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Stop Spoiling the Palestinians

(Jerusalem Post) Editorial - In private conversations in recent days with visiting European statesmen, Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that the Palestinians are being treated by some EU member-states as a "spoiled child," habituating the Palestinians to believe that they can gain concessions without giving anything in return. This was precisely the message coming out of Europe this week as Mideast Quartet envoys prepared to meet in Brussels. As one senior Israeli official put it, the EU hopes to avert a Palestinian statehood bid at the UN in September by "giving something" significant to the Palestinians. The hope among Europeans, according to this senior official, is that Israel will be pressured into agreeing to adopt President Obama's formula of restarting negotiations using the 1949 Armistice lines as a baseline. But the Palestinians will not be required to make any concessions to Israel. In other words, the Palestinians would be rewarded for their protracted intransigence - including their refusal to come to the negotiating table with Israel. Experience has shown that efforts to appease the Palestinians - including the U.S.-led demand for the 10-month settlement freeze accepted by the Netanyahu government last year - are liable to encourage not fresh readiness to compromise but, rather, still more intransigence, in order to secure yet more Israeli concessions. The best thing the international community could give the Palestinians is intelligent advice against seeking unilateral measures in the UN and in favor of genuine reconciliation with Israel and recognition of the Jewish state's right to exist peacefully.
2011-06-24 00:00:00
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