A Rude Awakening for Israel

 A Rude Awakening for Israel

Judging from a series of jarring public statements US officials have made, starting with President Trump and then the caravan of top officials he dispatched to Israel last week, America, too, is parroting the same long-standing misconceptions from previous administrations that are more likely to hinder peace instead of promoting it.

When Trump blames “rebel forces” for killing Israeli soldiers and avoids holding Hamas leadership accountable, he is following the Clinton-Rabin-Peres playbook, which blamed the “enemies of peace” for the wave of terror the Palestinian Authority unleashed on Israel’s streets right after the Oslo Accords, as if the PA leadership had no culpability. When the president excuses Hamas gangs conducting revenge killings against rival gangs in Gaza as “rambunctious,” as if they were a bunch of rowdy boys out for a night on the town, it emboldens Hamas to believe that the efforts to disarm them and demilitarize Gaza, which is the next phase of Trump’s 20-point plan, are not serious.

Kushner’s efforts to shift the responsibility onto Israel to “make life easier” for the Palestinians are also rooted in the failed Oslo paradigm. The Palestinian Authority and its predecessor, the Palestine Liberation Organization, have made life difficult for Israel, murdering nearly 5,000 Jews in various terrorist attacks since 1948. The Jerusalem-based NGO Palestinian Media Watch reported last week that 160 of the 250 Palestinian terrorists serving life terms who Israel released in exchange for the 20 hostages are now millionaires, in shekels, thanks to 229 million shekels in PA pay-for-slay payments. This sum does not include additional stipends the PA paid to their spouses and children. Wouldn’t that money have gone a long way toward making life easier for the Palestinians if spent on honorable causes?