Three key points are being overlooked when reporting on the recent violence on the border between Israel and Gaza. First, the new US embassy is located in West Jerusalem which has been part of Israel since 1948.
Second, the opening of the US embassy and the celebration of Israel’s 70th anniversary has not provoked any significant violence on the West Bank or in East Jerusalem.
Third, the political leadership of Hamas and their families have been absent from the “peaceful” protests on the Gaza border.
What are the implications? First, the status of East Jerusalem has not been changed by the relocation of the US embassy. Second, the Palestinian Authority understands that security co-operation with Israel and the building of state institutions, and an economy for its people, is the way forward to achieving statehood. The Palestinians who live under Palestinian Authority rule have learnt that violence does not produce independence or economic viability.
Finally, the Hamas leadership has cynically manipulated its people and used them as a buffer for terrorist activity while failing to account for the billions of dollars in international aid that was donated for the purpose of reconstructing the damaged areas of Gaza that border Israel and which is instead being used to construct terror tunnels.
Rather than blaming Israel for the recent violent attacks on the Gaza border, the finger must be pointed at Palestinian leaders for inciting violence and using their own people as cannon fodder.
The Palestinian leadership must show a willingness to engage with Israel to advance the cause of its own people.
For far too long the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have behaved like cantankerous adolescents refusing to accept responsibility for its own plight. Blaming the so-called Israeli occupation on the predicament of Palestinians obfuscates the reality.
Moreover, the Palestinian leadership has been largely responsible for stunting development and economic growth within its jurisdiction and for not affording the freedoms its people deserve. Palestinian officials must advance the cause of their people in a manner that reflects maturity and foresight. Encouraging your constituents to take up arms and to infiltrate the Israeli border to wreak havoc on the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv is not befitting of credible leaders.
Greg Sheridan writes that the only way forward for Israel and the Palestinians is maximum effort to improve the economy and life conditions of Palestinians and find a way for the populations to reconcile.
Israel had 50 years since the 1967 war to improve Palestinian lives; instead it has strangled the Palestinian economy, trampled on their human rights, starved them to skin and bone, and killed several thousands of them in the hope they will go away. They have nowhere to go.
No one would believe Sheridan’s assertion that if there were 10 years of peace, Israel would rush to the idea of Palestinian statehood. The world has seen that Israel has no desire for peace, much as it mouths desire for it.
Sheridan’s view that Donald Trump’s move injects realism into Middle East is nonsense. Trump has wrecked any peace process, wrecked Western solidarity in Middle Eastern affairs and wrecked American credibility all around the world.
Palestinians in Gaza have set fire to the border crossing through which they get their medicine, fuel and other humanitarian essentials from Israel.
We hear a great deal about the misery of Gaza. The authors of that misery are also the victims. There’s a pattern here, and it deserves to be highlighted amid the torrent of morally blind, historically uneducated criticism to which Israelis are subjected each time they defend themselves against Palestinian attack.
No decent Palestinian society can emerge from the culture of victimhood, violence and fatalism symbolised by these protests. No worthy Palestinian government can emerge if the international community continues to indulge the corrupt, anti-Semitic autocrats of the Palestinian Authority or fails to condemn and sanction the killers of Hamas. No Palestinian economy will ever flourish through repeated acts of self-harm and destructive provocation.
These letters were published in The Australian.