“The biggest challenge we face — apart from occupation — is marginalization,” Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, said in an interview.This fear of being irrelevant is deeply rooted in the Palestinian Arab psyche. When they shoot rockets, they revel in the fact that Israelis are forced to run to shelters - even if there are no casualties - because that shows that they aren't being completely ignored. Their newspapers always have articles that can be roughly translated as, "Look! Someone noticed us!"
...The result is a serial splintering of the Palestinian movement, a loss of state sponsors and paralysis for those trying to build a state next to Israel. Just six months ago, there was a moment of optimism when the Palestinian Authority presented its case for recognition to the United Nations, and later when Hamas closed a deal to free hundreds of its prisoners in exchange for the release of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.
But now, as momentum for a peaceful two-state solution fades, and the effort at the United Nations remains stymied, no viable alternatives have emerged and attention has focused on other conflicts.
Zakaria al-Qaq, a Palestinian expert in national security at Al Quds University in Jerusalem, said he recently joined dozens of other foreign scholars for a series of lectures on his specialty in the United States. Not a single one mentioned the Palestinian issue.
“I don’t see Palestine on the agenda of the United States or Israel,” he said. “It is on the shelf. The Palestinians don’t have the ability to impose themselves on the world and they can’t mobilize their people. The Arab world is busy. The Palestinians are becoming secondary.”
It is this immaturity that gives rise to violence. They much prefer war to being ignored, no matter how many casualties they suffer. (It also leads to publicity-friendly stunts like the UN Security Council joke last year.)
And their supposed supporters are sick of their theatrics and unwillingness to grow up. They'll pay lip service but in the end, they don't care that much, and they don't want to be sucked into the Palestinian drama.
Because everyone knows that if the Palestinian Arabs want independence so badly, they could have it tomorrow. Their insistence on what they call "justice" rather than compromise and peace is proof-positive of their immaturity (and an indication of their true goals.) Jews have accepted compromise for peace, or even the chance of peace, since the absurdly one-sided Peel Commission partition plan of 1937. Palestinian Arabs have not.
Their public insistence on an extra 3% of land or whatever, and their willingness to refuse anything but their maximal demands, is not winning them any new friends. And it is causing them to lose their old friends. But like a couple going through a messy divorce, they insist that they get everything they demand, and who cares whether their kids will be hurt for another couple of generations? Their definition of "justice" is more important than mere human lives. And they define "justice" in their own peculiar way where they serve as prosecutor, judge and jury,
Instead of doing something positive, they whine. And complain. And threaten. And do anything they can to become the center of attention again.
Because that's what five year-olds do.