Yoram Ettinger
(IsraelNN.com) The Palestinian issue was a deal-breaker during Israel-Egypt peace negotiation. In defiance of Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski - the "Palestine Firsters" - and in spite of Palestinian terrorist threats, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat introduced a Palestinian-bypass, thus concluding a peace accord. Their determination to overcome White House and Foggy Bottom preoccupation with the Palestinian issue as, supposedly, the root core of the Arab-Israeli conflict and Middle East violence produced a peace treaty. It has lowered the prospect of an Arab-Israeli war, has decreased regional tension and has advanced US interests.
The Israel-Egypt precedent documents that the road to peace goes through Arab capitals and not through Ramallah or Gaza; that the Palestinian issue does not constitute the crown jewel of Arab politics; that the Palestinians do not possess veto power over Arab policy-making; that the Palestinian issue has not been the cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict; and that the Palestinian issue has been employed by Middle Eastern radicals as fuel - and not as water - for the regional fire.
During the October 1998 Israel-Jordan peace ceremony, Jordan's top military command impressed upon their Israeli colleagues the need to oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River, since "it would constitute a death-sentence for the Hashemite regime." They expressed their disillusionment with Palestinian commitments, "which are signed in the morning and violated in the evening."
The Israel-Jordan and Israel-Egypt peace treaties have withstood Palestinian opposition and have prevailed, despite an ongoing Israeli war against Palestinian PLO and Hamas terrorism.
A dramatic departure from the roadmap of the Israel-Egypt and Israel-Jordan peace treaties was taken in the 1993 Oslo Accords and their derivatives: the Hebron and Wye Accords; the Camp David II and Sharm El-Sheikh conferences; the "Disengagement"; the Zinni and Mitchell Plans; and the Quartet's Road Map toward a two-state solution. Never has a "peace process" yielded so much failure, hate education, terrorism and bloodshed and no success.
Oslo and its byproducts have subordinated Israel-Arab peace, Israel's national security and US vital interests to the resolution of the Palestinian issue. Switching focus from the Israel-Arab track to the Israel-Palestinian track, and irrespective of Western and Israeli good intentions, the Oslo Accords and their offspring have played into the hands of Middle Eastern rogue regimes and terrorists.
The "Palestine First" approach has produced dozens of initiatives, conferences, summits, agreements and ceasefire episodes, which have yielded a series of short-lived illusions of peace and a false sense of security. The agreements have been promptly and systematically violated and crashed - since 1993 - by an unprecedented wave of Palestinian hate education, which is the manufacturing line of generic terrorism and homicide bombing.
The "two-state solution" is based on a series of erroneous assumptions, ignoring documented precedents, and therefore constitutes an erroneous policy. "Israel and Palestine living side-by-side in peace" - while the PLO and Hamas have been engaged in a horrific civil war, while there has not been inter-Arab peace during the last 1,400 years, while there has not been inter-Arab compliance with most inter-Arab agreements during the last 1,400 years, while there has not been a single Arab democracy during the last 1,400 years? The "two-state solution" has exacerbated regional turbulence, has fueled terrorism, has promoted war and has reduced the prospects for peace, thus undermining the national security of both the US and Israel.
Finally, drafting demography to the cause of the two-state solution constitutes either a dramatic mistake or an outrageous act of misleading the public (please see my discussion of the demographic issue here).
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