Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was elected in 2005 to a '4 year term'

Will The Palestinians Ever Take Responsibility For Their Own Actions?

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Emanuel Engelmayer
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The Palestinians once again are crying to the world about Israel withholding money from them, but like so many other times, it is their own actions that led to the Israeli action.

Earlier this month, the Palestinian Authority appealed to the UN with the hopes that the General Assembly would refer their claim to the International Court of Justice. They hope the end-game will be the global court finding the Jewish State guilty over what Palestinians call 'the occupation' of Judea and Samaria. Not surprisingly, the Israel-focused United Nations ended up approving the referral. Shortly afterward, the Israeli government responded with sanctions against the Palestinians for trying to delegitimize Israel’s existence through international actions that potentially have serious implications for Israel.

In the wake of the vote, Israel announced they will divert tax revenue Israel collects for the Palestinian Authority to victims of terror attacks. The punitive measures have led to the latest petition from the Palestinians against Israel's sanctions, a petition that has been endorsed by 90 countries, including 27 members of the European Union.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority seemingly expects Israel to sit idly by while they use both legal and physical terrorism to destroy the Jewish State's existence, and the troubling issue is that prominent global powers seem to be playing along. Calling out the antisemitic behavior would be appropriate, but it appears in 2023 antisemitism is once again popular and European fears of unrest from their massive Muslim populations are driving decisions.

In complete contrast to the Palestinian strategy of using meaningless appeals and petitions as PR stunts to gain leverage, Israel legitimately seeks the most efficient way to defend its 1947 UN-given right to self-determination and sovereignty. That is why Israel rarely appeals to international courts or the UN against Palestinian Human Rights violations because there is an understanding it will not change the situation but merely put the situation at the front of the global political stage, where it seemingly already is.

An example of this is the fact that Palestinians have been putting children in combat situations solely to promote the fact that there is an uptick in children being killed by Israeli forces. Images of 'innocent' teens swarm social media along with language insinuating that Israel is arbitrarily slaughtering Palestinian youth while the images of the same kids with guns and video evidence of their involvement in skirmishes with IDF soldiers get ignored.

It is also worth noting that for an authority seeking eventual statehood, the Palestinian leadership is expressing no capability of acting in a responsible manner for the sake of its people. As US President Harry Truman said back in 1942: “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen”; why head to an international court, being warned of the repercussions, if you have no viable way of actually dealing with them that doesn’t include heading to global leaders yet again? Additionally, the back-and-forth childish debates the PA is forcing Israel to participate in are simply getting kind of old and stale, gaining little international media coverage that has traditionally supported their cause. 

The Palestinians are responsible for the plight they find themselves in. In 1993 Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat signed an agreement that outlined a path toward two states for two people. Yet, after numerous offers and countless negotiating sessions since then, the Palestinians have rejected everything and even violate the Oslo Accords by claiming cities like Tel-Aviv and Haifa are occupied Palestine. President Abbas has made it clear that two states is not their goal, a unified Palestine in all of Israel is.

Nevertheless, Israel as usual was forced to send its diplomats out into the field to protect itself from the Palestinian petition against sanctions it quite literally brought upon itself.  Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Ardan, declared in response that "the Palestinians are taking advantage of the distorted mechanism of the UN to use political terrorism and try to harm Israel. This is a meaningless declarative statement and every country that signed it only added fuel to the fire of incitement and terrorism of the Palestinians, and removed any chance of reconciliation."

The head of Israel’s Foreign Ministry's Department for Middle East Affairs, Oded Joseph, also added in a separate interview "We completely reject the Palestinians' statement. They harnessed an automatic majority to some of the UN countries, but this statement has no practical meaning and cannot change the fact that most countries did not support the Palestinians' position to refer their issue to the International Court of Justice. The Palestinians need to understand that there is a price that will be paid for continuing their political moves against Israel.”

The Palestinian leadership’s attitude should concern Israelis less since as mentioned it has no real consequences, but the Palestinian nationalists under PA rule would be fools not to be shaking their heads over this embarrassing chain of events. What has the leadership of Palestine accomplished by using their billions in donations to whine and complain? Well besides more donations to pad their already fat wallets, the political equivalent of a pat on the back. The fact is, much of what the Palestinians do is done to raise more money. The business of perpetual 'resistance' and victimhood is very lucrative. It made Yasser Arafat, Hamas' Khaled Mashal & Ismail Haniyah and even current President Mahmoud Abbas, billionaires.

Meanwhile, in Palestinian territories, there are starving children, unpaved roads and infrastructure in desperate need of attention, and clean water shortages all over their self-governed territories, yet the PA has decided to begin the new year without any resolution that will help their citizens, but instead orchestrate some grand publicity stunt that has no chance of working, and does not benefit their people or further their cause.

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