Dependent independence

As co-blogger, Daled Amos notes in his excellent critique of the Times editorial The Peril of an Israeli Transition, the Times holds everyone responsible for a Palestinian state other than the Palestinians themselves.

I’d like to add a few observations.

1) More and more Palestinian independence is defined by their dependence on others.

2) At the end of the editorial, the editors write:

A way must be found to help turn Hamas into a legitimate and acceptable negotiating partner.

And that worked out so well, when the organization in question was Fatah.

3) We’ve been here before. A search yielded this editorial from when the Oslo Accords were anticipated.

Mr. Arafat, the P.L.O. chairman, risks his prestige and his life by standing up to radicals who hold out for the same maximalist demands he himself used to proclaim.

Then, 3 years later, after Binyamin Netanyahu was elected PM of Israel, in large part due to Arafat’s failure to move beyond the rhetoric of his past, the Times had this to say:

By meeting with Mr. Arafat, Mr. Netanyahu showed that he understands that the Likud Party’s fierce animosity toward the Palestinian leader should give way to a more moderate governing posture.

While it’s true that Netanyahu did moderate his “governing posture,” his “animosity” wasn’t the result of arbitrary prejudice as the Times suggested, but it was a reaction to his (correct) observation that Arafat did nothing but take Israeli concessions and then aid his allies fight in the commission of terror against Israel.

The same approach is still in place. Everyone in the world is responsible for creating a Palestinian state other than the Palestinians and that an essential element of that help is to ignore ongoing Palestinian obligations towards Israel.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.