The Palestinian ‘Unity’ Deal: The Charade Is Up!

Sarah N. Stern


“Our aim is the liberation of all of historic Palestine from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea, even if the conflict continues for a thousand years or many more generations.” - Faisal Husseini, considered a great Palestinian moderate, in his last interview, shortly before his death in 2001.

A Rubicon has just been crossed. Wednesday’s announcement by Abu Mazen of the Palestinian Authority that he has joined a national unity government with Hamas has unmasked the nature of the Fatah beast, once and for all, and revealed the naked intentions of the P.A. The fig leaf has fallen, and it does not reveal an attractive picture.

Since September 13, 1993, the Palestinian Authority has been playing a double, duplicitous, and highly dangerous game of “Good Cop/Bad Cop”.  On September 13th, when the Oslo Accords were signed, the Palestinians pledged to refrain from acts of violence or from incitement to violence, against Israel. All subsequent agreements have been predicated along that same pledge.


Israel was to trade something real and tangible, land, in exchange for peace. The only currency that the Palestinians had offered up was something illusive and intangible: a promise to refrain from acts of violence or terrorism and to refrain from the incitement towards those acts.
That was the sole condition that has ever been put on the Palestinian Authority.
Yet, scarcely a day goes by when there has not been an egregious comment cited in the Palestinian media applauding suicide bombers and inciting children “to follow in the proud path of the martyrs” ( i.e. to don suicide vests and to blow themselves up in  crowded pizza restaurants or buses.). The map of Palestine is ubiquitous within the disputed territories, including hanging on the walls of every Palestinian school, (yes, even our tax-payer funded UNRWA schools), and every official building, including on the walls under which Secretary of State John Kerry and Ambassador Martin Indyk sit. The map is one that we would recognize as Israel.
It was never their intention to just go back to the 1949 armistice lines, or the pre-1967 borders. If one picture is worth a thousand words, that is the picture that says it all.
There was essentially a division of labor that has existed for the last two decades.  While the Palestinian Authority ended their diplomatic isolation in the community of nations by signing Oslo, Wye, the Roadmap for Middle East Peace, and all subsequent agreements, they have used their enhanced diplomatic status to wage a nonphysical war against Israel through systematic campaigns of distortion and dehumanization of the Israel and the Jew in the international court of public opinion. They have never missed an opportunity to engage in the verbal war of demonization, delegitimization and BDS, (Boycott, Divest and Sanctions), against Israel.
The fact that BDS has caught on to the alarming extent that it has is testament to the success of the Palestinian Authority’s unending verbal war against Israel.
While the verbal war was effectively being fought by Fatah, Hamas engaged in the ongoing physical battle. However, this is not at all to suggest that there were not factions of Fatah who had been engaged in acts of terrorism or violence in the last two decades.

What people within Fatah would do was simply spin off and create other divisions of Fatah, such as the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, which has been responsible for the deaths of scores of innocent civilians in multiple heinous attacks, such as the attack on a Bat Mitzvah celebration on January 17, 2002, when 6 civilians were killed, and 33 were wounded. Or the attack on the central Tel Aviv bus station when 22 civilians were killed on January 5, 2003. Or the 2004 attack on a bus in Jerusalem, when 11 civilians were killed. And the list goes on and on.
However, for the most part, and under the watchful eye of the IDF, they have kept up to their end of the bargain and refrained from physical acts of terror.  That they left to their brothers in Hamas.
However, words eventually can kill. No-one is born wanting to be a suicide bomber. In fact, it is anti-Darwinian, against our natural survival instinct. These acts come about after years of listening to the most heinous  sorts of anti-Semitic and hate-infested propaganda that the Palestinian Authority subjects its people to from the cradle to the unfortunate early grave hat they have been inciting them to go to.
This has been going on for two decades. Life is a series of choices and the P.A. chose to align themselves with Hamas, rather than with Israel. As Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “Does Abbas want peace with Hamas or with Israel?”
Since 1997, Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the State Department, and U.S. law specifically states that it is unlawful for the United States to provide any material support to a foreign terrorist organization or to an entity that contains a foreign terrorist organization.
Now is finally time to stop this deadly charade.