First Steps
How to start Israel-Palestine normalization
POLICYMAKERS envision an era of “normalization” after the current round of fighting in the Middle East concludes.
That would sit well with Israel.
After all, the icon of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, dreamed of a “normal” Jewish state.
There is one catch, however: “Normalization” between Israel and Palestine does not exist in law or diplomacy.
Incredibly, the enthusiasm for normalization stems from the fact that Israel’s adversaries have conducted a war on the Jews from first day of the country’s creation in 1948.
The League of Arab States sent a cablegram to the United Nations the next day declaring its policy to be the liquidation of the Jews in Palestine, and the war against the Jews continues to this day.
The same goes for the Palestine Liberation Organization, which on its creation in 1964 issued a charter for the annihilation of the Jews of Palestine.
Defying Arab League policy, Egypt and Jordan signed separate peace treaties with Israel, while Syria and Lebanon each agreed to an armistice with the Jewish state.
Saudi Arabia, kingpin of the Arab League, has yet to agree to any armistice or peace treaty with the Jews.
The PLO, which now operates as the Palestinian Authority, signed a peace treaty with Israel, the first Oslo Accord, Sept. 13, 1993.
But the five-year “transitional period” passed without a final agreement being reached, and PA head Mahmoud Abbas, leader of Fatah, the PLO’s largest faction, has declared Palestinians will “no longer continue to be bound” by it.
Reports have it that both the Saudis and the PLO are finally ready to normalize ties with the Jews.
What should normalization look like? Begin with four steps:
Remove Palestinian teachers
and texts that continue to preach war against Jews.
PA schools feature a fourthgrade textbook dedicated to the legacy of Dalal Mughrabi, a Fatah member and woman terrorist who commandeered a bus and murdered 38 Israeli passengers, including 13 children.
In the spirit of normalization, the PA war curriculum would have to go.
Resettle descendants of Arab refugees from the 1948 war in dignified conditions
— instead of the nearly 60 “temporary” UN refugee camps to which they have been confined since the 1948 war under the pretense of the “right of return” to villages that no longer exist.
The Palestinian Authority instills in all children’s minds that their only future lies in villages that were left in 1948, an inappropriate goal if normalization is ever to happen.
Repeal the PA law that provides a salary for life for anyone who murders a Jew.
A policy of normalization would require a repeal of this legalized incentive to murder.
When I first heard of this law in 2015, I thought it had to be an urban legend with no credibility.
Our agency thus hired two Palestinian journalists within the PA to ascertain whether such a law exists.
They found the record of this unprecedented law at the Palestinian Ministry of Justice: If you kill a Jew, you get a salary for life.
The PA spends hundreds of millions of dollars on these payments every year.
Remove PA maps that obliterate Israel.
Since the new PA curriculum came into effect in August 2000, Palestinian maps replace the names of all Jewish communities with the names of Arab villages in all textbooks used in all schools run by the Palestinian Authority and the UN Relief and Works Agency.
Simply put, a new generation of Palestinian children has yet to see Israel on any map.
A policy of normalization would present maps that portray all UN members of good standing, including Israel.
These four steps towards normalization would bring new hope for a new Middle East.
David Bedein directs the Israel Resource News Agency and heads the Nahum Bedein Center for Near East Policy Research. He is the author of “Genesis of the Palestinian Authority” and “Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict: UNRWA Policies Reconsidered.”