Under the terms of a February 8 truce, Israel pledged to free some 900 Palestinian prisoners as a good-faith gesture in support of a cease-fire. However, a few days after it released the first 500 prisoners on February 21, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed five Israelis in Tel Aviv, leading Israel to delay further releases.
Now, Reuters reports that Israel has freed almost 400 more Palestinian prisoners, fulfilling its earlier agreement.
The Palestinian reaction? Predictably, they want more. And they'd better get it, or there'll be trouble:
Palestinians said Israel needed to free more prisoners to preserve the truce. "Releasing prisoners gives trust and hope to the peace process," said Tayeb Abdel Rahim, a senior Abbas aide. "However, this is not enough. All prisoners should be released."The prisoners Israel freed were those without Israeli "blood on their hands". They may have been members of terrorist groups, or carried weapons, or plotted attacks. But they did not actually murder Israeli citizens. Some of the remaining 8,000 or so prisoners did. Releasing them would not give "trust and hope to the peace process". It would give experienced killers to the terror groups.
The Palestinian message to Israel is, essentially, this:
(1) If you want peace, release our killers (who will presumably be only too happy to resume killing).
(2) If you don't, we might start attacking you again (not that we ever completely stopped).
Someone who truly desired peace with Israel would understand that people who murder its citizens deserve to be in prison for their actions. He would not make the pursuit of peace conditional upon their release. When I hear Palestinian representatives like Tayeb Abdel Rahim talk about "peace", I am reminded of Inigo Montoya's immortal line from The Princess Bride: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
FOLLOW-UP:
Israeli National News reports:
Israeli defense forces arrested five Islamic Jihad terrorists hours before they planned to stage a double suicide bombing attack in the suburban Jerusalem neighborhood Ramot on Thursday.Among the terrorists arrested was Muhanad Aby Romy, who is one of the prisoners that Israel released earlier this year. (Found via LGF. Interestingly, it looks like Charles and I independently picked very similar titles for our posts on this topic.)
11 comments:
You point out a reality impossible to get used to. Israel, short of every citizen marching into the sea, can never do enough to please those bent on its destruction, and their fans in the West. And, should Israel perish, there will still be "Israel" in the mind to blame all problems on. That is, those that are not the fault of America. Would any country in the world, besides Castro dumping lunatics and murderers on South Florida, ever release so many of its sworn enemies, just for the hope of peace and survival?
Posted by tokyobk
Israel's message to Palestinians is:
If you want peace, let us build more houses for Jewish immigrants from Russia and elsewhere on your land.
If you want peace, don't dare protest when we build a wall that cuts through Palestinian land, instead of simply building the wall on our own land.
If you want peace, surrender the idea of having Jerusalem as the capital of your own state, even though the city lies entirely within your country.
If you want peace, forget about refugees returning to their ancestral homeland, the place where they were born and have every reason to expect to be able to die.
The only legitimate starting point for peace in Palestine is the removal of illegal squatters, which the NY Times and other mainstream media call, charmingly, "settlers."
How can any legitimate Palestinian leader tell his people he will give their land away just so the Israelis will stop bulldozing their houses and rocketing their neighborhoods?
The pro-Israel response here, I predict, will essentially be that the Palestinians deserve to have the land taken away. There will be a lot of heated rhetoric and misdirection about how terrible suicide bombing is and how Arabs attack each other, but readers, take note, there will be no answer to the question: why don't Palestinians have the right to demand that, as a first, unconditional step, Israel remove all squatters from Palestinian lands it has seized by force.
Once these euphemistically called "settlements" are removed, a Palestinian leader could credibly begin to persuade the moderates who, at the moment, have no logical reason to trust Israel, to begin to enforce laws that could rein in militants.
Posted by bunkerbuster
Bunker-- The offer you wish for was made by Israel after the first war of Independence, where the the Jewish State took the land as fairly or unfairly as land is taken in that part of the world. Do you dispute this historical fact? Do you dispute the fact that Israel gave back the Sinai to Egypt for a peace which the Egyptians have respected and which has eliminated war between those states (though cost Sadat his life)? That Israel agreed to live side by side in peace with its Arab neighbors if they would only recognize it as a state after 48. That was a very tiny Israel, with no settlements, not the greater Israel that we are disputing now. By the way, that was an answer, not a diversion about terror. You make the Palestinians sound reasonable. The best we have now is Abbas, who I have some faith in but wont forget that his Soviet PhD is an extention of the Protocals.
By the way, from an earlier exchange, your analogy of America as friend in a bar who makes an ass of himself reminds me of the observation that people who tend to think like you do see America from the eyes of others where as people who tend to think like me tend to see America from an American perspective. Kerry's defeat was hastned by this unfortunate need to speak French. It is part of my beef with Newsweek. Michael Moore hides behind the idea that he wants to improve America but he is so gleeful in his bad news, you have to wonder.
Posted by tokyobk
...your post makes it clear at several points that Israel actually has some land of its own. What parts of Israel are legitimate, in your opinion, and how, if at all, would that land differ from the original Israel of Independence?
Posted by tokyobk
TokyoBK: Israel formally acknowledges that the West Bank and Gaza strip are not part of its territory. Why would the Palestinians think any differently? The problem is that there are Israelis who think the West Bank and Gaza are part of GreaterIsrael. This more militant faction may well have succeeded in declaring these areas Israeli territory, but that that would leave Jews as a minority within Israel, precluding Zionist outcomes of elections. Under the circumstances, increasingly militant Israelis have been able to drive the nation's policies, for the most part. (Remember, the first man to attempt peace with Arafat was promptly assassinated by right wing Israelis.) Similarly, there are Palestinians who believe all of what has become known as Israel should be Palestinian territory. To a lesser extent, the radical Palestinian element has also driven Palestinian policy.
The way forward, then, is to empower Israelis and Palestinians who are on record as respecting each other's borders and right to exist.
Ariel Sharon and his Likud party do not appear to believe that the West Bank and Gaza are Palestinian territories. U.S. policy should be aimed at eliminating support for Sharon and the Likud, specifically on the issue of the illegitimacy of ``Greater Israel.'' U.S. policy should also be aimed at building support for Mahmoud Abbas, specifically on the issue of the illegitimacy of his Palestinian opponents, many of whom deny Israel's right to exist, even within its internationally recognized borders.
Unfortunately, U.S. policy on Israel is driven by the Israel lobby and, of late, Christian conservatives, who claim a supernatural mandate to support Israeli territorial expansion, if only to assure the "biblical" nation's security at the expense of the Palestinians.
Posted by bunkerbuster
I agree with everything you write, maybe even the last sentence, though I don`t think the "Israel Lobby" is as unified as you imply, nor the motives of non-Jewish support wholly religious. There are many who see Israel as the ally of the US as a liberal, free market democracy in an undemocratic part of the world.
Posted by tokyobk
"The Palestinian reaction? Predictably, they want more. And they'd better get it, or there'll be trouble:"
You can say that agian. This seems to be an MO that goes back for many years.
Posted by gindy
The Palestinians may WANT more, but the Israelis are TAKING more every day and have been doing so for decades. That is why they now have "long-term" residents living on land expropriated from Palestinians. While Sharon may be trying to remove illegal squatters from some of the smaller outposts in Gaza, Israeli plans are moving ahead to expand land expropriations and construction in the West Bank. And remember, Israel is building a wall that cuts inside Palestinian territory. No one in the mainstream U.S. press dares to ask why that must be.
TokyoBK claims that Israel is a free market democracy, but it is neither. Israel provides huge subsidies to people willing to live on expropriated Palestinian land. The economy is highly socialistic in other ways and this is all subsidized by the U.S., which makes Israel the largest recipient of foreign aid in the world, though it's population is tiny and its resources far beyond those of many poorer nations.
Israel may be a democracy in the broadest sense of the term--they do have elections and a nominally independent court system--but then so does Egypt, another "free market" U.S. ally--well at least it was an ally until G.W. Bush came along. It's probably more accurate to describe them as "neutral" at the moment.
If you were a Palestinian who's land had been taken away, or whose home had been bulldozed as collective punishment--which Israel undertakes openly despite it being a violation of international law--would you be prepared to disarm as a PRECONDITION for negotiations on getting your land back? As a practical matter, the Palestinians have essentially been forced into that position. That doesn't make it moral or make it a likely path to peace.
TokyoBK recites the talking point that Israel gave back the Sinai peninsula and was thereby able to make peace with Egypt. Indeed, that is an ideal model, especially because Israel did not demand that Egypt disarm before it would return the Sinai and because Egypt has, with some insignificant exceptions, kept it's end of the deal and lives in peace with Israel.
As I noted before, you will see much scorn heaped on Palestinians, as if their barbarity somehow justifies Israel's theft of their land. No one, however, will answer the simplest of questions: Why should Palestinians disarm as long as their lands are occupied? Why isn't it a reasonable PRECONDITION for Israel to withdraw, or at least to agree to withdraw from Palestinian lands and to allow refugees to return? The most moderate, reasonable Palestinian leaders will never gain power as long as Israel insists that it has the right to steal Palestinian land. Why is that so hard for Israeli militarists to understand?
Posted by bunkerbuster
TokyoBK writes: ``people who tend to think like you do see America from the eyes of others where as people who tend to think like me tend to see America from an American perspective.''
That's interesting. Please elaborate.
Posted by bunkerbuster
Bunker: To elaborate. Setting aside right and wrong for the moment, many people on that wide jumble we call the "left" are worried that our image will suffer if we take this or that action and x (third world thugocracy) or y (socialist Euro) country won't like us anymore. To lump myself with the right for the moment, I am tired of caring what anybody thinks of us. I go to all sorts of proper Tokyo venues and at risk of being impolite, which is a very big risk in Japan, I laugh, make that scoff, at the idea that America has anything to apologize for. I am pleasantly suprised when an Italy pops up here and there but people "like me" have given up on the emotional part of people hating America and are more interested in the practical aspects of that perpetual dislike. Kerry's phrase "respected in the world" was so wrong headed, even a joke, becasue in the practical ways that I mentioned, America has never been more repsected in the Middle East than now. Proof of that is the Engish and the Arabic press releases (thanks MEMRI) are getting closer to the same than ever before. Proof of that is that the Saudi's have to do more than talk about their terror problem. Proof is Arab states have to prove they are not harboring their own terrorists. Kerry should have promised to make America, "more respected at Harvard and Yale and in coffehouses all over France" by flogging himself daily and wearing a hairshirt. He still would have lost but it would have been kind of funny and more accurate.
Posted by tokyobk
TokyoBK writes: ``many people on that wide jumble we call the "left" are worried that our image will suffer if we take this or that action.''
I applaud you, TokyoBK, for not caring too much about what people think about America. Indeed, the truth is far more important and empowering than "image management." That's one reason that many Americans believe that the damage to the U.S. military's reputation brought about by, for example, publication of evidence of torture at Abu Ghraib, is negligible compared with the intellectual and spiritual empowerment achieved by maintaining a free-thinking, free-speaking, truth-loving press, education system and society.
On this very forum, a screaming horde of right wingers are demanding that the government prevent publication of Abu Ghraib images because those images will cause America's image to suffer. It is a shame indeed that they are overly concerned about what the Islamofascists think about America. Indeed, the right wingers and Islamofascists both believe that free, open debate is a sign of weakness and disloyalty.
I'm glad that TokyoBK agrees that we needn't be too concerned about the damage this kind of truthful information may cause to the the Bush administration's or the American military's reputation.
As a nation we are strong enough, smart enough and mature enough to understand that while free speech and a thriving marketplace of ideas may come with some costs, it is far more powerful, in the long run, than government control and unanimity.
Posted by bunkerbuster
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