The Orwellian Peace Process

Rick Richman
Contentions/Commentary
24 March '10

We are indebted to George Orwell for the observation that the corruption of public life begins with the corruption of language, and nowhere has that been more evident than in the “peace process” — whose very name has proved Orwellian.

The “peace process” has so far produced three wars. The first occurred in 2000, after Israel offered the Palestinians a state on all of Gaza and virtually all of the West Bank. Yasir Arafat rejected the offer, returned home to a hero’s welcome, and commenced a barbaric terror war, quaintly named an “intifada,” waged in Israeli restaurants, discos, hotels, schools, and buses. In 2005, Israel removed every soldier and settler from Gaza to enable the Palestinians to demonstrate their willingness to live “side by side in peace and security”; the result was a rocket war against Israel from new forward positions. In 2008, Israel offered a state on 100 percent of the West Bank and Gaza (after land swaps) with a shared Jerusalem; the “peace partner” rejected the offer. A month later, a new war in Gaza became necessary to bring the rockets to a halt.

In 2003, the Palestinians agreed to a three-phase “Performance-Based Road Map” and then failed to perform Phase One — dismantling terrorist groups and infrastructure — much less Phase Two. The result was that their “performance” was waived and the U.S. pushed immediate Phase Three final-status negotiations. The failure to abide by the Road Map was called “accelerating” it.

“Peace process,” “peace partner,” “intifada,” “side by side in peace and security,” “accelerating” — these are all Orwellian terms designed to mask the fact that the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected a state in order to pursue the Orwellian “right of return” — an alleged “right” not given to the millions of other 20th century refugees (including the 820,000 Jews expelled from Arab lands), much less to those whose refugee status resulted from their decision to reject a two-state solution in 1948 and start a war instead.

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