Real roots of conflict

Editorial

Israel's deputy prime minister, Haim Ramon, on the weekend suggested that Israel must discuss sharing Jerusalem with a future sovereign Palestinian state. Ramon is a common source of trial balloons from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and the reaction to Ramon's suggestion among Israeli "hawks" has suggested that Olmert may have been right to distance himself from this idea.

In 2000, the Palestinians, in what was perceived as, or purveyed as, a popular uprising, put an end to a seven-year period of relatively peaceful negotiation and returned to the warm blanket of terrorism. We know now that the intifada was not, as its name implies, a popular uprising in the conventional sense. It was planned, funded and executed by the Palestinian Authority, the recognized government of the Palestinian people, with Yasser Arafat's signature on the cheque reqs for weapons.

Now the Israeli government is considering turning half of Jerusalem over to the Palestinians as a reward. The intent, of course, is not to reward terrorism, but the practical outcome is just that. The intent, sensible Israeli proponents will say, is to finally find the magic solution to decades of resentment and violence.

In negotiations, of course, everything is on the table. But two factors are at play in the discussion of Jerusalem's future. First, Israelis and Palestinians are not in negotiations, per se, at present. Second, Jerusalem was one of several issues awaiting resolution after a build up of trust in what were to be "final status" negotiations. Final status for Israel meant resolution of the very difficult issues standing in the way of lasting peace. Final status for the Palestinians, we now understand, meant resolution of the existence of the Zionist entity.

Like some other historical figures, Arafat never hid his true agenda, instead relying on the world's insouciance toward the fate of Jews to give him impunity.

Two years into the Oslo process, Arafat told a Jordanian TV interviewer: "Since we cannot defeat Israel in war, we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel."

That he misjudged the willingness of his Arab friends to come to his aid, or the strength of the Zionists' will to survive, does not negate Arafat's intent. Indeed, this should have been clear from the beginning to the end of the peace process, during which Arafat and the Palestinian refused to undertake the one substantive responsibility expected of them during that time: to end incitement to kill Israelis and Jews. All through the peace process, Palestinian school children continued to learn from textbooks that inculcated a genocidal hatred of the Zionist entity. Television programs continued to purvey the final objective of eliminating the Jews of the Middle East. Religious and political figures continued to whip mobs into the kind of hysterical frenzy once associated with Good Friday in Romania.

Israelis and everyone else must make the connection that this conflict has gone on for decades and will likely continue for decades more. The reason has nothing to do with what the Arab world insists and ignorant Western observers believe to be the regular suspects – Israeli intransigence and Zionist expansionism. It is because the root of this conflict is not on the Israeli side at all, but is caused and prolonged by more than 60 years of total and absolute rejection by the Palestinian, Arab and Muslim leadership of a Jewish state in the Middle East.

The 2000 iteration of this reality was the intifada. But the fertile soil of the intifada was tilled for a long, long time before that, through incessant propaganda against any form of Jewish self-determination in the historic land of the Jewish people. This root cause can be fancied up and explained away by focusing on Israeli excesses and side issues like settlements, but this conflict began and continues solely because of Arab absolutism, which finally was stated clearly in 1947/'48 and insists today that all of eretz Yisrael is Arab territory.

Conciliation and compromise may indeed win the day and ensure lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians – but only if conciliation and compromise are equally shared. The fate of Jerusalem, the "right of return" and the range of compromises demanded of Israel must indeed be addressed in final status negotiations. But those negotiations can happen only when the precursors to final status are met: when Palestinian, Arab and Muslim leaders have accepted Israel as a permanent fact and cease inculcating genocide in their society. Such a time seems a long way off.

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