On Feb. 11, 1980, Mahmud Abbas' mentor, then PLO-Chairman Yasir Arafat, explained to the Caracas, Venezuela newspaper El Mundo what peace means to him and his cohorts: "Peace for us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all-out war, a war which will last for generations."
Likewise, the Fatah constitution calls for the destruction of Israel.
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Similarly, Hamas' charter calls for the destruction of Israel. For Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, peace means the end of the Dar al Harb, and the entire world becomes the Dar al Islam with everyone ruled by Sharia. There is no place in Hamas' concept of "peace" for the existence of Israel, and they have shown by their terrorist actions in bombing buses full of women shopping during the holidays that they are genocidal. They quote their scripture calling for genocide against the Jews, and their actions show that they mean it.
Recently, Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu explained what peace means to Israel, giving a vision of peace held by a majority of Israelis. The requirements for peace, according to the Israelis, are:
1. The Palestinians must recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jews.
2. Any peace agreement with the Palestinians should end the conflict and all future Palestinian claims on land.
3. The Arab refugee problem must be solved outside of Israel's borders. No Arab refugees in Israeli territory.
4. A Palestinian state will have to be demilitarized, and a peace treaty must safeguard Israel's security. This must include a continued Israeli military presence along the Jordan River.
5. The settlement blocs will remain within the state of Israel. Jerusalem will remain the united, undivided capital of Israel.
Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu also said that the majority of Israeli were united in their belief that Israel's borders must be defended, that the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan must be kept intact, and Iran's nuclear weapons program must be kept in check.
The reasons for these should be obvious.
First, the Palestinians must recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. This is the first step toward ending the hatred and judeophobic incitement that has been going on among the Palestinians, as well as in the Arab world, and as well in the Muslim world, for a long time. Their leaders have spread the lie that the Jews have no historic connection with the Land of Israel. They have spread the lie that there is no Jewish people. Although international bodies have long called for a Jewish state, the leaders of the Palestinians have sought to abort the present Jewish state, and to even pretend that a Jewish state doesn't exist, in order to better set the stage and arrange excuses for killing the Jewish state. This is now recognized by Israelis as a key reason why past efforts at peace have failed: because the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.
Secondly, a peace agreement must end the conflict, and terminate all territorial claims. When Arafat met with Israeli leaders at the White House Rose Garden, and promised peace, he also went before the Arabs and explained, in Arabic, that this was like the Treaty of Hudaybiya. That meant to them that it was a temporary deal, to allow the Arabs to strengthen themselves in preparation for future war and terrorism. It was merely a hudna. Hamas wants a hudna, in order to consolidate their gains, to prepare themselves for future war against Israel, so that they can better choose their time for their next attack. Hamas' goal is the destruction of Israel, and Israel of course does not share that goal. So it has no reason to cooperate with Hamas' efforts to realize that goal, including a hudna. Israelis want a peace agreement to end the conflict, not merely to give Hamas (or Fatah for that matter) time to build armaments for a more deadly war against Israel in the future.
Thirdly, the Arab "refugee" problem must be solved outside Israel's borders. I put "refugee" in quotes, because a special definition is used for refugees here to include people who have never set foot in Israel. These are descendants of refugees, and descendants of descendants, and descendants of descendants of refugees. They have been brutalized for generations by the Arab states, to have warriors to meet their goal of destroying Israel. If these millions of hostile Arabs were allowed into Israel, they would produce a civil war that would make Lebanon's civil war seem a frolic by comparison. They would also wage the jihad of the womb, and before long Israel would cease to exist as the Jewish state, and would cease to exist as any functioning state. This just becomes another method to destroy the Jewish state. Destroying Israel may have been Arafat's definition of "peace", but it is in fact completely contrary to the aspirations, rights and needs of Israelis. What sort of "peace" would this give -- the peace of the graveyard? It's not for Israel.
Fourth, there needs to be demilitarization of a Palestinian state, there need to be safeguards for Israel's security, and there needs to be an continued Israeli military presence along the Jordan River. Tawfik Hamad wrote about the Jew-hatred in the Muslim world, including the Arab world, and including the Palestinian Arabs. He wrote: "Pro-Palestinian Muslim demonstrators across the world repeatedly use the chant 'Khyber Khyber Ya Yahood.. Gaish Muhammad Sawfa Yaood,' which reminds the Jews that the army of Muhammad is coming back for a repeat of what was done to the Jewish Khyber tribe. According to authentic Islamic history books, the Islamic army, let by Muhammad, annihilated the Jewish tribe of Khyber, raping its women and killing all its men." It will take generations of re-education to repair the damage done by the continual anti-Jewish incitement by the Palestinian leaders, and to repair the damage done by the Jew-hatred in the Muslim world. The de-nazification will take generations, if it ever gets done. Until that time, if it ever gets done, Israelis need to be safe. So there has to be demilitarization of a Palestinian state, and safeguards for Israel's security. The examples of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and of Hizbollah in Lebanon, show the danger of allowing a hostile entity to receive smuggled rockets and missiles, which they will launch against Israelis. So of course Israel has to maintain a military presence along the Jordan River, to prevent weapons, missiles, and mujahadeen from reaching a hostile entity in Israel's heartland, in Judea and Samaria. And, of course, to also be able to put up a defense in case there is conventional war due to some regime change in the Arab states to the east of Israel.As the revolts in Arab states have shown, no regime can be assumed to be invulnerable to revolution and regime change.
Fifth, the settlement blocs will remain within the state of Israel, and united Jerusalem, undivided, will remain Israel's capital. The settlement blocs are population centers in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, where Jewish kings ruled and where Jewish prophets gave their immortal messages. I hear of the inalienable rights of the Palestinians, of the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians, and President Obama has reminded everyone of the needs of the people of Gaza. But, maybe I missed it, but I have never heard President Obama recognize that the 500,000 Jews living in what he calls "settlements" -- in Judea and Samaria, and in northern, southern, and eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem -- are also people, with their own inalienable rights, legitimate aspirations, and needs. Those rights, aspirations, and needs do not include being massacred, being expelled from their homes and communities, nor being denied basic freedoms such as having property rights and the right to build for their needs. As President George W. Bush understood, in a letter to then-prime minister of Israel Ariel Sharon, the U.S. expects Israel to insist on recognizing that history has produced centers of Jewish population in the land once occupied for 18 years -- 1948-1967 -- by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, and that Israel will insist on keeping that territory. Israel will not abandon 500,000 of its citizens to the fate that would be dealt them by the ethnic cleansers.
As for Jerusalem, as everyone knows, the Muslim prays toward Mecca, while the Jew prays toward Jerusalem. Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3000 years, since King David made it his capital city. As long as Jerusalem is under the sovereignty of Israel, people of all faiths will continue to be able to exercise freedom of religion, including the right to make pilgrimage to holy places of Jerusalem. But when it was occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan for 18 years, Jewish synagogues were destroyed, the Jews were not allowed to visit the Temple Mount, nor allowed to visit the Western Wall, and holy gravestones were taken by Jordanian soldiers and used for latrines. Under Israeli sovereignty, all the residents of Jerusalem can live where they wish, and can build on their property. But under the laws of Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, it is a capital offense -- punishable by death -- to sell land to a Jew. Holy Jerusalem is no place where such bigotry can be allowed to flourish, and to avoid that situation of anti-Jewish bigotry, of destroying synagogues, of desecrating tombstones, of preventing pilgrimages to holy places, Israel must continue to have sovereignty over united, undivided Jerusalem.
