Thursday, October 2, 2014

Tzvika Fogel: A Teetering Palestinian Illusion



by Tzvika Fogel


The unpredictable Middle East obligates us to reassess the situation around us almost on a daily basis. The Arab world is a strange brew. We see, on the one hand, the terror armies of Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaida and the Islamic, and the vulnerable states of Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon on the other. We have Palestinians, Sudanese, futureless Syrian revolutionaries without national identities, facing radical Islamist warmongers like Iran, Qatar and Turkey, who put the future in jeopardy. All of these together create possibilities that even the most gifted of Hollywood script writers could never imagine. Yesterday's enemy could become tomorrow's ally, and whatever happens two days from now is anyone's guess. 

The Western world is beginning to internalize the situation, which does not coincide with common sense or healthy logic, and is starting to understand that the only way to tidy this mess up is not to surrender to it. If we fail today, with international forces working together, to treat these poisonous Islamist tree branches, then we will be forced to chop the entire tree down in the not-so-distant future. No one wants to fight a third world war after the Islamists acquire a nuclear bomb with which to send us back to the Stone Age. Or, in the words of Albert Einstein: "The fourth world war will be fought with sticks and stones."

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' malicious and deceitful speech at the U.N. General Assembly was predictable. At the end of the day, what more can be expected of a Palestinian politician incapable of making decisions, who extends his hand to the leaders of Hamas in Gaza and conducts a revolving door policy with Hamas terrorists in Judea and Samaria; a man who speaks about peace and tolerance in English and about the right of return in literary Arabic. For Abbas, alleviating tensions with Hamas, which he despises more than anything, is more important than peace with us. He is more afraid for his life than for the future of the Palestinians. He is completely devoid of the leadership skills and charisma required of a leader who must make decisions that involve compromise, which in turn can breathe new hope into the peace process. 

Whoever had pinned their hopes on Abbas to lead the Palestinian population toward peace and coexistence, instead found the true Mahmoud Abbas, in all his glory after his speech to the U.N. Indeed, this is the Damascus-educated Abbas, a citizen of Qatar and member of the Black September terrorist organization that perpetrated the slaughter of Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich, whose doctoral dissertation was primarily based on Holocaust denial.

Abbas is the tailwind behind the rickety terrorist sail boat, who believes he will succeed with words, a suit and a distorted presentation of victimhood, to destroy the Jewish state. We fight to bring about peace; they want peace in order to prepare for the next war. 

"Peace is made with enemies," said Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin back in the day, but our enemies do not want peace. Hezbollah, the ayatollah's henchman, is unfamiliar with the term peace. Hamas recognizes the word but does not recognize us. The moderate Palestinians recognize us in a limited capacity and know the term, but are unwilling to participate in the peace process, with all that it entails. 

Therefore, out of an understanding of the regional reality, which is simply just another branch of the same poisonous tree, we have to internalize that the only recourse is to force the current situation to an extreme point. The cancerous growth will either be removed or the limb will be lost; the branch will heal or we will cut it off. The Palestinians must decide if they want to reach an agreement as one, without threats and without weapons, or continue fighting amongst each other. In the meantime, instead of falling for the lip service of Palestinian politicians, I would rather put my faith in the IDF.


Brig. Gen. (ret.) Zvika Fogel is a former chief of staff of the IDF Southern Command.

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=10133

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

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