A Peace Agreement With The Palestinians! -- Am I Missing Something?

There are peace agreements and there are peace agreements.  After WW II, a number of peace agreements were hammered out.  We had one with Japan.  Another with Germany.  But, those were with countries we had defeated.   We also had peace agreements after WW I.  They proved disasterous.

There are peace treaties that never get consummated.  China still wants to take over Taiwan which they will never permit to be admitted to the UN.  Russia and Japan still haven't come to terms over the Sakhalin Islands and Argentina hasn't dropped its claims on the Falklands.  And, that's probably not the half of these ongoing disputes.

I would add that lots of people want their independence from brutish oppressors.  In this category one finds the Tibetans, the Kurds, and the South Sudanese.  Your odds of gaining independence are best if you're dealing with a democracy, like the Slovakians who wanted to separate from the Czechs.  Or, if you have some natural resource like the South Sudanese and their oil. And, some hundreds of years ago, Portugal gained its independence from Spain only because its English sponsors had a stronger  military than Spain's ally, France.  And, so it goes.

We now look at that sorry collection of Arabs; namely, the Palestinians.  First off, they pretend to be willing to live in peace with Israel.  Really?  Their problems require red herrings and their constant contentiousness with Israel suits that requirement to a T.  So what are the problems of the Palestinians. Perhaps first and foremost is the struggle between Hamas and Fatah.  Hamas won first elections ever in Gaza (let's see when they again have elections) because the people there viewed Fatah as corrupt.  But while the Gazans were happy to see Fatah defeated, it's questionable as to whether they were pleased to see Hamas execute so many followers of Fatah.  C'est la guere.

But, Fatah did maintain control over the west bank.  And that raises an important question.  Are there to be two Palestinian nations, or one?  We know that Fatah and Hamas have been having a great number of meetings to find a way of merging their interests and presenting themselves as a single nation.  But, there's a problem.  Hamas, in Gaza, has a constitution.  It calls for the elimination of Israel.  If one part of the Palestinians has that sort of constitution, how can we pretend that there's a single Palestinian nation?  So, let's put the Gaza matter aside and pretend that we can deal with Fatah as the single Palestinian entity.

Now the problems just begin.  We can't disregard history and what we say unfold when Israeli communities were removed from Gaza.  We can't not see the horrible disintegration of Syria.  Imagine if Israel in its pursuit of peace had returned any part of the Golan to Syria.  Every country surrounding Israel has massive problems.  To the north there is Lebanon with Hezbollah, a client of Iran, on Lebanon's southern border.  Syria has been referred to.  Jordan is already largely Palestinian.  The only reason their king hasn't been deposed is that its identity as a Palestinian state would become overt.  With Jordan identified as Palestinian, the claims of the Palestinians on the west bank would be seriously undercut.  Finally, to the south, we have Egypt.  Does Israel really want to see another Jew-hating state to its east?

If Fatah really wanted a state -- something they could actually have had a long time ago had they been willing to recognize Israel as a Jewish state -- they would now have to give up a great number of their demands.  The demand that Israel accept the return of Palestinians simply can not be satisfied.  Dividing up Jerusalem between the Palestinians and the Israelis is also out of the question.  (Would Saudi Arabia allow non-Muslims to reside in Mecca or Medina?)

There are really only three factors that make the Israeli-Palestinian conflict worthy of anyone's attention.
First, there is the overlarge role played by Islamic oil.  The overwhelming influence of oil has can be seen in the UN, where utterly ruthless nations sit on human rights committees.  Second, there is the overlarge role played by dysfunctional nations and their oil wealth that harbor a hatred of the US.  Here we find the Latin America countries that have been propped up by Venezuela.  Nations in this cohort include Cuba, Ecuador, Peru and Nicaragua.  These UN enemies of Israel are joined by countries that would seek greater voting strength in the UN by allying themselves with the above mentioned countries.

Perhaps the saddest nations are the many European countries opposed to Israel and delighted to see Israel struggle with the Palestinian tar baby.  Some of these nations have histories that go back to WW II, when they remained neutral in the face of the great struggle between the British and the Americans and their allies on one side and the Nazis on the other.  Ireland fits in in this category.  And, which country in Europe, at one time or another, did not torment its Jewish population in much the same way they continue to torment gypsies.  What a wonderful opportunity these countries now have to show the Jews what happens when they get too uppity.

And, last, but hardly least, is the hostility of the secular left.  There is the leftist view that holds that the world would be a better place of all nations and all people subscribed to the same codes of belief and behavior.  For them, cultural differences are something to be eliminated.  The violence in Muslim lands  confirms their belief that cultural eccentricities can only lead to dysfunctional behavior.  Israel, a nation that arose on a Zionist foundation, flies in the face of leftist theology.  That a nation committed to a Jewish belief system can prosper; and, more than prosper, actually show within their nation how Christians, Jews, Moslems, blacks, whites, straights and gays can all live together in peace is something leftists find intolerable.

How can there be peace when the belief system of so many nations finds Israel's success so intolerable?