by Orri Avraham

Created on: February 02, 2007   Last Updated: May 21, 2007

As diplomat Abba Eban once put it, "the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity". Indeed, the past century of Middle Eastern history provides a seemingly endless array of examples that give backing to Mr. Eban's observation. Israel's very birth came hand in hand with the Palestinian rejection of the 1947 UN partition plan; the 1993 Oslo accords and the 2000 Camp David talks were likewise met with rebuff coupled with unprecedented waves of Palestinian terrorism; and Israel's disengagement from Gaza last summer was answered with the triumph of Hamas, a radical terror group, in the Palestinian Authority elections a few months afterwards. Doubtless, the Palestinian people have proven their fundamental unwillingness to accept the existence of a Jewish state and settle for peace. I was in no way surprised, therefore, when I came across an interesting poll conducted by an Israeli newspaper this past month.

An astounding 63% of Palestinians living in the disputed territories believe their leadership should adopt the policies of Hezbollah, the Shiite terrorist organization that ignited the recent war in Lebanon. A predominant majority of Palestinians, in other words, believe the best way to achieve "peace" is through the indiscriminant bombardment of Israeli population centers. The same majority that voted Hamas into power last January an electoral choice many in the west have defended as a reflection of Hamas's superior social services as opposed to its fanatic anti-Israel creed now leaves us no room for desperate, skewed, back-door interpretations conceived to convince ourselves that the Palestinians really do want peace; that they really do in fact yearn for coexistence with the Jewish state.

No more surprising, yet equally worrying, is the proportion of Arab-Israelis (i.e. Palestinians living within Israel as citizens) who support Hezbollah and hail its zealous leader, Nassrallah. A jaw-dropping 70% views the terrorist group as one "acting in the interest of all Arab-Israelis." Hence the interest of Arab-Israelis and the murder of their Jewish neighbors are hereby defined as one in the same.

We must slap ourselves out of the fantasy we have drawn for ourselves. We must come to grips with the simple, inescapable reality that the Palestinian people at large neither yearn for peace nor are ready to reconcile with the idea of a sovereign Jewish state in the Middle East. We must come to recognize the problem, before we can at last resolve it.

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