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The new Palestinian strategy

Sep 4 2008 11:03am
It was inevitable (emphasis mine):

Now, with hopes fading for an agreement on statehood by the end of the year, leading pragmatists in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the last bastions of Palestinian secular nationalism, are calling for a fundamental reassessment of their leadership's strategies and goals.

A growing number propose dismantling the internationally funded Palestinian Authority as a first step to expose the reality of Israel's continued occupation of territories it conquered in the 1967 war and to make Israel bear the direct responsibility and cost until a political solution is found.

Prominent mainstream Palestinians are increasingly warning that if they fail soon to achieve the kind of state they want - sovereign and independent, with East Jerusalem as its capital - they will favor instead a one-state solution based on a long-term fight for equal rights within the state of Israel, along the lines of the South African struggle.

I've always thought, if the Palestinians had been smart about their goals from the beginning, they would have done this from the 60s and never engaged in terrorism to begin with. Well they lost half a century of opportunities. But they're finally seeing the light. And the Israeli right, which insisted for so long that this peaceful strategy would never come about, and which continues to push for settlement expansion in the West Bank despite all common sense demanding a Palestinian state in that territory, will soon find out what it's like to truly be on the wrong side of the issue.
If the Palestinians finally give up terrorism, and shift their resources to a non-violent demand for full rights within the State of Israel - meaning voting rights, meaning (because of pure demographics) no more Jewish state - then there's no way Israel can win this one. The strategic shift won't happen overnight, but it will happen sooner or later. And then it'll be impossible for moderate Americans, or moderate Israelis for that matter, to support Israel's continued existence as a Jewish state.
In a way, this is what the most radical anti-Israel leftists have always wanted - and Israel walked right into the trap. It's very sad.

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