Why Can No One Answer The Question?

For a long time, now, I have been asking the question, just why is it that the Palestinians, and before them the Arabs of the British mandate in Palestine, have perpetually refused to accept a state for themselves next to the Jewish one?

No supporter of the Palestinian cause has ever adequately answered that question, not on Daily Kos, not on My Left Wing, not anywhere that I have seen.  The most anyone has said, within progressive-left activist circles, is that none of the offers were ever good enough.  None of them.

Let's lay it out, yet again. I am not going to bother with links because everything that I am about to say is readily verifiable through Google and elsewhere and I have provided that verification innumerable times in the past.

So, in 1937, the British offered to divide what was left of the mandate, after forking over two-thirds of it to the Hashemites in Jordan. (The Hashemites being an exceedingly important group of Arabs that no one had ever heard of before.) This was under the Peel Commission and it offered the Jews a tiny rump state in what is about one-fourth of today's Israel.

The Jews accepted and the Arabs said "no."

In 1947, of course, under UN 181, the United Nations proposed to divide the mandate between a Jewish state and an Arab state.

The Jews again accepted and the Arabs again said "no."

Between 1948 and 1967, the Gaza strip was ruled by Egypt and the west bank of the Jordan River was ruled by Jordan. During that entire period there was virtually no talk of a Palestinian people and thus no talk of a "Palestinian" state on that land.

How is it that if the Palestinians represent a distinct ethnicity, or nation, that has lived on that land from time immemorial that they refused to even acknowledge themselves as a people and demand their sovereignty prior to 1967?  From 1948 through 1967 the "Palestinians" did not call themselves Palestinians, and thus did not think of themselves as a distinct people and did not, therefore, demand a state.

{Mentioning this is entirely taboo within the western Left, but despite their righteous indignation, it remains the case.}

After the 6 Day War in 1967, the Jews agreed to offer up the west bank to Jordan and the Gaza to Egypt but were met with the infamous "3 Nos" of the Arab League at Khartoum.

No negotiations. No recognition. No peace.   (Which pretty much says it all, I think.)

In 1979, the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, between Begin and Sadat, contained a provision for Palestinian autonomy.

The Arabs, again, said "no."

In 2000, under the Oslo process, Ehud Barak offered Yassir Arafat 100 percent of the Gaza, well over 90 percent of the west bank in a contiguous area with land swaps, along with the Arab sections of eastern Jerusalem.

The Arabs (surprise, surprise) said "no" and Arafat refused to even make a counter-offer.

In 2008, Ehud Olmert offered Mahmoud Abbas pretty much the same deal, which he also refused.

In 2010, the Palestinians refused to even negotiate peace so long as Jews dared to live, and thus build recreation centers and swimming pools in Judea and Samaria, the so-called "West Bank."

And to this day the conflict goes on and on and on and on.

And, furthermore, we are supposed to believe that not only do the Palestinians want a state of their own, but that they deserve one... yet for some never-stated reason that have always, and perpetually, refused to accept such a state.

They have refused offer after offer after offer, yet somehow we are supposed to believe that what they always refuse is what they actually want.

What horrendous nonsense this all is.

The whole thing is little more than the continued harassment of the Jews, a project that has been ongoing now for about 2,000 years.

If the "Palestinians" want a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one than all they need to do is agree to it. That they have never agreed to this should tell us that this is quite clearly not what they want. They do not want peace and potential prosperity for themselves and their children in a state next to the Jewish one. If they actually wanted that they could have had it time and time again, yet they have always refused.

Acknowledge the obvious.

The Palestinians want something else and they have made very clear what it is that they want. They've stated it in plain terms in the charters of both the PLO and Hamas.  The Hamas charter calls for the genocide of the Jews and the PLO charter calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.

That is what they want.

We have got to recognize that "no means no." And we need to base our understanding of the conflict on that fact.

This is what my former compadres on the Left simply cannot face.

They desperately want to believe that the Palestinians are actually misunderstood people of good will... despite their tendency to name sporting arenas after mass murderers... who if the Israelis would simply get together as a group and hop up and down on one foot, while simultaneously playing the kazoo as they face toward Mecca... then there would be peace.

The Israelis must do this, that, or the other thing.

And that is why Israel has moved to the right.  They understand that they are the victims of a cruel game that has been going on for almost 100 years, now.  The violence against them started with the Arab riots of the 1920s, well before there even was a country called Israel, and it has yet to cease.  The truth of the matter is that for religious and racist reasons the Arabs have, for centuries, considered the Jews an inferior people, the children of apes and pigs, and therefore Jewish sovereignty on land once controlled by Muslims is considered an affront, an unacceptable humiliation that must be redressed.

In fact, it is still considered an affront and a humiliation because the Arab and Muslim people continue to teach their children that it is so and therefore Jewish self-determination and self-defense in the traditional homeland of the Jewish people must, by all necessary means, be opposed.  This is true, apparently, even if it means the ongoing poverty and misery of the Palestinians.

This is the ugly truth that the Left will not face.  It is so much easier to think that if only the Israelis would do this, that, or the other.

It is a delusion born from desperation.

{It's also a sucker's game.}