- \n
- July 2016, the Middle East Quartet<\/span><\/a> (US, EU, UN and Russia): \u201cthe majority of people on both sides . . . express their support for the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- \n
- December 2014, Vice-President Joe Biden<\/span><\/a>: \u201ca two-state solution \u2026 the vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians, they think that it is the right way to go.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- \n
- May 2014, then-envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Martin Indyk<\/span><\/a>: \u201cConsistently over the last decade, polling on both sides reveals majority support for the two-state solution.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
These are merely recent examples. Go back a decade, and one can easily produce essentially identical quotations from President George W. Bush<\/span><\/a>, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak<\/span><\/a>, British Prime Minister Tony Blair<\/span><\/a>, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon<\/span><\/a>, and so on.<\/p>\n
However, the idea that Palestinians prioritize peace, statehood and prosperity flies in the face of reality. Consistent polling of Palestinians tells a diametrically opposite story.<\/p>\n
For example, a June 2016 joint poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) found that 58% of West Bank Palestinians oppose a Palestinian state involving mutual recognition between Israel and the envisaged Palestinian state and an end of claims.<\/p>\n
For another, the June 2015 Palestine Center for Public Opinion poll<\/span><\/a> found that, for the near term (the next five years), 49% of Palestinians support \u201creclaiming all of historic Palestine from the river to the sea,\u201d while only 22% favored \u201ca two-state solution\u201d as the \u201cmain Palestinian national goal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, Daniel Polisar of Jerusalem\u2019s Shalem College, in a recent examination of literally hundreds of Palestinian surveys<\/span><\/a>, established that majorities of Palestinians reject Palestinian statehood alongside Israel by an average of more than 3 to 1<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n
It takes only a moment\u2019s checking of the Palestinian scene to see that the idea of peaceful statehood and acceptance of Israel that would be its prerequisite has yet to emerge.<\/p>\n
In the past month, official Palestinian Authority (PA) TV joined<\/span><\/a> the family of a jailed Palestinian terrorist, As\u2019ad Zo\u2019rob, who murdered an Israeli who had given him a ride, lauding him as a \u201cheroic prisoner\u201d and a source of \u201cpride for \u2026. all of Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also, Fatah Central Committee member and Commissioner of Treasury and Economy, Muhammad Shtayyeh, publicly reaffirmed that Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas\u2019 party, which controls the PA, \u201cdoes not recognize Israel. The topic of recognition of Israel has not been raised in any of Fatah\u2019s conferences.\u201d<\/p>\n
The PA, after all, is a regime that names schools, streets, sports teams and youth camps in honor of suicide bombers, pay stipends to jailed terrorists and pensions to the families of dead ones. It also routinely denies that Jews have any connection with Jerusalem or the land. When, in February, UN Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres correctly stated that the Jewish biblical temples stood on Jerusalem\u2019s Temple Mount, PA officials and publicists publicly upbraided<\/span><\/a> him.<\/p>\n
How, then, does the myth of Palestinian desire for peaceful statehood and acceptance of Israel persist?<\/p>\n
George Orwell, as so often, put his finger on the problem, as long ago as 1940, when he wrote, \u201cMr. Hitler has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all \u2018progressive\u2019 thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. Hitler knows\u2026 that human beings don\u2019t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice<\/i> [emphasis added].\u201d<\/p>\n
In contrast to Orwell\u2019s acute analysis, just think of George W. Bush contending<\/span><\/a> that \u201can independent, viable, democratic, and peaceful Palestinian state is \u2026 the dream of the Palestinians\u201d; or of British Green Party pro-Palestinian activist Peter Tatchell, claiming<\/span><\/a> that Palestinians \u201cin their hearts, want exactly the same things as Israelis. They want peace, security, equality, jobs, housing, healthcare\u201d; or President Obama\u2019s CIA head, John O. Brennan, claiming<\/span><\/a> \u201cthere are certain aspirations that we all share \u2013\u2013 to get an education, to provide for our families, to practice our faith freely, to live in peace and security\u201d and one senses the incomprehension and heedlessness, genuine or deliberate, that afflicts analysis of this problem at all levels.<\/p>\n
Until the facts are faced, don\u2019t expect edifying public discussion of the subject. President Trump broke new ground when he publicly pointed<\/span><\/a> to the \u201ctremendous hate\u201d inculcated into Palestinian youth and non-acceptance of Israel that would have to change before peace becomes possible. In this he is correct. The \u201cultimate deal\u201d that brings peace will have to await a change of heart and direction in Palestinian society.<\/p>\n
(Morton A. Klein is National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). Dr. Daniel Mandel is Director of the ZOA\u2019 s Center for Middle East Policy.)<\/i><\/p>\n
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- May 2014, then-envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Martin Indyk<\/span><\/a>: \u201cConsistently over the last decade, polling on both sides reveals majority support for the two-state solution.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- December 2014, Vice-President Joe Biden<\/span><\/a>: \u201ca two-state solution \u2026 the vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians, they think that it is the right way to go.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n