According to Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, “The root of the conflict is not the settlements; it is the very existence of the State of Israel and the desire to wipe it off the face of the earth.” For proof of this reality, Netanyahu pointed to the fact that during Operation Pillar of Defense, the Palestinians fired missiles from Gaza, an area that Israel captured during the Six Days War yet withdrew from. Netanyahu further asserted that although many people preach the opposite, the truth is “the root of this conflict is not territorial. It is over our very existence in any borders whatsoever.”
Indeed, any close evaluation of statements by Palestinian leaders would reveal that Netanyahu is correct about this. For example, the PLO’s Zuheir Mohsen in 1977 told the Dutch newspaper Trouw: “The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism.”
Thus, based on this, it would appear that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not about giving the Palestinians a country of their own, for the Palestinians themselves throughout history never have had an independent sovereign state and have turned down every offer to create such a state next to Israel. Rather, the conflict is about denying Israel’s right to exist, since the Arabs cannot tolerate a non-Muslim entity in the heart of the Muslim world.
As Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas in Gaza, stated, “We do not recognize the Israeli enemy, nor his right to be our neighbor, nor to stay (on the land), nor his ownership of any inch of land…. We are interested in restoring our full rights to return all the people of Palestine to the land of Palestine. Our principles are clear: Palestine is a land of Waqf (Islamic trust), which can not be given up.”
Indeed, Palestinian leaders, whether they are Hamas or Fatah, have repeatedly confirmed that Netanyahu is correct in stating that the conflict is about Israel’s right to exist. For example, the PLO Ambassador to India, Adli Sadeq, stated in 2011, “They have a common mistake, or misconception by which they fool themselves, assuming that Fatah accepts them and recognizes the right of their state to exist, and that it is Hamas alone that loathes them and does not recognize the right of this state to exist. They ignore the fact that this state, based on a fabricated [Zionist] enterprise, never had any shred of a right to exist.”
The official Palestinian media also routinely denies Israel the right to exist. For example, Palestinian Media Watch reported Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the official PA daily, asserted, “The Jews have no connection to the Palestinian Arab land, upon whose ruins arose the colonialist settler Zionist plan that settles and expels, represented by the Israeli apartheid state. That which occurred two thousand years ago, assuming that it is true, represents in the book of history nothing more than invention and falsification and a coarse and crude form of colonialism.” Such sentiments are also taught within the Palestinian school textbooks, which refuse to put Israel on the map.
As Israeli Ambassador to the UN Ron Proser stated, “Peace can only be achieved through negotiations, by recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.” To date, Palestinian leaders, whether they be Fatah or Hamas, have refused to do this and for this reason, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to wage on.
Reported by Rachel Avraham for United With Israel
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