Myths & Facts Online

This section contains new myths and facts that have been added since the publication of the paperback edition of Myths and Facts. The information will also be cross-referenced in the appropriate chapters of the online M&F.

Elections are not synonymous with democracy. Several Arab countries hold elections, including Egypt and Syria, but they have only one candidate, and there is no doubt about the outcome. The dictators are always reelected with nearly 100 percent of the vote. In those nations, no one seriously claims the elections are democratic.

In the case of the Palestinian Authority (PA) elections held in January 2005, the standards were higher. These were advertised as an example of democracy and, compared to other Arab states, the voting was a considerable advancement toward free elections.

Still, the election could hardly be called competitive as the outcome was never in doubt. Seven candidates ran for president, but the only question was the size of Mahmoud Abbas’ margin of victory. He won with 62.3 percent of the vote. His nearest challenger was Mustafa Barghouti with 19.8 percent.¹

The election had a much lower turnout than expected (62 percent), and supporters of the Islamic terrorist organizations largely boycotted the vote, as did Arabs living in east Jerusalem. Thus, Abbas was conservatively estimated by al-Jazeera to have received the support of only about one-third of the eligible voters.²

The election process went smoothly and, despite Palestinian predictions of Israeli interference, international observers reported that Palestinians were not obstructed by Israel from participating in the election. In fact, Palestinian and Israeli officials were said to have worked well together to facilitate voting.³

Immediately after the election, however, 46 officials from the PA Central Election Committee resigned, confirming suspicions of voting irregularities and fraud. The Committee had come under pressure from Abbas’ staff to extend the vote by an additional two hours and to allow non-registered voters to cast ballots to guarantee a larger turnout and improve Abbas’ chance of a “landslide” victory.

The day of the election, gunmen stormed the Committee offices to demand that Palestinians who were not registered be allowed to vote. The deputy chairman of the Committee, Ammar Dwaik, said he “was personally threatened and pressured” and confirmed that some voters were able to remove from their thumbs the ink that was supposed to prevent double voting.⁵

While Abbas is now seen as a legitimately elected leader by most Palestinians and the international community, the PA has no history of democratic institutions, so it remains in doubt whether the various terrorist groups will also accept his leadership, and whether the security services will enforce the president’s will.

Natan Sharansky observed that “It is important that these elections took place, because it important that the new leadership comes, or will come, not through violence. That can be the beginning of the process of democracy.”⁶ To move closer to true democracy, Abbas will also have to remove his predecessor’s restrictions on the freedoms of speech, religion, assembly, and the press. Then perhaps the next election will be truly free and democratic.

“Israel is building the security fence as part of a land grab to control the West Bank and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

The purpose of the security fence is the prevention of terror. Its route has been carefully plotted to maximize the security it provides to the citizens of Israel and minimize the inconvenience and harm to Palestinians. The route of the fence must take into account topography, population density, and threat assessment of each area. To be effective in protecting the maximum number of Israelis, it also must incorporate the largest communities in the West Bank.

After the Israeli Supreme Court ruled the government had to more carefully balance security concerns and harm to the Palestinians, the route of the fence was adjusted to run closer to the “Green Line.” When completed, the fence will now incorporate just 7 percent of the West Bank — less than 160 square miles — on its “Israeli side,” while 2,100 square miles will be on the “Palestinian side.”

If and when the Palestinians decide to negotiate an end to the conflict, the fence may be torn down or moved. Even without any change, a Palestinian state could now theoretically be created in 93 percent of the West Bank (and the PA will control 100 percent of the Gaza Strip after the disengagement is complete). This is very close to the 97 percent Israel offered to the Palestinians at Camp David in 2000, which means that while other difficult issues remain to be resolved, the territorial aspect of the dispute will be reduced to a negotiation over roughly 90 square miles.

“The demographic threat to Israel posed by Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza is overrated and therefore Israel need not make territorial compromises.”

A study was recently published that suggested the assumption that Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza pose a demographic threat to Israel has been exaggerated because the actual population in the territories is significantly lower than what is reported by Palestinian Authority (PA) officials. According to a study by a team of independent researchers, the 2004 Palestinian-Arab population was closer to 2.4 million than to the 3.8 million cited by the PA.⁷

The independent study comes up with its figures largely by deconstructing PA statistics, but Israel's leading demographer, Professor Sergio DellaPergola of Hebrew University, has challenged the result, saying his estimate of 3.4 million Palestinians is based on Israeli data (the CIA estimates the population for the West Bank and Gaza at 3.6 million). According to DellaPergola, 4.7 million Arabs now live between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River out of a total of 10,263,000. The Jewish proportion of this total is 51 percent. DellaPergola argues that because of the higher rate of birth in the Arab community, they have the demographic momentum, and that by 2020, the proportion of Jews is likely to drop to 47 percent and could fall to 37 percent by 2050.⁸

Even if the new study is more accurate, it only has a minimal impact on the demographic reality. According to Israeli census figures, the population of Israel today is approximately 6.8 million. If we add the 2.4 million Arabs the new study says live in the territories, the total population from the river to the sea would be 9.2 million (including about 1.3 million Israeli Arabs). The Jewish population is roughly 5.2 million or 57 percent, slightly better than DellaPergola’s estimate of 51 percent.

These overall statistics also distort the debate over the disengagement from Gaza where the demographic picture is crystal clear. According to the new study, the Arab population there is more than 1.07. The Jewish population, according to the State Department, prior to the evacuation was 7,500, which means the the percentage of Jews in Gaza was a fraction of 1 percent.

The independent study focuses solely on discrediting the PA statistics and does not address the crucial issue of future trends, which DellaPergola shows are clearly in the Arabs’ favor. The new report argues that the growth rates in Israel and the territories have been lower than previously forecast (though they use figures for only the last four years), but even the new figures show that the growth rate for the Arabs remains higher than that of the Jews, so the proportion of Jews should continue to decline.

Recent data from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics suggests the situation may be even worse. The Bureau said that the proportion of Jews within the current borders of Israel is expected to decline from the present figure of 78 percent to 70 percent in 2025 because of the higher birth rate among Israeli Arabs. According to Industry and Trade Ministry data released in March 2007, Jewish women in Israel on average have 2.69 children each and give birth to the first at age 30. Muslim women have an average of four children and give birth to the first at age 27.⁹

Many proponents of territorial compromise argue that these demographic trends make it impossible for Israel to remain both a Jewish and democratic state if it holds onto the West Bank and Gaza. If a majority of the population of Israel, or even a significant minority, were non-Jews, then the Jewish character of the state would likely change. In fact, the new report states that “As in 1967, Israel faces a very real issue on the status of a large minority population in the West Bank and Gaza” (emphasis in the original). Extremists have suggested that non-Jews could be prohibited from voting, but this would make the state undemocratic. Since no Israeli leader – even those labeled as right-wing fanatics who dream of “Greater Israel” – have found a way to square this circle, Israel has never annexed the West Bank and Gaza. And now one of those “hardliners,” Ariel Sharon, was moved by the demographic reality to initiate the disengagement plan.

Many people argue that it is impossible to predict the future, and that most past projections were proven inaccurate. Earlier doomsday predictions were upset by large influxes of immigrants, and many Israelis still believe this will be their demographic salvation. After more than one million Jews from the former Soviet Union arrived in the 1990s, this view was temporarily vindicated, however, there only about 8 million Jews in the entire world outside Israel, and a large number would have to decide to move to Israel to offset the demographic trend. This is especially unlikely given that roughly 75 percent of the Jews outside Israel live in the United States from which very few emigrate.

The demographic issue is still only one variable in the Israeli political calculus related to territorial compromise. The other principal concerns are whether Israel can have greater peace and security without controlling some or all of the territories. That is a matter of great debate within Israel. For now, the majority of Israelis have come to the conclusion that withdrawal from Gaza and part of Samaria is in Israel’s best interest.

Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels was the master of the “big lie” tactic in which a lie, no matter how outrageous, is repeated often enough that it will eventually be accepted as truth. It is a propaganda tool the Palestinians have repeatedly tried to use to tar Israel. Past examples have included specious claims that Israel “massacred” 500 people at Jenin,¹⁰ infects Palestinians with the AIDS virus,¹¹ and drops poison candy for children in Gaza from airplanes.¹²

The latest calumny from the Palestinians is the claim that Israel is using a “radial spy machine” at checkpoints, and that the device killed a 55-year-old Palestinian woman.¹³The charge is apparently related to the Palestinian Authority’s decision to close a checkpoint on their side of the border in Gaza to protest Israel’s use of advanced radio-wave machines for searching Palestinian travelers.¹⁴

The device is the SafeView Millimeter Wave Radar, an American-made portal system that uses millimeter a safe wave holographic technology to screen travelers from Egypt for weapons and explosives. Unlike metal detectors, this system is capable of detecting virtually any man-made object, regardless of the type of material, by transmitting ultra-high frequency, low-powered radio frequency waves as people pass through the portal. The waves penetrate clothing and reflect off of the person’s skin and any items being carried. A sensor array captures the reflected waves and uses a desktop computer to analyze the information and produce a high-resolution, 3-D image from the signals.¹⁵

Since the allegation is coming from the official Palestinian media, it represents a violation of the Palestinian Authority’s commitment to end incitement against Israel.

“Unlike other Arab women, Palestinian women are not killed for dishonoring their families.”

Maher Shakirat learned that one of his sisters was thrown out of the house by her husband for an alleged affair. Shakirat strangled his sister, who was eight months pregnant, and forced two other sisters he accused of covering up the affair to drink bleach. One of those was badly injured but escaped, but the third sister was also strangled by her brother.

Palestinian women who bring dishonor to their families may be punished by male family members. The punishments may range from ostracism and abandonment to physical abuse to murder. “Honor killings” may be carried out for instances of rape, infidelity, flirting or any other action seen as disgracing the family. By killing the woman, the family’s name in the community is restored.

Women are usually not allowed to defend themselves; they are considered “minors” under the authority of male relatives, and may be killed based on a family member’s suspicions. An allegation of misbehavior is sufficient to defile a man’s or family’s honor and justify the killing of the woman. Men who carry out these murders in the Palestinian Authority typically go unpunished or receive a maximum of six months in prison.¹⁶

Because these crimes often go unreported, it is difficult to determine the actual number of victims in honor killings, but the Palestinian Authority’s women’s affairs ministry reported that 20 women were murdered in honor killings in 2005, 15 survived murder attempts, and approximately 50 committed suicide, often under coercion, for shaming the family.¹⁷

According to a June 2005 poll, 24% of Palestinians said that if a family discovered that one of its daughters was involved in a case of family disgrace (e.g., adultery), the family should kill the daughter to remove the disgrace.¹⁸

“Israel has moved the border so it will not withdraw completely from the Gaza Strip.”

Mohammed Dahlan, the Palestinian Authority’s Minister of Civil Affairs, has claimed that Israel moved the northern border of the Gaza Strip about 1.2 miles, and that Israel's disengagement will not be complete unless it withdraws to the 1949 armistice lines.¹⁹ By suggesting that Israel is holding onto a piece of Gaza, the Palestinians are threatening to create a Shebaa Farms issue that could undercut the prospects for peace created by Israel's courageous decision to evacuate all its citizens and soldiers from the area.

Substantively, Dahlan’s claim is inaccurate. The border of Gaza was originally determined during the 1949 Rhodes Armistice negotiations with Egypt. A year later, Israel agreed to move the border southeast, creating a bulge in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. In exchange, Egypt redrew the border in the north, moving it more than a mile southwest. According to Israel's National Security Council chief, Giora Eiland, the border was reconfirmed in the Oslo accords.²⁰ Today, Netiv Ha’asara, a community of 125 families, many of which were evacuated from settlements in the Sinai as part of the peace treaty with Egypt, is located in the area Dahlan wants included in Gaza.

In the case of Shebaa Farms, the Lebanese terrorist group, Hizballah, has speciously maintained that Israel did not fully withdraw from Lebanon, despite the UN's verification that it has, and used Israel’s presence in the Shebaa Farms area as the pretext for continuing its terror campaign against Israel. If the Palestinians adopt a similar policy toward the sliver of land they claim to be part of Gaza to perpetuate their image as victims, and to try to win propaganda points by claiming to still be under “occupation,” they will once again demonstrate that they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

If the Palestinians continue terrorist attacks against Israel, and make claims to additional territory, rather than focusing on state-building within Gaza and meeting their road map obligations, Israel will have little interest in pursuing negotiations regarding the West Bank.

“Hamas should be permitted to participate in Palestinian Authority elections.”

The second Oslo agreement (Oslo II) between Israel and the Palestinian Authority prohibits the “nomination of any candidates, parties or coalitions” that “commit or advocate racism” or “pursue the implementation of their aims by unlawful or non-democratic means” (Annex II, Article II).²¹ Under this agreement, Hamas, a terrorist organization responsible for the deaths of thousands of Israelis and Palestinians alike, cannot legally participate in Palestinian national elections. The Covenant of Hamas says nothing about democracy or elections. It does say that when “enemies (the Jews) usurp some Islamic lands, Jihad becomes a duty binding on all Muslims. In order to face the usurpation of Palestine by the Jews, we have no escape from raising the banner of Jihad.”

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has warned that Israel will not cooperate with the Palestinian Authority during elections if candidates from Hamas are allowed to participate. “An armed organization doesn't become democratic once they participate in the election,” Sharon said.²²

Yossi Beilin, the leader of the Meretz-Yahad Party, and one of the architects of the Oslo accords, said that recognizing Hamas as a legitimate political entity “is a gross violation of the Israeli-Palestinian interim agreement,” and that in the global struggle against terrorism, “it would be surprising indeed if Israel, paradoxically, were to acquiesce in the legitimization of a terrorist organization under its very nose.”²³

The United States has left it up to the Palestinians to decide who can participate in the Palestinian Legislative Council; however, National Security Council spokesperson Frederick L. Jones II said the U.S. would never have diplomatic relations with candidates from a terrorist organization.“We do not believe that a democratic state can be built when parties or candidates seek power not through the ballot box but through terrorist activity,” Jones said.”²⁴

Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank was applauded by the international community as an important and painful step toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even the United Nations, which rarely has anything positive to say about Israel, praised the “determination and political courage” shown by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ²⁵ in implementing the disengagement plan peacefully and successfully.

In an effort to bolster their standing with the Palestinian public, groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad claim it was their terror campaign that forced Israel to withdraw.²⁶ In fact, the terrorist groups did nothing but bring death and destruction to the people of Israel and their fellow Palestinians. Israel was not driven from the territories, it made a calculated decision to leave based on its own interests.

The 8,000 civilians who lived in Gaza were viewed by the terrorists as targets, and Israel had to devote a great deal of its human and material resources to protect these innocent people. In addition, Sharon agreed with those who concluded it would make no sense for Israel to hold on to an area with a Palestinian population exceeding one million. By withdrawing, Israel's security has been enhanced, and the Palestinians have been given the opportunity to govern themselves and demonstrate whether they are able and willing to create a democratic society that can coexist with Israel.

At the time of the disengagement, Israel had dramatically reduced the level of terror, and the security fence around Gaza had a nearly perfect record of preventing the infiltration of suicide bombers. Israeli forces had severely damaged the terrorist infrastructure and killed or jailed most of the leaders of the major terror groups. The disengagement took place after Israel won the Palestinian War the Palestinian Authority had instigated in 2000, and the withdrawal took place from a position of strength, not weakness.

Palestinian extremists can claim whatever they want, but even they know the truth. As Zakariya Zubeidi, the leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade terrorist group observed, “Not only was the intifada a failure, but we are a total failure. We achieved nothing in 50 years of struggle; we've achieved only our survival.”²⁷

And the Palestinian people are not fooled by the rhetoric of the terrorists, as is evident by this comment by Mohammed Ahmed Moussa, a grocer in Jabaliya, who said, “Let's be frank. If Israel didn't want to leave Gaza, no one could have forced them out. Those who claim the rockets and attacks made them leave are kidding themselves.”²⁸

Israel is a democracy and believes in free elections as the best means of insuring representative government. Consequently, Israel has been supportive of the idea of democratic elections in the Palestinian Authority. In the 2005 presidential election, international observers reported that Israel made no effort to impede the vote. To the contrary, it took a number of measures to facilitate the election.

Similarly, Israel has no intention of interfering in the upcoming legislative elections in the PA. While there is some dispute about whether and how Palestinians living in Jerusalem may participate, a similar issue was resolved before the last election.

The Jerusalem issue, however, is being used as a smokescreen by the Palestinians to obscure their internal divisions. Palestinian officials have been talking for months about delaying the elections scheduled for January 25 because of chaos and disorder throughout the PA, and because of fears that they will lose power and that Hamas will take seats from the dominant Fatah party.

Many Palestinians also legitimately fear the election will not be fair. With just three weeks to go before the election, the Palestinian election commission resigned because the commissioners said Prime Minister Ahmed Korei was interfering with their work. After the last election, 46 officials from the PA Central Election Committee resigned to protest voting irregularities and fraud.

The problem for the PA today is not any Israeli interference in their affairs, it is the Wild West climate that now dominates the Gaza Strip and much of the West Bank. So long as the PA is unable to insure the safety of its residents, it will be unable to hold a free democratic election.

“Academic freedom means any criticism of Israel is permissible in a university.”

The one place in America where anti-Semitism is still tolerated is in the university, where “academic freedom” is often used as a cover to sanction anti-Israel teachings and forums that are anti-Semitic.

In an address on the subject of academic freedom, Columbia President Lee Bollinger quoted from a report that described a professor as someone whom “‘no fair-minded person’ would even suspect of speaking other than as ‘shaped or restricted by the judgement . . . of professional scholars.’” He also spoke about the need for faculty to “resist the allure of certitude, the temptation to use the podium as an ideological platform, to indoctrinate a captive audience, to play favorites with the like-minded, and silence the others.”

Many faculty, however, do not resist temptation; rather, they embrace their position as an ideological platform. Those who abuse their rights, and insist they can say what they want, hypocritically denounce others who exercise their right to criticize them. To suggest that a professor’s views are inappropriate, or their scholarship is faulty, is to risk being tarred with the charge of McCarthyism.

Legality is not the issue in evaluating the anti-Israel, sometimes anti-Semitic speeches and teachings of faculty and speakers on campus. No one questions that freedom of speech allows individuals to express their views. The issue is whether this type of speech should be given the cover of “academic” freedom, and granted legitimacy by the university through funding, publicity or use of facilities.

For the last several years, for example, an anti-Semitic forum has been held at different universities by the Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM). In 2004, the conference was held at Duke University. Organizers were asked to sign an innocuous statement before the event calling for a civil debate that would “condemn the murder of innocent civilians,” “support a two-state solution” and “recognize the difference between disagreement and hate speech,” but refused to do so. By hosting a group that could not bring itself to object to the murder of Jews, Duke gave their views legitimacy and tarnished the university’s academic reputation. The 2006 PSM conference is being held at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

It is sometimes suggested critics seek to stifle legitimate criticism of Israel. There is a clear distinction, however, between criticism of Israeli policy, which you can read in any Israeli newspaper, and anti-Semitism, in which the attacks against Israel challenge its right to exist, or single Israel out among all other nations for special treatment, as in the case of the PSM’s call for the end to Israeli “occupation” in all of Palestine and divestment from Israel.

A related question is whether the presentations are in any way academic or scholarly. Few people would claim that a conference in which anti-black, anti-gay, or anti-woman sentiments were expressed would be protected by academic freedom, and yet that is the shield used to permit attacks on the Jewish people.

“The Palestinian Authority held a democratic election and Israel and the rest of the world must accept that Hamas was the victor.”

Winston Churchill said that “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.” It was a step forward, then, for the authoritarian Palestinian Authority to hold elections that by all accounts were conducted fairly. Nevertheless, so long as the Palestinian people continue to be denied by their leaders the freedoms of speech, religion, assembly and the press, the election cannot be considered truly free and democratic.

While democratic outcomes are preferable to the alternatives, the rest of the world is not obligated to have a relationship with elected leaders whose policies and views are dangerous. Adolf Hitler was elected by the German people, but few people would suggest today that the rest of the world should have ignored his genocidal views and treated him as an equal just because he emerged from a democratic process. Similarly, the current Iranian president was elected and is still widely viewed as a pariah because of his threats to destroy Israel and to pursue nuclear weapons in defiance of the rest of the world.

The Palestinian people chose to elect members of an organization whose avowed purpose is the destruction of Israel by violent means. Hamas is recognized throughout the world as a terrorist organization. Since the election, Hamas leaders have reaffirmed their commitment to the Hamas covenant calling for the liberation of all of Palestine and they have made clear it they have no intention of disarming.

Israel now has on its borders a quasi government run by people who oppose negotiations and compromise. Hamas can now take over all of the security services and weapons that have previously been given by Israel and others to the Palestinian Authority to keep the peace. The institutions that were bound by agreements to stop the violence, confiscate illegal weapons, end smuggling and cease incitement are now controlled by the very people most responsible for terror, gun running, and the use of the media and schools to demonize Israel and Jews.

Most of the world understands that Hamas is not a partner for peace and that it is a terrorist group that threatens the stability of the region. The United States and other countries rightly have said that it must recognize Israel and renounce terror before any diplomatic or economic support can be given to the PA. Of course, we went through a similar exercise in 1993 when similar demands were made of the PLO. Yasser Arafat made the necessary commitments in a letter to then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, but he never matched the words with deeds. The world will be wise not to make the same mistake with Hamas.

The Palestinians and other Muslims routinely accuse Israel of threatening their holy places in Jerusalem and have discovered that this is a good way to provoke local violence and international condemnation. The tactic goes back to the 1920s when the Mufti of Jerusalem made similar charges that provoked widespread rioting. The latest example of using this method of incitement (which violates the road map and Oslo agreements) came when Sheikh Mohammad Hussein, the director of the Al-Aksa Foundation, accused Israel of excavating under the Temple Mount with the intention of destroying the Al-Aksa mosque.³¹

As in the past, the charge is a total fabrication. The most recent construction involved the development of a new visitors center built around new findings excavated near the Western Wall. Discoveries at the new site include a ritual bath from the period of the second Jewish Temple, destroyed in 70 C.E., and a wall archaeologists say dates to the first Jewish Temple, destroyed in 586 B.C.E.³² The work was done in the already tunnel area that has now been open to tourists for several years. It is not underneath the Temple Mount and nowhere near the Al-Aksa mosque. What really bothers the sheikh is that the center will “show a fabricated heritage that might help them to deceive foreign visitors into believing Jerusalem as a historical place of the Jews....” ³³

Israel denied the accusations, but official government denials rarely satisfy those who are ready to believe any libel emanating from the Palestinian Authority. In this case, however, UPI reporter Joshua Brilliant attended the Foundation press conference during which a misleading film was shown purporting to prove the charges. Brilliant independently investigated the tunnel and found no evidence of any excavation in the direction of the mosque. A Hamas website nevertheless said that a synagogue was under the mosque and “We will spill blood and offer souls in defense of the mosque.”³⁴

Iran’s Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed that the cartoons first published in Denmark, which have sparked widespread Muslim protests, were part of a “conspiracy by Zionists who were angry because of the victory of Hamas.”³⁵

Sometimes the myths propagated by Arabs and Muslims are so outrageous and ridiculous that it would seem to be a waste of time to respond. This is one of those instances. Unfortunately, history has proven that one cannot underestimate the capacity of people to believe even the most absurd charges when they are applied to Israel. After all, large numbers of Muslims still believe that Israel was responsible for the atrocities committed on 9/11.

The cartoons, of course, haven’t anything to do with Israel. They were solicited by a Danish publication, Jyllands-Posten, and have subsequently been reprinted widely. In fact, one blogger posted images from an Egyptian newspaper that published the cartoons.³⁶Khamenei’s conspiracy theory also has a minor flaw — the cartoons were published in September 2005, six months before the Palestinian election.

In a juvenile and bizarre effort to retaliate for what they consider an affront to Islam, Iran is now soliciting cartoons lampooning the Holocaust. This really is nothing new as Iran and other Muslim nations routinely publish vile anti-Semitic cartoons in their state-controlled media. Sensitivity and tolerance are a one-way street in those countries.

“The Palestinians have maintained a truce and ceased terror operations against Israel.”

The number of successful Palestinian terrorist attacks has fallen dramatically in the last several months. This is not because of any actions on the part of the Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority continues to refuse to fulfill its road map obligation to stop violence, dismantle terrorist infrastructures, and confiscate illegal weapons. The decline in violence is due primarily to the efficiency of Israel’s security forces and the presence of the security fence. It has little to do with a supposed cease-fire during which there has been no lull in the effort to murder Israelis.

Prior to construction of the security fence, the Palestinians carried out 73 suicide bomb attacks that killed 293 Israelis. Even with the fence only about one-third completed, it has helped significantly reduce the carnage. Since construction began in July 2003, 11 suicide attacks have been launched that killed 54 people. In 2005, only seven suicide attacks were successful, which has taken terror against Israelis off the radar of the international media and given the perception that all is quiet. The reality is far different.

According to the Shin Bet, a total of 2,990 attacks were launched against Israel during 2005 following that January’s truce announcement by Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees, and Fatah’s Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades. Each month, Israel has more than 70 terror alerts.³⁷

• On February 2, 2006, soldiers prevented two Palestinian teenagers from smuggling 12 pipe bombs through a checkpoint. The next day two Palestinian teenagers were captured carrying explosive belts.³⁸

• On February 19, 2006, border police arrested three Palestinians from Bethlehem on their way to carry out a suicide bombing in Jerusalem. That same morning, two Palestinians attempted to place a bomb near the southern Gaza security fence.³⁹

• On February 20, 2006, the Shin Bet chief revealed that the IDF uncovered a launcher and eight mortar shells in Bethlehem, which were planned to be fired at the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo.⁴⁰

• On February 21, 2006, an IDF force found a large bomb factory in Nablus.⁴¹

• Since Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Palestinians have continued to fire rockets into Israel on an almost daily basis (more than 450 have hit Israel in less than six months⁴²), and increasingly threatened strategic targets, such as the power station in Ashkelon.

• Smuggling of weapons has accelerated in the Gaza Strip. The head of the Shin Bet reported that the number of rifles smuggled each month has increased from 200-300 to 3,000 since disengagement, and that the Palestinians have also smuggled in anti-aircraft missiles and tons of explosives.⁴³

Israel may have won the Palestinian War started by the Palestinian Authority in September 2000, but that does not mean that it has ended all terror threats. Cease-fires and truces mean little when those who declare them continue to arm themselves for the next battle, and their comrades continue to wage war.

The situation is likely to grow more dangerous now that the security forces responsible for enforcing the law in the Palestinian Authority will be infiltrated and probably controlled by the terrorists from Hamas who have made no secret since the Palestinian election that they are committed to their covenant’s call for the destruction of Israel. Moreover, the Palestinian people continue to support terrorism according to the latest poll, which found that 56% of Palestinians support suicide bombing operations against Israeli civilians.⁴⁴

“The PA is entitled to international aid because Hamas was democratically elected and the Palestinian people should not be made to suffer because Israel doesn’t like the election outcome.”

Billions of dollars of aid have flowed to the Palestinian Authority (PA) over the last 13 years despite the fact that most of it was siphoned off by corrupt officials and very little has actually reached the people. Now the PA is led by a party that pledged to fight corruption, but it also promises to continue to use terror as a means of achieving the objective of destroying Israel. Why does anyone believe the United States or any other country has an obligation to underwrite terrorism and programs for genocide?

It is true that the PA has financial problems, but that is not the rest of the world’s responsibility. Had the PA not misspent the billions it had received already from international donors, it would not be in this predicament. Moreover, as the Times editorialized, “Continuing United States subsidies while Hamas is in power will not move the region one step closer to a fair and sustainable peace.”

The Times and others are wrong in suggesting that Israel be pressured to pay tax and customs funds to the PA. These are funds that Israel agreed to pay as part of the Oslo agreements, which the PA has not fulfilled, and Hamas says it does not accept. Moreover, what government would give money to an authority that is calling for its destruction? Can you imagine the Israeli prime minister speaking to his Hamas counterpart: “We are very upset that you say that you are committed to destroying our nation, and we’re disturbed that you are launching terrorist attacks against us each day, but here’s the money we owe you. Don’t spend it all on one suicide bomb.”

The Palestinian people aren’t going to starve. Even if the United States, Israel, and other Western nations were threatening to withhold all aid until Hamas either is driven from power or completely reforms and renounces its covenant, Iran and other nations will provide the minimum required to sustain the Palestinians, a group which already receives substantially more aid than far needier populations around the globe. And the United States and others are not even talking about cutting off all aid; they all say they will continue to provide humanitarian funds.

The Palestinian people will blame the world for their predicament, as they have for the last 58 years, but perhaps a cutoff of some aid will be the consequence that finally teaches them the lesson that the path to statehood requires them to make a different choice – peace over violence.

In late 2005, Saudi Arabia was required to cease its boycott of Israel as a condition of joining the World Trade Organization (WTO). After initially saying that it would do so, the government subsequently announced it would maintain its first-degree boycott of Israeli products. The government said it agreed to lift the second and third degree boycott in accordance with an earlier Gulf Cooperation Council decision rather than the demands of the WTO.⁴⁶

Saudi Arabia continues, however, to prohibit entry to products made in Israel or to foreign-made goods containing Israeli components and hosted a major international conference aimed at promoting the boycott in Jidda in March 2006. The Organization for the Islamic Conference’s (OIC) Islamic Office for the Boycott of Israel is based in Jidda and the head of the office is a former Saudi diplomat.⁴⁷

In hearings in February 2006 before the Senate Finance Committee, U.S. trade representative Rob Portman insisted that the Saudis “have a responsibility to treat Israel as any other member of the WTO” and added that the U.S. had received assurance “they will abide by their WTO commitments.”⁴⁸

While the Saudis were presenting themselves in the media as peacemakers in early 2007 by resurrecting their 2002 peace plan, the government continued to bar entry to products manufactured in Israel or to foreign-made goods containing Israeli components.^48a This is in addition to the ongoing political boycott whereby Saudi officials refuse to meet with Israelis. The Saudi behavior is inconsistent with their rhetoric and raises questions about the sincerity of their peace proposals and whether a government that has reneged on its promise to the WTO to end the boycott can be trusted to fulfill commitments to peace with Israel.

“Israel is knowingly desecrating a Muslim holy place in Jerusalem by building a museum on top of a cemetery.”

An offshoot of the Islamic Movement in Israel petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court to halt the the Simon Wiesenthal Center from constructing a new Museum of Tolerance in the center of Jerusalem. The petitioners, from a group called “the Al-Aqsa Corporation,” claim the museum is being built on part of an ancient cemetery where 20,000 soldiers from Saladin's army are buried, and want the area recognized as an Islamic waqf. This would give them exclusive rights to any decisions regarding use of the land. This claim is very controversial because it would in effect place a Muslim enclave in the heart of West Jersualem.

Over forty years ago, an Islamic court ruled that the land was no longer sacred and could be used for construction or other purposes. Even four decades before that ruling, in 1922, the infamous Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, built a luxurious hotel on part of the land. The Mufti ruled that construction was possible if the tombs were removed and reburied in another place, and he made plans to build a Muslim university on the same tract of land.⁴⁹

The cemetery has been abandoned for well over a century and, in 1964, an Islamic court ruled that its status was mundaras (erased), meaning that its holiness had expired. Muslim scholars and religious leaders have allowed the “recycling” of cemeteries that have not been used for more than a generation. The Islamic Movement, however, sees the dispute as an opportunity to claim part of Jerusalem as a Muslim enclave.

The Israel Antiquities Authority has been especially careful in removing remains found at the site for reburial. The Wiesenthal Center has also offered to re-inter all of the remains in the part of the cemetery that still exists, and plans to renovate and fence off the area.

The Jordanians have no illusions about Hamas and, in late April 2006, arrested several members of the organization it suspected of planning a terrorist attack against senior members of the government on orders from Hamas leaders in Damascus.⁵⁰ This followed an earlier threat uncovered when Jordanian officials learned that Hamas had smuggled weapons, including bombs and rockets, into the kingdom. That discovery led Jordan to cancel a planned visit by Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar of Hamas.⁵¹

Tensions between Hamas and Jordan are nothing new. In 1998, the government warned leaders of the Islamic resistance movement in Jordan to refrain from making statements inciting violence or obstructing the Palestinian-Israeli Wye River peace deal that had just been signed. The admonition came after a Hamas bomb attack on an Israeli school bus in the Gaza Strip, and a statement by the Hamas politburo chief in Amman, Khalid Mashal, condemning the Wye agreement and vowing to continue the war against Israel.⁵²

In 1999, five commercial offices in Amman registered under the names of Hamas leaders were closed, several of its members were detained and arrest warrants were issued for several Hamas leaders. On September 22, 1999, Khalid Mashal, Ibrahim Ghousheh, Mousa Abu Marzook, Sami Khater and Izzat Rasheq were arrested after returning from a trip to Tehran. Marzook, who held a Yemeni passport, was deported. Mashal, Khater, Rasheq and Ghousheh, all Jordanian citizens, were given the choice of being tried for membership in an illegal organization or leaving Jordan. Ultimately, the four men were deported to Qatar.⁵³

Jordanian officials were growing increasingly worried about the close ties that Hamas was developing with the radical Muslim Brotherhood and the group’s close ties with Iran and Syria. Computer files confiscated from the Hamas offices contained sensitive information about the kingdom and Jordanian figures, records indicating that around $70 million had been transferred to Hamas from abroad over the previous five years, and the locations of arms and explosives caches around the kingdom.⁵⁴

Subsequently, Hamas became an “illegal and non-Jordanian” organization whose presence was no longer tolerated.⁵⁵

In 1996, the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mufti, Ikremah Sabri, issued a fatwa (religious decree), banning the sale of Arab and Muslim property to Jews. Anyone who violated the order was to be killed. At least seven land dealers were killed that year. Six years later, the head of the PA’s General Intelligence Service in the West Bank, General Tawfik Tirawi, admitted his men were responsible for the murders.⁵⁶

On May 5, 1997, Palestinian Authority Justice Minister Freih Abu Middein announced that the death penalty would be imposed on anyone convicted of ceding “one inch” to Israel. Later that month, two Arab land dealers were killed. PA officials denied any involvement in the killings. A year later, another Palestinian suspected of selling land to Jews was murdered. The PA has also arrested suspected land dealers for violating the Jordanian law (in force in the West Bank), which prohibits the sale of land to foreigners.⁵⁷

During the Palestinian War, few, if any Palestinians tried to sell land to Jews, but the prohibition remained in effect. Now that the war is over, the persecutions have begun again. In April 2006, Muhammad Abu al-Hawa was tortured and murdered because allegedly sold an apartment building in Israel’s capital city to Jews. Since the Mufti forbade Muslims accused of selling land to Jews from being buried in a Muslim cemetery, al-Hawa was laid to rest in a makeshift cemetery on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho.⁵⁸

In April 2009, the Chief Islamic Judge of the Palestinian Authority, Tayseer Rajab Tamimi, issued another warning against selling homes or properties to Jews. Sheikh Tamimi reiterated that those who violated the ban, including those who rented to Jews and real estate agents and middlemen facilitating transactions, would be accused of high treason and face the death penalty. ^58a Later that month, a Palestinian Authority military court found a Palestinian man guilty of selling land to Jews and sentenced him to death by hanging.^58b

“There are no words to adequately condemn the despicable attack in Tel Aviv. Not only because it is contrary to the interests of the Palestinian people...[but] because of the philosophy that is behind it....A racist philosophy that is based on the cruel principle of killing Jews because they are Jews.”

— Colunnist Nazir Majali ⁵⁹

“Hamas faced its first concrete choice this week between its ambition to govern the West Bank and Gaza and its extremist commitment to terrorism -- and it chose to side with the suicide bombers. The sickening Passover attack at a Tel Aviv restaurant Monday, which killed nine Israelis and injured dozens, was carried out by Islamic Jihad, an Iranian-backed extremist group that refuses to observe the shaky cease-fire Hamas has followed for more than a year. Yet, though the attack violated its own policy and undermined its interests, several of Hamas's spokesmen quickly defended it. The result was to put the Palestinian government on record as an outlaw and to raise dangerously the chances of a major new outbreak of Middle East violence.”

— Washington Post ⁶⁰

“Israel has no justification for withholding tax monies due to the Palestinian Authority.”

Under the Oslo interim agreement, Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza are in a customs union administered by the Israeli government. Israel collects a duty on any foreign imports destined for the West Bank and Gaza as welll as a value added tax on goods and services from Israel destined for the Palestinian territories.

At the beginning of 2001, Israel decided to withhold more than $50 million in taxes it owed to the Palestinian Authority (PA) in response to the ongoing violence. U.S. officials, and others, pressured Israel to transfer the money because of the PA's dire financial straits and inability to pay many of its bills. Israel recognized that its action was harsh, but believed it was necessary to demonstrate to the Palestinians that the inability or unwillingness to stop the violence had a cost. Israel must use whatever leverage it can to protect its citizens and this economic sanction was a milder response than a military one.

While Israel's action was blamed for the sorry state of the Palestinian economy, the truth was the Arab countries suspended the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars, collected as donations, meant for the PA. The justification for the Arab states' action was their concern that the funds would be embezzled and encourage further corruption in the PA.⁶¹ For example, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported that Yasser Arafat stole more than $5 million in foreign aid intended for needy Palestinians.⁶²

In July 2002, Israel agreed to transfer some of the tax revenues to the Palestinians as a confidence-building measure after Palestinian violence subsided, and an agreement was reached to set up a committee of U.S. representatives to oversee the transaction.⁶³ Israel subsequently began to forward the taxes it collected to the PA, after deducting the amount owed for electricity and water bills that many Palestinians refused to pay Israeli utilities.

Case Study

The speaker of the Palestinian legislative council, and later Prime Minister, Ahmed Korei, suddenly vacated the villa he built for $1.5 million in Jericho after President Bush raised the issue of PA corruption. A sign on the door was posted that said the villa had become a welfare institution for the relatives of Palestinians killed in terror attacks.⁶⁴

Following the election of Hamas in 2006, Israel again began to withhold tax revenue on the grounds that it had no obligation to help finance a government that was calling for its destruction. Furthermore, Israel argued that the agreement to remit these taxes to the PA was part of the Oslo accords that Hamas explicitly said it would not honor. The United States, the European Union and other countries also froze funding because Hamas is a terrorist group that does not recognize Israel as a country.

While Israel wants to deny Hamas the resources it needs to wage a terrorist war, the government does not want to harm the Palestinian people and therefore agreed in May 2006 to release tax revenues for humanitarian purposes, such as medicine and health needs.⁶⁵

The mantra of the Palestinians and their supporters since 1967 has been “end the occupation.” The assumption underlying this slogan is that peace will follow the end of Israel’s “occupation.” The equally popular slogan among critics of Israeli policy has been that it should “trade land for peace.” Again, the premise being that it is simply Israel’s presence on land claimed by the Palestinians that is the impediment to peace.

The experience in Gaza has offered a stark case study of the disingenuousness of these slogans. When Israel announced the plan to evacuate Gaza, rather than cheer the unilateral end to the occupation, the Palestinians denounced disengagement and refused for months to cooperate or to take measures to ease the transition. If the Palestinians’ fervent desire was really to end Israeli control over their lives, why didn’t they cheer the disengagement and do everything possible to make it a success?

Israel has withdrawn from every inch of Gaza; not a single Israeli soldier or civilian remains. The evacuation came at great emotional and financial cost. And what has the end of “the occupation” brought Israel? Has it received peace in exchange for the land? No, to the contrary, the Palestinian answer to meeting their demands has not been quiet, but a barrage of rocket fire. Since September 12, 2005, 770 Kassam rockets have been fired, more than 100 since the weekend of June 10, 2006.⁶⁶

Fortunately, these rockets are relatively inaccurate and have caused minimal death and destruction, but that is beside the point. What nation would hold its fire if its population was under daily attack from missiles? The ongoing rocket fire disrupts the lives of Israelis, traumatizes the children, and amounts to an act of war.

It has been a testament to Israel’s restraint that it has not mounted a large-scale military operation to this point to end the threat to its citizens. The Palestinian Authority has ceased to exist in Gaza; now it is simply a wild west outpost for terrorist factions to fight for power and provoke Israel. Time is running out for the Palestinian leadership to exert control or face the consequences.

Slogans are good for bumper stickers and sound bites, but they are irrelevant to the future of Israel and its neighbors. Israelis have repeatedly shown a desire for peace, and a willingness to make painful sacrifices, but nothing they do will end the conflict. The escalation of violence not only has occurred following Israel’s evacuation of Gaza but after the Israeli Prime Minister expressed his intention to withdraw from virtually the entire West Bank. Peace will be possible only when the Palestinians and other Muslims and Arabs demonstrate by their deeds their willingness to live beside a Jewish state.

“I extend my hand in peace to Mahmoud Abbas, elected President of the Palestinian Authority. On behalf of the State of Israel, we are willing to negotiate with a Palestinian Authority.”

— Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Speech to Congress⁶⁷

“If we are to look at Israeli society, it is within the academic community that we've had the most progressive pro-peace views and views that have come out in favor of seeing us as equals....If you want to punish any sector, this is the last one to approach.”

— Al-Quds University President Sari Nusseibeh on academic boycotts of Israel ⁶⁸

“The responsibility for this escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rests with the Palestinians who have yet again turned their backs on peace. Rather than take the withdrawal of Israel from Gaza as an opportunity to build a future for their children, they instead refused to relinquish their embrace of a culture of hate and death.”

— Editorial, Chicago Sun Times⁶⁹

“When Cpl. Gilad Shalit was abducted by the military wing of Mr. Haniyeh's Hamas movement last weekend, his administration faced a choice. It could behave like a civilized government — and work to free the hostage — or align itself with a terrorist operation. It chose the latter. Hamas government officials endorsed the militants' demand that Israel release Palestinian prisoners it has legally arrested in exchange for a soldier who was attacked while guarding Israeli territory. Hamas justified this position by citing the terrorist movement Hizballah, which has extracted prisoners from Israel in exchange for hostages, as well as governments that exchange POWs in wartime. Fair enough. But if Hamas wants to be equated with Hizballah or define itself as at war with Israel, then Israel has every right to try to destroy the Islamic movement's military capacity, to capture its leaders...and to topple its government. Isn't that what happens in war?”

— Editorial, Washington Post ⁷⁰

It is one of the horrible consequences of war that civilians die. In Lebanon, Israel has gone to great lengths to avoid harming civilians. What other army drops leaflets telling civilians to leave an area, thereby giving away the element of surprise, in the interest of protecting innocents?

Let the critics of Israel’s campaign explain how they would respond to a barrage of more than 1,400 rockets on their cities. How would they stop the rockets without hurting any noncombatants when the rockets are being fired from civilian neighborhoods rather than military bases?

Meanwhile, look carefully at the television pictures of the destruction in places such as Beirut. While the commentary by reporters often suggests Israel has bombed targets indiscriminately, what is remarkable is how precise the attacks actually have been. Frequently you see only a single building or a couple of structures damaged while the rest of the area is untouched. Israel could have easily leveled entire neighborhoods, but it did not.

Listen carefully as well. When reporters go to neighborhoods in Lebanon they are being guided by men from Hizballah who show them only what they want the reporters to see and tell them what Hizballah wants them to hear. The Hizballah terrorist says the building was a civilian residence, but the reporter has no way of knowing what was in the buildings, whether it was a rocket workshop, a hiding place for katyushas, the home of a Hizballah leader, or a command center. In fact, he doesn’t even know if the Israel was responsible for the destruction that he is shown. Does it make any sense that Israel would pick out a single residence in a Beirut neighborhood to bomb for no reason?

And notice too that the only people around are from Hizballah. The civilians are gone, so when the Hizballah terrorist tells the reporter they have to keep moving because the Israelis might strike, he knows that he and his fellow terrorists are the only targets.

Tragically, many civilians have died, but history has shown that the terrorists are very good at fabricating statistics. At one point, it was reported that something like 300 civilians had been killed and only one member of Hizballah. Does it seem plausible that in all of Israel’s attacks it only managed to kill one terrorist? Is everyone a civilian that the Lebanese claim is a civilian?

In war, mistakes are sometimes made. In some cases, troops kill each other in friendly fire incidents. In others, civilians die, as was the case when the United States killed 48 people at a wedding during fighting in Afghanistan. No one seriously believed the United States bombers had targeted people celebrating a marriage and no one should believe Israel has any reason to target trucks of food and medicine as the Lebanese president has alleged, or any other purely civilian target.

Besides the ethical and moral restraints, Israel has very good political reasons not to hurt noncombatants. Israeli officials know that a mistake leading to a large number of civilian casualties will hurt their image and provoke greater demands that they cease-fire before accomplishing their military objectives. An Israeli pilot openly admitted this consideration:

The main reasons Lebanese civilians are in danger have nothing to do with Israel. First, the Lebanese government failed to fulfill its obligation under UN Security Council Resolution 1559 to disarm Hizballah and deploy its army in southern Lebanon. Second, Hizballah has so little regard for civilians that it purposely bases its weapons and fighters in their homes and neighborhoods where they will be put at risk. Third, the civilians themselves have allowed Hizballah to create a state within Lebanon and to carry out terrorist attacks. Finally, if Hizballah had not attacked Israel, not a single Lebanese civilian would have been hurt. If Hizballah returns the soldiers it kidnaped and disarms, not one more civilian will die.

“The criticism that Israeli attacks aimed at Hezbollah are disproportionate is lazy and facile in several ways, especially in implying a moral relativism between the two sides that does not exist. This is not the contest between misguided equals that many in the West seem to see. One is the region’s lone democracy, which for much of its existence has faced a very real existential threat and would like, if possible, to live in peace with its neighbours. The other is a terrorist organization, bent on preventing such a future. ”

— Editorial, London Times⁷²

“Israel should exchange Arab prisoners for soldiers kidnapped by Hamas and Hizballah.”

The fighting that broke out between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and Israel and Hizballah in Lebanon in 2006, was provoked by longstanding threats by the terrorist organizations against Israel’s civilian population. The final straw that stimulated Israel’s military campaign was the kidnapping of three soldiers. The kidnappers demanded that Israel release prisoners in exchange for the soldiers they were holding.

The people in Israeli jails are there because they were involved in terrorist activities and many committed heinous crimes. In an effort to win greater sympathy for their gambit, Hamas asked for the release of women and children, giving the impression that housewives and toddlers were being unfairly imprisoned. Out of the 109 women and 313 juveniles then in prison, 64 women and 91 juveniles “have blood on their hands.” Palestinian prisoners under the age of 18 threw Molotov cocktails, transported weapons and associated with terrorist organizations. The women planned suicide attacks, prepared bombs and assisted suicide bombers; they also attacked Israeli soldiers and joined terrorist organizations. Ahlan Tanimi, for example, brought the bomb that murdered 16 in the Sbarro pizza restaurant in Jerusalem. Kahira Sa’adi drove a terrorist to King George Avenue, where he blew up three people. Hanady Jaradats killed 21 in the Maxim restaurant in Haifa.⁷³

The focus of Hizballah’s demand was the release of Samir Kuntar. He was captured in 1979 and tried and convicted for the murder of Danny Haran and his 4-year-old daughter Einat, and for killing two Israeli policemen. Upon taking them hostage, Kuntar shot the father dead at close range in front of his daughter. He then smashed the girl’s head, killing her. He was sentenced to multiple life terms, amounting to 542 years in prison.^73a

It is true that Israel has exchanged prisoners for soldiers in the past, often in lopsided trades of dozens of prisoners for a handful of Israelis. Sometimes the Israelis have already been killed and the nation is just trying to retrieve the bodies of its soldiers. These cases demonstrated how much Israel values the lives of its citizens, and reflect the IDF policy of leaving no soldier — dead or alive — on the battlefield.

This sense of obligation explains the deal struck on July 16, 2008 in which Israel agreed to trade Samir Kuntar, along with five other Lebanese militants, in return for the bodies of its fallen soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, both killed after being kidnapped by Hizballah, and information regarding missing Israeli airman Ron Arad, who disappeared when his jet went down over Lebanon in 1986. The report on Arad contained no new information and said Hizballah did not know what happened to Arad, but they believe he is dead.

Meanwhile, Kuntar, the murderer, was given a hero’s welcome in Beirut and his release was praised by Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas.

The decision to make the trade was a painful and difficult one for Israel. The idea of releasing prisoners like Kuntar is odious to Israelis. Moreover, prisoner exchanges are dangerous because they increase the risk that the terrorists will see kidnapping as a weapon to use repeatedly to force Israel to make concessions. It also lessens the terrorists’ incentive to keep hostages alive.

The latest prisoner exchange has emboldened Hamas to increase its demands for the return of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. “We have to take advantage of this to release our prisoners,” said Gaza strongman Mahmoud Zahar.^73b

During the last war in Lebanon, disinformation was the norm and Israel’s enemies learned that they could disseminate lies that the media would not investigate, that they could exaggerate Israeli actions, and that reporters could be manipulated by controlling their access. This pattern is now repeating itself in coverage of Israel’s war with Hizballah terrorists.

Reporters covering the war from Lebanon have been particularly egregious in revealing their own biases based, it seems, on having been based in the country and developing sympathies for their subjects. More serious, however, has been the way some of these correspondents have allowed themselves to be used by Hizballah. In the first Lebanon war, the PLO threatened reporters and made favorable coverage the price of access. Hizballah learned from their example and now influences much of what reporters can see and say.

CNN’s Nic Robertson, for example, was taken to an area of Beirut and told that the rubble of buildings was a result of Israeli air strikes on civilian targets. He repeated the allegation as fact. He had no way of knowing what was in the buildings, whether it was a rocket workshop, a hiding place for katyushas, the home of a Hizballah leader, or a command center. In fact, he didn’t even know if Israel was responsible for the destruction that he was shown.

Robertson later admitted that his report had been influenced by his Hizballah guide. He acknowledged that he had been told what to film and where. “They designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn’t have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath.” Robertson said Hizballah controls south Beirut. “You don’t get in there without their permission. We didn’t have enough time to see if perhaps there was somebody there who was, you know, a taxi driver by day, and a Hizballah fighter by night.” Unlike what he said on air during his guided reports, Robertson told CNN’s Reliable Sources, “there's no doubt that the bombs there are hitting Hizballah facilities.”⁷⁴

Robertson’s CNN colleague, Anderson Cooper, is one of the journalists who has been consistently fair and balanced. He also has not hesitated to point out Hizballah's mendacity. He said the group was “just making things up,” and gave as one example a tour he was given in which Hizballah had lined up some ambulances. They were told to turn on their sirens and then the ambulances drove off as if they were picking up wounded civilians when, in fact, they were simply going back and forth.⁷⁵

Time Magazine contributor Christopher Albritton made clear that reporters understand the rules of the game. “To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hizballah is launching Katyushas, but I’m loath to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist’s passport, and they’ve already hassled a number of us and threatened one.”⁷⁶

Under no duress whatsoever, the Washington Post’s Thomas Ricks made perhaps the most outrageous charge of the war when he claimed that Israel is intentionally leaving Hizballah launchers intact because having Israeli civilians killed helps Israel in the public relations war.⁷⁷

Israel’s image is also being tarred by suggestions that it is targeting Lebanese Christian areas, intimating that Israel is killing innocent Christians and is not restricting its attacks to the Shiite Muslims of Hizballah. CNN reported, for example, an Israeli strike “on the edge of the city’s mostly Christian eastern district” that killed 10 people. In the next paragraph, however, the report says Israel hit “a building near a mosque” (emphasis added)⁷⁸

Photographs can be especially powerful, but they can also be misleading or outright fakes. In the last Lebanon war, for example, the Washington Post published a photograph (August 2, 1982) of a baby that appeared to have lost both its arms. The UPI caption said that the seven-month-old had been severely burned when an Israeli jet accidentally hit a Christian residential area. The photo and the caption, however, were inaccurate. The baby did not lose its arms, and the burns the child suffered were the result of a PLO attack on East Beirut.

A similarly dramatic photo of a baby pulled from the rubble of a building in Qana that appeared on front pages around the world is now being challenged as a fake.⁷⁹ One of the photographers involved, Adnan Hajj, was discovered to have doctored at least two photographs, one of which was changed to show more and darker smoke rising from buildings in Beirut bombed by Israel, and the other changed the image of an Israeli jet so it showed three flares being discharged instead of one. Reuters admitted the photos had been changed, suspended the photographer, and removed all of his photographs from its database.⁸⁰ This incident should make editors and viewers alike suspicious of images being disseminated by freelance Arab photographers and videographers who are engaging in propaganda rather than photo-journalism.

It is also conceivable that some of the scenes that reporters are being shown have been staged. It is difficult to prove without access to the raw footage of the photographers, but anyone who doubts that this is part of the strategy of Israel’s enemies need only look at the examples of Palestinians choreographing events in the territories documented on The Second Draft web site.

Reporters in Lebanon also continue to exaggerate the destruction in Beirut and elsewhere by showing tight shots of buildings hit in Israeli air strikes and rebroadcasting the same images repeatedly. “You would think Beirut has begun to resemble Dresden and Hamburg in the aftermath of Second World War air raids,” observed former Sunday Telegraph correspondent Tom Gross. But, Gross notes, “a careful look at aerial satellite photos of the areas targeted by Israel in Beirut shows that certain specific buildings housing Hizballah command centers in the city’s southern suburbs have been singled out. Most of the rest of Beirut, apart from strategic sites such as airport runways used to ferry Hizballah weapons in and out of Lebanon, has been left pretty much untouched.”⁸¹

Qana was also an example of how the press immediately reports whatever statistics they are fed by Lebanese officials. Again, we learned in the last war that these figures are usually inflated and the press rarely bothers to verify them. Front page stories around the world said that 57 civilians were killed when Israel bombed a building it believed to be empty. While still tragic, the actual casualty figure was only 28. Moreover, most accounts failed to mention the building was in an area where 150 rocket attacks on Israel had originated.

While an Israeli strike that killed UN observers drew headlines, little attention was given to reports that Hizballah was using the UN posts as shields. A Canadian soldier with UNIFIL, for example, reported that his team could observe “most of the Hizballah static positions in and around our patrol base” and noted that Israeli ordnance that fell near the base was not a result of deliberate targeting, but “has rather been due to tactical necessity.”⁸²

Over the years, the Arabs have learned one sure-fire way to get media attention is to scream “massacre” when Israelis are in the neighborhood. On August 7, news outlets repeated Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s claim that Israel had committed a “massacre” by killing 40 people in an air raid on the village of Houla. Later, it was learned that one person had died.⁸³ Throughout the fighting Siniora’s statements to the media have suggested that Israel has unique weaponry that only hits civilians and never terrorists.

Turning momentarily away from the carnage of war, some reporters have suggested that Israeli attacks have created environmental problems in Lebanon. Meanwhile, little attention has been devoted to the ecological damage caused by fires sparked by Katyusha rockets that have destroyed 16,500 acres of forests and grazing fields.

The press is also spending a great deal of time talking to Lebanese civilians and their relatives in the United States and highlighting the difficult conditions they are enduring. This is no doubt the case since they are living in a war zone; however, the media has spent almost no time talking to the Israelis living under the constant threat of rocket attacks. Few reporters have gone into the bomb shelters to interview the frightened Israeli families. No one seems interested in how the relatives of Israelis in the United States feel about their loved ones living under siege.

Similarly, initial reports focused on the Americans living in Lebanon while no one seems interested in the 120,000 North Americans living in Israel. It is terrible that tourists and students had to be evacuated from Lebanon, but what about those same groups in Israel? How many reporters talked to the hundreds of students on summer tours and programs in Israel, many of whom were in the north when the violence escalated? While the complications of leaving the country may not be as severe as in Lebanon, it is still very difficult to arrange a quick exit from Israel, and many American parents are in a state of panic worrying about their family and friends in Israel.

Two million Israelis are now living under threat of rockets, including approximately 700,000 Israeli Arabs.
Altogether, more than 300,000 Israelis have been displaced from their homes.
Fifteen percent of the entire Israeli population is living in bomb shelters.
Approximately 5,500 homes have been damaged by Hizballah rockets.
Israel’s tourist industry, which had finally started to recover from the Palestinian War, is again being devastated.
Towns that are home to important sites of the three major religions have come under fire, including Tiberias, Nazareth and Safed.

Wars are never easy to cover, and each side of a conflict wants to make its case through the media. A responsible press, however, does not repeat whatever it hears, it first makes every effort to insure the accuracy of its reporting. That is the standard expected of journalists covering the war between Israel and Hizballah.

“Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians during the war instigated by Hizballah.”

Three weeks after the beginning of the war initiated by Hizballah on July 12, 2006, Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a report that charged Israel with indiscriminate attacks against civilians in Lebanon.”⁸⁴Nothing in the report was based on first-hand knowledge of HRW; rather it was gathered from interviews with “eye-witnesses and survivors” of Israeli strikes who “told HRW that neither Hizballah fighters nor other legitimate military targets were in the area that the IDF attacked.” The HRW staff added for emphasis that they did not see “any signs of military activity in the area[s] attacked, such as trenches, destroyed rocket launchers, other military equipment, or dead or wounded fighters.”

If the investigators did not find evidence of Hizballah’s presence at bomb sites, it does not necessarily follow that the terrorists had not been there since it is possible that any weapons, documents or bodies were removed before HRW arrived on the scene. As Joshua Muravchik observed, “There was no dependable method by which HRW could assess the veracity of what it was told by the ‘witnesses,’ many of whom were in areas where the population was sympathetic to, or intimidated by Hizballah. Indeed, there was no means by which it could be sure that they were not Hizballah cadres, since members of the group do not ordinarily wear uniforms or display identity badges.”⁸⁵

HRW also has no evidence for the scurrilous accusation that civilians were “deliberately” killed. Unless the investigators are mind readers, they could not divine Israeli intentions. Moreover, it is easy to find a great deal of evidence to show the efforts Israel made to avoid harming noncombatants, such as the dropping of leaflets to warn civilians to evacuate locations before they were attacked, the pinpoint attacks of buildings in neighborhoods that could more easily have been carpet-bombed, and the reports of Israeli pilots and others who withheld fire because of the presence of civilians in target areas.

When challenged about the group’s methods, HRW director Kenneth Roth said, essentially, trust me. Anyone watching TV, however, saw the images of rockets being fired from civilian areas, and the photos of weapons and armed men in what should have been peaceful neighborhoods. Numerous witnesses also told reporters very different stories than those reported by HRW, giving examples of weapons caches in mosques and fighters using UN troops as shields.⁸⁶ HRW had no trouble accepting the word of the Lebanese people it interviewed, but gave no credence to evidence presented by Israel, such as weapons captured in fighting in civilian areas or videos showing the deployment and launching of rockets from areas that were attacked.

Two days after the release of their report on Israel, and while being subjected to serious criticism for having double standards, a relatively short statement (7 pages compared to 51 on Lebanon) was released by HRW.⁸⁷ Rockets had already been falling on Israel for three weeks before Roth managed to call on Hizballah’s to stop its attacks and declare that “Lobbing rockets blindly into civilian areas is without doubt a war crime.” Even in this report documenting strikes on Israeli hospitals, educational institutions, businesses and civilian homes, HRW couldn’t resist reiterating its charges against Israel.

The decision by HRW to treat Israel as the main culprit in this war also entailed a studied refusal to make basic moral and legal distinctions. The group did not differentiate between Hizballah’s action in initiating the conflict and Israel's reaction in self-defense, nor between Hizballah’s openly announced and deliberate targeting of civilians and Israel’s efforts to avoid civilian casualties by, for example, appealing to Lebanese civilians to evacuate areas it intended to attack (and thereby giving up the element of surprise and increasing the risk to its own troops).

Most remarkably, HRW did not take note of the contrasting goals of the combatants. One of Hizballah’s declared aims is to destroy Israel, while Israel's goal was to survive and to protect its citizens. HRW justifies this self-imposed moral blindness on the grounds that its touchstone is law, not morality.

The spurious allegations made by HRW, as well as similar ones published by Amnesty International, were further undermined by a report issued in November 2006 by the Intelligence and Terrorism Center at the Israeli Center for Special Studies. This publication provides extensive documentation and photographic evidence of “Hizballah’s consistent pattern of intentionally placing its fighters and weapons among civilians.” It also shows that Hizballah was “well aware of the civilian casualties that would ensue” from this activity.

Israel has been hoping since the death of Yasser Arafat that a Palestinian leader who would emerge with the vision and courage to pursue peace negotiations. The hope was that Mahmoud Abbas was that leader, however, he has proven over the last two years to be unable to control the Palestinian Authority, and he is therefore incapable of negotiating any agreement that Israelis could expect to be implemented.

The election of Hamas to power further undermined the position of Abbas, and worsened the overall situation of the Palestinians as the international community has withheld most of its financial and political support for the PA unless and until Hamas agrees to recognize Israel, end its campaign of terror and agree to fulfill past agreements signed with Israel. Though Abbas has repeatedly offered to form a unity government with Hamas, and said that it was prepared to meet those conditions, Hamas has adamantly refused to do so.

As recently as September 21, 2006, Abbas told the UN General Assembly that a Hamas-Fatah government would recognize Israel. Hamas denied this, however, and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh reiterated his opposition to recognizing Israel’s right to exist and reasserted the Palestinians’ intention to continue their “resistance.” Haniyeh also urged moderate Arab countries not to support U.S. policy just as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was meeting in Egypt with Arab allies in an effort to revive the road map.⁸⁸

The only way that a unity Palestinian government can become a partner for peace is if the Hamas half of the government effectively ceases to reflect the core values of the organization expressed in its covenant, which calls for Israel’s destruction.

For now, the Palestinians cannot even make peace among themselves. Fatah’s al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades threatened to kill all of Hamas’ leaders, including Haniyeh, and 11 Palestinians were killed and more than 150 were wounded in battles between the rival Palestinian groups.⁸⁹ In addition to either instigating the violence or being unable to stop it, Abbas has also failed to secure the release of the Israeli soldier still being held by Hamas. None of these developments inspire confidence that an Abbas-led government, unified or not, can advance the peace process.

In an effort to jumpstart the peace process, Saudi Arabia has resurrected the idea of negotiating with Israel on the basis of a formula outlined by then Crown Prince Abdullah in 2002. Abdullah’s ideas were revised and adopted by the Arab League as a peace initiative that offered Israel “normal relations” in exchange for a withdrawal to the 1967 borders and resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue.

In response to the renewed discussion of the plan in March 2007, Prime Minister Olmert expressed a willingness to talk about the Saudi initiative. When the plan was brought up a few months earlier, Olmert reportedly met secretly with a member of the Saudi royal family.⁹⁰ More recently, Israel tried to persuade the Saudis to modify the plan’s position on the refugees to make it more palatable, but the Palestinians objected to any changes.

For the plan to have any chance of serving as a starting point for negotiations, the Saudis and other Arab League members will have to negotiate directly with Israel. In 2002, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he would go the Arab League summit to discuss the plan, but he was not invited. The Saudis were also been invited to Jerusalem to discuss their proposal, but they rejected this idea as well.

As it is, this initiative is nothing more than a restatement of the Arab interpretation of UN Resolution 242. The problem is that 242 does not say what the Saudi plan demands of Israel. The resolution calls on Israel to withdraw from territories occupied during the war, not “all” the territories in exchange for peace.

In addition, Resolution 242 also says that every state has the right to live within “secure and recognizable boundaries,” which all military analysts have understood to mean the 1967 borders with modifications to satisfy Israel’s security requirements. Moreover, Israel is under no obligation to withdraw before the Arabs agree to live in peace.

The Arab plan calls for Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights. The Israeli government has offered to withdraw from most, if not all of the Golan in exchange for a peace agreement; however, Syrian President Bashar Assad has so far been unwilling to negotiate at all with Israel.

The demand that Israel withdraw from “the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon” is at odds with the UN conclusion that Israel has completely fulfilled its obligation to withdraw from Lebanese territory.

The Arab initiative calls for a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem based on the nonbinding UN General Assembly Resolution 194. Today, the UNRWA says that 4.3. million Palestinians are refugees. The current population of Israel is approximately 7 million, 5 million of whom are Jews. If the Palestinians all returned, the population would exceed 10 million and the proportion of Jews and Palestinian Arabs would be roughly 60-40. Given the higher Arab birth rate, Israel would soon cease to be a Jewish state and would de facto become a second Palestinian state (along with the one expected to be created on the West Bank and Gaza Strip). This suicidal formula has been rejected by Israel since the end of the 1948 war and is totally unacceptable to all Israelis today. Israel does, however, recognize a right for all the refugees to live in a future Palestinian state.

Israel has agreed to allow some Palestinian refugees to live in Israel on a humanitarian basis, and as part of family reunification. Thousands have returned already this way. In the past, Israel has repeatedly expressed a willingness to accept as many as 100,000 refugees as part of a resolution of the issue. In fact, one government report said that Israel accepted 140,000 refugees in the decade following the Oslo agreement of 1993.⁹¹

The refugee issue was not part of Abdullah’s original proposal and was added at the summit under pressure from other delegations. Also, it is important to note that Resolution 242 says nothing about the Palestinians and the reference to refugees can also be applied to the Jews who fled and were driven from their homes in Arab countries. Another change from Abdullah’s previously stated vision was a retreat from a promise of full normalization of relations with Israel to an even vaguer pledge of “normal relations.”

The Arab demand that Israel accept the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital has been part of the negotiations since Oslo. Israel’s leaders, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, have accepted the idea of creating a Palestinian state in part of those territories, and Israel has even offered compromises on the status of Jerusalem, but the Palestinians have rejected them all.

It is also worth noting that most of the Arab League nations have no reason not to be at peace with Israel now. Israel holds none of their territory and is more than willing to make peace with the members of the League. Several members of the League had already begun to normalize relations with Israel before the latest outbreak of violence, and their principal critic was Saudi Arabia.

A report disseminated by Peace Now charged that “Palestinians privately own nearly 40% of the land on which the settlements have been built.”⁹² This sensational allegation, however, is not supported by any evidence and was subsequently undermined by data released by the government. The Peace Now study stated as fact data that it admitted was leaked to the organization by a government official. When asked to produce any of the data to backup the claims, the coauthor of the study said he could not do so and that it was up to the Israeli government to release the information. The result is that the organization has put an inflammatory allegation out before the public without presenting any documentation to back it up.

Without giving readers any information to evaluate the report’s accuracy and reliability, it is impossible to verify the conclusions. If the data was made available, it is likely that arguments would be made about the ownership of the land. As Steve Erlanger noted in the New York Times, “The definitions of private and state land are complicated, given different administrations of the West Bank going back to the Ottoman Empire, the British mandate, Jordan and now Israel. During the Ottoman Empire, only small areas of the West Bank were registered to specific owners, and often villagers would hold land in common to avoid taxes. The British began a more formal land registry based on land use, taxation or house ownership that continued through the Jordanian period.”⁹³

Palestinians can and often do challenge Israeli land seizures in court. In fact, the Peace Now report reviews the case of Elon More in which Palestinians petitioned the Israeli High Court of Justice and the justices prevented private land from being seized for the establishment of a settlement. Often, however, the Palestinians cannot prove ownership of land they claim. Moreover, while Peace Now makes a distinction, the Palestinians do not see any difference between the West Bank and Israel proper, which they also claim was stolen and belongs to them.

The Civil Administration, from which the data was leaked, also challenged the report’s accuracy, noting that much of the land believed to be privately held was actually state land. The government agency also said it carries out “an in-depth reexamination of the status of the land in order to ensure that no harm comes to or use is made of privately held Palestinian land for the needs of Israeli settlement.”⁹⁴

Not surprisingly, the Times put the incendiary story on the front page, but, as has become typical of the “Paper of Record’s” shabby reporting, Erlanger failed to verify the information. He said only that the paper “spoke to the person who received it from the Civil Administration official.” So Erlanger did not see the original documents and did not get a second source, as journalistic ethics require, to verify unsubstantiated claims put out by a partisan organization.

Several months later, the government released data that cast the entire Peace Now report in doubt. One of the findings the original report sensationalized was that 86 percent of the largest Israeli community in the West Bank, Ma’ale Adumim, was built on private Palestinian land. The government data, however, showed that only 0.5 percent of the settlement is on private land. The response of the Peace Now study’s author was to blame the military for not releasing the data earlier.^94a

At one level, the accuracy of the report is irrelevant. The authors’ primary interest was in tarring the Israeli government, and that goal was aided by the Times, which cooperated by publishing the story in advance of the report’s official release, before anyone could respond and without checking its veracity. Furthermore, even if the data would have shown that 100% of the land belonged to Jews, it would not have mattered because Peace Now believes, despite nearly 60 years of evidence to the contrary (including the recent disengagement from Gaza), that settlements are the obstacle to peace.

Every Israeli wants “peace now,” but it will not be achieved by trying to embarrass the government. Even if data is eventually released to substantiate some or all of the claims in the Peace Now report, it will not change the dynamics of the region; Hamas, Hizballah and Iran will be no more likely to accept a Jewish state in the Middle East. It will not even have much impact on the settlements as the tens of thousands of Jews living in the larger consensus settlements such as Ma’ale Adumim and Ariel, whose land is alleged to belong in part to Palestinians, will not be evacuated. If Palestinian claims could be proven, at worst, Israel would be expected to compensate the landowners, as it has in the past, and it will deservedly receive a black eye. Most people, however, will also understand that the situation that exists in the West Bank has always been first and foremost the result of the decision of Jordan to attack Israel in 1967 and has persisted because of the refusal of any Palestinian leader to trade peace for land.

“It's easy enough for global leaders to issue flowery appeals for action on the Middle East or to imply that progress would be possible if only the United States used its leverage with Israel. The stubborn reality is that there can be no movement toward peace until a Palestinian leadership appears that is ready to accept a two-state soluiton.”

— Editorial, Washington Post ⁹⁵

“The overwhelming majority of casualties in the war with Hizballah were civilians.”

Throughout the 2006 war with Hizballah, the media reported casualty totals offered by Lebanese officials as facts with no apparent effort to verify them. When the number of Hizballah terrorists killed was mentioned at all, it was invariably with a qualifier such as “Israel says” or “Israel claims.” The evidence suggests, however, that it is likely that half or more of the casualties were not innocent civilians, but Hizballah fighters.

According to Lebanon’s Higher Relief Council, the total number of Lebanese who died in the war was 1,191.⁹⁶ No distinctions are made between civilians and terrorists. Press reports usually ignored the fact that it was in Hizballah and the Lebanese government’s interest to exaggerate the number of civilian casualties to blacken the image of Israel and support their contention that Israeli attacks were disproportionate and indiscriminate. Simultaneously, Hizballah sought to conceal its casualties to enhance its prestige and make propagandistic claims about the damage it was inflicting on Israel while suffering few losses of its own.

The truth did dribble out, though it was largely ignored. For example, the Daily Telegraph reported: “Lebanese officials estimate that up to 500 fighters have been killed in the past three weeks of hostilities with Israel, and another 1,500 injured. Lebanese officials have also disclosed that many of Hizballah’s wounded are being treated in hospitals in Syria to conceal the true extent of the casualties. ‘Hizballah is desperate to conceal its casualties because it wants to give the impression that it is winning its war,’ said a senior security official. ‘People might reach a very different conclusion if they knew the true extent of Hizballah’s casualties.’”⁹⁷ The Kuwait Times quoted a report that said Hizballah “buried more than 700 fighters so far, with many more to go.”⁹⁸ Military expert John Keegan said Hizballah losses might have been as high as 1,000 out of a total strength of 5,000.⁹⁹

These sources are consistent with information provided by Israel. Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror, a former senior officer in Israeli military intelligence, said “Israel identified 440 dead guerillas by name and address, and experience shows that Israeli figures are half to two-thirds of the enemy’s real casualties. Therefore, Amidror estimated, Hizballah’s real death toll might be as high as 700.”¹⁰⁰ A subsequent report three weeks later said that Israel had identified the names of 532 dead Hizballah terrorists and estimated at least 200 others had been killed.¹⁰¹

These reports suggest that at a minimum, roughly half the casualties in the war were combatants. It is more likely the figure approaches 60 percent, which would mean the majority of dead were terrorists. This reinforces the Israeli position that it did indeed inflict heavy losses on Hizballah and that the civilian casualties were not a result of deliberate or indiscriminate attacks. Tragically, many civilians were killed, but as Israel has also shown, many of them died because they were used as human shields. Of course, there would have been zero casualties if Hizballah had not attacked Israel and kidnaped its soldiers (who have still not been returned or visited by the Red Cross).

“The major difficulty is that the Palestinians don't accept Israel's right to exist.”

— British Prime Minister Tony Blair¹⁰²

“What is urgently needed is decisive steps by the U.S. and its allies to counter the extremists and to force them to pay a price for their aggression. Passage of a UN sanctions resolution against Iran cannot be put off any longer. The Security Council should also be prodded to investigate whether Damascus has respected its resolutions calling for Hizballah's disarmament and an end to Syrian weapons trafficking. ‘Realism’ in the Middle East means understanding that Syria and Iran won't stop waging war against the U.S. and its allies unless they are given reasons to fear they might lose.”

— Washington Post editorial ¹⁰³

“We offered the Syrians peace four times, including withdrawing from the Golan Heights, and it didn’t happen four times. It's true that this was during the days of his father Hafez, but now he has to prove that this is what he wants. A statesman is examined according to his deeds, not according to his declarations.”

— Shimon Peres¹⁰⁴

The media has helped create the misperception that the Palestinian Authority (PA) cannot dismantle the terrorist network in its midst because of the strength and popularity of the radical Islamic Palestinian terrorist groups.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad are not huge armed forces. Together, the armed wings of both organizations total fewer than 5,000 men. By contrast, the PA has 45,000 people in a variety of police, intelligence, and security forces.¹⁰⁵ Not only does the PA have overwhelming superiority of manpower and firepower, it also has the intelligence assets to find most, if not all of the terrorists.

Given the disparity of forces, the Jerusalem Post’s Palestinian affairs correspondent, Khaled Abu Toameh, asked “Why then, doesn’t [PA President Mahmoud] Abbas simply order thousands of his policemen to deploy along the border with Israel to halt the Kassam attacks? How come he hasn’t even made the slightest effort to stop the smuggling of tons of explosives from Egypt into the Gaza Strip?”¹⁰⁶

Toameh answers the questions himself. “Abbas lacks the will — not the ability — to take harsh decisions. In fact, he appears comfortable with the image of a weak leader low on funds and resources.”

Despite the suffering the terrorists have brought them, the Palestinian public has not called for an end to the violence. No equivalent to Israel’s Peace Now movement has emerged.

Still, on an individual basis, it is possible for Palestinians to say no to terror. When the suicide bombing recruiter phoned the wife of former Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi to ask if her son was available for an operation, she turned him down.¹⁰⁷

In other countries, including Israel (where they helped prompt a withdrawal from Lebanon), mothers have often helped stimulate positive change. When enough Palestinian mothers stand up to the terror recruiters, and to their political leaders, and say that they will no longer allow their children to be used as bombs, the prospects for peace will improve. So long as they prefer their children to be martyrs rather than doctors, bombers rather than scholars, and murderers rather than lawyers, the violence will persist, young Palestinians will continue to die needlessly and peace will remain a dream.

Newspaper headlines in mid-January 2007 said it all: “Palestinian Opposes Provisional State” (New York Times, January 14) and “Abbas Rejects ‘Temporary Borders’ for Palestine” (Washington Post, January15). Israel once again offered to move the peace process forward and advanced ideas to allow the Palestinians to achieve independence before the thorniest issues are resolved, but Mahmoud Abbas, following in the footsteps of his mentor Yasser Arafat, chose to prove again the Palestinian penchant for never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Abbas not only rejected the chance for peace and interim statehood, he declared his continued support for violence against Israel. Speaking at the 42nd anniversary of the founding of Fatah on January 11, 2007, in Ramallah, Abbas said, “Let a thousand flowers bloom, and let our rifles, all our rifles, all our rifles, be aimed at the Occupation.” Paying tribute to Arafat, Abbas continued, “I say to the master of the martyrs your sons will continue your march. I say to you, your lion cubs will continue this struggle, this battle until a Palestinian state is established on the land of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital.”

Abbas also used the type of anti-Semitic rhetoric normally associated with Hamas. While criticizing Israeli counter-terror operations, he said, “The sons of Israel are mentioned as those who are corrupting humanity on earth.”¹⁰⁸

At the very moment when the United States, Israel and Europe are trying to strengthen his position against Hamas in the belief that he will act to stop terror, Abbas was condoning attacks against Israel. Just days before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived to ask him to fulfill his commitments under the road map for peace, Abbas announced he supported the very actions the road map calls for him to stop. This is the familiar tactic of Palestinians who pretend to be moderates in English for the Western press and then express their true feelings in Arabic to the Palestinian public.

The priority for Abbas today is not peace or improving the lives of the Palestinian people that he is responsible for as president of the Palestinian Authority. Abbas is now just trying to survive. To do so, he must unify the factions fighting for dominance. Since he is unwilling to confront his opponents militarily, he hopes to cajole them to cease their mutiny against him by playing the Israel card. He is asking for unity to fight against their common enemy – Israel. Simultaneously, he seeks the means to stay in power from the West by presenting himself as the only alternative to Hamas. And it is working because he is being armed and financed even as he continues to allow the attacks against Israel to continue.

The Palestinians’ latest rejection of an offer for statehood can now be added to the long list of missed opportunities starting as far back as 1937. Will the Palestinian people ever choose a leader who will put their interests first and choose prosperity over power, peace over violence and the future over the past?

While Jimmy Carter and other critics of Israel attempt to paint the country as intolerant and discriminatory toward Arabs based on their ill-informed and distorted views of both the past and present, Israeli Arabs themselves have a very high opinion of their country. According to a new poll released in January 2007¹⁰⁹, 82 percent of Israeli Arabs said it is “better to be a citizen of my country than others.” By comparison, 90 percent of Americans agreed with the statement and 88 percent of Israeli Jews.

In addition, 77 percent of Israeli Arabs agreed “my country is better than others,” which was only slightly less than the 83 percent of Australians and 79 percent of Canadians and Americans who felt the same way. Interestingly, the figure for Israeli Arabs was 11 points higher than that for Jews.

While almost everyone in the survey from Ireland and the United States said they were proud to be a citizen of their country, 83 percent of Israeli Jews said they were proud and 44 percent of Israeli Arabs. Another 27 percent of Israeli Arabs said they were willing to fight for their country, an increase from 22 percent in 2000. While still well below the overwhelming 94 percent of Israeli Jews who are prepared to fight (Finland was second with 83 percent and the U.S. third with 63 percent), it is significant that more than one-quarter of Israeli Arabs, who are exempt from military service, are still prepared to defend their nation.

Analyzing the survey data it is clear why Israeli Arabs are adamant about remaining citizens of Israel and express no desire to be part of a Palestinian state. The results also illustrate why Palestinian Arabs in the territories express a high regard for Israel in polls. They see how their fellow Arabs are treated and the type of society Israel has built and wish to emulate it.

It is too bad the Jimmy Carters of the world do not see Israel the way its citizens – Jewish and non-Jewish – view their nation. If they did, they’d recognize that Israeli society can serve as a model, albeit an imperfect one, for the values they espouse.

In the perverse world of Islamic fanaticism, women who become suicide bombers are viewed as noble and heroic feminists acting out the collective desire of Muslim women to defeat the enemies of Islam. These women, however, are usually pawns of psychotic men who do not have the courage to kill themselves and who instead prey on the vulnerabilities of women who have often already been victimized by the norms of Muslim society.

Hamas leader Ahmad Yassin ruled that women should not become suicide bombers because it was more important for them to “ensure the nation’s existence” by reproducing. He nevertheless approved suicide actions by women who stained their family honor. In one case, for example, a married mother of two small children requested Yassin’s permission to carry out an attack after her relationship with a lover became known.

The first female suicide bomber was Wafa Idris, who blew herself up in Jerusalem on January 27, 2002. Idris was 25 years-old and had been divorced after failing to have children. “Her status as a divorced and barren woman, and her return as a dependent to her parents’ home where she became an economic burden, put her in what is a dead end situation in a patriarchal society,” explained Ben-Gurion University Professor Mira Tzoreff.¹¹⁰ Idris believed the way out of her inferior status was by becoming a martyr.

Roughly 70 women have followed in her footsteps, though only eight succeeded in blowing themselves up. These are not uneducated women; more than one-fifth, for example, had more than a high school education.¹¹¹ Tzoreff notes that women who are childless, divorced, and “unbetrothable” are targets of recruiters. Some younger women are seduced by terrorists and then are blackmailed if they become pregnant. Those who do not become pregnant are still viewed as having shamed themselves and their families by having violated the society’s norms regarding modesty. They are then offered the opportunity to redeem themselves by dying for the terrorists’ cause.

It is not only the young, however, who can be turned into murderers. In what the National Post called a “new low,” even by the standards of Palestinian terrorists, a woman thought to be over 60 with more than 40 grandchildren was recruited by Hamas to attack Israeli soldiers in Gaza. The Post editorialized that the good news was that the woman didn’t kill anyone but herself, but the bad news was that “there are Muslims on this earth who think Allah wants them to turn grandmothers into walking bombs.”¹¹²

In November 2006, Israel and the Palestinian factions in Gaza announced a cease-fire following an agreement reached between Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian factions. As part of the agreement the Palestinians had agreed to stop Qassam rocket fire, suicide bombings and the digging of tunnels.¹¹³

Despite the cease-fire, Qassam rockets continue to be launched frequently into Israeli territory and tunnels are dug along the border with Egypt. Such a tunnel provided the opportunity to conduct a deadly suicide bombing attack in Eilat on January 29, 2007 , which took the life of three innocent people.

Two Palestinian groups, Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades (the military wing of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction), claimed joint responsibility for the attack. A spokesman for the ruling Hamas movement praised the bombing, a sentiment echoed by a senior Islamic Jihad leader, who called the attack “a natural response to the continued crimes by the Zionist enemy.” According to Israel Radio, Abbas condemned the suicide bombing, adding that he was opposed to all attacks that harm civilians.¹¹⁴ Such condemnations were criticized in the past by militants within its own party.¹¹⁵

This latest attack and the Palestinian response follows an all too familiar pattern. The PA proclaims a cease-fire and the leadership presents itself as a force of moderation. Simultaneously, those same leaders either look the other way or actively encourage terrorist attacks. Once an atrocity occurs, some Palestinians condemn the attacks, including those who have the power to prevent them, and others openly praise them.

The implication for Israel is clear: Palestinian leaders cannot be trusted to keep agreements or to prevent violence. And it should come as no surprise given the long history of such behavior, which is also reflected in the actions of the Palestinians among themselves. Fatah and Hamas agreed to stop fighting each other after weeks of bloody clashes, but the internal truce was almost immediately broken and the groups continue to engage in a civil war.

MYTH

FACT

“We denounce this blatant act of provocation and the complete disregard for the sanctity of the holy mosque. This act will ignite the feelings of Muslims all over the world and is in fact a retrogressive step in the efforts to achieve peace in the region.”¹¹⁶ This statement from the Malaysian Foreign Minister refers to the Israeli excavation and plan for construction at the site of the Mugrabi ramp in the Old City of Jerusalem and serves as a call to action and incitement rather than as a warning of a concerned observer.

In February 2004, the Mugrabi ramp, which provided access to the Temple Mount, collapsed as a result of numerous natural disasters. The Jerusalem Municipal Authority approved the building of a permanent bridge to replace the wooden structure that was built as a temporary entry. The commencement of an archeological dig, required by law to salvage any artifacts in the area before construction begins, has been met with outrage and violence from the Islamic world, which claims that Israel’s actions are meant to destroy Islam’s third holiest site to replace it with the Third Temple.

A four-member team from UNESCO found that the construction and excavation at the Mugrabi ramp site, located 50 yards from the Temple Mount, was being conducted with complete transparency and poses no danger to the Temple Mount or to the Al-Aksa mosque.^116a Israel has a record of safeguarding the holy places of Christians and Muslims and has no interest in the destruction of the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. In contrast, the Muslim Waqf, which has been in control of the Temple Mount since 1967, banned the Israel Antiquities Authority from the area in 2000 to conduct illegal construction on an underground mosque. In the process, the Waqf dumped 13,000 tons of dirt containing artifacts from the First and Second Temple period in Municipal garbage dumps, rendering many of the ruins useless.

Muslim leaders are expressing outrage over the excavation and construction in an effort to unite the Palestinians against Israel and to distract from internal Palestinian factional tensions. The Palestinians have a long history of using false accusations of Jewish threats to Muslim holy sites to rally the Muslim population, going as far back as the riots of the 1920’s. Riots today echo the Western Wall tunnel riots of 1996 when Israel was also falsely accused of endangering Muslim shrines by opening an additional exit to the already existing tunnels. The tunnel exit was a significant distance from any Muslim holy places and posed no danger whatsover to the Temple Mount. The exit actually facilitated the use of the tunnels and helped make them a popular archeological park.¹¹⁷

The media and international organizations have served to perpetuate these false accusations by reporting on conflicting “claims” rather than by accurately reporting the facts, which contradict the rumors.

MYTH

FACT

It is often suggested that the Palestinians have moderated their views toward Israel. When it is pointed out that groups such as Hamas (a partner in the Palestinian Authority government) openly advocate the destruction of Israel, as the group’s spokesman did on March 12, 2007,¹¹⁸ their position is often dismissed as mere rhetoric. The Palestinian people, we are told, are prepared to live in peace with Israel. Surveys of Palestinian public opinion, however, consistently present a very different picture. Large majorities of Palestinians repeatedly tell pollsters they support terror and oppose a two-state solution. In February 2007, for example, Near East Consulting (NEC)¹¹⁹ found that 70% of Palestinians support a one-state solution and 75% said Israel is not a peace partner. Though 70% did support a peace settlement with Israel, 75% said Israel has no right to exist and another 51% agreed that Hamas should maintain its position on the elimination of Israel.

Even more alarming are the signs that young Palestinians are more militant than their elders. On the question of whether Hamas should continue to seek the elimination of Israel, for example, 66% of Palestinians 18-21 agreed and an overwhelming majority of 90% said Israel has no right to exist.

Given the steady diet of anti-Israel propaganda in the Palestinian Authority media and educational system, these results are not surprising and reinforce Israel’s longstanding view that incitement through those channels is having a significant negative impact on Palestinian attitudes toward Jews and Israel and hurting the prospects for peace. These results are sobering for anyone who believes that Israeli concessions will end the conflict or that a new generation of Palestinian leaders will be any more willing to accept Israel than their predecessors.

MYTH

“The Arab peace initiative reflects the Arab states’ acceptance of Israel.”

FACT

Imagine if one day someone who has always despised you let it be known through a third party that they were willing to be your friend. But first you had to meet some conditions and, if you didn’t, your enemy would try to kill you. How seriously would you take your adversary’s offer of friendship?

This is similar to the position Israel finds itself in following the Arab League’s reiteration of its “peace plan.” Israel has made clear that it is prepared to negotiate with the Arab states on the basis of the plan, but that many of their demands, such as the withdrawal from all territory captured in 1967 and the acceptance of a “right of return” for Palestinian refugees, are unacceptable.

If the Arab proponents of the plan were sincere, the response should be that they are prepared to sit down with Israel’s leaders and discuss how to overcome the disagreements. But this has not been the Arab response. Rather than accept an Israeli invitation to come to Jerusalem to negotiate or exploit the willingness of Israel’s leaders to go to an Arab capital for talks, the Arabs have told Israel it must accept the plan or face the threat of war. Here are a few examples:

Make peace on our terms or else. Is this the rhetoric you would expect from leaders who have moderated their views and want to seek an accommodation with Israel?

Peace plans are not worth the paper they are printed on if the proponents continue to talk about war and pursue policies such as supporting terrorists, arming radical Muslims, inciting their populations with anti-Semitic propaganda and enforcing boycotts that promote conflict. Progress toward real peace requires the Arab states to show by words and deeds that they are committed to finding a formula for coexisting with Israel. The only ultimatum should be that if the first efforts to reach an understanding do not succeed, they will try and try again.

MYTH

FACT

The Palestinian Authority’s ongoing inability and unwillingness to prevent terror attacks against Israel has required the imposition of security measures to prevent most Palestinians from entering the country. Still, Israel has remained open to Palestinians in need of medical assistance.

Contrary to frequent Palestinian claims that Israel prevents Arabs from obtaining health care, the Civil Administration in the West Bank receives and grants thousands of requests by Palestinians to visit Israeli hospitals where they are treated by some of the finest medical professionals in the world. In 2006 alone, 81,000 Palestinians were given permits to enter Israel for health reasons, an increase of 61 percent from 2005. According to the Health Coordinator responsible for responding to requests, 90 percent of the applications for permits are approved.¹²³

In addition to providing direct care to Palestinians from the territories, Israel is also training Palestinian health care workers. Courses have been offered since 2000 and since then 200 Palestinians have taken part, including Marwan Baqer, who heads of team of ambulance workers in Gaza. Baqer was invited to participate in a course in emergency medicine. “It is excellent that people from the Palestinian territories come to participate in an Israeli course.” He added that when he returned to Gaza he would say he “learned something good.”

One of the Israeli physicians on the board of Physicians for Human Rights’, the group sponsoring the course, observed, “We have a common enemy – disease.”¹²⁴

Israel is committed to providing health care for anyone in need, including not only Palestinians but sometimes Arabs from countries still at war with Israel. This concern for the individual, and willingness to cooperate with Palestinians in the field of medicine, offers hope that Israelis and Palestinians will find more common ground in the future.

MYTH

FACT

On June 14, 2007, the Rosary Sisters School and Latin Church in the Gaza Strip were ransacked, burned and looted by Hamas gunmen who used rocket-propelled grenades to storm the buildings. Father Manuel Musalam, leader of the Latin community in Gaza, expressed outrage that copies of the Bible were burned, crosses destroyed and computers and other equipment stolen.¹²⁵

“I expect our Christian neighbors to understand the new Hamas rule means real changes. They must be ready for Islamic rule if they want to live in peace in Gaza,” said Sheik Abu Saqer, leader of Jihadia Salafiya, an Islamic outreach movement that recently announced the opening of a “military wing” to enforce Muslim law in Gaza. The application of Islamic law, he said, includes a prohibition on alcohol and a requirement that women be covered at all times while in public.¹²⁶

Critics of Israel who express concern for Christians, such as former president Jimmy Carter and columnist Robert Novak, have consistently ignored the persistent discrimination and abuse of Christians by Muslims throughout the Middle East and especially by Palestinian Muslims. It is therefore not surprising that they are once again silent as Christians come under attack in the Gaza Strip as Hamas begins to impose its extreme Islamic views on all the people now living under its control.

The Christian position throughout the territories has always been precarious, which is why most have fled the Palestinian Authority. In Gaza only about 2,000 Christians live among more than one million Muslims and they are now seeking international protection and many are planning to leave.

On August 11, 2006, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1701 in response to the Israel-Hizballah war. The resolution called upon the Lebanese government “to secure its borders and other entry points to prevent the entry in Lebanon without its consent of arms and related materials.”

In May 2007, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon established the Lebanon Independent Border Assessment Team (LIBAT) to evaluate Lebanon’s compliance with Resolution 1701. The committee concluded that “The performance of the (Lebanese inspection) agencies in stopping ongoing arms smuggling, which is generally accepted as a fact, can only be described as not up to what can be expected.”¹²⁷

The committee discovered widespread corruption amongst Lebanese border police and described the ease by which missiles and militants can sneak across the Syrian-Lebanese border. The report illustrated the United Nations’ skepticism of Lebanese attempts to end the flow of illegal arms into Lebanon when it said “one would have expected that an occasional seizure of arms…would have taken place. If by nothing else, then by pure chance. This lack of performance is worrying.”¹²⁸

Lebanon’s failure to implement Resolution 1701 poses a direct threat to Israel and to Lebanese stability. Since last summer’s war, large amounts of weapons (including rockets capable of striking as far south as Tel Aviv and southern Israel), have been smuggled into Lebanon from Syria and Iran. Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah has declared openly that Hizballah will not disarm so long as Israel remains a threat. He also claims to have tens of thousands of rockets ready to fire at Israel (Israeli military estimates place the number at 20,000).¹²⁹ The smuggling and stockpiling of weapons by Hebollah, with the complicity of Lebanese border officials, also threatens the pro-Western Lebanese government. If the UN does not take steps to insure the implementation of its resolution, the risk of renewed violence between Israel and Hizballah will grow, as will the possibility of a takeover of Lebanon by Hizballah.

Palestinians are fleeing in droves of their own volition. Israel is not forcing any of them to leave.

Today, Palestinians have the opportunity to build the infrastructure of a democratic state in the Palestinian Authority. They control all of the Gaza Strip and the population centers of the West Bank, but have squandered the chance by engaging in fratricide and terror. Palestinians are voting with their feet, however, and tens of thousands have left, or are now trying to emigrate. According to Palestinian sources, as many as 80,000 people have departed the territories since the Palestinian War began in September 2000, and a study by Bir Zeit University found that 32 percent of Palestinians, and 44 percent of young Palestinians, would emigrate if they could.¹³⁰

Undoubtedly, Israel’s measures to curtail terrorism – roadblocks, military operations, closures – have created hardships for Palestinians, but this does not explain why so many people would abandon their homeland. In fact, many Palestinians have moved to Israel because they would rather live in a democracy than a theocratic mobocracy. This is especially true for Arabs living near Jerusalem who have chosen the “hell in Jerusalem over paradise in the PA.”¹³¹

Palestinian officials have become so alarmed that the PA’s mufti issued a fatwa [religious decree] forbidding Muslims to leave.¹³²

The Israeli government released figures showing that 25 percent of potential male draftees do not serve in the Israel Defense Forces. This reflects an increase from 12.1 percent in 1980. As political scientist Stuart Cohen noted, however, these figures are misleading and do not reflect the ongoing commitment to service of Israel’s youth.¹³³

The principal reason the number of draftees has declined, Cohen relates, is that the number of ultra-Orthodox males granted deferments has grown dramatically, as this population nearly tripled from 3.7 percent of all potential recruits to 11 percent. Of the remaining 14 percent of non-Orthodox Jews, 9 percent either reside abroad or are rejected because they have a criminal record or are physically incapable of serving. This means that the percentage of Israeli “draft dodgers” who actively seek to avoid service for any reason is only 5 percent.

It is more striking that the overwhelming majority of Israelis serve their country despite often having to carry out unpleasant duties. In wartime, moreover, Israelis respond to the call to service in even greater numbers than required. For example, in 2002, during the Palestinian War, more than 100 percent of the reserves showed up to join their units during Operation Defensive Shield, which means many who had been excused reported for duty,. The same phenomenon occurred in the 2006 war with Hizballah, where certain units were ready to be operational in less than 24 hours and soldiers who were not called up volunteered to defend their country.

Some argue Iran would never launch a nuclear attack against Israel because no Muslim leader would risk an Israeli counterstrike that might destroy them. This theory doesn’t hold up, however, if the Iranian leaders believe there will be destruction anyway at the end of time. What matters, Bernard Lewis observed, is that infidels go to hell and believers go to heaven. Lewis quotes a passage from Ayatollah Khomeini cited in an 11th grade Iranian schoolbook, “I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against the whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all of them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom, which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another’s hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours.”¹³⁴

Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, believes the most important task of the Iranian Revolution was to prepare the way for the return of the Twelfth Imam, who disappeared in 874, bringing an end to Muhammad’s lineage. This imam, the Mahdi or “divinely guided one,” Shiites believe, will return in an apocalyptic battle in which the forces of righteousness will defeat the forces of evil and bring about a new era in which Shi’a Islam ultimately becomes the dominant religion throughout the world. The Shiites have been waiting patiently for the Twelfth Imam for more than a thousand years, but Ahmadinejad may believe he can now hasten the return through a nuclear war. It is this apocalyptic world view, Lewis notes, that distinguishes Iran from other governments with nuclear weapons.

There are those who think that Iran would never use such weapons against Israel because innocent Muslims would be killed as well, but Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad’s predecessor, explicitly said he wasn’t concerned about fallout from an attack on Israel. “If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession,” he said, “the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.” As one Iranian commentator noted, Rafsanjani apparently wasn't concerned that the destruction of the Jewish State would also result in the mass murder of Palestinians as well.¹³⁵

Iran will not have to use nuclear weapons to influence events in the region. By possessing a nuclear capability, the Iranians can deter Israel or any other nation from attacking Iran or its allies. When Hizballah attacked Israel in 2006, for example, a nuclear Iran could have threatened retaliation against Tel Aviv if Israeli forces bombed Beirut. The mere threat of using nuclear weapons would be sufficient to drive Israelis into shelters and could cripple the economy. Will immigrants want to come to a country that lives in the shadow of annihilation? Will companies want to do business under those conditions? Will Israelis be willing to live under a nuclear cloud?

If you were the prime minister of Israel, could you afford to take the risk of allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons?

Israel is widely believed to have developed a nuclear weapon in the late 1960s. Despite U.S. fears at the time that this would provoke a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, this did not happen. Now, however, it appears many nations are interested in pursuing a nuclear capability, but it is in response to what they see as the danger posed by Iran’s nuclear program, not Israel’s.

The only Muslim nation that currently has a nuclear capability is Pakistan. The decision by Pakistan to build the “Islamic bomb” had nothing to do with Israel; it was a response to the development of the bomb by its neighbor and rival India.

Iran began its secret development of nuclear weapons nearly two decades ago, but that decision was also unrelated to Israel. Iran’s principal concern was to counterbalance what Iranians viewed as the dangerous nuclear ambitions of their rival in Baghdad. Israel had long been Iran’s ally and even the paranoid mullahs in Tehran knew Israel had no hostile intentions toward the Islamic Republic. Iran is now determined to build a bomb to achieve regional domination over the Arab states.

The focus on the belligerent rhetoric of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has led many to wrongly assume that he is the driving force behind the Iranian nuclear effort, but the program was initiated long before his election. For Iranians, the drive for a bomb is a function of their nationalistic belief that they have just as much right to nuclear weapons as any other nation, so it is a mistake to believe that a difference of opinion exists between pro-Western Iranians in the opposition and the Islamists currently in power.

Some Arab leaders, notably Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi, may have believed that the only way they could ultimately achieve their goal of destroying Israel, given their belief in Israel’s nuclear arsenal, was to have bombs of their own, but neither leader seemed primarily motivated by Israel’s capability. Hussein knew he had little to fear from Israel and was more interested in developing a weapon that would give him an advantage over Iran and help establish Iraq as a regional power. The same is true for Libya, which was for many years interested in a nuclear weapon because its megalomaniacal leader believed it would make his country a superpower.

In recent months, as tensions with Iran have escalated, several Arab countries suddenly announced their interest in nuclear power. Like the Iranians, they all publicly claim their interest is solely in the peaceful purpose of electrical generation. After more than 30 years of living with Israel’s assumed arsenal, Jordan, Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, the UAE and Saudi Arabia did not suddenly decide they needed nuclear energy.¹³⁶ Since Jordan and Egypt have peace treaties with Israel and the other Arab states have no dispute with Israel, their motivation is more likely to have come from the fear of a nuclear Iran.

If Iran’s nuclear program is not stopped, it is clear the arms race in the Middle East will be on and the proliferation of nuclear weapons will become a far more serious danger.

Israel is not alone in its concern about Iran’s nuclear weapons program. In fact, the nations most worried about Iran are its immediate neighbors who have no doubts about the hegemonic ambitions of the radical Islamists in Tehran.

Former Bahraini army chief of staff Sheikh Maj.-Gen. Khalifa ibn Ahmad al-Khalifa said Iran stirs trouble in many Gulf nations. “[Iran] is like an octopus – it is rummaging around in Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Gaza and Bahrain,” al-Khalifa proclaimed.^136a The Crown Prince of Bahrain was the first Gulf leader to explicitly accuse Iran of lying about its weapons program. “While they don’t have the bomb yet, they are developing it, or the capability for it,” Salman bin Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa said.¹³⁷

At least 12 Arab countries have either announced new plans to explore atomic energy or revived pre-existing nuclear programs between February 2006 and January 2007 (Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, & the GCC) in response to Iran’s nuclear program, according to a report released by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

The trend continued in 2008 as many Middle Eastern countries sought to strengthen their nuclear cooperation with other Western nations, such as the United States, Russia and France. Both Saudi Arabia and UAE signed nuclear cooperation accords with the United States, and Russia and Egypt have laid the groundwork for Russia to join a tender for Egypt’s first civilian nuclear power station.

Kuwait, Bahrain, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, and Jordan announced plans to build nuclear plants as well. Even Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Arab world announced plans to purchase a nuclear reactor.

In October 2007, a senior Iranian general said that suicide bombers were ready to strike at targets throughout the Gulf “if necessary.” The threat was aimed at Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Earlier in 2007, a close associate of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad resurrected an old claim on Bahrain as Iran’s 14th province, which Bahrain’s foreign minister said “touched on the legitimacy of our country.” The effect of Iran’s saber rattling, Giles Whittell wrote, “is especially chilling in Bahrain as the only Sunni-led country with a Shia majority that is not at war or on the brink of war.”¹³⁸

European leaders also clearly see Iran as a threat to their interests. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said, for example, “Iran is trying to acquire a nuclear bomb. I say to the French, it’s unacceptable.” France has indeed recently signed a nuclear framework agreement with the UAE.

Similarly, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has stated, “I’m emphatically in favor of solving the problem through negotiations, but we also need to be ready to impose further sanctions if Iran does not give ground.”¹³⁹

Great Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown proclaimed, “We are absolutely clear that we are ready, and will push for, further sanctions against Iran....We will work through the United Nations to achieve this. We are prepared also to have tougher European sanctions. We want to make it clear that we do not support the nuclear ambitions of that country.”¹⁴⁰

President George W. Bush has been even more emphatic, “I've told people that, if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”¹⁴¹

The international concern that has prompted a series of UN resolutions and ongoing condemnation of Iranian behavior has nothing to do with Israel. Most of the world understands that a nuclear Iran poses a direct threat to countries inside and outside the Middle East, raises the specter of nuclear terrorism, increases the prospects for regional instability, and promote proliferation. Israel’s detractors, such as professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, portray Israel and the “Israeli lobby” as campaigning for military action against Iran. In fact, Israel and its supporters have been the most outspoken in their desire to see tough measures implemented to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program to avoid war.

Just as the parties were preparing for peace talks in Annapolis, the Palestine Authority’s chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said the Palestinians would not recognize Israel as a Jewish state. This latest effort by a Palestinian official to delegitimize Israel was accompanied by Erekat’s startling statement that “no state in the world connects its national identity to a religious identity.”¹⁴³

Nations with predominantly Muslim populations are not the only ones to link their national and religious identity. These nations constitutionally recognize Christianity or Catholicism as their state religion: Argentina, Armenia, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Denmark, El Salvador, Finland, Greece, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Malta, Monaco, Norway and the United Kingdom. Bhutan and Cambodia are officially Buddhist nations.¹⁴⁴

Israel has no official state religion. Freedom of worship is guaranteed to all. It is, however, the homeland of the Jewish people and was established and recognized internationally as a Jewish state by the United Nations in the partition resolution.

As most analysts expected, no substantive agreements came out of the conference convened by the United States in Annapolis, MD, on November 27, 2007, to discuss Arab-Israeli peace. Optimists did hope, however, that by attending the conference Arab states might finally signal their recognition of Israel and begin a process of normalizing relations. That, too, did not happen. Instead, most Arab participants reinforced their rejectionist policies and demonstrated that simply gathering around a conference table will not make them less intransigent.

Israel’s Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, reiterated Israel’s interest in a two-state solution with the Palestinians and in peace with the entire Arab world. She also talked about Israel’s willingness to compromise:

Substantively, none of the Arab delegates showed any interest in compromise. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did not back down from the traditional irredentist demands of Yasser Arafat. The Syrian Foreign Minister rejected the idea that giving up the Golan Heights would be a painful compromise for Israel and reiterated Syria’s longstanding position that Israel must evacuate the Golan before Damascus would even consider peace. The Lebanese representative also said nothing about peace, but demanded Israel withdraw not only from the disputed Shebaa Farms region but also a new area never contested before.

The biggest disappointment may have once again been the Saudis, whose participation was treated as a major achievement by the U.S. State Department. A Saudi diplomat told non-Israeli reporters (he wouldn’t speak to Israelis) Israel could not expect normalization of relations until it reached an agreement with the Palestinians. The Saudi Foreign Minister repeated Arab maximalist demands regarding settlements and the return of Palestinian refugees.¹⁴⁵

Livni also pointed out how the Arab delegates had missed an important opportunity to show they had changed their attitudes:

Alas, Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said he would not shake hands with the Israelis and the Saudis went so far as to request that they be allowed to enter through a different door than the Israelis. Livni sought meetings with some of the participants from countries that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel; they all refused. Dutch European Affairs Minister Frans Timmermans said the Arab delegates “shun her like she is Count Dracula’s younger sister.”¹⁴⁶

Instead of a psychological breakthrough, the conference once again illustrated the difficulty of achieving progress toward peace so long as most of the Arab leaders refuse to even acknowledge their Israeli counterparts’ existence, let alone the right of a Jewish state to exist in their midst.

Most Palestinians currently living inside Israel’s borders say they would prefer to live in Israel rather than a Palestinian state. In fact, 62% of Israeli Arabs prefer to remain Israeli citizens rather than become citizens of a future Palestinian state.¹⁴⁷ Israeli Arabs sometimes say they prefer the hell of Israel to the paradise of Palestine because they know that, despite its faults, Israel is still a democratic state that offers them freedom of speech, assembly, religion, and the press, and respects human rights in general and women’s rights and gay rights in particular, all rights they would be denied under Palestinian rule.

Residents of East Jerusalem began voting with their feet when politicians began discussing the possibility of dividing Jerusalem prior to the Annapolis Conference in 2007. Only about 12,000 East Jerusalemites had applied for citizenship since 1967 (out of some 250,000), but 3,000 new applications flooded Israel’s Ministry of Interior in the four months prior to the meeting.¹⁴⁸

With the peace talks resuming after years of stagnation, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians accustomed to the social and economic freedoms in Israel see themselves at risk of losing their rights. For the Palestinians of the Ras Hamis and Shuafat refugee camps, which are a part of Jerusalem, but would most likely fall on the side of Jerusalem apportioned to the Palestinian Authority in any future peace agreement, the preference for staying in Israel is clear. They plan to take advantage of their status as Israeli permanent residents, which allows them freedom of movement, and move to a city well within Israel’s borders and legal jurisdiction. “If they put a border here, we’ll move to Haifa and Tel Aviv. You’ll have fifty thousand people who live here leaving East Jerusalem in minutes,” declared Jamil Sanduqa, head of the refugee camp’s local council.¹⁴⁹

Many of the 250,000 East Jerusalemites depend heavily on Israel for jobs, health care, and unemployment insurance. They do not foresee having the same opportunities or benefits under the Palestinian Authority. Palestinians living in Israel want to live normal lives and earn a living to help their family and don’t want to be involved with extremists. “I don’t want to raise my children on throwing stones, or on Hamas,” Sanduqa said.¹⁵⁰

One of the proposals for moving toward a two-state solution is a land swap. The idea is that Israel would evacuate most of the West Bank but keep the large settlement blocs that are home to approximately 170,000 Jews. This area is estimated to be 3-5 percent of the West Bank. Israel has proposed a land swap of a similar amount of territory now within Israel. One idea is to shift the border so the 45,000 residents of Umm el-Fahm, plus an additional 150,000 Israeli Arabs who sit on 200 square miles of land just northeast of the West Bank, would be a part of a future Palestinian state. The Palestinians swap citizenship; Israel exchanges land. In theory, it’s a win-win situation where everyone gets to be citizens of their own nation. But the Israeli Arabs in these towns, especially Umm el-Fahm, the largest Muslim Israeli Arab city in Israel, are vehemently opposed to being part of the deal.

“We wish to express our sharp opposition to any initiative taken by the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority with regard to our civil, political and human rights,” the heads of the Arab regional councils and cities wrote to Prime Minister Olmert and his cabinet members in response to the land swap proposal. “…We wish to make it clear that as citizens of the State of Israel since 1948-1949…the proposed moving of borders will deprive us of these human rights and tear apart the social and economic ties that have been constructed on the basis of a long and difficult struggle.”

One of the first to sign the letter to Prime Minister Olmert was Sheikh Hasham Abed Elrahman, Umm el-Fahm Mayor and head of the Wadi Ara Forum of Arab and Jewish Mayors. He wrote, “I cannot argue with feelings. I can tell you that we want to work together with the Jewish majority for the betterment of all of Israel. Religiously, politically and socially, we want to remain part of the State of Israel.”¹⁵¹

Not only do few Palestinians want to move to “Palestine,” many Palestinians now living in the Palestinian Authority would emigrate if they could. According to a December 2007 survey, 34 percent of the residents would like to leave.¹⁵²

Israel has always regarded the creation of a Palestinian state as a threat to its security. This remains true today, but most Israelis believe the best chance for coexistence with the Palestinians is to negotiate an agreement whereby a demilitarized state is created in the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank.

Given the damage and terror caused by the rockets Palestinians are firing daily from Gaza, it should not be surprising that Israelis worry about the possibility of a Palestinian military force with missiles, artillery, tanks, warships or fighter planes. Long before the two-state solution became popular, discussions about the creation of a Palestinian state envisioned that it would be demilitarized to minimize the risk of an Israeli withdrawal.¹⁵³ Jordan is equally concerned that a Palestinian army that could turn in its direction.

Following the Annapolis conference, Palestinian officials denounced the idea that their future state should have any limits placed on it. “The Palestinian Authority rejects talk about a demilitarized Palestinian state,” a senior PA official told the Jerusalem Post.¹⁵⁴

While the focus of the negotiations, and media coverage of them, has been on the familiar issues of settlements, refugees and Jerusalem, it is the issue of whether the Palestinian state will be permitted to create an army that could threaten its neighbors that may yet turn into the major obstacle to an agreement.

FACT

On the eve of Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, Middle East envoy James Wolfensohn brokered a deal to purchase greenhouses built by Jewish settlers in the hope of providing employment and export income to the Palestinian people and boost the fledgling economy. Wolfensohn and a number of other donors, including several American Jews, bought the greenhouses, which averaged more than $75 million in total crop output annually, and gave them to the Palestinian Authority.¹⁵⁵

Almost immediately after Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, many greenhouses were ransacked and looted. In September 2005, looters in Neve Dekalim, the largest Jewish settlement in Gaza, walked away with irrigation hoses, water pumps, and plastic sheeting, often while Palestinian policemen watched.¹⁵⁶

Despite pleas from the Palestinian Prime Minister to leave the structures intact, the security situation around the greenhouses worsened. In 2006, roving gunmen destroyed greenhouses in the former settlement of Morag, and dozens of armed militiamen ransacked more than 50 acres of greenhouse space in the former settlement of Gush Katif.¹⁵⁷ Witnesses said the militants used bulldozers to demolish the buildings’ frames, and then destroyed or stole whatever equipment they could find inside, including irrigation computers.¹⁵⁸

The Palestinian Company for Economic Development, the organization in charge of running the greenhouses, complained that hundreds of greenhouses and other agricultural installations were destroyed. In an appeal to the Palestinian Authority leadership, the company said, “These greenhouses and other installations and projects provide a source of income for over 4,500 families. We are very disturbed by the recurring attacks and thefts. Such actions jeopardize the largest agricultural project carried by the Palestinian Authority after the Israeli withdrawal.”¹⁵⁹

In addition to rendering the greenhouses useless for their intended purpose of building up the PA economy, Hamas has also established terrorist training centers on some of the lands of the evacuated settlements. Abu Abdullah, a senior member of Hamas’ military wing, said the two former settlements of Eli Sinai and Dagit are now advanced training zones.¹⁶⁰

Nearly 70% of the greenhouses have been completely destroyed, most recently by Palestinians who dismantled some of the remaining greenhouses to sell to Egyptians after the Gaza-Egypt border was breached in January 2008.¹⁶¹ The treatment of the greenhouses is an example of how, contrary to Palestinian propaganda blaming Israel, the economic troubles in the Gaza Strip are largely self-inflicted.

FACT

Life in the Gaza Strip is difficult, and many Palestinians are suffering deprivations because the international community has imposed a boycott against Hamas since it seized control in a violent coup. Hamas, however, has attempted to blame Israel for the situation it created by its ongoing terrorist campaign against Israeli citizens, refusal to recognize the Jewish state and daily bombardment of innocent Israeli civilians with lethal explosive rockets. Cynically, Hamas is using innocent Gazans in an effort to manipulate public opinion.

The most recent example of this and Hamas’ manipulation of the international media was the protest conducted on “peace boats” off the coast of the Gaza shore. Lauren Booth, sister-in-law of Middle East Envoy and Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, arrived in Gaza on one of these “peace boats” and proclaimed that Gaza is “the largest concentration camp in the world today” and a “humanitarian crisis on the scale of Darfur.”^161a

Although all of her fellow protestors eventually left Gaza on the same boats they arrived in, Booth decided to remain behind. Although having been offered opportunities to leave, Booth declined, and she was later photographed at a well-stocked grocery shop inside the world’s “largest concentration camp.” (To view the photo, click here.). During her month-long stay in the Gaza Strip campaigning for human rights, Booth did not once mention the name of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit.

Earlier this year, Palestinians announced they would form a human chain, mostly women and children, to highlight Israel’s refusal to allow the free movement of goods until the rocket fire ceases. That propaganda ploy backfired, however, when only a few thousand people participated instead of the 50,000 or more Hamas said it was mobilizing.¹⁶²

Hamas’ propaganda efforts have been more successful in the past. In January, pictures released by foreign news agencies showed a meeting of the Hamas-led government lit by candlelight, suggesting Israel had deprived Gaza of power. Meanwhile, sunshine can be seen streaming through the window curtains since the meeting was actually held at one o’clock in the afternoon. Other pictures depict protests in the streets; masses of Palestinians march down Gaza sidewalks, each one holding a lit candle for the world to see the desperateness of a society living without electricity and running water. Yet, a streetlight shines in the background.

According to Arabic Daily Asharq Al-Awsat, Hamas thrives at the expensive of the people, paying about 18,000 militants nearly 16 million dollars a month to carry out their dirty work. “So how can there be talk of lifting the Gaza siege and relieving the distress of its people, while Hamas concentrates all its efforts on recruiting and providing for its thousands of fighters. It is clear that Hamas’ priority is to look after its militants, at the expense of Gaza’s people and their suffering!” exclaimed columnist Tariq Alhomayed.^162a

As part of their effort to promote the Palestinian image of victimhood, Hamas forced businesses to close in Gaza. A top Palestinian Authority official recently accused Hamas of ordering owners of bakeries to keep their businesses closed for the second day running to keep up the ruse of an imminent crisis in the Gaza Strip. “Hamas is preventing people from buying bread,” he said. “They want to deepen the crisis so as to serve their own interests.”

The official also said that, contrary to Hamas’s claims, there is enough fuel and flour to keep the bakeries in the Gaza Strip operating for another two months. “Hamas members have stolen most of the fuel in the Gaza Strip to fill their vehicles,” he said.¹⁶³

Shlomo Dror, a spokesman for Israel’s Defense Ministry, reiterated the PA official’s remarks. Gaza has enough fuel, he said, and he accused Palestinian officials of trying to create the impression of a crisis that did not exist. In fact, at one point after Israel initially decided to reduce fuel supplies to the Strip, the Israeli fuel company Dor offered the Palestinian distribution companies shipments of gasoline, which they refused.¹⁶⁴

Less than a week later, the PA Health Ministry accused Hamas of stealing fuel and medicine stockpiles from hospitals in the Gaza Strip. The PA Health Ministry sent these provisions into the territory after the initial fuel cuts, but Hamas used the fuel instead for cars belonging to senior officials.¹⁶⁵

Furthermore, in addition to the fuel it receives from Israel to power its electrical plant, Gaza gets about two-thirds of its electricity directly from Israel. Israeli officials said that supply would not be affected. In fact, 70 percent of the fuel Israel supplies to Gaza was still flowing into the territory during the border closings, but Hamas still ordered the power plant in Gaza to turn off its turbines.¹⁶⁶

“If they shut it down, it’s not because of a fuel shortage,“ Dror said. “The power plant shutdown,” he explained, “would not be comfortable, but it’s not a humanitarian crisis.” ¹⁶⁷ Most of Gaza’s electricity comes from Israel and Egypt. Very little is supplied by the Gaza plant.

Of course, Hamas officials do not have to worry about the impact of even these modest power cuts. Ahmed Youssef, an adviser to the Hamas foreign ministry said that when the lights go out during a dinner party with foreign guests, Hamas can call the power company and have them turned back on.¹⁶⁸

The press has consistently exaggerated and misreported the situation in Gaza. For instance, the Boston Globe ran an op-ed on January 26, 2008, claiming, “Gaza daily requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population,” and that “Israel had cut this to 90 tons per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99 percent.”¹⁶⁹ According to both a 2007 UN document and the Palestinian Ministry of Economy, however, flour consumption needed daily in the Gaza Strip falls somewhere between 350 to 450 tons, nowhere near the gross miscalculation of 680,000. At 680,000 tons daily, and at a total population of nearly 1.5 million people, the Boston Globe is claiming that each Gazan needs almost half a ton of flour every day. The newspaper did run a correction shortly thereafter by simply amending the “tons” to “pounds,” a measurement that no one in the international community would use.¹⁷⁰

In addition, the breaking down of the security fence along Gaza’s border with Egypt was another propaganda coup for Hamas. As tens of thousands of Palestinians flocked into Sinai, aid officials estimated that the supposedly penniless residents of Gaza spent more than $100 million on goods in the first few days after the border breach.¹⁷¹

Hamas has no shortage of funds. Senior officials have been caught at the border carrying suitcases with millions of dollars; many other cash deliveries have undoubtedly been smuggled in undetected. The terror group ensures that their officials and soldiers are well-fed and housed, while the rest of the population suffer for the benefit of the television cameras.

In May 2006, Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal made clear that he is not interested in medicine or other humanitarian supplies. “We ask all the people in surrounding Arab countries, the Muslim world and everyone who wants to support us to send weapons, money and men,” Meshaal said).¹⁷² Rather then spend money on food and medicine for the people of Gaza, Hamas buys weapons on the black market and the smuggling of arms into Gaza continues unabated.

Hamas has gone so far as to block shipments of food. In July 2007, for example, Hamas prevented more than 60 truckloads of Israeli fruit and vegetables from arriving in Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing.¹⁷³

FACT

Israel's military operation in Gaza was a response to the unceasing indiscriminate rocket attacks by Hamas terrorists that have targeted the civilian population centers of southern Israel. Between January 9 and March 1, 2008, at least 231 rockets have rained down on Israeli kindergartens, schools, parks and homes.¹⁷⁴

Initially, the Gaza terrorists could only terrorize nearby Jewish communities such as the town of Sderot (population 19,400) with their lethal rockets because the Qassam’s range was 4.3 miles. Hamas has been determined, however, to threaten more innocent Israeli lives. Hamas subsequently developed longer range projectiles and also smuggled in through Egypt more sophisticated weapons supplied by Iran and others. The upgraded Qassams now have a range of 7.5 miles. More ominously, Hamas has acquired deadly and accurate Iranian-made Grad rockets, which have nearly doubled the reach of the Qassams.¹⁷⁵ The Grad rockets are now threatening the Israeli port city of Ashkelon (population 108,600).¹⁷⁶ Hamas is expected to continue to improve the range and lethality of its arsenal and to be capable of producing their own Grad-type rockets by the end of the year.¹⁷⁷

The men, women and children who live within range of the rockets go about their lives in a perpetual state of trauma and fear. Imagine for a moment how it must be to live under those conditions. Perhaps you are a student, commuting to the university, as Roni Yechiah, a 47-year-old father of four was doing on February 27, 2008. Roni was sitting in his car in the parking lot of Sapir College on the outskirts of Sderot when the "Color Red" alarm sounded, indicating a rocket strike was moments away. A rocket struck nearby and Roni suffered mortal shrapnel wounds.¹⁷⁸

He is only one of many Israelis who have been killed or maimed by the barrages from Gaza. Brothers Osher and Remi Twito were on their way to the bank on the evening of February 9, 2008, when the "Color Red" alarm sounded. They dove for cover, but there simply was not enough time. The rocket landed almost on top of the boys. Remi took shrapnel in both his legs. His little brother, Osher, who aspired to play professional soccer one day, had his left leg amputated below the knee.¹⁷⁹

Thousands of families have been made to live in fear. The most ordinary tasks, like driving to school or walking to the bank, cannot be completed without putting one's life at risk. Terror has seized these communities —communities of teachers, students, parents and children.

The decision to take military action in Gaza was not made lightly. Israeli leaders were forced to choose one of two evils: either sit by and allow Hamas to besiege southern Israel with rockets or to take action to stop the terror. Israel's Operation Warm Winter, began February 29 and ended March 3, 2008. It involved air strikes on Hamas power centers and military bunkers (often hidden in Palestinian population centers, as well as ground operations. As in past conflicts with the Palestinians, Israeli infantry engaged Hamas militants in close, urban warfare for the purpose of limiting the civilian death toll, often putting themselves at greater risk to do so.¹⁸⁰ While Hamas militants used the Jabalya refugee camp as a shield, Israeli soldiers endeavored to disarm and arrest militants with non-lethal force.¹⁸¹

Hamas is deeply entrenched in Gaza and has made no secret that its long-term objective is the destruction of Israel. Shortly after Israeli troops withdrew, the terror attacks resumed, with three Grad rockets striking Ashkelon, one hitting an apartment building and another a kindergarten playground.¹⁸² Israel will undoubtedly continue to engage in military operations until its civilian population is safe, a policy that would certainly be followed by any other government facing similar threats.

FACT

The definition of “moderation” is relative. Compared to the murderers of Hamas and the genocidal Iranian president, for example, Abbas can be said to be a moderate since he has negotiated with Israel and expressed a willingness to accept a two-state solution. On the other hand, Abbas has expressed no willingness to compromise on any substantive issue.

On the issue of Jerusalem, Abbas said the city would be the capital of a future Palestinian state. “At the Camp David summit, the Palestinian leadership rejected an Israeli proposal to share sovereignty over the Aksa Mosque,” he said. “They wanted to give the Muslims all what is above the mosque, while Israel would control what's under it. We continue to reject this offer. We cannot compromise on Jerusalem.”¹⁸³ In an interview with the Washington Post, Abbas declared, “I say and have always said that East Jerusalem is an occupied territory. We have to restore it.”¹⁸⁴

On the subject of Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, Abbas insisted that “The withdrawal from Gaza must only be part of other withdrawals which should follow. Israel must pull out of all Palestinian lands occupied in 1967. We must end the occupation.”¹⁸⁵ He reiterated this again in the Post interview.

In the same speech Abbas said that the refugee issue had to be solved on the basis of UN Resolution 194. According to Abbas, 4.5 million Palestinians are refugees. In a January 3, 2005, appearance, Abbas said Palestinian refugees and their descendants have the right to return to their original homes. “We will never forget the rights of the refugees, and we will never forget their suffering. They will eventually gain their rights, and the day will come when the refugees return home," Abbas told a cheering crowd.¹⁸⁶

While Abbas negotiates with Israel, he continues to reject its raison d’etre as a Jewish state. He said the Annapolis peace conference was nearly scuttled because “[the Israelis] wanted us to state we recognize Israel as a Jewish State in the closing statements, but we wouldn’t hear of it.”¹⁸⁷

For Western journalists, Abbas presents himself as the voice of moderation, but like his mentor Yasser Arafat, he expresses his true feelings in Arabic. For example, Abbas was supposed to have forsworn terror, but on February 28, 2008, he told the Jordanian newspaper al-Dustur that he did not rule out returning to the path of armed “resistance” against Israel. In fact, his reason for not engaging in “armed struggle” now is not because he has disavowed terror, but simply because he doesn’t believe the Palestinians can achieve their objectives. “At this present juncture, I am opposed to armed struggle because we cannot succeed in it, but maybe in the future things will be different,” he said.¹⁸⁸ Earlier, Abbas had launched his presidential election campaign by saying “the use of weapons is unacceptable because it has a negative impact on our image.” The Wall Street Journal noted afterward that “Mr. Abbas does not reject terrorism because it is immoral, but because it no longer sells the cause abroad.”¹⁸⁹

Abbas was the number two person in the PLO under Arafat and a founder of the Fatah terrorist organization, which makes him responsible for decades of atrocities. In February 2008, he proudly claimed credit for initiating the terror campaign against Israel. “I had the honor of firing the first shot in 1965 and of being the one who taught resistance to many in the region and around the world; what it’s like; when it is effective and when it isn’t effective; its uses, and what serious, authentic and influential resistance is,” Abbas said. The PA president even takes credit for training the Lebanese Shiite terrorists. “We (Fatah) had the honor of leading the resistance and we taught resistance to everyone, including Hizbullah, who trained in our military camps.”¹⁹⁰

Abbas has consistently opposed taking decisive steps against Palestinian terrorists. In 2004, for example, he said, “I will not use weapons against any Palestinian.” He added, “Israel calls them [the armed groups] murderers, but we call them strugglers.”¹⁹¹ A week later, Abbas said he would shield Palestinian terrorists from Israel and that he has no plans to crack down on them after the presidential election scheduled for January 9, 2005.¹⁹² True to his promise, Abbas has yet to take serious measures against terrorism and, of course, the Hamas terrorists he shielded later staged a coup and seized power from Fatah in Gaza.

On January 4, 2005, Abbas escalated his anti-Israel rhetoric after an Israeli tank fired two shells into a field in response to Palestinian mortar attacks, killing seven Palestinians and wounding six. Referring to those who attacked Israel as “martyrs,” Abbas condemned Israel as the “Zionist enemy.”¹⁹³

Like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Abbas is a Holocaust denier. His Ph.D. dissertation suggested that six million Jews did not die at the hands of the Nazis and denied that gas chambers were used to murder Jews.¹⁹⁴ It is therefore particularly galling that he would proclaim that Israeli retaliation against the hail of rocket fire from Gaza targeting Israeli civilians “worse than the Holocaust.”¹⁹⁵

The daily newspaper of the Palestinian Authority, Al Hayat Al Jadida, controlled by Abbas, has praised terrorists, even going so far as to eulogize and honor suicide-attackers. This newspaper, whose budget is supplied by the Palestinian Authority, praised the martyrdom of the Palestinian man who murdered eight youths in a Jerusalem seminary on March 6, 2008. The paper ran a front-page story with a large, color photo of the attacker. The article referred to the attacker as having achieved Islamic martyrdom.¹⁹⁶ As recently as April 2008, Mahmoud Abbas had planned to award the PLO's highest honor, The Al Quds Mark of Honor, to twp female terrorists who had assisted in the murder of Israelis. When this became public, Abbas withdrew the awards.¹⁹⁷

On the issues, Abbas is no moderate. A better description would be that he is a pragmatist. As evident from the quotation above about giving up the use of weapons because it hurts the Palestinians’ image, he is primarily interested in creating a facade that will allow him to continue to receive funding and support from abroad to stay in power without making any concessions that would improve the prospects for peace or imperil his standing among radical Palestinians. He also clings to the hope that Israel will be forced to capitulate to his demands by outside powers, a fantasy that is fed by pressure exerted on Israel from the Europeans, UN, and U.S. State Department.

Israelis have no illusions about Abbas and, from the start, expressed skepticism that any agreements could be reached with a man who has shown neither the will nor the ability to carry out any of his promises, particularly with regard to ending terror against Israel. Nevertheless, Israeli leaders understand he is the only interlocutor they have for the moment and are willing to pursue negotiations in the hope that Abbas will actually moderate his views and compromise on the issues required to reach an agreement.

FACT

Whenever Israel has been asked to negotiate with one of its enemies, one condition that is often presented is that Israel’s right to exist be recognized. When, for example, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin agreed to lift the longtime ban on negotiations with the PLO, Yasser Arafat was first required to write a letter renouncing terrorism and recognizing Israel’s right to exist. Israel subsequently began what came to be known as the Oslo peace process. Of course, it turned out the “recognition” was largely meaningless as Arafat continued to support violence aimed at undermining Israel’s existence.

Since the Hamas takeover of Gaza, some people, including Israeli and American officials, have conditioned talks with that terrorist group on its recognition of Israel. As in the case of the PLO, such a statement would mean little without corresponding deeds. To date, Hamas has explicitly said it has no intention of ever recognizing Israel’s right to exist and has repeatedly said it is committed to Israel’s destruction.

Even Mahmoud Abbas, who is often referred to as a “moderate,” has made clear that he does not recognize Israel as a Jewish state.¹⁹⁸ This has not deterred Israeli officials from negotiating with him because they understand that Israel’s future depends on their ability to reach an agreement with the Palestinians and other neighbors that ensures Israel’s security whether the Arabs or Muslims acknowledge the Jews’ right to statehood or not.

Most people have forgotten Abba Eban’s wise admonition made more than 25 years ago: “Nobody does Israel any service by proclaiming its ‘right to exist.’ Israel’s right to exist, like that of the United States, Saudi Arabia and 152 other states, is axiomatic and unreserved. Israel’s legitimacy is not suspended in midair awaiting acknowledgement....There is certainly no other state, big or small, young or old, that would consider mere recognition of its ‘right to exist’ a favor, or a negotiable concession.”¹⁹⁹

FACT

The situation many Palestinians find themselves in is unfortunate and often quite severe. Many live in poverty, see the future as hopeless, and are unhappy with the way they are treated by Israelis. None of these are excuses for engaging in terrorism. In fact, many of the terrorists are not poor, desperate people at all. The world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden, for example, is a Saudi millionaire.

In the most recent attack at the Merkaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem on March 6, 2008, in which eight seminary students were brutally gunned down and another 15 wounded, the perpetrator, Ala Abu Dhaim, was not poor or desperate. He was engaged to be married, he came from a family that is financially comfortable, and was employed by the yeshiva as a driver. Dhaim also was not suffering under “occupation.” In fact, as a resident of the East Jerusalem village of Jabel Mukaber, which lies within Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries, he was entitled to all the same social and welfare benefits as Israeli citizens.

The stereotype that Palestinians turn to terrorism out of desperation is simply untrue. “There is no clear profile of someone who hates Israel and the Jewish people. They come in every shape and from every culture. Demonstrators, rioters and stone throwers do tend to be younger, unmarried males. But there’s a big difference between the young men who participate in those types of disturbances and terrorists,” remarked Aryeh Amit, former Jerusalem District Police Chief.²⁰⁰

A report by the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded, “economic conditions and education are largely unrelated to participation in, and support for, terrorism.” The researchers said the outbreak of violence in the region that began in 2000 could not be blamed on deteriorating economic conditions because there is no connection between terrorism and economic depression. Furthermore, the authors found that support for violent action against Israel, including suicide bombing, does not vary much according to social background.²⁰¹

For example, the cousin of one of the two Palestinian suicide bombers who blew themselves up on a pedestrian mall in Jerusalem in 2001, killing 10 people between the ages of 14 and 21, remarked candidly, “These two were not deprived of anything.”²⁰²

Amnesty International published a study that condemned all attacks by Palestinians against Israeli civilians and said that no Israeli action justified them. According to the report, “The attacks against civilians by Palestinian armed groups are widespread, systematic and in pursuit of an explicit policy to attack civilians. They therefore constitute crimes against humanity under international law.”²⁰³

Terrorism is not Israel’s fault. It is not the result of “occupation.” And it certainly is not the only response available to the Palestinians’ discontentment. Palestinians have an option for improving their situation, namely negotiations. But under the current Hamas regime, this is adamantly rejected. The Palestinians could also choose the nonviolent path emphasized by Martin Luther King or Gandhi. Unfortunately, they choose to pursue a war of terror instead of a process for peace. Israel has proven time and again a willingness to trade land for peace, but it can never concede land for terror.

FACT

Hamas controls the Gaza Strip and, therefore, some people, including knowledgeable Israelis, argue that Israel must negotiate with the terror group. No one seriously believes that Hamas is interested in any lasting peace with Israel, but the advocates for negotiations believe it may be possible to reach a ceasefire agreement in which Hamas promises to stop firing rockets into Israel and Israel ceases its military operations against the group in Gaza. A byproduct of such an agreement is hoped to be a prisoner exchange that would lead to the release of Gilad Shalit who was kidnapped by Hamas 21 months ago.

Israel has not pursued this strategy for a number of reasons. First, Hamas has given little indication it is prepared to end its terror campaign. On the contrary, its spokesmen continue to make belligerent statements. On March 28, for example, Hamas leader Khalil al-Haya, declared: “The Zionist enemy doesn’t have a vision of peace. Only force... fighting and holy war works with [Israel].”²⁰⁵ Hamas also remains committed to its covenant that calls for the destruction of Israel.

From Israel’s perspective, a ceasefire would be exploited by Hamas to build up its forces. Without Israeli counter-terror operations, the group will be free to continue to smuggle in weapons and money from Iran and elsewhere, and to develop longer range missiles capable of striking Israeli population centers. In exchange for a short-term respite in attacks, many Israelis fear they will be allowing Hamas to become a far more dangerous adversary in the future.

It is often said that you don’t make peace with your friends, you make peace with your enemies, but this assumes the enemy you are negotiating with is not committed to your destruction. Golda Meir said it best when she explained the conflict had nothing to do with territory. “We’re the only people in the world where our neighbors openly announce they just won’t have us here,” she observed. “And they will not give up fighting and they will not give up war as long as we remain alive. Here....They say we must be dead. And we say we want to be alive. Between life and death, I don’t know of a compromise.”

“Mahmoud Abbas has rooted out the corruption in the Palestinian Authority .”

FACT

In his June 2002 speech outlining a vision for Middle East peace, President George W. Bush said, “Today, the Palestinian people live in economic stagnation, made worse by official corruption. A Palestinian state will require a vibrant economy, where honest enterprise is encouraged by honest government....If Palestinians embrace democracy, confront corruption and firmly reject terror, they can count on American support for the creation of a provisional state of Palestine.”

Despite failing on all counts, the United States has supported the Palestinians, but their failure to meet Bush’s expectations explains their current predicament.

The Palestinian Authority’s record on rejecting terror is clear. The Palestinians have done no such thing and continue to support and encourage violence against Israel. That has been well documented. Less attention has been paid, however, to the PA’s failure to confront corruption.

Less than a year after Bush’s speech, the IMF documented how Yasser Arafat diverted $900 million to his own account. The revelation helped explain why the Palestinian people saw little improvement in their lives despite international contributions to the PA of more than $6 billion.

While the international community was focused on the peace process, Palestinians were more concerned with how their lives were being affected by the widespread corruption in the PA, and Fatah in particular. Their anger finally became apparent to everyone when elections were held in 2006 and Hamas won control of the legislature. Since then, however, Fatah’s leader, the PA president, Mahmoud Abbas, has done little to promote honest government. In fact, the situation appears to have grown worse, with a series of scandals emerging in 2008 that are again provoking public outrage.

The former Prime Minister, Ahmed Qurei (Abu Alaa), who heads the Palestinian negotiating team with Israel, is accused by the PA ambassador to Romania of depositing $3 million of PLO funds into his personal bank account. An older accusation that has also resurfaced is that Qurei and his sons own a cement factory that supplies concrete used for the construction of Israel’s security barrier as well as Jewish settlements.²⁰⁶

Qurei is no stranger to controversy. After Bush raised the issue of PA corruption in his 2002 speech, Qurei suddenly vacated the villa he built for $1.5 million in Jericho. A sign on the door was posted that said the villa had become a welfare institution for the relatives of Palestinians killed in terror attacks.²⁰⁷

In addition, one of Abbas’ advisers, the former speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Rouhi Fattouh, was caught by Israeli customs officials using his Israeli-issued VIP pass to smuggle thousands of cellular phones from Jordan into the West Bank. Fattouh was forced to resign.²⁰⁸

Other Fatah officials are also believed to be involved in smuggling. Officials in the Ministry of Health, for example, are suspected of working with doctors and pharmacists to smuggle expired medicine into the West Bank. Some of these medications are believed responsible for the death of Palestinian patients.

Another crony of Yasser Arafat, Khaled Salam, is being investigated after PA officials learned he planned to invest $600 million in a tourist project in Jordan. The former “financial adviser” to Arafat is also known to have close ties with Abbas and some of his aides.

The latest scandals create serious problems for Israel as well as American peace efforts. The disaffection with Abbas threatens to further strengthen Hamas at a time when Israelis are increasingly concerned that Abbas may lose control of the West Bank as he did the Gaza Strip. This would reduce the prospects for peace and increase the probability of war. The ongoing corruption also undermines confidence in the Palestinians’ ability to create a viable governing authority.

President Bush had the correct formula for peace in 2002. The Palestinians have now had nearly six years to fulfill his vision and their inability or unwillingness to do so is the principal reason they have not achieved their goal of statehood and the conflict with Israel has continued.

“Hizbollah is a resistance movement whose only interest is fighting Israel.”

Hizbollah, backed by Iran and Syria, has been building up its forces since its establishment in the early 1980s with the intent of eventually establishing an Islamic government in Lebanon and across the Arab world. After provoking a war with Israel in the summer of 2006, and bringing ruin to much of the country, Hizbollah set out to undermine the pro-Western government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

When their demand for a national unity government and veto power was rebuffed in late 2006, Hizbollah (and Amal Party) representatives resigned from their cabinet posts and carried out protests again Siniora’s government. For months, Hizbollah supporters conducted demonstrations in Beirut and prevented pro-Western, anti-Syrian members of the Lebanese legislature from electing a new president who would not be loyal to Syria or sympathetic to Hizbollah’s agenda. Other anti-Syrian legislators were assassinated, presumably by Syrian agents or supporters, to reduce the number of potential votes against Hizbollah’s (and Syria’s) preferred candidate.

In a bid to gain power, armed Hizbollah militiamen stormed Beirut on May 9 and took control of the western part of the capital. Fierce street battles ensued between the armed gunmen and Sunnis loyal to the U.S.-backed government. At least 67 people died over the course of five days of intense fighting.

The staged coup came shortly after the Lebanese government shut down Hizbollah’s private telephone network, as well as firing the airport security chief for alleged ties to the organization. The two measures sparked the bloodiest confrontations since the civil war ended in 1990. In response, Hizbollah spiritual leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah proclaimed, “We have said before that we will cut off the hand that targets the weapons of the resistance.”²⁰⁹

The two moves aimed at reigning in Hizbollah backfired. After Hizbollah threatened further violence, the Lebanese government rescinded both measures on May 15 in what was viewed as a victory for the terrorist organization.

The veto was a major triumph for Hizbollah and their supporters, effectively allowing them to nix any legislation they oppose. In addition, the Syrian-backed opposition party received 11 seats in the Cabinet. A new election law was also adopted that divides Lebanon into smaller-sized districts that will redistribute power in favor of the allies of Iran and Syria.²¹⁰

Siniora also gave up enforcing the UN resolutions requiring Hizbollah to be disarmed. This insures the group will continue to act as a state within the state and destabilize the country and also allows the terrorists to remain a threat to Israel.

The general population was not fooled by the rhetoric of Hizbollah officials and recognized the group was interested in dominating the country rather than resisting the non-existent Israeli occupation. “Hizbollah are liars; they are despicable,” said Nawal al-Meouchi, an innocent bystander to the sectarian violence. “They said they would never turn their arms on the Lebanese, but they have.”²¹¹

“Palestinian terrorist groups agreed to a cease-fire to advance the peace process.”

In an effort to stop the nearly daily onslaught of rockets from Gaza, Israeli officials have discussed the possibility of a cease-fire with the Hamas terrorists bombarding the Israeli civilian population. Egypt and others have also tried to mediate a cessation of terror that would allow Israel to end its counterterror measures. Rather than agree to a simple cease-fire, however, Hamas, has engaged in verbal gymnastics to suggest it will adopt a policy that will, at best, offer a temporary respite while the organization continues to build up its arsenal to pursue its long-term goal of destroying Israel.

The latest example of this Hamas tactic is the proposal in May 2008 to accept a “tahdiyah,” or period of calm. Earlier, in June 2003, Islamic Jihad and Hamas agreed to a hudna in response to demands from then Palestinian Authority prime minister Mahmoud Abbas to stop their attacks on Israel so he could fulfill his obligations under the Middle East road map. The agreement was interpreted in the Western media as the declaration of a cease-fire, which was hailed as a step forward in the peace process. Violence continued after the supposed cease-fire, however, and Israeli intelligence found evidence the Palestinians exploited the situation to reorganize their forces. They recruited suicide bombers, increased the rate of production of Qassam rockets, and sought to extend their range. Over the last five years since the declaration of the hudna, attacks on Israel increased and Hamas succeeded in smuggling in more weapons with longer ranges.

While any cessation of violence against Israeli civilians is to be welcomed, it is important to understand the cease-fire the radical Islamic groups are contemplating in the Muslim context.

The media and some political leaders portray a hudna as a truce or a cease-fire designed to bring peace. Though the term hudna does refer to a temporary cession of hostilities, it has historically been used as a tactic aimed at allowing the party declaring the hudna to regroup while tricking an enemy into lowering its guard. When the hudna expires, the party that declared it is stronger and the enemy weaker. The term comes from the story of the Muslim conquest of Mecca. Instead of a rapid victory, Muhammad made a ten-year treaty with the Kuraysh tribe. In 628 AD, after only two years of the ten-year treaty, Muhammad and his forces concluded that the Kuraysh were too weak to resist. The Muslims broke the treaty and took over all of Mecca without opposition.²¹²

A modern-day hudna is not a form of compromise, rather it is a tactical tool to gain a military advantage. Hamas has used it no fewer than 10 times in 10 years.²¹³

The hudna declared by Islamic terrorist organizations in 2003 was no different. The Hamas charter openly rejects the notion of a peaceful solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the group did not change its views. On the contrary, Hamas spokesmen said they would not give up their weapons, that they would continue to resist “illegal occupation,” and that they believed the “violent awakenening from a few weeks or months of quiet” will “reaffirm Palestinians’ belief in the intifada as the only option for them.”²¹⁴ Even the hudna declaration asserted “the legitimate right to resist the occupation as a strategic option until the end of the Zionist occupation of our homeland and until we achieve all our national rights.” Hamas contends that all of Israel is occupied territory.²¹⁵ This is why Secretary of State Colin Powell called Hamas an “enemy of peace” just before the hudna was declared, and said “the entire international community must speak out strongly against the activities of Hamas.”²¹⁶

Hamas officials, meanwhile, made clear that an agreement will not change the group’s policy. “The confrontation with the [Israeli] occupation will continue despite the talk about a tahdiyah [calm],” said Osama Hamdan, Hamas’s representative in Lebanon. “As far as Hamas is concerned, all options remain open,” he added.²¹⁷

Whether the Palestinian terrorist groups are sincere in their declaration of a cease-fire is irrelevant to the fulfillment of the Palestinians’ road map obligations. The road map explicitly calls on Abbas to do more than just achieve a cessation of hostilities; he is obligated to disarm the terrorists and dismantle the terrorist infrastructure.

“Olmert’s resignation means the end of peace talks with the Palestinians.”

Ehud Olmert’s decision to resign as prime minister will naturally cause a delay in negotiations with the Palestinians as Israel’s democratic process works toward the creation of a new government. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni won the Kadima Party primary and has now been asked to form a government. Livni has been the lead negotiator for nearly a year and has developed a very good working relationship with her Palestinian interlocutors. If Livni forms a government, she can be expected to quickly return to the talks with the Palestinians. If she is unable to do so, elections will be called and the campaign will indeed preoccupy Israeli leaders.

This is the nature of democracy. American leaders are also distracted by the presidential campaign, but everyone knows once it is over, the new administration will turn its attention to the Middle East. After Israeli elections, the new prime minister will also return to the bargaining table.

The outline of a future agreement has long been on the table and it has been further refined in recent months according to details of the negotiations leaked to the Israeli press. It should come as a surprise to no one that the security fence is likely to become a de facto border with the major settlement blocs inside the fence. The settlements outside the fence would be evacuated and legislation is already before the Knesset that would pay settlers living west of the fence $305,000 each to leave voluntarily.²¹⁸ Whether this bill passes or not, the message is clear that the intention is to dismantle most settlements and compensate their residents.

Israel has proposed a land swap that would result in the Palestinians receiving an area of land equivalent to what Israel annexes. According to the details in the press, Israel would annex 7 percent of the West Bank and, in return, cede 5.5 percent of the Negev and an area equivalent to the other 1.5 percent for a passageway connecting the Gaza Strip and West Bank. This proposal is very similar to what the Palestinians were offered in negotiations between President Clinton, Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat in 2000. Arafat rejected the “Clinton parameters,” but many Palestinians subsequently lamented the lost opportunity for statehood.

The negotiations have been very detailed with Israel, for example, as both sides have discussed security arrangements such as demilitarization (Israel wants but the Palestinians reject), warning stations and deployments in the Jordan Valley. Israel has also offered to allow 1,500-2,000 Palestinians to move to Israel each year for 10 years. The Palestinians want the total figure to be 100,000, a figure Israel may yet approve as it was the number David Ben-Gurion said he would allow after the 1948 war (and well over 100,000 have been allowed into Israel since 1993).

The question of Jerusalem remains one of the most controversial, but the contours of an agreement have also been around for some time and there is reportedly an understanding that the Jewish neighborhoods would be part of Israel and the Arab neighborhoods Palestine and some interim arrangement over the holy areas of the Old City.²¹⁹

Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the opposition, has different ideas about what a final agreement would look like with the Palestinians. If he were to win a future election, as current polls project, the details of an agreement are likely to change, but he is no less committed to pursuing peace with the Palestinians.

On November 11, 2008, Nir Barkat was elected mayor of Jerusalem. Not participating in the mayoral election, once again, was Jerusalem's Arab population. As permanent residents of the city, Jerusalem's Arabs are entitled to vote in municipal elections, although the overwhelming majority of the Arab population boycott these elections.

Since 1967, various Palestinian Authority associations (now run both by Fatah and Hamas) have demanded that the Jerusalem Arabs refrain from voting in these elections. According to these groups, any voting in Israeli government elections on the part of the Arabs will signify their approval of the Israeli “occupation” of what they claim is Palestinian territory. East Jerusalem, of course, is one of these highly contested areas. In the days leading up to the 2008 election, Hamas and Fatah leaders again threatened any Arab who might consider going to the polls.

In addition to voting, Palestinians in Jerusalem may run for office. Zohir Hamden, an Arab from the village of Sur Baher, intended on running for mayor of Jerusalem but withdrew his candidacy one month before the election and became candidate Arcadi Gaydamak’s advisor on East Jerusalem issues.

Fouad Suleiman, another Jerusalem Arab resident, joined the Meretz Party for the city's election. His personal platform focused on improving education and general living conditions in East Jerusalem.

Pressure is also exerted by Palestinians in the territories to discourage Arabs running for office. In a similar municipal election in 1998, “The Lobby for Human Rights in Jerusalem” - made up of nine private Palestinian agencies - decried Arab candidates' participation in the election. In a published letter they wrote:

“The candidacy of and the support for the “Arab List” violates all international law and norms, and seriously undermines the prospects for a successful struggle of the Palestinian people to liberate their capital Jerusalem.”²²⁰

The boycott of this election shows, yet again, that Jerusalem's Arab population is cutting off their nose to spite their collective face. Indeed, if Palestinians do not express their right to vote in municipal elections, and especially if they do not support their own Arab candidates, how can they expect to influence policy in Israel? Israel and the Palestinians cannot come to a real peace agreement if the Palestinians are prohibited by their own leaders from exercising a basic human right – the right to vote.

Until 2007, Israel was the only country in the Middle East and all of Asia to protect homosexuals under its anti-discrimination law. It is still the only country in the Middle East to do so. Israel, Turkey, Cyprus and Jordan are the only nations in the region where homosexuality is not expressly illegal. In other Middle Eastern nations, homosexuals are prosecuted under the law and persecuted by their neighbors.

Abusive treatment of gays in Arab and Muslim societies abounds, leading many Palestinian homosexuals to seek refuge in Israel’s cosmopolitan cities like Tel Aviv, which hosted its 10th Annual Pride Parade in 2008. A young gay Palestinian named Tarek provided the details for one such story of abuse in the May 2003 issue of the Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide. Upon suspicion of his homosexuality, Tarek was sentenced to a reeducation camp, run by Muslim clerics under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, where he was tortured for two months.²²¹

In regards to gay rights, Israel is even more progressive than the United States and some European countries. In 1992, Israel passed a law preventing discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation. In contrast to the United States military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, openly gay Israelis can serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. In 2006, Israel became the only nation in the Middle East and Asia to formally recognize same-sex marriages performed in other countries.²²² Because civil marriages are not legal in Israel for heterosexual or same-sex couples, (individuals must be married religiously by a rabbi, imam or priest), gay marriages, like other civil unions, are not performed in Israel. Israelis can also legally adopt the children of their same-sex partner. Foreign partners of gay Israeli citizens are granted residency permits in Israel and same-sex partners are eligible for spousal benefits, pensions and tax exemptions.

Israel’s record for LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) rights is also likely to improve with the passing of new legislation by the 18th Knesset. Only a few minutes into its opening session on February 23, 2009, first-term Meretz MK Nitzan Horovitz submitted a bill for the legalization of civil marriages and divorces in Israel. The first openly gay member of the Knesset, Horovitz explained in a written statement that the bill would provide every Israeli with the right to choose between a religious or civil marriage and a religious or civil divorce.²²³

Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s military incursion into Gaza for the purpose of ending Hamas’ rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, ended with a unilateral ceasefire declaration by Israel on January 18, 2009. The same day, a Hamas spokesperson announced the militant group would halt fire for a week in order for Israeli forces to withdraw from the Gaza Strip.²²⁵

Only a few hours following both unilateral ceasefire declarations, Hamas fired at least 18 rockets into Israel.²²⁶ After a retaliatory air strike, Israel continued to withdraw its troops, as promised, a process that was complete within four days. Since January 18, Hamas has continued to rearm itself via smuggling tunnels on the Gaza-Egypt border and deliberately target Israel’s civilian population in ongoing attacks. This continued violence includes over 100 rocket and mortar shell attacks on Israel, in addition to multiple IED detonations and attacks on IDF border guards.²²⁷

On March 2, 2009, at least 10 rockets were fired into southern Israel and exploded in a schoolyard in Ashkelon. This attack came a day after 7 rockets struck Sderot and prompted the Israeli government to file an official complaint with the United Nations over the unceasing rocket fire threatening the lives of innocent citizens.²²⁸

Despite once again being under siege, Israel continues to deliver increasing amounts of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Since the end of Operation Cast Lead, over 127,431 tons of food and medical supplies and over 12,275,900 liters of fuel have been delivered to the Gaza Strip.²²⁹

“Arab states’ sincerity in promoting their peace initiative is reflected in their positions in international forums.”

The Arab states have renewed their call for Israel to accept the Arab League peace initiative. When it was originally proposed, their sincerity was called into question when the principal sponsors, the Saudis, and others refused Israeli invitations to negotiate. Since then, the Saudis have remained unwilling to go to Jerusalem or to invite the Israeli prime minister to Riyadh to demonstrate a genuine interest in peace. In addition, the Arab states have continued their historic campaign to delegitimize Israel in international forums such as the UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council. The latest example of their insincerity is the Arab states’ active participation in the Durban Review Conference, scheduled for April 2009.

This second round of the Durban process has already begun to take the shape of its predecessor in its anti-Israel rhetoric through draft resolutions presented for discussion by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and to be voted on at the conference.²³⁰ Proposed draft resolutions include injecting the text with critical references to Israel as an occupying power that carries out racist and discriminatory policies that are a “contemporary form of apartheid.”²³¹

As it has become clear that Durban II will be a repetition of the anti-Semitic hate fest of Durban I, Israel, Canada and Italy have announced they will not attend the meeting. President Obama sent representatives to the meeting of the coordinating committee, but they also withdrew in disgust after they concluded the planners were determined to turn the conference into a mockery of its purported purpose. The Obama administration announced that it would not participate in Durban II unless the text of the 2001 Durban Declaration and Program of Action is revised to “not single out any one country or conflict, nor embrace the troubling concept of ‘defamation of religion’.”²³² Meanwhile, officials from several European nations announced they are also considering withdrawing from the conference.²³³

Durban II is another test of the honesty of the Saudis and other Arabs promoting their peace initiative. They cannot claim to be interested in peace while engaging in an effort to delegitimize Israel. To be taken seriously, they must immediately take the steps outlined by the Obama administration to strip away the irrelevant and the anti-Israel elements of the Durban program and embrace the stated goal of the conference to fight racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance. Otherwise, the Arab League initiative can be dismissed as nothing more than what most people suspected, a public relations stunt concocted by the Saudis to divert attention from their role as state sponsors of terror and the fact that 15 of the perpetrators of 9/11 were Saudi citizens.

“Charles Freeman was the right choice for chair of the National Intelligence Council and the Israel lobby was responsible for his not being appointed.”

Imagine if a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan served for years on the board of a Pakistani funded think tank, sang the praises of the dictatorial junta in Islamabad, served as a consultant for a company doing business in China and defended that country’s human rights abuses while also routinely making disparaging remarks about India. Would it be a surprise if opposition arose to that person’s appointment to a sensitive U.S. government intelligence post?

A similar situation arose when a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Charles Freeman, was appointed chair of the National Intelligence Council and, not surprisingly, provoked opposition from a wide range of people, including several members of Congress who called for a review of Freeman’s ties to foreign governments.

Since retiring from the Foreign Service, Freeman has been an outspoken defender of the apartheid regime in Saudi Arabia, extolling the virtues of “Abdullah the Great,” the Saudi autocrat, while running the Saudi supported Middle East Policy Council in Washington, D.C. Freeman has also been well-known for his strident criticism of Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship.²³⁴

While many of his defenders argued that he was being targeted because Freeman had the courage to speak out against Israel, many of his harshest critics were far more concerned with his statements and activities related to China. Freeman served on the advisory board of the Chinese-government-owned entity Chinese National Offshore Oil Co. This affiliation and his comments regarding the Tiananmen Square massacre are what elicited serious objections to his appointment by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. In a 2005 public e-mail, Freeman wrote about the massacre, “[T]he truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud…. In this optic, the Politburo’s response to the mob scene at ‘Tian’anmen’ stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action.”²³⁵

After withdrawing his name from consideration, Freeman was quick to blame the Israeli lobby for derailing his appointment, a charge the Washington Post called a “grotesque libel.”²³⁶ In fact, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee never took a formal position on Freeman’s appointment and numerous members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, questioned whether someone who “headed a Saudi-funded Middle East advocacy group in Washington and served on the advisory board of a state-owned Chinese oil company” was the right choice to the chairmanship responsible for reviewing intelligence agencies’ analysis and preparing intelligence reports for the new administration.²³⁷ In fact, in his explanation for why he opposed Freeman’s appointment, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) did not even mention Israel.²³⁸

In a scathing editorial, the Washington Post also rejected Freeman’s contention that American policy is somehow dictated by Israeli leaders. “That will certainly be news to Israel’s ‘ruling faction,’ which in the past few years alone has seen the U.S. government promote a Palestinian election that it opposed; refuse it weapons it might have used for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities; and adopt a policy of direct negotiations with a regime that denies the Holocaust and that promises to wipe Israel off the map. Two Israeli governments have been forced from office since the early 1990s after open clashes with Washington over matters such as settlement construction in the occupied territories.” The Post noted that Freeman and “like-minded conspiracy theorists” ignore such facts.²³⁹

The Post also rejected Freeman’s claim that Americans cannot discuss “Israel’s nefarious influence,” noting that “several of his allies have made themselves famous (and advanced their careers) by making such charges -- and no doubt Mr. Freeman himself will now win plenty of admiring attention. Crackpot tirades such as his have always had an eager audience here and around the world. The real question is why an administration that says it aims to depoliticize U.S. intelligence estimates would have chosen such a man to oversee them.”²⁴⁰

Arab states have joined with most of the world in condemning the Iranian drive to produce a nuclear weapon. They understand that a nuclear-armed Iran would be a grave threat to their security. Even now, Iran is threatening its neighbors and provoking outrage in the Arab world.

In recent weeks, Iran’s Arab neighbors have accused it of threatening the sovereignty and independence of the Kingdom of Bahrain and territories of the United Arab Emirates, “issuing provocative statements against Arab states,” and interfering in the affairs of the Palestinians, Iraq and Morocco.²⁴¹

In statements challenging Bahrain’s sovereignty, Iranian officials recently renewed claims that the kingdom was actually a part of the Persian Empire. At the same time, Iran reasserted its authority over three islands of the United Arab Emirates that it forcibly seized in the early 1970s and continues to occupy. While joint sovereignty was maintained between Iran and the UAE over the Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunbs islands until 1994, Iran significantly increased its military capabilities on Abu Musa, stationed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps soldiers there, and expelled foreign workers in attempts to assert full control of the island. The United Nations General Assembly, the Arab League, and the Arab Parliamentary Union have all affirmed their support for the UAE and have made clear that Iran illegally occupies the islands.²⁴²

Reactions to the statements challenging Bahrain’s sovereignty and the UAE’s rightful administration of its islands rippled throughout the Middle East. Arab parliamentarians warned Iran that its assertions “harm the fraternal relations and common interests between Iran and the Arab States, and that the recurrence of such statements and irresponsible allegations undermine confidence between the peoples and lead to instability in the region.”²⁴³

Arab League Deputy Secretary-General Ahmad Bin Hali angrily denounced Iran’s claims to Bahrain. He also called Iran’s interference in Palestinian affairs unjustified and said that the Arab countries would not allow Iranian influence in Iraq during the war-torn country’s fragile period of rebuilding. He also said that Iran had not been invited to attend the upcoming Arab League summit in Doha.²⁴⁴

Morocco went even further, severing diplomatic relations with Iran in response to the inflammatory statements concerning Bahrain and hostile activity by Iranians inside Morocco. Morocco’s foreign ministry accused the Iranian diplomatic mission in Rabat of interfering in the internal affairs of the kingdom and attempting to spread Shi’a Islam in the nation where 99 percent of the population is Sunni Muslims. The foreign ministry said that since King Mohammed VI is Morocco’s official religious leader, proselytizing to convert Sunni Muslims is an attack on the monarchy.²⁴⁵

Fear of Iran has grown, especially as Arab states have become more skeptical that the international community will succeed in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Consequently, Saudi Foreign Minister Sa’oud Al-Fei’sal has called for the development of a joint Arab strategy to deal with the “Iranian challenge.”²⁴⁶

Before even taking office, Benjamin Netanyahu is being caricatured as a right-wing extremist uninterested in peace when, in fact, he is a proven peacemaker who carried out the last large-scale Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and negotiated with even his sworn enemy Yasser Arafat. It was no surprise that Netanyahu staked out tough positions during his election campaign, emphasizing his commitment to Israel’s security, but after being chosen to serve as prime minister he also pledged his government a “partner for peace.”²⁴⁷

When Netanyahu became prime minister the first time, he also was vilified by the media and Arab leaders; yet, he entered talks with Arafat and agreed to withdraw Israeli troops from Hebron. Both leaders signed the Protocol Concerning the Redeployment in Hebron on January 17, 1997, turning over to Palestinian jurisdiction more than 80 percent of the city of Hebron with the promise of further redeployment from the West Bank in the coming weeks.²⁴⁸ Here was the “right-wing” prime minister agreeing to give up territory in a city with a long Jewish religious and political history in the hope of achieving peace.

This same opponent of peace signed the Wye River Memorandum on October 23, 1998, at the White House. Netanyahu agreed to turn over another 13 percent of the remaining territory under full Israeli control to the Palestinians in return for their pledge to outlaw and combat terrorist organizations, prohibit illegal weapons and prevent weapons smuggling, and prevent incitement of violence and terrorism. Netanyahu’s government also agreed to resume permanent status negotiations.²⁴⁹ Unfortunately, the Palestinians once again failed to fulfill their promise to end terror and sabotaged the plan for additional Israeli redeployments.

Today, the political climate is very different. The Palestinians are in disarray. The Palestinian Authority is split, with Hamas terrorists controlling Gaza and Fatah clinging to power in the West Bank. The nominal president of the PA is considered a reasonable person who simply is impotent to negotiate or implement an agreement. In addition, Israelis are in no mood to make territorial compromises after seeing how the complete evacuation of Gaza brought them more terror rather than peace. Until the Palestinians demonstrate they are committed to peace, few Israelis are prepared to give up territory the Palestinians may use to launch rockets at Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or Ben-Gurion Airport.

In this context, Netanyahu is advocating that the next steps in the peace process focus on improving the lives of the Palestinians. He believes that by strengthening the Palestinian economy and promoting rapid growth, the average Palestinian civilian will have a greater stake in coexistence.²⁵⁰ While critics seeking to discredit Netanyahu suggest he is trying to avoid political concessions, Netanyahu has made clear this is not the case. “The economic track is not a substitute for political negotiations, it’s a complement to it,” he explained. “If we have a strong Israeli-Palestinian economic relationship, that’s a strong foundation for peace.”²⁵¹ He has also told international leaders that the Palestinians should have the rights to govern themselves as long as they do not threaten Israel²⁵² and at the Knesset’s commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, Netanyahu reaffirmed this commitment. “The government I am about to form will do all in its power to reach peace with our neighbor. … Every one of our neighbors who will be ready for peace will find our hands outstretched before them.”²⁵³

“The United States missed an opportunity to address the issue of global racism by boycotting Durban II.”

Prior to the Durban II Conference, U.S. President Barack Obama explained, “I would love to be involved in a useful conference that addressed continuing issues of racism and discrimination around the globe.” The U.S., however, decided to join Israel, Poland, the Netherlands, Italy, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in boycotting the conference when language in the draft final communiqué of the conference equated Zionism with racism. President Obama described such anti-Israel language as “hypocritical and counterproductive.”²⁵⁴

By the close of the first day of the second U.N. anti-racism conference, it was already clear Durban II would not be the productive conference President Obama envisioned. Following fastidiously in its 2001 predecessor’s footsteps, hopes for an honest discussion on global racism at the U.N. forum disappeared with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech on the opening day of the conference. Ahmadinejad described Israel as having established a “totally racist government” and as “the most cruel and repressive” racist regime. Echoing the vitriolic attacks on Israel from the 2001 Durban Conference, Ahmadinejad declared, “It is time the ideal of Zionism, which is the paragon of racism, be broken.”²⁵⁵

Ahmadinejad’s inflammatory statements provoked doznes of western diplomats to walk out during the speech. It also led the Czech Republic, which currently holds the EU rotating presidency, to join the countries boycotting the conference.²⁵⁶

Even the normally ambivalent U.N. Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, criticized Ahmadinejad’s misuse of the conference platform “to accuse, divide and even incite,” essentially the exact opposite of the what the conference was intended to achieve.²⁵⁷

Just as Israel’s deputy minister of foreign affairs Daniel Ayalon correctly predicted, “Durban II, like its predecessor, will go down in infamy and will massively deviate from its original purpose.”²⁵⁸

“Abbas is ready to accept a Jewish state in the framework of a two-state solution.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas demands Palestinian statehood and an Israeli commitment to a two-state solution, but recently reiterated his longstanding, extremist position denying Israel comparable legitimacy. "I say this clearly,” Abbas told a conference in Ramallah, “I do not accept the Jewish State, call it what you will…”²⁵⁹ His refusal to recognize the fundamental Jewish character of the State of Israel is just one of many barriers that Abbas has erected along the road to peace.

In 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert extended a peace proposal to Abbas that would create two nation-states. Under the plan Israel would have withdrawn from almost the entire West Bank and partitioned Jerusalem on a demographic basis. Abbas rejected the offer.²⁶⁰

Israel’s leaders remain committed to peace, but after Palestinians have repeatedly rejected offers that would have allowed them to establish a state, it should be clear to all that the biggest obstacle to a two-state solution is the leadership of the Palestinians and their more than 60-year refusal to live with a Jewish state.

In an interview with the New York Times, Khaled Meshaal, leader of Hamas, said the terrorist group was seeking the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, based on the 1967 boundaries. When asked about establishing peace with Israel, he stated the ultimate goal was a 10 year ceasefire, but he still would not commit to peace.²⁶⁵ Despite this apparent overture, when pressed about Hamas’ charter which cites the anti-Semitic tome The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and calls for the destruction of Israel, he simply suggests people ignore what amounts to the group’s constitution.²⁶⁶

In the time-tested practice once regularly employed by Yasser Arafat of saying one thing to Western audiences and something entirely different to people in the Middle East, Meshaal delivered a speech on May 27 , 2008, at Tehran University entitled, “The Decline of the Zionist Regime,” during which he said, “We will never recognize Israel or cease to fight for our land.”²⁶⁷

Though he has slightly tempered his remarks for Western media, Meshaal will not publicly deny that he works for the destruction of Israel, whether it comes today or 10 years from now. Though now it appears he is posturing to gain support from the West, as recently as December 2008, he stated on al-Jazeera that “Allah made a laughingstock of America” and “[the] world will change, submitting to the Arab Islamic will, Allah willing.”²⁶⁸

Since splitting from the Palestinian Authority and staging a violent takeover in Gaza in the summer of 2007, Hamas under Meshaal has worked tirelessly to subvert the efforts of the Palestinian Authority and Israel to reach a peace agreement. In that time, under the direction of Meshaal, thousands of rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip into civilian neighborhoods of Israel. Today, Hamas is not even willing to make peace with his fellow Palestinians, let alone the Israelis.

“The pope’s trip to Israel shows that issues between Israel and the Vatican have been resolved.”

The Catholic Church has had a difficult relationship with the Zionist idea since the early 20th century when Theodor Herzl sought the support of Pope Pius X for a Jewish homeland and was told by the pontiff that “the Jews did not acknowledge our Lord and thus we cannot recognize the Jewish people. Hence, if you go to Palestine, and if the Jewish people settle there, our churches and our priests will be ready to baptize you all.”²⁶⁹

In 1947, the Vatican voted in favor of UN General Assembly Resolution 181 to partition Palestine; however, it did not officially recognize Israel until 1993. Since then, the Catholic Church has taken strides to improve its relationship with the Jewish state, including signing a diplomatic treaty and exchanging ambassadors with Israel.²⁷⁰

In 2000, Pope John Paul II visited the Holy Land and Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to Israel was meant to follow a similar path to foster interfaith dialogue and improve Vatican-Israel relations. Unfortunately, a series of missteps by the pope have shown that past wounds are far from healed.

Pope Benedict XVI was born in Germany and has said he reluctantly became a member of the Hitler Youth during World War II (a Vatican spokesman denied this during the tour and had to issue a retraction after it was pointed out that Benedict admitted it in his autobiography). This personal background made his May 11, 2009, visit to Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial especially poignant. Though his address condemned Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism, many Israelis expected him to go further. Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, the Chairman of Yad Vashem, expressed his disappointment following the speech, “Something was missing. There was no mention of the Germans or the Nazis who participated in the butchery, nor a word of regret.” Though the pope referred to the millions of innocent victims, he did not specifically mention the 6 million Jewish victims.²⁷¹

The role of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust has long been a contentious issue for Israel and the Vatican. At Yad Vashem, there is a plaque criticizing Pius XII, who was pope from 1939 to 1958, for not doing more to save the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust. The Vatican continues to limit access to archives that might shed further light on the actions of Pius. Furthermore, in 2008, Pope Benedict announced his intention to beatify Pius XII, a high religious honor of the Church that is the last step before sainthood.²⁷² This decision angered some Jews as did his announcement in January 2009, that he was lifting the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson, a Holocaust denier who believes that Jews are bent on world domination.²⁷³

Israelis hoped that the pope’s visit to Israeli sites and meetings with Israeli officials would be accompanied by positive statements about Israel’s quest for peace and some recognition of the ongoing dangers it faces. Benedict, however, reserved his more political remarks for his tour of Palestinian areas. Speaking to a crowd in Bethlehem, for example, Pope Benedict XVI reasserted the policy of the Vatican on Palestinian statehood. While declaring their rights to a sovereign homeland, the pope lamented Palestinian losses suffered in Gaza. He told a crowd in Manger Square, “Please be assured of my solidarity with you in the immense work of rebuilding which now lies ahead and my prayers that the embargo will soon be lifted.” Though he urged Palestinian youth to resist the temptation to resort to terrorism, he did not condemn Hamas for its acts of terror against Israel that made the embargo on the Gaza Strip essential to halting weapons smugglers and provoked Operation Cast Lead.²⁷⁴

The Palestinians also took full advantage of the propaganda value of the pope’s appearances in the West Bank. Mahmoud Abbas, for example, used the pope’s speech in Bethlehem as an opportunity to criticize Israel’s security fence, labeling it an “apartheid wall”.²⁷⁵ Later, on a visit to a Palestinian refugee camp, the pontiff was photographed in front of one of the few sections of the fence that is actually a wall and lamented that it symbolized the “stalemate” in relations between Israel and the Palestinians. He expressed his wish that the wall would come down soon so that “the people of Palestine… will at last be able to enjoy the peace, freedom and stability that have eluded [them] for so long.”²⁷⁶

In addition to ignoring the Palestinian violence that killed more than 800 Israelis and prompted the building of the security barrier, the pope was also silent with regard to the ongoing persecution of Christians throughout the Middle East and especially within the Palestinian Authority. This was another missed opportunity for the pope to show concern for the plight of his followers.

The decision of Pope Benedict XVI to make a pilgrimage to Israel was a welcome one and did show the distance the Vatican has traveled in the century that has passed since Herzl’s visit to Rome. The acts of commission and omission during the pope’s trip indicated, however, that there is still some distance to go before Israel will have the respect it deserves from the Holy See.

Meeting in Washington in May 2009, President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu reaffirmed their commitments to seeking a comprehensive Middle East peace. What may not have been expected, however, is just how alike the leaders’ priorities and agendas are in achieving that goal.

In their public remarks, Netanyahu and Obama elucidated their shared visions of negotiations, security, Israeli national sovereignty, and Palestinian self-governance.²⁷⁷ Netanyahu expressed his desire to move forward in negotiations and live in peace with the Palestinians whom Israel “want[s] to govern themselves.” Obama declared that in his Middle East policies “Israel’s security is paramount.” He called for steps to be taken that would assure Israel’s security by halting terrorist attacks and also facilitate the creation of an independent Palestinian state.²⁷⁸

Obama and Netanyahu also agreed on the importance of collaboration with Arab nations to attain peace. Obama called on Arab states to be “more supportive and bolder in seeking potential normalization with Israel,” a message he said he would deliver to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak when he met with them. Both leaders also emphasized the importance of involving Arab nations in dealing with the regional threat posed by Iran.²⁷⁹

The issue of a nuclear Iran was Netanyahu’s top priority in his discussions with Obama. The president said he recognized that a nuclear-armed Iran posed a threat not only to Israel, but also to the rest of the international community. Netanyahu described an Iran with nuclear military capabilities as “the worst danger we face,” a threat to Israel’s existence, U.S. interests worldwide, and moderate Arab regimes of the Middle East. Obama reiterated his commitment to engaging Iran in an effort to change its policy. He gave no timetable for how long he would pursue this course, but left no doubt that he was committed to preventing Iran from developing a nuclear arsenal.²⁸⁰

Netanyahu has been in office for less time than Obama and has not yet publicly announced positions on many contentious issues, including ones raised by the president. For example, Obama expressed concern over Israeli settlement policy, but the issue has long been a point of contention between the United States and Israel. Netanyahu has not yet announced what his policy will be toward existing or new settlements.

Obama also called on Israel to open the border crossing of the Gaza Strip, which was closed by Netanyahu’s predecessor in response to years of rocket attacks and weapons smuggling. Again, Netanyahu has not yet stated whether he is prepared to loosen restrictions on Gaza and the president’s position was undermined the following day by yet another rocket fired from Gaza into Israel, which landed in the backyard of a home in Sderot and injured an Israeli woman.²⁸¹

Following his meeting, Obama expressed confidence in Netanyahu’s leadership. “I’m confident that he’s going to seize this moment. And the United States is going to do everything we can to be constructive, effective partners in this process,” Obama said. Echoing these sentiments, Netanyahu said, “We share the same goals and we face the same threats. The common goal is peace. Everybody in Israel, as in the United States, wants peace.”²⁸²

“Netanyahu’s government refuses to honor past agreements on settlements.”

Though he did not respond for the press to President Obama’s call for Israel to halt settlement expansion during their meeting in Washington DC on May 18, Prime Minister Netanyahu has since acted on his commitment to honor the agreements reached by previous administrations.

One of the conditions of the 2003 Road Map was that all unauthorized Israeli settlements established after March 2001 be dismantled. In accordance with the agreement, reached between the Ariel Sharon government and the United States, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that 26 illegal outposts would be evacuated.²⁸³ Netanyahu also informed the U.S. leadership of his commitment to remove the illegal West Bank outposts and not build any new settlements. Three days after his meeting with Obama, police forces demolished a Jewish outpost in Samaria called Maoz Esther, the first settlement to be dismantled under Netanyahu’s newly formed government.²⁸⁴ Israel’s Defense Ministry also began delivering delimiting orders to ten additional illegal outposts, an action required by Israeli law before outposts can be cleared.²⁸⁵

Another member of Netanyahu’s cabinet calling for ratification of the three-phase road map to peace, that has a clearly stated goal of Palestinian statehood, is Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. During an interview before he was sworn in, Lieberman told Haaretz that Israel had undertaken obligations under the road map and that those obligations would be honored. He criticized previous Israeli administrations for not acting on those commitments and dismantling settlements and removing roadblocks. Elaborating on these obligations, he said, “Unlike others, we will carry out everything that is in writing, and there will be no contradiction between what we say and what we mean, but we will stick to the phased nature of the road map.”²⁸⁶

Netanyahu has also expressed his interest in adhering to agreements reached with the Bush administration whereby Israel was permitted to accomodate natural growth in existing settlements, such as expanding the size of a family’s home within the boundaries of the community. Another understanding with the Bush administration was that Israel would be allowed to continue construction in consensus settlements that are expected to become a part of Israel at the end of negotiations.²⁸⁷

In addition to the issue of settlements, Netanyahu’s government is honoring previously agreed upon documents in its commitment to reengaging the Palestinians in negotiations without preconditions. At his public meeting with President Obama at the White House, Netanyahu expressed this commitment, “I share with you very much the desire to move the peace process forward. And I want to start peace negotiations with the Palestinians immediately.”²⁸⁸

President Barak Obama has said the Palestinian-Israeli conflict “is a critical issue to deal with, in part because it is in the United States’ interest to achieve peace; that the absence of peace between Palestinians and Israelis is a impediment to a whole host of other areas of increased cooperation and more stable security for people in the region, as well as the United States.”²⁸⁹

It may be argued that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is urgent for the United State s if you believe that the conflict is really an impediment to Arab cooperation on the Iranian nuclear issue. The evidence, however, is that the Arab states have never seriously cared about the Palestinians and that they have their own self-interest in seeing Iran’s nuclear ambitions thwarted, an issue which has nothing to do with the Palestinian question.

The parties also do not see any urgency. In fact, in September 2008, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas turned down then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s sweeping offer for Palestinian statehood that would have given the Palestinians 98.1% of the West Bank and allowed thousands of Palestinians to return to Israel.²⁹⁰ Yet, Abbas turned down the offer, claiming there were “gaps,”²⁹¹ and failed to offer a viable counteroffer.

Following his May 2009 meeting with President Obama, Abbas also made clear the Palestinians are in no hurry to negotiate with Israel, let alone make any concessions. He expressed the view that Obama’s opposition to Israeli settlements would eventually bring down the Netanyahu government and he was content to put off any peace talks until Netanyahu is out of office. Jackson Diehl wrote in The Washington Post that “Abbas and his team…plan to sit back and watch while U.S. pressure slowly squeezes the Israeli prime minister from office. ‘It will take a couple of years,’ one official breezily predicted.”²⁹² Until then, Abbas stated, “in the West Bank we have a good reality… we are having a good life”²⁹³.

This statement contrasts starkly with the typical image projected by the PA and the media of the Palestinians as an impoverished, suffering people. Abbas also left no doubt that the Palestinian leadership feels no urgency for a resumption of the peace process. Abbas told Obama, “There’s just about nothing you can do.”²⁹⁴

Israelis also see no urgency. While the Israeli public and prime minister are committed to peace with the Palestinians they are very cognizant of the Palestinians’ obstinate position. Furthermore, Israelis see no chance of reaching an agreement with the Palestinians so long as their leadership remains splintered with Hamas controlling the Gaza Strip and the West Bank barely controlled by the unpopular and politically weak Abbas.

Israelis also need confidence building time to recover from fighting three wars in the last nine years that have cost more than 1,200 Israeli lives and forced parts of the country to live in a state of almost constant anxiety as a result of years of rocket bombardments. Indeed, during Obama’s meeting with Abbas, the president told the Palestinian president that the Israelis have good reason to be concerned about security.²⁹⁵ The American president should therefore understand that now is not the time for a rush to diplomacy and that the first priority should be creating a sense of security in Israel.

“Peace now” is not just a slogan, it is what every Israeli wants. President Obama should be applauded for sharing this desire and wanting to make it a reality; however, the conditions in the region will have to radically improve before it will be possible to achieve the goal Americans and Israelis share.

On June 14, 2009, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for negotiations with the Palestinians to resume without preconditions. He also described his vision of peace as one between two sovereign nations living side-by-side. To achieve this two-state solution, he said, the Palestinians must recognize the State of Israel and accept a demilitarized state.²⁹⁶

Following Netanyahu’s speech, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs issued a statement praising Netanyahu’s remarks, “The President is committed to two states, a Jewish state of Israel and an independent Palestine, in the historic homeland of both peoples. He believes this solution can and must ensure both Israel's security and the fulfillment of the Palestinians' legitimate aspirations for a viable state, and he welcomes Prime Minister Netanyahu's endorsement of that goal.”²⁹⁷

The response of the Palestinian leadership to Netanyahu’s invitation to revive the peace process, however, was hostile. Chief Palestinian Authority negotiator, Saeb Erekat, called on the Arab countries to suspend the Arab peace initiative. Multiple spokesmen for PA President Mahmoud Abbas called on the international community to isolate Netanyahu for what they describe as his “sabotage” of the peace process, and PA officials in Ramallah warned of a new round of violence and a new intifada.²⁹⁸ This followed Abbas’s earlier remarks suggesting that he was prepared to wait for years, until he believed Netanyahu was forced from office, before resuming negotiations with Israel.²⁹⁹

Notes

¹ CNN.com, (January 10, 2005).
² Aljazeera.Net, (January 11, 2005).
³ CNN.com (January 10, 2005); Herb Keinon, “Observer teams validate PA elections,” Jerusalem Post, (January 11, 2005).
⁴Herb Keinon, “Sharansky: PA election not ‘truly free,’” Jerusalem Post, (January 11, 2005).
⁵ Aljazeera.Net, (January 15, 2005); Jerusalem Post, (January 16, 2005).
⁶Herb Keinon, “Sharansky: PA election not ‘truly free,’” Jerusalem Post, (January 11, 2005).
⁷ WEST BANK/GAZA DEMOGRAPHY STUDY: THE 1.5 Million POPULATION GAP, American Research Initiative, (January 23, 2005)
⁸ What is the True Demographic Picture in the West Bank and Gaza? - A Presentation and a Critique, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, (March 10, 2005); Yair Ettinger, “Critics slam report debunking demographic threat,” Haaretz, (January 10, 2005).
⁹Jewish Telegraphic Agency, (April 5, 2005; March 9, 2007).
¹⁰CNN, (April 17, 2002).
¹¹Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, (May 15, 1997).
¹²Jerusalem Post, (May 23, 2001).
¹³ Palestine News Agency WAFA, (April 28, 2005).
¹⁴Al-Quds, (April 27, 2005).
¹⁵ Endwave Corporation and SafeView, Inc.
¹⁶ Muslim Women’s League; About.com
¹⁷Chris McGreal, “Murdered in name of family honor,” Guardian, (June 23, 2005).
¹⁸Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, (June 14-19, 2005).
¹⁹ Jerusalem Post, (July 4, 2005).
²⁰Jerusalem Post, (July 4- 5, September 7, 2005); Ha'aretz, (September 6, 2005).
²¹Akiva Eldar, “Oslo said it: Hamas and elections don't go together,” Ha'aretz, (July 19, 2005).
²²Glenn Kessler, “If Hamas Participates, Sharon Says Israel Won't Aid Palestinian Elections,” Washington Post, ((September 17, 2005).
²³Yossi Beilin, “Recognizing Hamas is irresponsible,” Bitterlemons.org, (September 26, 2005).
²⁴Glenn Kessler, “If Hamas Participates, Sharon Says Israel Won't Aid Palestinian Elections,”Washington Post, (September 17, 2005).
²⁵Office of the Secretary-General, United Nations.
²⁶Khaled Abu Toameh, “A Palestinian Verdict: Terror Worked: Fatah and Hamas both claim it was 'our' fighters who beat Israel,” The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, (August 26, 2005).
²⁷ Jerusalem Post, (August 4, 2004).
²⁸Daniel Pipes, “Palestinian Responses to an Israeli Withdrawal from Gaza,” Danielpipes.org, (September 6, 2005).
²⁹ Al-Manar TV, (January 25, 2006).
³⁰Wall Street Journal editorial, (February 20, 2006).
³¹ Palestinian National Authority, (December 13, 2005).
³²Aaron Klein, “Israeli dig to spark Temple Mount violence?” WorldNetDaily.com, (October 24, 2005).
³³ Palestinian National Authority, (December 13, 2005).
³⁴Joshua Brilliant, “ ‘Israel digging under Al-Aksa,’ or not,” UPI, (January 3, 2006).
³⁵“Iran's Khameini says Israel behind Danish cartoons of Muhammad,” Al Bawaba, (February 7, 2006).
³⁶ Jyllands Posten Muhammed Cartoons.
³⁷ Jerusalem Post, (January 2, February 20, 2006).
³⁸ Jerusalem Post, (February 3, 2006).
³⁹ Jerusalem Post, (February 19, 2006).
⁴⁰ Ynet.com, (February 20, 2006).
⁴¹Haaretz, (February 21, 2006).
⁴²Margot Dudkevitch, “Kassam-weary residents vow change,” Jerusalem Post, (February 24, 2006).
⁴³ Jerusalem Post, (January 10, 2006).
⁴⁴ Jerusalem Media & Communication Centre, (February 2006).
⁴⁶ New York Times editorial, (March 4, 2006).
⁴⁷ Trade Information Center, International Trade Administration; Arab News, (December 31, 2005).
⁴⁸John Zarocostas, “Saudi meeting eyed for WTO violation,” Washington Times, (March 9, 2006); Michael Freund, “S. Arabia to host Israel boycott event,” Jerusalem Post, (March 7, 2006).
^48a Michael Freund, “Saudis continue to boycott Israel,” Jerusalem Post, (April 16, 2007).
⁴⁹Ehud Ya'ari, “O Jerusalem: The Next Chapter,” The Jerusalem Report, (March 20, 2006).
⁵⁰“Jordan arrests Hamas terror suspects,” Jerusalem Post, (April 25, 2006); Detainee’s confession televised, AP, (May 11, 2006).
⁵¹Jamal Halaby, “Jordan Accuses Hamas of Smuggling Weapons,” AP, (April 18, 2006).
⁵²Alia A. Toukan, “Jordan warns Hamas members in Kingdom against inciting violence,” Jordan Times, (November 2, 1998).
⁵³P.R. Kumaraswamy, “The Jordan-Hamas Divorce,” Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, (August/September 2001).
⁵⁴“Jordan Strikes at Hamas,” Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, (September 1999).
⁵⁵P.R. Kumaraswamy, “The Jordan-Hamas Divorce,” Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, (August/September 2001).
⁵⁶ Jerusalem Post, (August 19, 2002).
⁵⁷State Department. Human Rights Report for the Occupied Territories, 1997, 1998.
⁵⁸Caroline Glick, “Why is Muhammad Abu al-Hawa dead?” Jerusalem Post, (April 18, 2006).
^58aKhaled Abu Toameh, “PA: Death penalty for those who sell land to Jews,” Jerusalem Post, (April 1, 2009).
^58bKhaled Abu Toameh, "PA court: Death to man who sold land to Jews," Jerusalem Post, (April 29, 2009).
⁵⁹Nazir Majali, “Philosophy of death,” Haaretz, (April 23, 2006).
⁶⁰“Suicide Rhetoric,” Washington Post, (April 19, 2006).
⁶¹ Ha'aretz, (February 11, 2001).
⁶²Al-Watan [Kuwait], (June 7, 2002).
⁶³ Jerusalem Post, (July 21, 2002).
⁶⁴ Jewish Telegraphic Agency, (June 11, 2002).
⁶⁵“Israel To Bypass Hamas With Aid Funds,” UPI, (May 11, 2006).
⁶⁶Jerusalem Post, (June 13, 2006); Embassy of Israel.
⁶⁷ Prime Minister Olmert Addresses Joint Session of Congress, (May 24, 2006).
⁶⁸“Palestinian university president comes out against boycott of Israeli academics,” Associated Press, (June 18, 2006).
⁶⁹Editorial, Chicago Sun Times, (June 27, 2006).
⁷⁰Editorial, Washington Post, (July 1, 2006).
⁷¹Jerusalem Post, (July 18, 2006).
⁷²London Times, (August 1, 2006).
⁷³Barbara Sofer, “The Human Spirit: Palestinian women in Israeli jails,” Jerusalem Post, (July 6, 2006).
^73a“Lebanon hails militants freed in prisoner swap,” CNN (July 16, 2008).
^73bBarzak, Ibrahim, “Hamas hints it will raise stakes for captured Israel sodier,” AP (July 1, 2008)
⁷⁴ CNN, (July 23, 2006). Also, corrected transcripts from broadcast.
⁷⁵ CNN, (August 8, 2006).
⁷⁶Tom Gross, “The media war against Israel: The Jewish state is fighting not one enemy but two: Hizballah, and those who peddle its propaganda,” National Post, (August 2, 2006).
⁷⁷ CNN, (August 6, 2006).
⁷⁸ CNN, (August 7, 2006).
⁷⁹Reuven Koret, Hezbollywood Horror: “Civil Defense Worker” doubles as Traveling Mortician,” Israelinsider.com, (August 3, 2006) and “Hezbollywood? Evidence mounts that Qana collapse and deaths were staged,” Israelinsider.com, (July 31, 2006); EU Referendum, (July 31, August. 1, August 5, 2006).
⁸⁰AP, (August 8, 2006).
⁸¹Tom Gross, “The media war against Israel: The Jewish state is fighting not one enemy but two: Hizballah, and those who peddle its propaganda,” National Post, (August 2, 2006).
⁸²“A Canadian soldier's report from South Lebanon,” CTV.ca, (August 6, 2006).
⁸³AP, (August 7, 2006).
⁸⁴Human Rights Watch, “Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon,” (August 3, 2006).
⁸⁵Joshua Muravchik, “Human Rights Watch vs. Human Rights: The cynical manipulation of a worthy cause has a history,” The Weekly Standard, (September 11, 2006).
⁸⁶Alan Dershowitz, “What Are They Watching?” New York Sun, (August 23, 2006).
⁸⁷Human Rights Watch, “Israel/Lebanon: Hezbollah Must End Attacks on Civilians,” (August 5, 2006).
⁸⁸Aluf Benn, “Haniyeh: I won't head a government that recognizes Israel,” Haaretz, (September 23, 2006); Herb Keinon, “Haniyeh: Rice trying to weaken region,” Jerusalem Post, (September 21 & October 3, 2006).
⁸⁹ Khaled Abu Toameh, “Palestinian violence down, rhetoric up,” Jerusalem Post, (October 3, 2006).
⁹⁰Reuters, (October 4, 2006).
⁹¹ Jewish Telegraphic Agency, (February 6, 2002).
⁹²Dror Etkes & Hagit Ofran, “Breaking the Law in the West Bank – One Violation Leads to Another: Israeli Settlement Building on Private Palestinian Property,” (Jerusalem: Peace Now, October 2006).
⁹³Steven Erlanger, “Israeli Map Says West Bank Posts Sit on Arab Land,” (New York Times, November 21, 2006).
⁹⁴“Response of the Civil Administration – Judea and Samaria – to the “Peace Now” Report,” Civil Administration, (November 21, 2006).
^94a“Military database released to Peace Now shows little land seized from Palestinians to build largest West Bank settlement,” Associated Press, (March 14, 2007).
⁹⁵“Instransigent Hamas,” Washington Post, (October 11, 2006).
⁹⁶ Lebanese Higher Relief Council, (December 6, 2006).
⁹⁷Con Coughlin, “Teheran fund pays war compensation to Hizbollah families,” Daily Telegraph, (August 4, 2006).
⁹⁸Kuwait Times, (August 30, 2006).
⁹⁹John Keegan, “Why Israel will go to war again – soon,” Daily Telegraph, (November 3, 2006).
¹⁰⁰UPI, (September 7, 2006).
¹⁰¹Washington Times, (September 27, 2006); Steven Stotsky, “Questioning the Number of Civilian Casualties in Lebanon,” CAMERA, (September 27, 2006); Wikipedia.
¹⁰² AP, (December 7, 2006).
¹⁰³ Washington Post, (December 16, 2006).
¹⁰⁴Ronny Sofer, “Peres: Syria deceiving, focus on Palestinians,” Ynet News.com, (December 21, 2006).
¹⁰⁵Anthony H. Cordesman, “Escalating to Nowhere: The Israeli-Palestinian War — The Actors in the Conflict: The Palestinian Factions That Challenge Peace and the Palestinian Authority,” (DC: CSIS, September 12, 2003), p. 35; Khaled Abu Toameh, “ Palestinian Affairs: Guns and Poses,” Jerusalem Post, (November 25, 2006).
¹⁰⁶Khaled Abu Toameh, “ Palestinian Affairs: Guns and Poses,” Jerusalem Post, (November 25, 2006).
¹⁰⁷Israel Radio, (August 1, 2002).
¹⁰⁸Khaled Abu Toameh, “Abbas: Aim guns against occupation, Jerusalem Post, (January 11, 2007); Aaron Klein, “Abbas urges: ‘Raise rifles against Israel,’” WorldnetDaily.com, (January 11, 2007).
¹⁰⁹Uzi Arad and Gal Alon, “Patriotism and Israel's National Security - Herzliya Patriotism Survey 2006,” Herzliya: Institute for Policy and Strategy, 2006.
¹¹⁰Mira Tzoreff, “The Palestinian Shahida: National Patriotism, Islamic Feminism, or Social Crisis,” in Yoram Schweitzer, Ed. Female Suicide Bombers: Dying for Equality? (Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, August 2006), pp. 13-24.
¹¹¹Yoram Schweitzer, “Palestinian Female Suicide Bombers: Reality vs. Myth,”in Yoram Schweitzer, Ed. Female Suicide Bombers: Dying for Equality? (Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, August 2006), pp. 25-42.
¹¹²“For Palestinians, a new low,” National Post, (November 25, 2006).
¹¹³Avi Issacharoff, Aluf Benn and Jack Khoury, “Israel, PA agree on cease-fire starting today,” Haaretz, (November 26, 2006).
¹¹⁴Shmuel Rosner, “EU slams Eilat bombing, calls it bid to derail peace,” Haaretz, (January 30, 2007).
¹¹⁵“Militants demand Abbas apology for condemning Tel Aviv attack,” Haaretz, (January 29, 2007).
¹¹⁶ Haaretz, (February 11, 2007).
^116aJerusalem Post, (March 13, 2007).
¹¹⁷Jerusalem Post, (February 8, 2007).
¹¹⁸“We will not betray promises we made to God to continue the path of Jihad and resistance until the liberation of Palestine, all of Palestine,” Reuters, (March 12, 2007).
¹¹⁹“General Monthly Survey,” Near East Consulting, (February 2007).
¹²⁰David Blair, “Accept peace plan or face war, Israel told,” Telegraph, (March 28, 2007).
¹²¹Roee Nahmias, “Syria: Without peace, resistance will liberate Golan Heights,” Ynet News, (April 16, 2007).
¹²²“Arabs won't wait decades for Israeli response to Arab Peace Initiative: GCC,” Kuwait News Agency, (May 3, 2007).
¹²³“ISRAEL-OPT: More Palestinians entering Israel on health grounds,” IRIN, (February 15, 2007).
¹²⁴Corinne Heller, “Palestinians learn emergency medicine in Isrel, Reuters, (November 22, 2006).
¹²⁵Khaled Abu Toameh, “Gaza's Christians fear for their lives,” Jerusalem Post, (June 19, 2007); “Catholic compound ransacked in Gaza,” AP, (June 19, 2007) .
¹²⁶Aaron Klein, “‘Christians must accept Islamic rule,’” WorldNetDaily, (June 19, 2007).
¹²⁷Lebanonwire, Independent Border Assesment Team Report, (June 2007).
¹²⁸Lebanonwire, Independent Border Assesment Team Report, (June 2007).
¹²⁹Uzi Mahnaimi Zarit, “Hezbollah 'has stockpiled rockets' on Israeli border,” Timesonline. The Sunday Times. (June 10, 2007).
¹³⁰Khaled Abu Toameh, “Fatwa forbids PA Muslims to emigrate,” Jerusalem Post, (June 10, 2007); Mark Mackinnon, “Heavy-hearted Palestinians taking their chances abroad,” The Globe and Mail, (November 20, 2006); Sarah El Deeb, “More Palestinians Flee Homelands,” AP, (December 9, 2006).
¹³¹Larry Derfner, “Jerusalem Undivided” U.S.News & World Report, (June 3, 2007).
¹³²Khaled Abu Toameh, “Fatwa forbids PA Muslims to emigrate,” Jerusalem Post, (June 10, 2007).
¹³³Stuart A. Cohen, “Why is the IDF crying wolf?” Jerusalem Post, (July 30, 2007).
¹³⁴“Does Iran have something in store?” Wall Street Journal, (December 26, 2006).
¹³⁵Iran Press Service, (December 14, 2001).
¹³⁶See, for example, “Egypt to build nuclear power plants,” AP, (October 29, 2007); “Analysis: Yemen, Jordan hope for nuclear,” UPI, (October 1, 2007); “Six Arab states join rush to go nuclear,” [London] Times Online, (November 4, 2006).
^136aAl-Hayat (London), May 16, 2008.
¹³⁷Giles Whittell, “Bahrain accuses Iran of nuclear weapons lie,” TimesOnline, (November 2, 2007).
¹³⁸Giles Whittell, “Bahrain accuses Iran of nuclear weapons lie,” TimesOnline, (November 2, 2007).
¹³⁹David Jackson, “Iran, Iraq top agendas for meetings with allies,” USA Today, (November 1, 2007).
¹⁴⁰ Associated Press, (October 23, 2007).
¹⁴¹Matt Spetalnick, “Bush: Threat of World War III if Iran goes nuclear,” Reuters, (October 17, 2007).
¹⁴²Richard Cohen, “Bush’s Legacy of Cynicism,” Washington Post, (October 30, 2007).
¹⁴³“Erekat: Palestinians will not accept Israel as 'Jewish State',” Barak Ravid, Haaretz, (November 12, 2007).
¹⁴⁴ 2006 Report on International Religious Freedom.
¹⁴⁵Herb Keinon, “Behind the scenes at Annapolis,” Jerusalem Post, (November 28, 2007).
¹⁴⁶Herb Keinon, “FM's complaints of Arab conduct denied,” Jerusalem Post, (November 29, 2007).
¹⁴⁷KEEVOON Research, Strategy and Communications, (December 26, 2007).
¹⁴⁸Ronny Shaked, “Thousands of Palestinians apply for Israeli citizenship,” Ynetnews.com, November 7, 2007).
¹⁴⁹Joshua Mitnick, “Better the Devil You Know,” The Jerusalem Report, (November 12, 2007).
¹⁵⁰Joshua Mitnick, “Better the Devil You Know,” The Jerusalem Report, (November 12, 2007).
¹⁵¹Eetta Prince-Gibson, “Land (Swap) for Peace?” The Jerusalem Report, (November 26, 2007).
¹⁵² Near East Consulting, Bulletin # II-12, (December 2007).
¹⁵³For example, demilitarization was one of several prequisites to ensure Israel’s security after the establishment of a Palestinian state according to a study group that explored Israel’s options for peace in 1989. The West Bank and Gaza: Israel's Options for Peace, Tel Aviv: The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, 1989, p. 104.
¹⁵⁴Khaled Abu Toameh, “PA does not want demilitarized Palestine,” Jerusalem Post, (January 4, 2008).
¹⁵⁵Jonathan Pearlman, “Fruitless Enterprise,” The Jerusalem Report, (August 7, 2006).
¹⁵⁶Lara Sukhtian, “Palestinians loot greenhouses; Pumps, hoses taken; Abbas appeals for order,” The Boston Globe, (September 14, 2005).
¹⁵⁷Khaled Abu Toameh, “Gaza: Gunmen raze Morag hothouses,” Jerusalem Post, (May 14, 2006).
¹⁵⁸Arnon Regular, “Palestinian militants ransack former Gush Katif greenhouses,” Ha’aretz, (October 2, 2006).
¹⁵⁹Khaled Abu Toameh, “Gaza: Gunmen raze Morag hothouses,” Jerusalem Post, (May 14, 2006).
¹⁶⁰Aaron Klein, “Ex-Jewish cities now for Hamas terror training,” World Net Daily, (March 20, 2007).
¹⁶¹Will Rasmussen, “Gaza's greenhouses become hot property in Egypt,” Reuters, (January 31, 2008).
^161aRaz, Noa. “Blair sister-in-law: Gaza world’s largest concentration camp.” Ynetnews.com (September 11, 2008)
¹⁶²Shelly Paz and Rebecca Anna Stoil, “Gaza human chain a few links short,” Jerusalem Post, (February 25, 2008).
^162aAlhomayed, Tariq. “Hamas’s Gluttony.” Asharq Al-Awsat (September 7, 2008).
¹⁶³Khaled Abu Toameh, “Arab editor blames Hamas for Gaza crisis,” Jerusalem Post, (January 21, 2008).
¹⁶⁴“Palestinians refuse to receive fuel from Israel,” Xinhua, (December 2, 2007).
¹⁶⁵Jpost.com Staff, “PA: Hamas stealing Gaza hospitals’ fuel,” Jerusalem Post, December 6, 2007).
¹⁶⁶Jpost.com Staff, “Defense sources: Gaza blackout a Hamas trick,” Jerusalem Post,(January 20, 2008).
¹⁶⁷Amos Harel and Yuval Azoulay, “Gaza power plant shuts down due to fuel blockade,” Haaretz, (January 21, 2008).
¹⁶⁸Ellen Knickmeyer, “Gazans feeling recoil of attacks on Israel,” Washington Post, (February 19, 2008).
¹⁶⁹Eyad al-Sarraj and Sara Roy, “Ending the stranglehold on Gaza,” Boston Globe, (January 26, 2008).
¹⁷⁰Martin Kramer, “Gaza buried in flour,” Martin Kramer’s Sandbox, weblog, (January 28, 2008).
¹⁷¹Ellen Knickmeyer, “Egyptians Reseal Border, Cutting Access From Gaza,” Washington Post, (February 4, 2008).
¹⁷²Near East Report, (May 22, 2006).
¹⁷³Matthew Krieger and Tovah Lazaroff, “Hamas bans Israeli produce from Gaza,” Jerusalem Post, (July 10, 2007) .
¹⁷⁴ Wikipedia, “List of Qassam Rocket Attacks”.
¹⁷⁵Matan Tzuri,“‘We Didn't Think They Would Get to Us’,” Yediot Achronot, (March 2, 2008,) pg 8 (Hebrew).
¹⁷⁶ Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, “Population of Localities Numbering Above 1,000 Residents and Other Rural Population on 30/09/2007."
¹⁷⁷Mijal Grinberg and Yuval Azoulay, “5 Hurt in Ashkelon as Close to 50 Rockets Hit Southern Israel,” Haaretz, (March 2, 2008).
¹⁷⁸Ofra Edelman and Yuval Azoulay, “Student Killed in Negev College as Qassam Barrage Intensifies,” Haaretz, (February 28, 2008).
¹⁷⁹Shelly Paz and Judy Siegel, ‘I Screamed as Loud as I could So They Could Hear Me,’ Jerusalem Post, (February 11, 2008).
¹⁸⁰Ron Ben Yishai, “Givati Officers: Lessons from Lebanon Implemented in Gaza,” YNET News, (March 4, 2008).
¹⁸¹Ibid.
¹⁸²Tani Goldstein, “Rocket Hits Ashkelon House; Qassams Land in Sderot,” YNET News, (March 3, 2008).
¹⁸³AP Story, (January 1, 2005.)
¹⁸⁴ “A Conversation with Mahmoud Abbas,” Washington Post, (September 30, 2007).
¹⁸⁵AP Story, (January 1, 2005).
¹⁸⁶Ibid.
¹⁸⁷Roee Nahmias, “Report: Abbas Does Not Rule Out Resuming Armed Conflict with Israel,”YNET News, (February 28, 2008).
¹⁸⁸JPost Staff, “Abbas: ‘Armed Resistance Not Ruled Out’,” Jerusalem Post, (February 28, 2008).
¹⁸⁹“The End of the Affair, ” Wall Street Journal, (December 31, 2004).
¹⁹⁰Ibid.
¹⁹¹Khaled Abu Toameh, “PA's Elite Urge End To Violence,” Jerusalem Post, (February 27, 2004).
¹⁹²“The End of the Affair, ” Wall Street Journal, (December 31, 2004).
¹⁹³Barry Rubin, “Two Arab Elections, ” Jerusalem Post, (January 4, 2005).
¹⁹⁴Raphael Medoff, “Likely PA Prime Minister a Holocaust Denier,” Frontpage, (February 26, 2003).
¹⁹⁵AP and JPost Staff, “Abbas: ‘IDF Action Worse than the Holocaust’,” Jerusalem Post, (March 2, 2008).
¹⁹⁶Itamar Marcus and Barbara Cook, “Palestinian Authority Daily: ‘Killer of Eight Young Men is Holy Martyr- Shahid,’” Palestinian Media Watch, (March 9, 2008).
¹⁹⁷JPost Staff, “Abbas: Awards To Terrorists Have been Revoked,” Jerusalem Post, (April 17, 2008).
¹⁹⁸Roee Nahmias, “Report: Abbas Does Not Rule Out Resuming Armed Conflict with Israel,”YNET News, (February 28, 2008).
¹⁹⁹Abba Eban, “The Saudi Text,” The New York Times, (November 18, 1981).
²⁰⁰Interview with Jerusalem District Police Chief Aryeh Amit by Eetta Prince Gibson, “The Back Page,” The Jerusalem Report, (March 31, 2008).
²⁰¹Jitka Maleckova and Alan Kreuger, “Education, Poverty, Political Violence and Terrorism: Is There a Causal Connection?” (July 2002), quoted in the Daily Star [Lebanon], (August 6, 2002).
²⁰²Washington Post, (December 5, 2001).
²⁰³“Without Distinction - Attacks On Civilians by Palestinian Armed Groups,” Amnesty International, (July 11, 2002).
²⁰⁴ Jerusalem Post, (January 15, 2003).
²⁰⁵ Staff and AP, “Haniyeh: Hamas Will Weigh Ceasefire,” Jerusalem Post, (March 28, 2008).
²⁰⁶Khaled Abu Toameh, “Palestinian Affairs: Abbas's latest headaches,” Jerusalem Post, (March 27, 2008).
²⁰⁷Jewish Telegraphic Agency, (June 11, 2002).
²⁰⁸The Associated Press, “Palestinian Resigns Over Smuggling,” Washington Post, (April 7, 2008).
²⁰⁹The Associated Press, “Hezbollah agrees to remove Lebanon roadblocks,” International Herald Tribune (May 15, 2008).
²¹⁰The Associated Press, “Hizbullah wins veto right in government,” The Jerusalem Post (May 21, 2008).
²¹¹Robert F. Worth and Nada Bakri, “Hezbollah Begins to Withdraw Gunmen in Beirut,” The New York Times (May 11, 2008).
²¹² Palestine Chronicle, (July 6, 2003); Embassy of Israel (USA), (June 27, 2003).
²¹³ Washington Institute for Near East Policy, (June 2, 2003).
²¹⁴ Jerusalem Post, (July 17, 2003); Ha'aretz, (July 7 and 14, 2003); Israel Radio, (July 10, 2003).
²¹⁵ IMRA.
²¹⁶ The State Department, (June 20, 2003).
²¹⁷Khaled Abu Toameh, “Truce doesn’t mean end of resistance,” The Jerusalem Post (May 20, 2008).
²¹⁸“Israeli Cabinet debates evacuation pay,” JTA (September 14, 2008).
²¹⁹“Olmert sees land swaps in deal with Palestinians,” JTA (August 12, 2008); Leslie Susser, “Olmert’s Last Hurrah,” Jerusalem Report (September 15, 2008).
²²⁰ “Lobby For Human Rights In Jerusalem, ” (October 7, 1998).
²²¹ Kirchick, James, “Palestine and Gay Rights,” The Advocate, (July 11, 2006).
²²² AP, “Israel’s Supreme Court Approves Same-Sex Marriages Performed Abroad,” International Herald Tribune, (November 21, 2006).
²²³“First openly gay MK submits bill to legalize civil marriages,” Haaretz, (February 23, 2009).
²²⁴Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, (November 16, 2008).
²²⁵“Hamas announces ceasefire in Gaza,” BBCNews, (January 18, 2009).
²²⁶Ibid.
²²⁷“A surge in the number of rockets and mortar shells fired at Israel,” IICC, (March 1, 2009).
²²⁸“Gaza rocket hits Ashkelon, Israel files complaint with UN,” Haaretz, (March 3, 2009).
²²⁹“Increased humanitarian aid to Gaza after IDF operation,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, (March 2, 2009).
²³⁰Steinberg, Gerald. “Arab Peace or Durban War?” Jerusalem Post, (November 25, 2008).
²³¹Lazaroff, Tovah and Abe Selig. “Durban II draft document ‘getting worse’,” Jerusalem Post, (February 23, 2009).
²³²U.S. Department of State, Press Release (February 27, 2009)
²³³Steinberg, Gerald. “Analysis: Will the conference be delegitimized?” Jerusalem Post, (March 3, 2009).
²³⁴Isikoff, Michael and Mark Hosenball, “The Intel Czar Stumbles,” Newsweek, (March 10, 2009).
²³⁵Ibid.
²³⁶“Blame ‘the Lobby’,” The Washington Post, (March 12, 2009).
²³⁷Ibid.
²³⁸Frank R. Wolf, “Charles Freeman Orchestrated His Own Fall,” The Washington Post, (March 14, 2009).
²³⁹“Blame ‘the Lobby’,” The Washington Post, (March 12, 2009).
²⁴⁰Ibid.
²⁴¹“AIP calls on Iran to respect int’l treaties relevant to Bahrain, UAE,” Gulf in the Media, (March 23, 2009); “Arab League slams Iran’s ‘provocation’,” The Jerusalem Post, (March 22, 2009).
²⁴²“AIP calls on Iran to respect int’l treaties relevant to Bahrain, UAE,” Gulf in the Media, (March 23, 2009); “Abu Musa Island,” GlobalSecurity.org, (October 15, 2008).
²⁴³“AIP calls on Iran to respect int’l treaties relevant to Bahrain, UAE,” Gulf in the Media, (March 23, 2009).
²⁴⁴“Arab League slams Iran’s ‘provocation’,” The Jerusalem Post, (March 22, 2009).
²⁴⁵“Morocco severs relations with Iran,” aljazeera.net, (March 7, 2009).
²⁴⁶“Iran ‘angered’ by Morocco severing ties,” The Jerusalem Post, (March 8, 2009).
²⁴⁷“Netanyahu ‘will be peace partner,’” BBC, (March 25, 2009).
²⁴⁸“Chronological Review of Events Related to the Question of Palestine,” United Nations, (January 31, 1997).
²⁴⁹“The Wye River Memorandum,” US Department of State, (October 23, 1998).
²⁵⁰Raphael Ahren, “Netanyahu: Economics, not politics, is the key to peace,” Haaretz, (November 21, 2008).
²⁵¹Raphael Ahren, “Netanyahu promises peace talks,” Haaretz, (March 27, 2009).
²⁵²Herb Keinon, “Netanyahu refused to nix two state solution,” Jerusalem Post, (March 28, 2009).
²⁵³Shahar Ilan, “Netanyahu vows ‘every effort to reach viable peace,’” Haaretz, (March 30, 2009).
²⁵⁴“Obama defends boycott of UN racism meeting,” AFP, (April 19, 2009).
²⁵⁵Edward Cody, “Iranian: Israel Is a Racist State,” The Washington Post, (April 21, 2009).
²⁵⁶“UN Chief: Ahmadinejad ‘misused’ Durban II for political purposes,” Haaretz, (April 21, 2009).
²⁵⁷Edward Cody, “Iranian: Israel Is a Racist State,” The Washington Post, (April 21, 2009).
²⁵⁸Bruno Waterfields, “Britain isolated amid UN racism summit boycott,” Telegraph.co.uk., (April 20, 2009).
²⁵⁹Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, “Mahmoud Abbas: ‘I do not accept the Jewish State, call it what you will,’” Palestinian Media Watch, (April 28, 2009).
²⁶⁰Ari Shavit, “The two nation-state solution,” Haaretz, (April 24, 2009).
²⁶¹“Sari Nusseibeh: Palestinians should waive right of return,” Ynet, (July 30, 2008).
²⁶²“Abbas Calls Israel ‘Zionist Enemy’,” CBS News, (January 5, 2005).
²⁶³“Abu Mazen: Little Jihad is Over, Big Jihad Starts,” IsraelNN, (January 5, 2005).
²⁶⁴Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, “Abbas mocks idea of Jewish state,” Palestinian Media Watch, (May 4, 2009).
²⁶⁵Tagreed El Khodary and Ethan Bronner, “Addressing U.S., Hamas Says It Grounded Rockets,” New York Times, (May 4, 2009)
²⁶⁶Ibid.
²⁶⁷Address to “The Decline of the Zionist Regime” conference, Tehran University, Press TV, (May 27, 2008).
²⁶⁸Special Dispatch 2137, MEMRI, (December 3, 2008).
²⁶⁹Uri Bialer, Cross on the Star of David, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005, p. 3.
²⁷⁰Tony Johnson, “Vatican-Israel Relations,” Council on Foreign Relations, (May 12, 2009).
²⁷¹“Pope: Holocaust victims’ cry still echoes in our hearts,” Haaretz, (May 11, 2009).
²⁷²Rachel Donaido, “Vatican-Israel Tensions Rise Over Pius,” New York Times, (October 19, 2008).
²⁷³Richard Owen, “Dismay as Pope welcomes back Holocaust bishop Richard Williamson,” Times Online, (January 26, 2009).
²⁷⁴Rachel Donaido and Alan Cowell, “In Bethlehem, Pope Urges Lifting of Gaza Embargo,” New York Times, (May 13, 2009).
²⁷⁵Ibid.
²⁷⁶Only about 5% of the Security Fence is a wall. “Pope: West Bank fence is symbol of ‘stalemate’,” Haaretz, (May 13, 2009).
²⁷⁷Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Obama Tells Netanyahu He Has an Iran Timetable,” The New York Times, (May 18, 2009).
²⁷⁸“Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel,” White House Office of the Press Secretary, (May 18, 2009).
²⁷⁹Ibid.
²⁸⁰Ibid.
²⁸¹Hadad, “Qassam lands near house in Sderot,” Ynet News, (May 19, 2009).
²⁸²“Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel,” White House Office of the Press Secretary, (May 18, 2009).
²⁸³Herb Keinon, “PM: No new West Bank settlements,” Jerusalem Post, (May 24, 2009).
²⁸⁴Isabel Kershner, “Israel Removes Illegal Settler Outpost in West Bank,” New York Times, (May 21, 2009).
²⁸⁵“Middle East Peace Report, Vol. 10, Issue 35,” Americans for Peace Now, (May 26, 2009).
²⁸⁶Barak Ravid, “Lieberman to Haaretz: Israel ready for mutual peace moves,” Haaretz, (April 2, 2009).
²⁸⁷Glenn Kessler and Howard Schneider, “U.S. Urges Israel to End Expansion,” Washington Post, (May 24, 2009).
²⁸⁸“Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel,” White House Office of the Press Secretary, (May 18, 2009).
²⁸⁹ White House Press Release (May 28, 2009).
²⁹⁰Tovah Lazaroff, “Channel 2: Olmert Offers PA 98.1% of West Bank,” The Jerusalem Post (September 15, 2008).
²⁹¹Jackson Diehl, “Abbas’s Waiting Game,” The Washington Post (May 29, 2009).
²⁹²Ibid.
²⁹³ Marty Peretz, “The Spine,” The New Republic (May 29, 2009).
²⁹⁴Jackson Diehl, “Abbas’s Waiting Game,” The Washington Post (May 29, 2009).
²⁹⁵ White House Press Release (May 28, 2009).
²⁹⁶“Prime Minister's Speech at the Begin-Sadat Center at Bar-Ilan University,” Prime Minister’s Office, (June 14, 2009).
²⁹⁷“Statement from Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech,” The White House, (June 14, 2009).
²⁹⁸Khaled Abu Toameh, “Palestinians: Netanyahu has buried peace process,” Jerusalem Post, (June 14, 2009).
²⁹⁹Jackson Diehl, “Abbas’s Waiting Game,” The Washington Post (May 29, 2009).

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Notes