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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 4/7/16

The Palestinian Leadership...To Where?

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Alon Ben-Meir
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In times of relative quiet, you indoctrinate, train, and prepare the young to fight another senseless war against Israel, and in times of war you use women and children as human shields, boasting about your heroism while you live in hiding to protect your skin.

You seem to relish ruling over dispirited and dispossessed people. They will recover once you have gone, leaving behind a legacy of delusional leaders who betrayed their people and vanished in disgrace.

Internal political discord:

You are duplicitous politicians, like the blind leading the blind; both of you have your own personal schemes, surrounding yourselves with morally tainted "Yes men" who are vested in your warped ideology that has for decades been misleading every Palestinian.

You suffer from mutually maligning political discord between you and within your armed wings, and you refuse to reconcile with the PA, whose President (Abbas) remains the legitimate head of the Palestinian national movement and the de facto head of state.

With chaos among the leadership, you move from one crisis to another, leading by your whims while trying to outwit each other.

Abbas recognizes the urgent need to make peace with Israel to give the people a new horizon and the prospect of better days, but you steer against the public's powerful desire for peace in order to serve your bankrupt political agenda, sabotaging peace further and further each passing day.

By now, you should recognize that time is not on your side; you must reconcile with the reality of Israel and accept the centrality of peace with Israel based on a two-state solution.

Like your counterpart the PA, you must embrace the Arab Peace Initiative (API), which provides you with the political cover to negotiate peace without losing face. The API calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders (with some land swaps), which you, Mr. Meshal, have endorsed on a number of occasions.

Based on prior negotiations, there are several critical common denominators in the API that a majority of Palestinians and Israelis share, including a realistic solution to the refugee problem and the future status of Jerusalem, which the entire Arab and Muslim world supports.

The only prerequisite for you is to renounce the use of force, agree with the PA to conduct fair and free elections, and let the people be free to choose who represents their aspirations to lead them on the path to peace. You should remember what Gandhi once said: "Non-violence is a weapon of the strong."

This step alone, if faithfully embraced, will persuade the Israelis to reevaluate their position as to whether or not you are ready to negotiate peace in good faith, and will certainly encourage Western powers to remove your name from the list of terrorist organizations.

Your policy toward Israel:

At the time Israel was created, a Palestinian state could have also been established. Since then, Israel has become a formidable global power and a leader in technology, medicine, renewable energy, land development, and military industry, while a multitude of Palestinians are still languishing in refugee camps.

If we do not judge the leadership by what they have accomplished for their people, how do you explain why seven decades later, so many Palestinians are still living in poverty and despair?

Given the opportunity and education, the Palestinian people could accomplish just as much as the Israelis; they are hardworking, creative, and resourceful, but unfortunately are led astray by poor and misguided leaders.

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Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. His dedication to writing about, analyzing, and (more...)
 

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