The Obama Administration is demanding that Israel hand over more West Bank land to exclusive PA control, including the Abu-Dis area adjacent to Jerusalem, Palestinian sources told Ynet Thursday.Because what could possibly be wrong with turning back the clock to the day before a war began that killed a thousand Israeli civilians?According to the US vision, the move will take place as part of reverting to the state that prevailed in the West Bank before the outbreak of the last Intifada.
"The most significant demand is to restore the situation to what it was on the eve of the Intifada," one source said.
Starting and losing a war has consequences in every part of the world except for one. Since 1967, the world - and "international law" as interpreted by most - is fixated on the idea that the Arabs can start all the wars they want against Israel. If they lose, international pressure will ensure that the previous status quo can be returned to, so there are no consequences for losing.
We have seen Egypt, Syria, the PLO, the PLO again, Hezbollah and Hamas start wars with Israel, secure in the knowledge that they will not lose anything of consequence if they lose the war. Just expendable people who are less important than "The Struggle" and perhaps a few years of negotiations and pressure.
It wasn't that many years ago that Israelis were putting their lives on the line in order to take a bus or go to a restaurant. Their government finally went on the offensive to fix this intolerable situation - it built a fence, it took actions against terrorists, it added checkpoints both in the territories and all over Israel itself that every citizen had to go through many times daily, and it took actions to stop giving Hamas materials to build rockets and tunnels with.
All those defensive actions, meant to save lives, appear to be now "unacceptable," in the term that the Obama administration uses with serious conviction against Israel and with fake conviction against Iran.
Now, the surviving Palestinian Arab leaders who wholeheartedly supported the intifada are being given an opportunity to turn back the clock, so they can come up with a new way to destroy Israel without losing any leverage.
The strategy is simple. When the Arabs win, militarily or politically, they win. When Israel wins, it is a draw at best. So all the Arabs have to do is keep trying.
While the White House thinks in terms of four-year chunks of time, the Arabs think in terms of centuries. To them, the Crusades were a mere blip in time.
And so is Israel.
So, backed by Westerners who cling to the false hope that a temporary peace treaty will somehow stop worldwide Islamic terror, the Arabs can keep trying to shave parts of Israel off until there is nothing left. After a Palestinian Arab state will come demands for the Arab parts of Israel, then demands for the 1947 partition lines, then demands for Arabs to "return" to lands that they never owned to begin with. There will be demands for "Palestine" to have full control over its airspace, to have the full ability to invite Iran or Syria to place an army on its territory, all in the name of fairness and independence.
The demands,and the supporting wars, will not stop because there is no incentive to stop them. They know that the West will always want to turn the clock back if they lose, so why fear losing?
There is a basic fact that should be self-evident, but years of double-talk and wishful thinking has rendered it invisible in the Middle East:The only way towards real peace is if both sides have something to lose by its absence.