everything “tainted” by Jews.

No, settlement construction as a hindrance to peace is a straw dog. This is true everywhere, given the good faith Israel has demonstrated in Sinai and Gaza, that in the faint hope for peace, Israel will evacuate its citizens. But it is especially true in Jerusalem.

The real hindrance to peace is the naïve idea that the Palestinian leadership is prepared to live in harmony beside Israel.

“One needs to see what has taken place here during the past 17 years,” Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s vice-prime minister, told an Israeli newspaper recently. “The belief of land for peace has failed. We got land in return for terror in Judea and Samaria and land in return for rockets in Gaza. What, the Americans don’t see this?”

The naïveté that moderate Palestinian leaders are preparing their people for peaceful coexistence should have been dashed again last month when the “moderate” Fatah government marked the 32nd anniversary of the deadliest terror attack in Israeli history by naming a public square in honor of the woman who led the attack.

Dalal Mughrabi was 19 years old when she and a band of terrorists traveled by boat from Lebanon, landed between Tel Aviv and Haifa, and began a killing spree that left 13 children and 25 adult civilians dead.

The naming of the town centre in honor of a mass murderer is the latest glorification of terror and a history of incitement to kill. Schools, soccer fields, streets and preschools are named for shahids, martyrs who have blown themselves up among Jews or who have died trying. This is to say nothing of the outright indoctrination still existing in Palestinian textbooks and popular culture extolling the same incitement to antisemitism and murder.

“We are all Dalal Mughrabi,” the New York Times quoted Tawfiq Tirawi, a member of the Fatah central committee, as saying at the dedication event. “For us, she is not a terrorist [but] ... a fighter who fought for the liberation of her own land.”

Ironically, the ceremony for the naming of the square was evidently a low-key affair by the standards of this sort of celebration of mass murder. The event was left largely to the party’s youth wing, because the senior members of the party did not want to distract from the concurrent visit to the region of ... U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden.

The fact that the Palestinian leadership had more of a feel for international diplomacy than the Israeli leadership could help explain why, despite the facts of the situation, world sympathy seems to hold with those who destroy, while condemning those who build.

In a rational world, the only building that creates a genuine impediment to peace is the building of yet another generation of young Palestinians raised to admire and emulate mass murderers.

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