'Palestinian' society not ready for peace
Palestinian Media Watch's Itamar Marcus was in Toronto last week, where he was interviewed by the Canadian Jewish News. He said that 'Palestinian' society is nowhere near ready for peace or for any kind of compromise. (Hat Tip: NY Nana)The Palestinian leadership is playing a double game – the same one they have been playing for years. They promise reconciliation when they speak to Western interlocutors in English but they assure their own people in Arabic that Israel has no right to exist and fighting it is a religious duty.Keep in mind, Marcus isn't discussing ancient history. He's not even talking about seven years ago. He's talking about NOW. NOW the 'Palestinians' are continuing to indoctrinate their children to religiously mandated jihad. And the Olmert-Barak-Livni government wants to give them all of Judea and Samaria?
Marcus said when considering which represents the Palestinian leadership’s real position, “we learned in the past that the message they give their people is the one they truly believe.”
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In an interview with The CJN, Marcus said PMW’s latest research showed “the Palestinian leadership has literally stolen the opportunity for peace from their children and society.”
The Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, who is considered a moderate, have fashioned a series of school texts used from grades 1 through 12 that poison the opportunity for peace, he said.
The Grade 12 text, released only a few months ago, refers to the conflict with Israel as a religiously mandated one. “None of the books say [the conflict] is about the West Bank. They say it is existential,” he said.
All Palestinian school texts have been updated by Fatah since 2000. The Grade 12 books, introduced at the end of 2006, “make no attempt to educate for peace and co-existence with Israel. Indeed the opposite is true,” states a PMW analysis of the books. “The teaching repeatedly rejects Israel’s right to exist, presents the conflict as a religious battle for Islam, teaches Israel’s founding as imperialism, and actively portrays a picture of the Middle East, both verbally and visually, in which Israel does not exist at all.”
That message is continued on official government television, in state-run newspapers and to a somewhat lesser extent, in the privately held Al-Quds newspaper.
A television documentary that aired on Aug. 20, 2007 on PATV, refers to Jaffa, Haifa, Tiberias and other Israeli territories as Palestinian lands. In these circumstances, it would be unwise to trust Abbas to deliver a peace agreement with Israel, Marcus said.
“Abbas was Yasser Arafat’s right hand man during the period of duplicity when Arafat was giving one message to Israel and another to his own people,” he stated.
To further illustrate his point, Marcus pointed to a development involving U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, who is pushing the Annapolis conference. Following a meeting with Abbas that preceded the Palestinian civil war, the secretary told reporters Abbas assured her he would demand that Hamas recognize Israel.
When asked by Palestinian television to comment, Abbas assured his audience he would not demand that either Hamas nor his organization, Fatah, recognize Israel, Marcus stated.
After years of indoctrination, Palestinian society is not prepared for peace with Israel.
Even if Abbas sincerely wanted peace, which Marcus doubted, he has no support for that within Palestinian society. Any deal would not outlive Abbas and Israeli territorial withdrawals would leave it in a precarious security position, he said.
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The U.S. administration is pushing Israel towards a deal that would endanger it to gain support from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for military action against Iran.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is “desperate for a deal,” even though the Israeli military, security services, parliamentarians and public oppose concessions, he said.
The bankruptcy of the Rice/Olmert approach can even be seen from the language they use, he continued. They refer to a “window of opportunity,” but “if it’s a window, it’s not an opportunity.
“A window won’t survive. It has to be a society [that supports peace],” he said.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:10 AM
1 Comments:
Carl,
Thanks for the hat tip. I wish that I could have seen him in Toronto.
He is spot on, but sadly President Bush and Condi are so wrong, so very wrong, and it is Israel, I fear, that will pay for this stupidity.
'Peace'? They do not even have a rudimentary concept of what the word means, and have no desire to learn.
Olmerde, their partner in crime, seems determined to see this lynching through. He is complicit in this, and so are his merry band of thieves. They are willingly participating in this farce, and I still hope that Annapolis with fall apart at the feet of Bush, Condi and Olmerde.
The Israelis could have and should have stayed home.
I am not very optimistic, though.
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