Weekly Commentary: Gestures To PA – But Keep The Gloves Off

Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 17 May 2012

The current series of Israeli gestures could serve a vital role in enabling
the Jewish State to keep the “ball” in the Palestinian “court” without being
sucked into renewing the “settlement freeze”.

But making gestures should in no way be accompanied by a reconciliatory
approach towards objectionable Palestinian behavior and Palestinian
pronouncements.

Toning down criticism of the PA not only doesn’t serve the interests of
Israel – it ultimately does not serve the interests of the Palestinians.

First Israeli interests:

Israeli criticism of the PA serves both to highlight and emphasize the
standard of behavior that we expect the Palestinians to meet while providing
vital evidence that these standards are not being met.

The failure of the Palestinians to meet these standards can serve a critical
role in justifying Israel’s final status requirements.

After all, if the Palestinians had honored Oslo – in particular the security
elements of the agreement – we would be facing incredible pressure in final
status talks to accept paper thin security arrangements.

The gross failure of the Palestinians to honor their security obligations
makes “peace for piece of paper” a farce that no serious third party would
even consider suggesting – let alone trying to impose.

But there are also Palestinian interests.

If you believe that the Palestinian leadership genuinely wants to implement
a “two state solution” rather than a “two state stage” with the ultimate
goal of destroying Israel then one would want to empower them to be able to
honor their obligations.

And the best way to empower the Palestinian leadership is to put them in the
position that they can point to the sharp criticism they suffer from for
violations in order to justify compliance to their “street”.

For everyone’s best interests – let’s keep the gloves on.

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-7255730
INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il
Website: http://www.imra.org.il