IMRA
Weekly Commentary
18 August '11
A reminder from the past:
"... WHAT if they cheat? What if they take whatever we give them and demand even more, still exercising violence and terror? Within the proposed settlement, Israel will be in a position to close in on Palestine and undo the deal...
Once peace comes, Israeli doves, more than other Israelis, must assume a clear-cut "hawkish" attitude concerning the duty of the future Palestinian regime to live by the letter and the spirit of its obligations. ...”
Amos Oz - "From Battles To Bridges", The Jerusalem Post, September 3, 1993
Did Amos Oz, who has consistently avoided criticizing the Palestinians for failing to honor the Oslo agreements, abandon his commitment to press for Palestinian compliance?
Here’s the trick: Amos Oz wrote about “[O]nce peace comes”.
That’s final status “peace” not the interim Oslo agreements.
And there is an internal logic to this if one subscribes to the secular messianic belief that the day Israel withdraws to the ’67 lines that we will enjoy utopian peace with the Arabs.
Because the flip side of blindly embracing that “ending the occupation brings utopian peace” is that what the Arabs say or do before that day is not relevant for policy making.
Are the Amos Oz’s of the world really so embarrassingly silly in their belief system?
It could be.
But here is the catch.
These secular messianics are a miniscule minority in Israeli society.
Their ideas may get support and funding from overseas, but at the end of the day, they have to convince rational Israelis to support a deal with the Palestinians.
Rational Israelis do indeed care about what the Palestinians say and do before the “end of the occupation.”
And thus, even the secular messianics have a vested interest in pressing for Palestinian compliance today in order to garner the support of rational Israelis.
This would not be the first time that the messianic camp took the rational Israelis into account
This was the logic behind Beilin-Mazen, the Geneva Initiative and other similar projects aimed at coming up with verbiage that at least superficially could be used in order to prove to rational nonbelievers that a “deal” indeed could be struck.
To paraphrase Oz: Israeli doves, more than other Israelis, must today assume a clear-cut "hawkish" attitude concerning the duty of the Palestinians to live by the letter and the spirit of their obligations.
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The chances of the Palestinians ever signing a comprehensive peace agreement with Israel are less than none as are the chances of the Palestinians even honoring their committments in any interim agreements.
ReplyDeleteThus the Palestinians will never renege on their peace agreement because they will never make one with Israel.
The Palestinians are at war with Israel, and it is a war to bring about the end of Israel's existence. Both sides of the Israeli political spectrum know this as a fact, it is just that the Left believes that if Israel is accommodating enough, appeasing enough, or nice enough, that the Palestinians will undergo a sea change and live in peace with Israel. Israeli Nationalists also assume that if Israel remains firm in her positions, that the Palestinians will someday formally agree to peace with Israel but also believe that the Palestinians will violate any agreement as soon as it suits them.
Both sides are certainly wrong for the near future and probably for the long term that Israel can attain serious and enforceable peace treaty with the Palestinians.
The Palestinians do not want peace with Israel, they want to destroy Israel. Thus an informal Palestinian Israeli cease fire, of more or less effectiveness, is the best we can hope for.