Earlier this week, just in advance of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit
to Washington, a brief flurry of excitement took hold of the media, as word
spread of what appeared to be a major conciliatory gesture by the
Palestinians.
In a well-timed leak, the London-based
Al-Hayat reported
over the weekend that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had offered
Israel the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City as part
of a future peace agreement. The proposal, according to the paper, was among
several ideas that Abbas had recently submitted in writing to US Mideast
negotiator George Mitchell. The rest of eastern Jerusalem, he declared, would
serve as the capital of a Palestinian state.
At first glance, Abbas’s
offer would appear to herald a significant form of progress. After all, the
thorny issue of control over Jerusalem and its holy sites has long confounded
efforts to reach an accommodation between the two sides. By granting Israel a
foothold in the heart of ancient Jerusalem, Abbas would appear to be conceding
that the Jewish people can stake a legitimate claim to this very special
place.
But a closer look reveals that this Palestinian “concession,” like
so many others before it, is in fact little more than a hollow and ultimately
inconsequential act. And it would be foolish for Israel and its supporters to be
duped into thinking otherwise.
TO BEGIN with, how can Abbas offer Israel
something we already have? Last time I checked, the Western Wall was safely and
securely under our control. Indeed, it was 43 years ago this summer, during the
Six Day War, that Israel liberated the site from Jordanian occupation in an act
of self-defense.
As everyone knows, the Wall was built by Herod as part
of the Temple compound, where the Jewish people were worshiping God two
millennia before the PLO was created.
The Western Wall is ours by right
and by history, and thank God, it is in Israeli hands. We do not need Abbas or
anyone else, for that matter, to give us something we already possess. And we
most certainly don’t need to view his reported acknowledgment of reality as
constituting a “concession” or “gesture” which merits a reciprocal
response.
To do so would be to grant the Palestinians a huge advantage at
the negotiating table, for it would transform their verbal acceptance of the
most basic truths into something that Israel would be expected to pay for with
tangible assets.
“Want us to recognize that Israel has a right to live
and breathe?” the Palestinians will ask, “then ante up! Want us to
accept that
you have a right not to be thrown into the Mediterranean, then give us a
down
payment.”
That is not a recipe for peace, it is a formula for
failure.
The Palestinian acceptance of Israel’s right to Jerusalem, just
like their recognition of Israel’s existence, must be viewed as a
prerequisite
to, rather than a part of, any diplomatic process.
Israel cannot and must
not allow Abbas to arrogate to himself the ability to force us into
yielding on
our positions in exchange for mere words. As it is, his authority barely
extends
beyond the four corners of his own desk, which is yet another reason not
to take
his pronouncements all too seriously. But if we place ourselves at the
mercy of
Abbas’s fickle approval, we will most certainly weaken our stance beyond
repair.
In any event, the questions raised by the PA leader’s dubious
generosity quickly became moot. Within 24 hours of the
Al-Hayat report,
chief
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat went on Israel Radio on Sunday
morning to
deny that the Palestinians had made any such offer regarding the Western
Wall or
the Old City. Jerusalem, he insisted, must be under Palestinian
control.
So much for Palestinian flexibility.
NOT SURPRISINGLY,
amid all this fuss, little attention was paid to the really big story
regarding
Abbas, who once again revealed his true colors by heaping praise on a
mass-murderer. On Saturday, he sent his condolences to the family of Abu
Daoud,
the mastermind of the terrorist attack against the Israeli team in the
1972
Munich Olympics, who had passed away the day before.
“He is missed,”
Abbas wrote in his letter to Abu Daoud’s relatives, praising the
terrorist as
“one of the leading figures of Fatah” and thanking him for having “spent
his
life in resistance and sincere work as well as physical sacrifice for
his
people’s just causes.”
Among Abu Daoud’s “just causes” was the taking of
11 Israeli Olympians hostage in Munich, all of whom were killed during a
failed
rescue attempt by German police. “I regret nothing,” Abu Daoud told
Germany’s
Spiegel TV in 2006, defiantly adding that “you can only dream that I
would
apologize.”
For Abbas to praise such a man and mourn his passing speaks
volumes as to the kind of person he truly is, far more than any supposed
gestures he may or may not have made.
So let’s stop seeing “concessions”
where there aren’t any and peacemakers where they do not exist. It
should be
obvious that from people such as Abbas we require neither recognition
nor
beneficence. And neither should we fawn all over them to get it.