As the world focuses its attention on
millions of refugees uprooted from Syria and Iraq in part because of the
rise of Islamic State (ISIS), no other cause has suffered as much as
that of the Palestinians.
Indeed, the word “Palestinian” and
mention of groups like “Fatah” and “PFLP” (the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine) are fast disappearing from Arab and Islamic
discourse.
They’ve been replaced by ISIS and the new
kids on the block, the myriad of jihadi groups who actually believe in
no states, let alone a Palestinian one.
For the Islamists and their terrorist
extensions the very idea of a nation state — be it Syria, Egypt or even a
future Palestine — is an anathema to the fundamental principle of an
Islamic worldwide caliphate.
In one swift ideological move, the
Islamists pulled the rug from under the feet of the Palestinian national
struggle, something even the Israelis failed to accomplish.
Even when late Israeli prime minister
Golda Meir supposedly declared, “There is no such thing as a Palestinian
people”, she was widely scoffed at. Today, even the typhoid epidemic in
the devastated Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, south of Damascus,
has caused barely a ripple either in the Arab world or the West.
The camp, once home to over 100,000
refugees, now contains a mere 18,000 including 3,500 children, after it
was attacked by ISIS jihadi fighters in April.
Things were not always this bleak for Palestinians or the future state of Palestine.
Many of us, well-wishers of both Israel
and the Palestinian people, remember being giddy with joy 22 years ago
this month, when on Sept. 13, 1993, Palestinian and Israeli shook hands
in a gesture of reconciliation.
In the words of Thomas Friedman of the New York Times:
“In a triumph of hope over history,
Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Yasser Arafat, the
chairman of the P.L.O., shook hands today on the White House lawn,
sealing the first agreement between Jews and Palestinians to end their
conflict and share the holy land along the River Jordan that they both
call home.”
I distinctly remember an event hosted by
the then Ontario premier Bob Rae at Queen’s Park, where Canadian
Palestinians and Jews and their well-wishers thought we had come to the
New Jerusalem. Our ecstasy, however, was short-lived. On both sides,
enemies of the deal worked to sabotage it.
A radical Jew assassinated Rabin inside
Israel while Arafat was forced to take up a confrontational posture just
to appear credible on the Arab street.
Seven years later, on July 11, 2000,
Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority chairman
Yasser Arafat were to meet at Camp David under the chairmanship of U.S.
president Bill Clinton to sign the “final status settlement.” They did
meet, but Arafat rejected the deal. He made a monumental mistake, best
described by Shakespeare in another context:
“There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.
Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”
Today, if Israel wants, it can facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state.
The Jews have given more than their share to civilization. But creating a state for a sworn enemy could be their greatest glory.
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