Time to Stop Pretending

If only the poor Palestinians were left alone by the US and Israelis, they would stop the terrorism and live peaceful lives like normal people, or so we are told. Now many Palestinians are finding out first hand that you should be careful what you wish for.

With the US and Israel basically out of the picture, the Palestinians have turned on each other even more violently than they attacked Israel. There are still some useful idiots trying to find a way to pin this on the US and Israel, but they are finding out quickly that that dog won't hunt.

Fouad Ajami does a good job of summing up what has been obvious for a long time to anyone that actually paid attention rather than just knee-jerking against the Jews.

By the time the fury of the second intifada burned out, as it was bound to, the Palestinians were politically bankrupt and bereft. The Arab world had bigger battles to fight in Iraq and the Persian Gulf; the Israelis, keen to conciliate the Palestinians, had grown weary of them. There was a diplomatic dance, the quartet, which brought together the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations in a halfhearted effort to keep the Palestinian world afloat. But the Palestinians would do all in their power to snuff out those diplomatic efforts as well. Given a chance, by an election in early 2006, to signal their desire for normalcy, the Palestinians voted for mayhem. Two convicted terrorists, Marwan Barghouti and Abu Ali Yatta, headed the Fatah list; all in all, 14 members of the new parliament were serving prison sentences. National movements are often carried away by delirium, their politics can become deeds of self-immolation, and the Palestinians have come to embody the suicidal streak of mass-based nationalism.

This is not a failure of the Bush diplomacy, the disorder now on full display in Gaza and the West Bank. This is the harvest of Palestinian history. What we see is the inevitable fate of a national movement given over to the cult of the gun.

By now it should be clear even to the most ardent supporters of Palestine that they are not interested in peace and could care less about the lives of other Palestinians. They only wish to dominate and force their beliefs on anyone and everyone they can.