Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Palestinians' violent past

Palestinians' violent past
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1114684.html
BY OFER BAVLY
It seems that although the Israeli government and moderate
Palestinians agree on the need to restart the peace process with a
view to reaching a permanent resolution, there is serious disagreement
on what the real obstacle to peace is. Many in Europe and in the
United States view the Israeli settlements in the West Bank as the
single greatest obstacle to peace. But historical perspective as well
as the recent past show otherwise.
Arab violence toward Jews in the Holy Land began decades before the
state of Israel was established. It had nothing to do with
''occupation'' or with ''settlements,'' and everything to do with
preventing Jews from establishing their own state on their historical
land.
After the 1948 War of Independence, Jordan occupied the West Bank, and
Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip for almost 20 years. Eastern Jerusalem
was in Arab hands, ruled by the King of Jordan. And yet the
Palestinians never rose against these Arab states, never demanded
independence, never demanded to establish a capital in Jerusalem.
Acts of terror
In the 1950s and 1960s, Arab Fedayeen terrorists launched dozens of
attacks against Israeli civilians. This was not a protest movement,
nor was it a fight to ''liberate'' any land. There were no settlements
and no occupation. The terrorists simply wanted to kick the Jews out
of the Middle East, refusing to recognize the Jewish state's right to
exist. They used terrorism in an attempt to change that reality.
In 1964, three years before any Israeli occupation of the West Bank,
the Palestinians established the PLO, which began carrying out
indiscriminate terror attacks against Israeli civilians. There was no
occupation, no Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, no settlements. East
Jerusalem was Arab. And yet, instead of building a peaceful state of
their own alongside Israel, Arafat and his band of terrorists wanted
to eliminate the Jewish state, which only occupied half of the land
allotted to our two states by the United Nations.
Jordan, Egypt and the rest of the Arab world could have given the
Palestinians their own homeland on the same land they demand today,
not one inch less. They could have handed them Jerusalem as their
capital on a silver platter.
Recent experience shows that whenever Israel made concessions to the
Palestinians, those concessions were rewarded not with reciprocal
concessions, but rather with more violence, terrorism and
intransigence. After Israel pulled out of Lebanon, the Hezbollah
terrorist organization continued launching missiles against us. Not a
single Israeli soldier is on Lebanese soil, yet Hezbollah claims to be
a ''resistance'' movement. Resistance against what? Against Israel's
very existence.
In 2005, Israel pulled out all its soldiers from the Gaza Strip and
dismantled settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinian
response came in the form of 8,000 rockets launched against Israeli
towns and villages. There is no occupation in Gaza. No settlements in
Gaza. No soldiers in Gaza.
We'll honor pact
The settlements never have been and never will be an obstacle to
peace. If and when we negotiate a territorial agreement with the
Palestinians, we may well dismantle more settlements. We will fulfill
our side of any agreement. But history shows that dismantling
settlements and making territorial concessions only make the
Palestinians hungrier for blood. For us, uprooting families from their
homes is a painful concession that we have made again and again. It
has brought us more violence and more death. For the Palestinians,
these concessions are a sign of weakness, causing them to launch even
more terror attacks.
The real obstacle to peace is the refusal of the Arab world to truly
accept the existence of a Jewish state on our historic land. Although
it occupies one-thousandth of the combined size of Muslim states,
Israel's existence in the Middle East is, to most Arabs, unacceptable
and should be fought to the last drop of (Israeli) blood. They fight
not for land, but for our destruction and elimination. Pressuring
Israel to dismantle the settlements is dangerous because it will not
bring peace to the Middle East. It will bring more violence, more
terrorism and more Israeli deaths. Unfortunately, we learned this
lesson years ago.

 Acts of terror
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irgun_attacks_during_the_1930s