Talking About Israel's Rights

Max Singer, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the BESA Center of Bar-Ilan University, writes that Israel should not be surprised when Europeans and others "refuse to be moved by Israel's complaints about Palestinian terror and have no patience for arguments about the need for defensible borders."

The reason, though straightforward, goes almost unnoticed: Israel talks about its needs; while Palestinians talk about their rights. . . .

The Palestinians . . . are heard as saying, "we are a proud and ancient people; our land was stolen by colonialist foreigners, and we will fight until we get it back." The reply that they are fighting too dirty, or that Israel needs the land to protect its security, doesn't carry much emotional weight. . . .

Entrenched anti-Israel sentiment will not be moved until we state that we are a proud and ancient people; that the disputed land is our homeland, and was ours historically; that the land was assigned to us by the League of Nations, and we will fight to protect our country. . . .

The disputed land, we should remember, became available in 1920 when its former sovereign, the defeated Ottoman Empire, was removed. The League of Nations heard the dispute between the Jews, represented by the Balfour Declaration of Great Britain, and the Arabs living in the land, represented by other Arab countries.

Aware that the Jews had ruled the land in ancient times, had no other homeland, and were displacing no existing state, the League decided that the Jewish people should be invited to settle the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as its homeland. . . .

Israel's rights are not perfect or exclusive, but they are certainly strong enough so that it does not come to the table as a "thief of Palestinian land." The Palestinians' claims may be strong enough to justify giving them some of the land they want. But since the Palestinians have never been rulers of the land, it could not have been stolen from them.

No member of the United Nations has an obligation to recognize a new state of unproven intent on its borders, much less yield disputed territory previously used to launch multiple genocidal wars, unless and until the claimant demonstrates by irreversible action (not just words) over a significant period of time (not just for the moment) an intent to live in peace.

Which is why the Road Map has three phases instead of one.

(Hat tip:  K-Lo).