"Obstacles to Peace"

How many times have we heard that the Jewish settlers who live beyond the Green Line are obstacles to peace? A quick search finds here,
here, here, here, and literally hundreds of other times that this phrase was used in reference to Jewish settlements, often by the State Department and the White House.

Well, now these supposed obstacles are gone from Gaza, so we must be that much closer to peace now, right?

The Palestinian Authority, instead of housing citizens in the Gaza communities abandoned by Israel, has turned them into training camps for armed factions. N'vei Dekalim is used to launch rockets.

Many of the 21 communities emptied of their Jewish residents last summer have now been turned into full-fledged military training camps of the ruling Fatah group and of other Islamic terror groups. According to the groups, the communities also act as recruitment centers for the “people's army” being funded by Fatah.

Two Kassam rockets were fired from Gaza, mid-day Tuesday, toward Israeli towns in the western Negev. A Hamas official told the World Tribune that the rockets were fired from former Jewish towns that have been converted into launching sites for the war against the Jewish State.

Last month, the PA official in charge of interior affairs, Nassar Yusouf, toured the training camp erected on the remains of the community of N'vei Dekalim – which was the largest of the Jewish towns in Gush Katif. Yusouf planned to declare the area a closed military zone, but soon realized that armed hordes from his own Fatah faction had set up a military infrastructure in the place.

It must be an oversight by the major media outlets and our Department of State, but not once have I seen terror training camps in Gaza referred to as "obstacles to peace." Not once have I seen anyone in the mainstream press or officials from the US or EU utter the obvious truth that terror is far more an "obstacle to peace" than Jews who want to live on historically Jewish land.

It is mind-boggling that after the Gaza debacle, where the pseudo-statelet is well on its way to becoming Hamastan, that people think that peace is closer now than it was six months ago.

There is only one obstacle to peace - the fact that the Palestinian Arabs, and the Arab and Muslim world at large, cannot accept the idea of Jews living in the Middle East in positions of power, even if Israel was the size of a tablecloth.

Solving that problem will not bring peace, but it is a necessary precondition of peace. Making more concessions to people who ultimately want you dead or dhimmified is the worst sort of wishful thinking.