Josef Joffe, publisher-editor of Die Zeit, and a fellow at the Institute for International Studies and the Hoover Institution at Stanford, concludes in “Do Palestinians Really Want a Two-State Solution?” in today’s Wall Street Journal Europe that the answer is no:
The real message of
Gaza may be a bloody and cruel testimony to intractability. How shall we count the ways? Annapolis, Wye, Taba, Camp David,
Oslo . . . all the way back to 1947 when the Arabs refused the original two-state solution. Looking at this tale of doom, the proverbial visitor from Mars would ask in all innocence: “Could it be that the Palestinians actually don’t want two states?” . . .
In 2005,
Israel withdrew from
Gaza. Our man from Mars would have thought: Now is the time for the Palestinians to really build a state, as they couldn’t previously when Yasser Arafat was in charge and the Israeli army in place. Instead, the Palestinians elected Hamas, which thrust the three no’s at
Israel: no recognition, no negotiation, no acceptance (of the
Oslo Accords).
It is worth reading in its entirety.
“These guys don’t look like they want peace.” (WSJ caption to the above AP picture, which accompanies Joffe’s article today).
