Peace a long way off

Editorial

After a visit with British Prime Minister Tony Blair – a summit of embattled prime ministers if there ever was one – Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced he would seek to restart the so-called "road map" to peace.

This may not be a time for humor but, by coincidence, while thumbing through an old compendium of the brilliant satirical magazine The Onion, we encountered this headline from 2002: "Mideast peace process derailed, burned to the ground, shovelled over with dirt."

The "Mideast peace process," a comedic term were it not such a tragic one, has inspired writers to plumb the depths of language like Monty Python describing a dead parrot. Israel, pressed by the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and the world community, tries again and again to find common ground and compromise with an enemy whose overriding goal is complete annihilation of the Jewish presence in the Middle East. At what point will the people and government of Israel give up this futile engagement?

The last substantive effort at a constructive end to decades of conflict was last year's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. This was the latest in an endless history of opportunities the Palestinians had to demonstrate that their goal was a constructive one – nationhood – rather than a destructive one – the end of Israel. The Palestinians demonstrated unequivocally where they stand by encouraging anarchy and expanded terrorism within that territory. It is a symptom of either Israel's boundless faith in the goodness of human nature or its dense failure to learn the lessons of history that it keeps trying to make nice with a people and a leadership that have given no demonstrable indication that they seek peaceful co-existence.

The United Nations and the West have accepted as adequate the most cursory expressions of peace from the Palestinians while domestically the Palestinian leadership and grassroots continues its six-decade battle for supremacy over the Zionist usurper.

Peace will not come from more Israeli entreaties. Peace requires a comprehensive social restructuring of Palestinian society from one of genocidal jihadist fanaticism to one that is prepared to enter the family of peaceful nations in co-existence with its neighbors.

Israel has nothing more it can offer to this process. It depends on the Palestinians.

Israel continues to extend more and more olive branches only to have them snapped and burned, because the world community demands it and Israel, foolishly, concedes.

Until the world community acknowledges that peace lies in the hands of the Palestinians and stops blaming Israel for the situation, there will be no peace. Until the world places pressure on the Palestinians instead of making infinite excuses and justifications for the violence and Jew-hatred that is integral to that society, there will be no peace.

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