MK Ofir Akunis
"Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." The remark was made by Abba Eban, one of Israel's greatest foreign ministers, way back when. No one suspects Eban of being right-wing, a nationalist or a member of the Likud party. He was a highly respected leader and one of the leaders of the Labor party, though a moderate one.
On his way to the United Nations this week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced, once again, that he refuses to acknowledge Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people. This statement is neither casual nor accidental. It embodies the most basic Palestinian outlook: two states for one people. A Palestinian state "free of Jews" in Judea and Samaria, as clarified by a PLO representative in the United States this week, and a binational country in sovereign Israel. These points of view come alongside the Palestinians' refusal to end the conflict and their insistence on the Palestinian right of return, also for second and third generations born years after the War of Independence in which their grandparents were pushed back and who, according to international law, are not even refugees.
Today, as in the past, the Palestinians have refused every possible arrangement. They responded to the U.N. partition plan of 1947 with acts of terror and bit Israel's outstretched hand after our declaration of statehood. They also refused to participate in the 1991 Madrid Conference. At the 2000 Camp David Summit, where former Prime Minister Ehud Barak made astounding offers, they also brushed him off and launched unprecedented violence. In 2008, the Palestinians refused the Olmert-Livni offer that even included control over Jerusalem holy sites.
After so many years of refusing peace, only a few days now remain until the moment they place their unilateral petition for statehood on the table at the United Nations. If they do so, it will be an additional error. Unilateral steps violate every past agreement and render them null and void.
Abbas and the Palestinian Authority can still do the right thing: negotiate. Without negotiations, no conflict can be solved. If they refuse - and this is not a threat - in the end, as usual, they will lose.
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