Peace Process Penalties

Rick Richman
Commentary/Contentions
08 March '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/03/08/peace-process-penalties/

The report that the Palestinian Authority is seeking to have Hamas removed from the U.S. and EU lists of terrorist organizations is a reminder of one of the striking aspects of the “peace process” — there is never a penalty for any Palestinian failure to abide by it.

Phase I of the Roadmap required the Palestinians to dismantle their terrorist organizations; the Palestinians elected their premier terrorist group to control their parliament, and the group now rules Gaza. Phase II contemplated a state with provisional borders; the Palestinians have consistently refused even to consider it. Phase III requires final status negotiations based on UN resolutions calling for secure and recognized borders and a withdrawal from an unspecified portion of the territories. The Palestinians refuse to negotiate anything more than a de minimis change to the indefensible 1967 lines and will not recognize a Jewish state even in a final agreement.

When you cannot implement Phase I, will not implement Phase II, and refuse to engage in Phase III, the Roadmap has effectively been discarded without penalty.

For its part, Israel has taken multiple steps without reciprocal Palestinian ones: (1) a freeze on settlement activity (as Israel understood that obligation); (2) dismantlement of 21 longstanding settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank; (3) transfer of Gaza to the PA; (4) dismantlement of numerous roadblocks and checkpoints in the West Bank; (5) forcible destruction of various settlement outposts; and (6) a 10-month moratorium on construction even within settlements that will remain part of Israel in any conceivable peace agreement.

Israel holds a letter signed by the president of the United States, given in exchange for the Gaza withdrawal, in which the U.S. promised it would prevent “any attempt by anyone to impose any other plan” than the Roadmap (emphasis added). The letter was intended as a U.S. commitment to enforce the penalty implicit in the full name of the Roadmap (“A Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution”): absent compliance with Phases I and II, the Palestinians would not obtain a state.

But there was no penalty for failure to abide by the commitment.

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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.

(Read full post)
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