by Khaled Abu ToamehEven if Israel were to freeze all construction in the West Bank settlements, this would not mean that peace would prevail in the Middle East the following day.
Those who think that Palestinians would take to the streets to express their joy over such a move are living on a different planet and have a short memory.
Those who think that Palestinians would take to the streets to express their joy over such a move are living on a different planet and have a short memory.
In the summer of 2005, when Israel destroyed all settlements in the Gaza Strip and evicted more than 8,000 Jews from their homes, not a single Palestinian welcomed the Israeli pullout.
Neither Fatah nor Hamas saw the Israeli withdrawal as a goodwill gesture that could pave the way for making peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Neither Fatah nor Hamas saw the Israeli withdrawal as a goodwill gesture that could pave the way for making peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
On the contrary, many Palestinians interpreted the withdrawal as a sign of weakness, attributing to the wave of suicide bombings and rocket attacks against Israel. Now the Palestinian Authority is saying that it won’t return to the negotiating table unless Israel halts all construction in the settlements.
The Palestinian Authority is trying to create the impression that had it not been for the continued construction, peace would have come to the region a long time ago.
This argument, of course, is untrue -- otherwise, peace would have prevailed after Israel destroyed the settlements in the Gaza Strip.
And was there peace between Jews and Arabs before the settlements started popping up after 1967? The Palestinian Authority’s entire approach toward the issue of settlements has been characterized by hypocrisy from the beginning.
If the issue of the settlements were so important, as the Palestinian leadership claims, why didn’t Yasser Arafat and his advisors sign the Oslo Accords more than fifteen years ago without demanding that Israel first halt construction of new homes in the settlements?
If the issue of the settlements were so important, as the Palestinian leadership claims, why didn’t Yasser Arafat and his advisors sign the Oslo Accords more than fifteen years ago without demanding that Israel first halt construction of new homes in the settlements?
And why didn’t Arafat back then insist that Israel freeze all settlement construction as a precondition for talking to Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Binyamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon while the bulldozers were working? Why, also, did Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, continue the peace talks with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni without demanding any freeze in settlement construction?
It is interesting that Abbas finally discovered the “threat” of the settlements only after US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton started putting pressure on Israel about the continued construction.
Only after Obama and Clinton made a big issue out of the settlements did Abbas come up with his new demand: that Israel freeze all settlement construction as a precondition for resuming the peace process.
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