Commenting on these revelations, the Jerusalem Post’s Herb Keinon notes that “over the past couple of weeks, everyone from the World Bank to the International Monetary Fund and UN Mideast envoy Robert Serry has come out with reports declaring that Palestinian institutions are about ready for statehood,” and that last week in Brussels an international donors conference for the Palestinian Authority said, “The PA is above the threshold for a functioning state in key sectors.”
These assessments deal with areas like finance, administration, law, and infrastructure, where current PA prime minister Salam Fayyad is credited with bringing about improvements over the last few years, while ignoring such matters as the massive incitement and hate-education that foster atrocities like the Itamar massacre and a broader societal ethos where one-third of the population said they approve of it.
Yet on Tuesday, while Israelis were celebrating Passover and just two days after the news about the Itamar suspects, Israeli media prominently reported on a Los Angeles Times article claiming that
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under mounting pressure to unveil a new plan for solving the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict or risk having the U.S. and international community move ahead with a strategy of their own…. American and European diplomats are continuing to prod Netanyahu to lay out his vision for restarting peace talks and ending the occupation of the West Bank. If he does not, diplomats warned, the so-called Mideast quartet—the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations—may attempt to jump-start the process by formally endorsing, for the first time, the creation of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Netanyahu’s government has vehemently opposed such a move.
On the one hand, ongoing Palestinian terror that issues from a society festering with hatred. On the other, Western demands—even in the face of raging Middle East instability—for an instant Palestinian state on all of the territory that is supposed to be in dispute. The disconnect could not be more jarring. Just before Passover, Netanyahu told Agence France-Presse that
The core of the conflict has always been the persistent refusal of the Palestinian leadership to recognize the Jewish state in any borders…. Why don’t the Palestinians do something so simple as recognizing the Jewish state? After all, we are prepared to recognize a Palestinian state. Why can’t they reciprocate if they really want peace?
But it’s more than not recognizing the Jewish state. It’s not recognizing the right of the Jews in it to live.
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