Ban knifes Israel
Palestinians have inflicted on Israel thousands of indiscriminately fired rockets, shootings and grenade attacks, scores of suicide bombings and, now, the so-called wave of terror. Encouraged by their leadership, Palestinians have taken to stabbing random Israelis, running them down with cars and shooting them. They have killed roughly 30 people and wounded more.
And now, with words disastrously and deliberately chosen, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has given further encouragement to the violence.
Addressing the Security Council in January, Ban cast the Palestinian attacks as an essentially rational human response to “the weight of a half century of (Israeli) occupation and the paralysis of the peace process.”
Most harmfully, Ban abandoned impartiality, morality, historical fact and concern for the impact of his pronouncements to state that “as oppressed peoples have demonstrated throughout the ages, it is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism.”
Hamas could well amend its charter to include Ban’s expression of understanding for tactical murder, while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas surely will long hold up the secretary general’s imprimatur of understanding as atrocities arise.
Ban’s condemnation of the wave of shootings, stabbings and vehicular assaults will justifiably be taken as boilerplate because he placed the onus for stopping the violence not on the Palestinians but on Israel — completely and exclusively on Israel.
Citing four current disputes, Mr. Secretary saw the road to peace in an overhaul of Israeli policies on Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.
His fundamentally misguided premises are that Israeli settlement activities incite bloodshed, thus Israel should stop building to have hope of reaching an understanding with the Palestinians.
This is, of course, the delusion shared by those who give Palestinians a free ride while holding Israel guilty of violating a high and exacting moral standard for failing to reach a peace deal.
Revealingly, beyond his condemnation of violence, Ban asked nothing of the Palestinians in terms of making peace.
He failed even to demand that, one and all, they recognize Israel’s right to exist as a starting point for talks that might lead to a two-state solution.
Although Hamas is sworn to Israel’s destruction, Ban mustered only a schoolmarm’s admonition that “questioning the right of Israel to exist cannot be tolerated.”
Even more revealingly, facing severe blowback, Ban toughened up even more on Israel in a New York Times Op-Ed article.
There, he circumlocuted around Hamas’ pledge to annihilate Israel.
“I will always stand up to those who challenge Israel’s right to exist,” he wrote, without demanding full Palestinian acceptance of the Jewish state.
Worse, he added that “I will always defend the right of Palestinians to have a state of their own,” the false suggestion being that Israel and Israelis at large want to deny them sovereignty.
Three conditions agreed by the U.S., Russia, the UN and the European Union have been central to all past attempts to reach peace between Israel and the Palestinians for the last decade: recognition of Israel’s right to exist, an end to terror and acceptance of the terms of all prior agreements.
The Palestinians have never lived up to any of the three conditions. Stunningly, Ban made no mention of them as he accused Israel of keeping the Palestinians “under indefinite occupation.”
If the facts on the ground are indefinite, to use Ban’s words, they are so primarily because the Palestinians have never taken yes for an answer and now they play the victims of an occupation.
Once Israel occupied Gaza. Then Israel pulled out entirely. Now Gaza is the home base from which Hamas and other terrorists have rained Israel with rockets. It is beyond foolish to urge Israel to similarly cede land on the West Bank — until the Palestinians prove true partners in peace.
Ban’s expression of understanding toward terrorists and his umbrage at Israel will lead not there but to more pools of blood.