The rest is commentary

Editorial

Joe Biden, the American vice-president, dropped into Israel this week. U.S. special envoy George Mitchell is on his way too. The visits are a result of a Palestinian willingness to enter into “indirect” talks with Israel.

The potential for peace is always better when parties are talking, as opposed to not talking, but the core barrier to peace still seems to remain. If you read the news coverage, that core barrier seems imprecise. Agence France Presse reports that negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders “have stalled since Israel launched a devastating offensive against the Gaza Strip in December 2008.”

The Associated Press added that Biden’s arrival and the announcement of impending talks “came just hours after Israel enraged Palestinians by announcing new West Bank settlement construction.”

The New York Times reported that a green light was given by the Arab League last week, endorsing the concept of indirect talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

“The talks also represent a softening in the position of the Palestinian leadership, which had insisted it would not begin talks unless Israel froze construction in its settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem,” said the Times.

Somewhere in this must be the rub of the issue.

The Agence France Presse story implies that the lack of diplomatic intercourse over the past year is a result of Operation Cast Lead. Media are all over the 112 proposed new housing units in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Beitar Illit, despite that the permits for the construction were granted before the recent assurances of a slowing in settlement growth.

Other commentators are pointing to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s recent addition of two of Judaism’s holiest sites – the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and the tomb of the matriarch Rachel in Bethlehem – to a list of national heritage sites. This “provocation” threatens to bring on a third intifada, according to some Palestinians.

Hysteria is rampant. The Palestinian newspaper Filastin warns: “The Judaization of Hebron ... is a prelude to the Judaization of the al-Aqsa mosque and the rest of Palestine ... this will include the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and the seizure of their properties.”

“Judaization” has been the frightful menace being promoted by Palestinians since 1967 – and a core technique through which the Palestinian-Israeli conflict gets extrapolated into a Jewish-Muslim conflict.

Leave it to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to put everything in perspective. The list of national historic sites is “a very dangerous provocation that could lead to a war of religions,” he warned.

The irony, lost of course, is that the only people in Israel who have ever threatened the holy sites of others have been the Arabs themselves, first the Jordanians and then the Palestinians. Desecrations of Jewish sites took place throughout the West Bank and east Jerusalem when Jordan occupied the territory from 1949 to 1967. And one of the first things that Palestinians did to celebrate their freedom when sovereignty over the area first was actualized in 2000, as part of the peace process, was to ransack the Tomb of Joseph.

Need we dig back in history so far to remember that – coincidentally perhaps – the Dome of the Rock, Islam’s third-holiest site, was built directly atop the ruins of the ancient Hebrew Temple? Yes, it was probably a coincidence.

The whole idea that Israel is seeking anything beyond protection of its holy sites is typical of a projection that is central to the anti-Israel movement both in Palestine and abroad: accuse Israel of precisely those “crimes” of which the accusers themselves are guilty. This projection is at the very heart of this conflict, but it is still not quite the rub itself.

The media reports about a return to negotiations, about settlements and about the holy sites, leave a clear impression: Israel is the barrier to peace. Israel is the party that stands between the Palestinians and peaceful self-determination. Israel builds settlements. Israel usurps (its own) holy sites. Israel pummeled Gaza last year. Israel is “Judaizing” areas claimed by Palestinians (despite the areas having been Jewish holy sites for millennia).

Each of these – and the whole litany of allegations against Israel – is an excuse that quite brilliantly detracts the attention of the world from the real barrier to peace. Myriad accusations seek to lay the blame for continued war on Israel, a projection so simple in its brilliance that it has taken the world by storm, obliterating the truth of the matter.

From beginning to end of this conflict, the single barrier that has prevented peace is the refusal by the Arab world to stand a Jewish state in its region. All the rest is commentary.

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