Why Peace Efforts In Middle-East Fail

Reasons Why Peaceful Resolutions for the Arab-Israeli Conflict Always Fail

by Tawfik Hamid

• The cause of the problem is NOT the land. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, several Arab nations were created by fiat. The Arab world accepted this without any problem, as these were Muslim-majority countries. Rejecting the state of Israel was related to the fact that it is a Jewish rather than a Muslim country.
  
  
• In this manner, despite the clear discrimination against non-Muslim minorities in most of the Arab and Muslim world (denying equal rights in church construction, for example), many in the Arab world point the finger only at Israel when they talk about discrimination.
  
  
• The European Union is currently funding a study into Palestinians textbooks, brought about by the findings of the non-governmental organization IMPACT-se, which found in May that "the new Palestinian school [material] for the 2018–19 academic year... was 'more radical than those previously published.'" ... Meanwhile, no one is being educated for peace.
  
  
• When we add onto all that the sad reality that Palestinian politicians are using the conflict to get billions of dollars in donations, we can understand why this conflict has so far not been solved.
  
  
  
  
  We must salute Jared Kushner's attempt to bring a peaceful solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. That said, the Palestinians' unsurprising rejection of the peace offer requires some scrutiny, especially the true causes of the perennial failure to achieve lasting peace.
  
  
  Without understanding them, every attempt to solve this conflict, every attempt to make true peace in the Middle East, will always fail.
  As an insider with a background as both a Muslim and an Arab, please allow me share with you some insight into the problem.
  
  
  1. The Arab-Israeli conflict is not about borders. It is about the existence of the state of Israel.
  
  
  In 1947, the United Nations Partition Plan -- Resolution 181 -- gave the Palestinians and Arabs control over most of the Holy Land. The rejection of the plan by the Arab nations, and their declaration of war against Israel rather than their acceptance of peace, was the first clear indication that the Arabs' desire was never to provide a state for the Palestinian people, but rather has been from the beginning to erase Israel from the map. This destructive intent is memorialized in the Hamas Charter, which unashamedly asks for the eradication of the State of Israel. This intent is also aligned with the Iranian leaders' continuous entreaties to destroy Israel. An evaluation of relevant social media commentary in the Arab world demonstrates a genuine desire by many -- if not most -- of the Arab population to see the destruction of Israel and the killing not just of all Israeli Jews but of all Jews:

  Narrated 'Abdullah bin 'Umar:
  I heard Allah's Apostle [Muhammad] saying, "The Jews will fight with you, and you will be given victory over them so that a stone will say, 'O Muslim! There is a Jew behind me; kill him!' " -- Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 56, Number 791

  2. The cause of the problem is NOT the land
  
  
  After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, several Arab nations were created by fiat. The Arab world accepted this without any problem, as these were Muslim-majority countries. Rejecting the state of Israel was related to the fact that it is a Jewish rather than a Muslim country. In fact, on several occasions I have asked Arab Muslims (including raising the point on Aljazeera TV) [See: 40:44 - 41:04] whether they would continue fighting Israel if its entire population converted to Islam. The answer is a unanimous "NO." My answer to that is always, "Then the problem has nothing to do with the land, as many claim, but with the Jewishnessof the State of Israel."