by Reuven Berko
The Palestinians in Gaza are sick of Hamas, and in Judea and Samaria, they are tired of the Palestinian Authority's rampant corruption.
In
the late 1990s, author and political commentator Fouad Ajami published
his book "The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation's Odyssey," in
which he laid out the failures in the worldviews of Arab leaders and
their self-criticism as the reason for their lack of achievement.
Two decades later, as 2017 was drawing to a
close, the Palestinians' dream palace sustained three serious blows in
quick succession. First, U.S. President Donald Trump declared that the
U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. This was followed by
the Likud Central Committee's decision to annex the settlements and the
Jordan Valley. Finally, the Knesset passed a law that removes the teeth
from any future peace deal involving Jerusalem (by requiring a special
majority of 80 MKs to vote in favor of handing any part of the city over
to any foreign government).
If the Palestinians were to look at them in
a sober light, they would see that the U.N. resolutions that followed
Trump's announcement were meaningless. In light of the continuing
historic drama that began with the landmark Balfour Declaration, the
U.N. resolutions condemning Trump's announcement carried no operative
significance and merely served as a faint echo of the detached
institution's fading anti-Israelism.
The latest provocations from Hamas are not a
lust for battle, but an expression of how desperate and lost –
operatively, politically, and ideologically – the organization is. This
beaten and battered group made an immense investment in missiles and
attack tunnels, at a heavy cost to its people. These have become a
pointless burden. Hamas is currently in a political situation in which
the world is sick of Islamism, and the entities that aid and abet it
(Qatar, Iran, and Turkey) are bogged down in their own domestic
troubles.
The Palestinian Authority is at the end of
an era. PA President Mahmoud Abbas is trying fruitlessly to use a
diplomatic atmosphere that is hostile to Israel to wring concessions out
of it, while simultaneously avoiding direct negotiations with Israel or
recognizing it as a Jewish state. The PA is wasting time trying to
paint Israel as an apartheid state through a South Africa-style boycott
movement, while continuing to coordinate on security because it is
afraid of Hamas.
The Israeli convoy is moving on while the
PA is gritting its teeth over absurd demands (Jerusalem as the
Palestinian capital and a "right of return" for Palestinian refugees),
not realizing the effect the processes at work in the world are having
on their delusional dreams. Indeed, Islamist terrorism, the Iranian
threat, the breakdown of many countries in the region, the masses of
Muslim refugees into sinking Europe, the persecution of Christians in
the Middle East – these are the factors that have sidelined the
Palestinian problem, which was never the cause of the regional unrest.
As these developments take place, Abbas is
claiming that the U.S. is sponsoring an Israeli strategy to eradicate
the Palestinians and their irrefutable right to kill off the peace
process. A range of voices in Fatah and the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine and Hamas – responded to Trump's declaration and
Israel's decision about Jerusalem and the settlements with the language
of a declaration of war that demands that they revoke any recognition
of Israel and the peace process and resume resistance (the armed
struggle).
Most of the Palestinians in Judea, Samaria,
and the Gaza Strip are waking up. The sparsely attended "days of rage"
Hamas and the PA initiated over the issue of Jerusalem signal a
disappointing finale because the city used to be an issue that would
light up both the Palestinians and Arab nations.
The Gazans are sick of Hamas, and in Judea
and Samaria they are tired of the corruption in the PA, and once again
an interim government devoted to economic issues that would have
Israel's blessing is being discussed. Some reject the militant
candidates for Abbas' position (Majid Faraj and Mohammed Dahlan) as
representatives of the same old organizational approach and would prefer
Salam Fayyad, who has already proven his ability to make the vision of a
flourishing Palestinian society a reality. That might work well for us.
Reuven Berko
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-delusional-world-of-the-palestinians/
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