Pretty Boy of Israeli Politics Calls Out Palestinians

Yair Lapid, a strong advocate of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, expressed doubt about the PA's intentions.  His new position reflects a consensus among Israelis that the Palestinians scuttled peace talks purposefully

Do the Palestinians Really Want Their Own State?
- Treasury Minister Yair Lapid interviewed by David Horovitz

"There is a question that is haunting me which is whether the Palestinians really want to have their own state. I'm not sure about it."
   
"The Palestinians are the first nation in history that are treating independence as a zero-sum game. They say either you give us 100% of what we want or we don't want it at all. The United States was established as a shaky confederation of 13 states....Modern Italy was formed without Rome."
 
"Look at the UN Resolution about the establishment of Israel: 55% of the territory, without the Western Wall, without big chunks of Jerusalem. But we acted according to the basic principles of nations that really want independence. We said, whatever they give us we're going to take, and then we're going to struggle over the details. This is what nations really do when they really want to go there."
"But the Palestinians are saying: They've only offered us 94% of what we want territorially. We're not going to take it. They've only offered us 94% of the self-government that we've asked for. We're not going to take it. It's either 100% or we're not taking it at all."
   
"You look at this and you ask yourself, maybe they don't want it so much." 
(Times of Israel)


Palestinian Magical Thinking - Jonathan Spyer
 
Palestinian nationalism in both its Fatah and Hamas variants rejects the possibility of accepting the permanence of Jewish statehood in any part of the area west of the Jordan River. For the Palestinian Authority, the nine-month period of negotiations came as an unwelcome interruption to a very different strategy to which it will now return: attempting to isolate and delegitimize Israel at international forums to induce it to make concessions in return for nothing.
     
This strategy follows a notable pattern in Palestinian politics - namely, the constant attempt to find an alternative to a negotiated peace based on compromise. The Palestinians see themselves as part of the local majority Arabic-speaking Sunni Muslim culture. From this point of view, the establishment of a non-Muslim sovereignty in Israel is not only an injustice, but also an anomaly, bound eventually to be defeated and disappear. So there is no need to reconcile to it.
    
The campaign to place pressure on Israel through activism on the international stage is the latest example of this Palestinian magical thinking. So expect more furious and pathos-filled denunciations of Israeli crimes from various UN committees largely staffed by the representatives of various dictatorships.
The writer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
(PJ Media)
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