Friedman's Clueless Middle East Advice - Jonathan S. Tobin
After so many years of being wrong about the Palestinians being ready to make peace with Israel, it is difficult to take New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman's Middle East advice columns seriously. But
his latest effort contains some whoppers. He starts out with praise for
imprisoned Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti as an "authentic
leader." But what makes Barghouti "authentic" to Palestinians is his
role in the murder of Israeli civilians (for which he is currently
serving five life sentences).
Let's remember that Barghouti's
mass murder spree took place in the immediate aftermath of an Israeli
peace offer that was not much different from the scheme Friedman now
thinks the Palestinians will accept. PA leader Yasir Arafat turned down
Ehud Barak's offers of a state in 2000 and 2001 and answered it with a
terror war that cost more than 1,000 Israelis their lives courtesy of
killers like Barghouti. Arafat's successor Mahmoud Abbas walked away
from another such offer in 2008.
Unlike Friedman, Israelis aren't
prepared to ignore the results of two decades of Middle East peace
processing during which they have traded land and received terror
instead of peace.
Netanyahu has already said he'd accept a
two-state solution and the vast majority of Israelis would support him
if he were presented with a deal that ended the conflict. Just as in
1977 when Egypt's Sadat went to Jerusalem, the Israelis are ready to
deal. The problem is that, unlike Sadat, the Palestinians aren't
actually willing to live in peace alongside the Jewish state. (Commentary)
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