What Peace Process?

Today, the Palestinian Legislative Council passed a law making any compromise on Jerusalem illegal.

The Palestinians state that they want a Palestinian State within the 1967 borders AND Jerusalem (see Jerusalem Post 12/6/07).

In other words, after attacking the nascent State of Israel in 1947/48 and losing, after mounting the 1967 war and losing, then waging the 1973 war, and despite incessant terror attacks since then, the Oslo Terror War and thousands of dead Israelis, the Palestinian's idea of "justice" is that they get their "Palestinian state" with its (for Israel) suicidal borders, forced transfer of hundreds of thousands of Jews AND all of Jerusalem.

The Palestinians never had ALL of Jerusalem. Under the aegis of their Jordanian masters, they managed to hang onto the eastern 'seaboard' of Jerusalem and the Old City. Once in control of the Old City, they drove out the Jews they hadn't already killed, dynamited the Jewish Quarter, destroyed the synagogues, desecrated the graves and -- built a Wall.

No one called it the "Apartheid Wall" back then, although that's exactly what it was. No Jews Allowed--despite "international guarantees" that Jews would have access to holy places, including the Western Wall, we didn't.

So much for "international guarantees."

Now the Palestinians, while talking "peace, peace" have in fact demonstrated once again that their talk is nothing more than a smokescreen. The passage of this law means that any compromise that Olmert and Abbas can reach on Jerusalem is doomed to fail, and that Abbas, by law, is now deemed a "traitor."

Even the hardliners of the Israeli government are willing to concede that the Arab-majority districts of Jerusalem could belong to the Palestinian state.

Such a compromise from the Israeli Right is apparently not enough. Hence this newly passed law prohibiting compromise, and declaring unconditionally that Jerusalem is "Palestinian, Arab and Islamic."

This is the sort of declarative statement that I wish the Tzafonim and the uber-Left elitist allies of European and American chattering classes would sit up and notice. This is, in effect, a declaration that peace is not negotiable and that if victorious, the non-Palestinian, non-Arab and non-Islamic citizens of Jerusalem better (1) not hope for civil rights and (2) run for their very lives.

Shades of 1948 ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem all over again....

Then again, on the "peace front" the Palestinians have presented another conundrum: "A massive IDF operation in the Gaza Strip will force the Palestinian Authority to boycott peace talks with Israel, PA officials warned Wednesday." (Jerusalem Post, 12-6-07)

The Palestinian terror gangs rain missiles down on Israeli towns daily, yet their government does nothing to stop them. The Palestinians and their amen-choir of NGOs, UN parasites and knee-jerk Leftists all bemoan "targetted killings" (IDF strikes on missile crews and terror unit heads), scream "disproportionate" when the IDF fires artillery back at them, but now scream about the only alternative, which is a ground assault.

Let me see if we've got this right: the Palestinians attack us from Gaza, deliberately aiming at civilian institutions like kindergartens and schools. We aren't permitted to selectively take out their leadership or their firing teams. If we eliminate those two options, and mount a ground offensive, then Israel will be responsible for halting the "peace process" because then the Palestinians will have to boycott the peace talks.

They're waging war, and we're supposed to make peace under fire? Yet we aren't allowed to make peace because peace requires compromise and one of the compromises to be decided is the the partition of Jerusalem, and now the Palestinians say any such partition is illegal--they want ALL of Jerusalem (including the majority that's Jewish).

And last week, Hamas, the political party of the majority of Palestinians, weighed in with their official policy: it called upon the United Nations to apologize for the 1947 partition plan, stating unquivocally that “Palestine is Arab Islamic land, from the river to the sea, including Jerusalem. … There is no room in it for the Jews.”

Why are we even talking to these people?