The world-wide condemnation of Israel following the commando raid on the “Free Gaza” movement ship as usual contains more than a grain of hypocrisy. The flotilla of six vessels was clearly meant to be provocative, as was the fact that the only ship boarded by commandos was the only one that refused to redirect to an Israeli port for inspection, and it was, of course, the only one where violent resistance was encountered upon boarding. With Hamas still occasionally firing rockets into Israel that were likely smuggled in from the sea, and still refusing to renounce its stated reason for being (to destroy Israel), any ship that refuses inspection is obviously suspect. It is clear that it was intended to create a public relations problem for Israel by compel the Israeli commandos to use force by attacking them as they boarded. But such subtleties seem to escape the media and foreign nations trying to drum-up side issues to deflect from domestic problems.
I have to confess that I am much less impressed with the intentions of Hamas than passionate pro-Palestinian advocates seem to have; too bad the Palestinians and their advocates are not as passionate about peace as they with demonizing Israel. “Idealism” and realism are rarely compatible. A dispassionate knowledge of history may seem “pedestrian” to those who prefer to see Israel, a nation historically surrounded by enemies, and attacked by its neighbors on four occasions, as the “oppressor” nation. History tells us that Palestine is a geographical construct, occupied by different peoples at different times through-out most of its history, ruled by one empire or another—with the exception of the periods that the Israelites/Jews maintained an independent state there. The word “Palestinian” simply denotes the Arabs who live there, and who share a common religion (Islam) and language (or at least the “literary” Arabic that is taught in schools) with the rest of the Arab world, with some small differences in regional culture. Thus the “Arab World” is unique in history in that it comprises of many separate “states” across a broad, interlocked geographic area that seem almost interchangeable (Egypt’s Nasser dreamed of becoming the ruler of a secular “Pan-Arab” empire). The modern Arab states (Egypt might be an exception) are for the most part chunks cut-up by the British and French mandates after the break-up of the Ottoman empire.
Following the horrifying reality of the Holocaust—a culmination of centuries of anti-Semitic intolerance that is still strong even today in Europe—Jews in Palestine, having already been promised a state in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, stepped-up their demands for a state, even resorting to terrorism against British authorities who were dragging their feet to appease Muslims. It is interesting to note that the current demands of the pro-Palestinian foreign advocates (demands which are not, it should be noted, precisely shared by their Hamas friends) were already in place by the partition of 1948. The Palestinians had no factual historical claim to their own state, but they refused to co-exist with an “infidel,” Jewish or Christian, even when it meant a state of their own. Although it is true that hard-line Zionists wanted all of Palestine, there wasn’t any way the international community was going to allow that—until the Palestinians essentially gave-away their state by conducting a mass exodus, becoming refugees not by necessity but by abiding by the commands of their decidedly unvisionary leaders.
It is seems a waste of time pointing out to those convinced of Hamas’ “victimization” that even after having been beset by enemies on all sides bent on its destruction, the Israelis were still willing to barter all the land they occupied in the 1967 war for peace, but the Arab world allow that chance to slip away. In the more recent past, the lack of true Palestinian statesmen allowed chances at a legitimate peace slip away; Arafat, who at best was a capricious opportunist, did not deal in a honest way with serious peacemakers like Rabin, and after his assassination, Peres. Hamas suicide attacks in Israel derailed that first real chance for a lasting peace, but the Palestinians were given a second chance with Barak. Barak went against the wishes of even his own party by offering to “share” Jerusalem, but Arafat refused to compromise on this and the issue of the refugees returning to Israel—a right they had vacated 50 years earlier. Arafat’s all or nothing gambit failed. The Israelis tired of his game and voted Barak and the last best peace plan for the Palestinians out. That peace plan was taken off the table for good when the next round of Palestinian uprisings began.
And it is also useless to point out that the Palestinians are still unable to get their act together and speak as one coherent voice in favor of peace with Israel. If impoverished peasants in Mexico decided to lob mortars and missiles into Texas, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine the reaction of Americans, regardless of the grievances of Mexican peasants who have been harmed by price restrictions that benefit American farmers under NAFTA. Yet Palestinians in Gaza have chosen as their representative an organization, Hamas, that is bent on the destruction of Israel, and has repeatedly tested the patience and willingness of the Israeli people to deal with the Palestinians, who lobbed for months mortars and missiles into Israel without provocation before the Israeli army retaliated. All Hamas ever needed to do was recognize the right of Israel to exist. They will not do so. The Israelis want peace. The Palestinians, at least in Gaza, have chosen “leaders” who apparently do not; real peace would reduce Hamas--which unlike the IRA has no political wing--to irrelevancy. It needs violence, or the threat of violence, to survive as a viable entity. This is why it needs to maintain Israel as a enemy, and it will continue to gull the world with its victim propaganda. They had their opportunities, but the hand they played was violence and murder, and outside the Muslim world, events like Munich were far from public relations victories for the Palestinians and their cause. Now they must deal with the bad hand they left themselves with.
Israel can be justly criticized for continuing to build settlements on the West Bank, which calls into question their sincerity. But the lack of reciprocity to the concessions the Israelis have made in the past have with some justification produced distrust on the part of the Israelis in the Palestinians commitment to peace, which has always been a questionable commodity. All that Israel has asked for is recognition of its right to exist, but for Iran and the Arab world this has proved too difficult a pill to swallow, particularly since anti-Israel propaganda has proved such a useful tool to focus the population’s attention away from domestic problems.
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