President Bush yesterday said, "I strongly support the creation of a Palestinian state. I believe it's in the interests of the Palestinian people, I believe it's in the interests of Israel to have a democracy living side-by - democracies living side-by-side in peace."
And when the "democracy" elects a terror government - what then? We've already seen the fruits of giving election powers to Palestinian Arabs when they have been raised in an environment that lionizes terror and seethes with hate. I like many things about President Bush, but when he read Natan Sharansky's book, The Case for Democracy, he either fundamentally misunderstood the message or he ignored a crucial part of it - the Town Square test:
If a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society. We cannot rest until every person living in a "fear society" has finally won their freedom.All the events in the territories prove that Palestinian ARabs are not ready for free elections, let alone a state, and when the leaders of the world effectively reward them with a state while they continue to support violence then the world is rewarding terror. (Not to mention that after Hamas took over Gaza, Abbas resorted to extreme non-democratic measures to maintain power in the West Bank.)
And it is not only Bush. While Israeli newspapers emphasized Tzipi Livni's speech yesterday saying that a secure Israel is in the Palestinian Arab interest, they ignored what the Palestinian Arab newspapers highlighted about the speech - she said that a Palestinian Arab state is in Israel's interest.
History shows, however, that Palestinian Arabs have not the slightest interest in a state. The could declare a state in Gaza today if they wanted to; they could build all the institutions they want and make a model democratic society in a contiguous area where not a single Jew or Zionist lives. When they were offered a state in 2001 they rejected it, as they did in 1947 when they rejected partition and in 1950 when the West Bankers voluntarily chose to be annexed to Jordan and become Jordanian citizens.
Time and time again the Palestinian Arab leaders have proven that they do not want to establish an Arab state but to destroy a Jewish state. Their refusal to consider compromise on Jerusalem - an ignored part of the Arab world until Zionism came along - is only one proof of this. Their refusal to compromise on the 1967 borders - which the Arab world did not recognize in 1967, but belatedly found to be acceptable after the Six Day War - proves this. Their refusal to push the Arab world to allow Palestinian Arabs to become citizens of their nations, rather to leave them stateless to increase pressure on Israel proves that they don't even care about their own people, let alone statehood. (Does anyone really think that PalArab leaders would welcome some five million Arabs of Palestinian descent moving into the West Bank and Gaza? )
And if Israel debased itself so much as to allow a state to be established on the entire West Bank and Gaza, who is so naive as to think that the leaders of this state would make any serious moves to prevent terrorists to infiltrate Israel from the territories as they did during the '50s and '60s? Who can claim that the Palestinian Arabs, or the Arab world as a whole, would not use this state as a launching pad for further terror and pressure - just as Hezbollah does with Shebaa Farms, you know that Palestinian Arabs will choose even the tiniest border disputes as excuses to keep terror going.
Why shouldn't they? Terror has gotten them this far, and the world is telling them that they can accomplish all of their goals not with freedom and democracy but with violence.