Looking for peace partners in all the wrong places

Last week, while expressing some limited skepticism towards the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, Ethan Bronner of the New York Times reported that the economic and security situations in areas under the control of Fatah have improved greatly in recent years. Even AP acknowledges some of these changes.

But today, Isabel Kershner “reports” that Netanyahu and his government really aren’t interested in peace.

Mr. Netanyahu has been explicit, though, about his conditions for a deal. He says the Palestinians must recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people. Palestinian negotiators reject such recognition, contending it would preclude the demand of the Palestinian refugees of 1948 and their descendants for the right of return to their former homes, and be detrimental to the status of Israel’s Arab minority.

Mr. Netanyahu adds that the problem of the refugees has to be resolved outside the borders of Israel and that Israel will only accept defensible borders, and he wants international guarantees that any Palestinian state will be fully demilitarized.

To that his aides have lately added that there is currently no Palestinian partner who can deliver the essential conditions for statehood as outlined by Mr. Netanyahu, or who is capable of making the historic compromise necessary for a final peace deal.

This would appear to be pretty accurate. However Kershner continues, with cynicism dripping form her writing:

It is a familiar refrain: For years, leaders from the Likud Party refused to negotiate on grounds that Yasir Arafat, the strongman of Palestinian nationalism who many Israelis viewed as a dictatorial terrorist, was no partner for peace. Now his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, the Western-backed Palestinian president who has shunned violence against Israelis, is held in disregard for being domestically weak.

Now whether Abbas has always shunned violence against Israelis is an open question. (If it were answered, I don’t think it would be answered in a way that would support Kershner’s assumptions.) However, why are these two claims contradictory?

Arafat was a dictatorial terrorist who actively promoted terror against Israel and he left no political organization in place to ensure an orderly succession. (Ironically during the years when Arafat ran the show we’d hear that he couldn’t make compromises because he was too politically weak from the same people who’d tell us that only by dealing with Arafat could Israel make peace.) Now Abbas and Fayyad are in charge in Judea and Samaria and neither commands any significant political support. Arafat, of course, made violence against Israel a virtue, so until his legacy is purged from Palestinian society, those advocating co-existence (sincerely or not) will be at a political disadvantage. Even now Fatah glamorizes terror even while outlets like the New York Times claim that its leaders are interested in coexistence.

At the end of her article, to bring additional proof that Netanyahu isn’t interested in peace, Kershner interviews Saeb Erekat.

Saeb Erekat, a senior Abbas aide and veteran Palestinian negotiator, said stopping settlement construction, as the Americans have demanded, was “an Israeli obligation, not a Palestinian condition.” There can be no compromise, he added. “Either they stop or they do not,” he said.

The Israelis say Mr. Erekat is just posturing. Mr. Erekat, meanwhile, said of the Israelis, “They are the ones refusing to meet with us.”

Adding to the circular feeling of the conflict, Mr. Erekat stated that if the Israelis were willing to resume negotiations like before on the core, final status issues of the conflict, including borders, refugees, Jerusalem and the settlements, “then Saeb Erekat will come.”

Erekat is an interesting source. Here’s what he had to say about Arafat’s refusal to agree to peace with Ehud Barak:

“Yasser Arafat said to Clinton defiantly: ‘I will not be a traitor. Someone will come to liberate it after 10, 50, or 100 years. Jerusalem will be nothing but the capital of the Palestinian state, and there is nothing underneath or above the Haram Al-Sharif except for Allah.’ That is why Yasser Arafat was besieged, and that is why he was killed unjustly.

And why “moderate” Mahmoud Abbas wouldn’t agree to peace with Ehud Olmert.

“In November 2008… Let me finish… [Israeli prime minister Ehud] Olmert, who talked today about his proposal to Abu Mazen, offered the 1967 borders, but said: ‘We will take 6.5% of the West Bank, and give in return 5.8% from the 1948 lands, and the 0.7% will constitute the safe passage, and East Jerusalem will be the capital, but there is a problem with the Haram and with what they called the Holy Basin.’ Abu Mazen too answered with defiance, saying: ‘I am not in a marketplace or a bazaar. I came to demarcate the borders of Palestine – the June 4, 1967 borders – without detracting a single inch, and without detracting a single stone from Jerusalem, or from the holy Christian and Muslim places.’ This is why the Palestinian negotiators did not sign…”

Of course, one could argue that Netanyahu hasn’t come close to what either Barak or Olmert offered. But there’s another question that Kershner and those like her never bother to address: what will be enough? If Barak’s and Olmert’s (overly generous) offers were rejected and didn’t even form the basis for further negotiations, what must Israel cede to get the Palestinians to agree to peace?

In other words, based on Erekat’s own claims – to the Arab world – there is no Palestinian partner ready or willing to make peace with Israel. Why is Netanyahu portrayed as cynical for saying he has no partner among the Palesitnians, when experience and their own words confirm Netanyahu’s stance?

It’s something that most Israeli understand, when will the rest of the world?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.