False Hopes of Peace

No point in pursuing deal with Palestinians, who won’t honor it anyway

By Gilad Sharon, YNet News, July 4,2007

The common thread tying our Palestinian neighbors together is their hatred towards us and their desire to see us harmed, and this is not sufficient to turn them into a nation.

It can be surmised, therefore, that if the State of Israel had never existed, a Palestinian state would not have existed just as it never has: Egypt would have moved further north, Syria would have moved a little to the south, and the whole matter would have been over and done with.

It is reasonable to assume that Jordan and Lebanon wouldn’t have existed either.

It is no coincidence that a Palestinian state was never established prior to Israel’s foundation; it is no coincidence that the Partition Plan was rejected by the Palestinians; it is also no coincidence that for the almost 20 years that had elapsed between the War of Independence and the Six Day War, no such state was established in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip.

Even recently, when it still seemed to many of us that there was a central government among the Palestinians, they chose not to establish a state of their own, even though such a state would have been recognized by the world at large, including Israel.

The truth of the matter is that Palestinian nationalism is the byproduct of our Zionism. This is the way it is, whether they like this fact or not. Namely, this is not sufficient to become a nation that shares a history, a culture and a common vision.

The terrible scenes of brutality among the Palestinians are nothing new. Such battles over local interests, clan wars and power struggles have always accompanied the Palestinians, even during their struggles against Israel. This was the case during the War of Independence when the Palestinians were also preoccupied with the battles between the Nashashibi and Husseini clans.

Futile talk

Why should all this be of interest to us? Because it impacts the way we should conduct ourselves. There is no point – as it has been demonstrated over and over again during the past 13 years – in reaching an agreement with any key Palestinian element. This is futile.

It suffices to look at the vast number of ceasefire agreements the Palestinians have signed among themselves during the infighting in Gaza (they even signed the Mecca Deal, which was supposed to give it some religious validity.) Every one of the agreements was breached even before the ink had dried on the documents they signed.

If this is the value they attribute to agreements among themselves, what then is the value of agreements signed with us, which of course were never adhered to? There is also no point to the choir of voices here calling to bolster Mahmoud Abbas, so that the murderers of his camp can defeat another murderous camp in their midst. Such talk is futile.

Drawing from my long-term experience of working with animals, I know that even if a chick is fed and cared for, its feathers will never turn into a lion’s mane, but only into feathers at the most.

We should do what’s best for us and not depend on any Palestinian element to do anything. There is no point in discussing an exchange deal with them, because there is no such exchange. We evacuated the Gaza Strip, for example, because we are better off not being there, as per the opinion of the vast majority and leadership.

Let’s imagine that we had left Gaza with an agreement, which would have obviously been immediately breached, could we then have flaunted something imaginary in return?

Our goal is to live in safety and calm. If we have to reach a local understanding to achieve this objective, that’s quite alright. There is no point in trying to force a western central government on the Palestinians or to force our values on them. This reeks of arrogance and patronage, and it won’t work.

Gilad Sharon is the son of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

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