NOT FAIR!

Tantrums and toddler diplomacy have always been the go-to for Palestinians and their overseas advocates.

Masterclass in Palestinian negotiations.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time around toddlers will recognize the core modus operandi of the Palestinian movement and their overseas advocates.

The intellectual position, overwhelmingly, is one familiar to young parents withholding candy or enforcing a bedtime: Not fair!

If you’ve been reading my Substack, you know that I consider September 28, 2000, a turning point, the end of the Oslo process and the beginning of the era we are currently in. It was at that moment when the Palestinians, under Yasser Arafat, decided to jettison their nominal commitment to a negotiated peace and revert to terrorism as a means of getting what they wanted. If three-year-olds had lethal weapons, their strategy might be similar.

As I also keep saying: Violence will never free Palestine. The only way there will ever be peace and Palestinian self-determination is through a negotiated settlement, with Palestinians demonstrating that they are willing to live in peace next to Israel, not in place of it.

And yet, at that moment when Arafat and the rest chose violence over negotiation, the world overwhelmingly jumped on board and joined the mob.

I’m not saying violence is never justified — there is such a thing as just war — but violence is never justified and there is no just war when a jilted negotiating partner is sitting at a table ready to talk and the other side, in this case Palestinians, launch a campaign of eviscerations, explosions and mass murder.

There is no excuse for this. And yet, of course, there are. Excuses abound.

At root is toddler diplomacy: Not fair!

I heard it again at an atrocious public event I attended recently. (Read about it here! It was more fun to write about than it was to attend.) At this intellectually debasing presentation, we heard what is essentially a prototypical justification for the Palestinians’ rejection of peaceful negotiation and return to violence. Negotiations were never going to get the Palestinians everything they wanted. Ergo: Not fair!

Well, guess what? In negotiations, neither side gets everything they want. That’s why they’re called negotiations.

In this case, though, it is audacious beyond belief that Palestinians and their overseas mouthpieces should believe that meeting 100% of Palestinian demands is the least the Israelis could do.

I can’t believe we need to say this out loud but … the defeated rarely get to set the terms of the peace.

The Palestinians are stateless for two reasons. First, their Arab allies unanimously rejected the potential for Palestinian Arab self-determination in 1947, after the 1948 war, and again after the 1967 war, when Israel offered to return what we now call be “occupied territories” in exchange for nothing but a promise of peace.

What part of yes don’t they understand?

Second, the Palestinians, under Arafat, were on the road to self-determination through the negotiating process that began in Oslo. It ended because the Palestinians realized that they had reached a fork in the road. Negotiations were never going to result in the outcome they sought. Because the outcome they sought — the outcome they still seek — is not a Palestine living in peaceful coexistence next to Israel. It is a Palestine built on the graves of Israelis. That’s what “From the river to the sea” means, in case you’re not clear.

So, when overseas “allies,” like the activists on North American campuses, Canada’s New Democratic Party, members of the Squad and other assorted kooks make the case that the Palestinians were never going to get a fair shake, they’re right.

The “fair shake” that would be acceptable to the Palestinians who launched the Second Intifada is the elimination of the state of Israel. Whether that elimination includes the people who live there may be up for debate, but the larger issue is not. Again: “From the river to the sea.” “By any means necessary!” “Intifada! Revolution! There is only one solution.” (And you know damn well the “only solution” they’re talking about is the “final” one. If you think it’s a coincidence they chose that turn of phrase, you need to grow the hell up.)

What is Not fair! is not that Israel refused to agree to the ridiculous idea of a “right of return.” What is Not fair! has little or nothing to do with settlements, final status borders, the role of Jerusalem or any of the other issues that ostensibly led to the collapse of the peace process. No, what is Not fair! is that Israel would continue to exist at the end of peaceful negotiations.

As much as I detest the radical extremism of the anti-Israel movement that has emerged most vociferously since October 7, I’m grateful for this much. There is a degree of honesty now that there wasn’t before. They used to pretend that what they wanted was an independent Palestine next to an independent Israel. They’re not pretending anymore.

But here is something that the Palestinians and their overseas allies haven’t got through their heads yet. They think Jews are the masters of negotiation and so, if they can’t be beaten on that playing field, the Palestinians will take the battle to their own playing field: warfare.

What they don’t seem to comprehend is that the Jews have learned to outsmart the enemy at that too. Out of necessity, the Jewish people, embodied in the Jewish state of Israel, have learned very, very well to fight for their survival. Their enemies believed in 1948, in 1967, in 1973, in 2000, in too many times to count since the disengagement from Gaza in 2005, and on October 7, that, with just one more attack, the Jews would fold like a house of cards.

That’s not going to happen, not now, not ever, and no matter how many times people maniacally scream “From the river to the sea.”

Given this reality, maybe it would have been wise to have taken one of the endless opportunities to accept Palestinian self-determination alongside Israel instead of committing themselves inflexibly to the rigid insistence on complete victory over the Zionist usurpers.

Palestinians and their overseas (purported) allies don’t think Palestinians can best the Jews in a negotiation. Somebody needs to tell them that the Israelis won’t be beaten at the Palestinians’ own game of violence either. So maybe talking wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

But that, of course, would require compromise. Compromise would mean an end to the deaths of Palestinians that Palestinian leaders and their overseas cheerleaders seem happy to perpetuate if it wins the global PR war. But it would also mean an end to the objective to which Palestinians for more than 75 years have been indoctrinated to anticipate: the liquidation of the Jewish state.

That is what’s Not fair! about peaceful negotiation. It’s not the negotiation part. It’s the peace. It’s the idea that Israel would continue to exist. It’s the idea that the birth of Palestine would not mean the death of Israel.

That’s what’s Not fair!

In case that wasn’t clear.

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