Gaza: only pessimism

Editorial

Global calls for ceasefire begin the moment Israel starts shooting back. We've seen this before: incessant terrorist attacks against Israel draw little to no international condemnation, but the moment Israel engages with those targeting and killing its civilians, "peace activists" emerge from every hedgerow, all causes and contexts ignored.

Blaming Israel is the order of the day, but what was true in 1948 remains true. This entire conflict emanates from the unfaltering refusal of the Arab world to accept Jewish self-determination in their midst. While the Israeli body politic has transformed through countless epochs of change, the Arab world remains almost monolithically opposed to Israel. Until 1967, the Arab states tried to defeat Israel conventionally, through military victory; thereafter, through incessant terrorism determined to ensure that the Jews would not have a moment's peace.

Even as Yasser Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize for holding an olive branch in one hand, he was holding a gun in the other. What we called the peace process, the Palestinians called a "hudna" – who knew there was a word for negotiating peace in order to buy time to re-arm?

Just as Hitler outlined his plans explicitly in advance for anyone caring to pay attention, Arafat told the world that he was willing to accept a two-state solution until the time came to raise arms against Israel for the final blow. He thought that moment was at hand in 2000, evidently, when the peace process collapsed in the renewed Palestinian violence that continues today. Every death and every injury – Israeli, Palestinian, Jew, Arab, Christian or other – since 2000 has been caused by the simple, but yawning, chasm between Israelis and their Arab neighbors: Israel wants peace and coexistence; Arab leaders want Israel to disappear. Neither side will stop until one gets its way and that will not take days or weeks or months, but likely generations.

Even if Israel triumphs in Gaza, defeating Hamas, and somehow a democratic Palestine emerges from the detritus left by Israel's necessary actions and the Palestinians' own disastrous policy of kleptocracy and feudalism, the region will still be poisoned by the generations of Palestinians and other Arabs inculcated with genocidal Jew-hatred.

Whatever happens in Gaza this year is a small part of a long, winding road.

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