Will Palestinian Intransigence Once Again Save Israel From the Folly of Her Leaders?

"Then it's agreed. The U.S. will sell out Israel at the November peace conference."

Many friends of Israel have looked forward to the U.S.-sponsored international Middle East Peace Conference, tentatively scheduled for this November, with foreboding. They are not so much afraid of the potential failure of such a conference, which could lead to renewed Arab-Israeli hostilities, as to its potential success, which likely would deprive Israel of the Temple Mount and the heart of the historical Jewish homeland in Yehuda and Shomron, as well as impose both indefensible borders that would threaten the security of Israel and refugee repatriation obligations that would threaten its Jewish character.

Because Israel's present "post-Zionist" leadership puts so little value on Jewish values and Jewish tradition, one can have but little faith that people such as Ehud Olmert recognize the true cost of the concessions they are prepared to make to secure an agreement from the Arabs. The Arabs, on the other hand, know exactly what they are about, which is why the Muslim Waqf and the Palestinian Authority spend so much effort denying and erasing every trace of Jewish historical ties to the Land of Israel. They understand, as Israel's secular leaders do not, that the real key to destroying Israel is to undermine the reason for its creation, the national aspirations of the Jewish people.

Even so, painful concessions might be bearable if they came in return for true peace and recognition of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State. However, many friends of Israel fear and expect that the promises of peace from the Palestinian Arabs and the surrounding Arab States would turn out to be prevarications, just as the Oslo Accords proved to be. Fatah leaders have described the Oslo Accords as a "trojan horse," designed to allow Yassir Arafat and armed Fatah militias to return to the Land of Israel and obtain control over a part of its territory, the first phase of a strategic plan to weaken and ulitimately destroy Israel by stages. A peace agreement at the November international conference would be the next stage in that process.

Indeed, many of us have wondered at, and have been grateful for, the refusal of Yassir Arafat to accept the deal offered by President Bill Clinton and Israeli Premier Ehud Barak at Camp David summit conference in September 2000. Had he accepted the offer, he would have become the first President of a Palestinian State, which in all likelihood would have shortly thereafter repudiated its peace treaty with Israel and "continued the struggle to liberate all of Palestine," i.e., extinguish the State of Israel. It was one more example of how the Palestinian Arabs, in the words of Henry Kissinger, "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity," thank God.

Once again Palestinian overreaching may save Israel from the recklessness of her leaders. Tuesday's Jerusalem Post [it is already Tuesday in Israel] reports that the Palestinian Authority will only participate in the November conference if prior to the conference Israel makes a sweeping deal with the Palestinians, covering not only territorial concessions, but also refugees, settlements, security (or for Israel the loss of security) and water rights. As the Book of Psalms tells us, God watches over fools.