No End to the Palestinians’ Self-Inflicted Tragedy

Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah/Palestinian Authority has just cemented a reconciliation agreement with Hamas, the terrorist movement that seized Gaza from Fatah in 2007 and whose charter calls for the murder of Jews. U.S.-brokered Israeli/Palestinian negotiations have foundered in a predictable round of recriminations. But events commemorated in recent weeks provide the clue to understanding why such talks invariably lead to an impasse. On May 15, Palestinians marked what they call the naqba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) – the day Israel came into existence upon the expiry of British rule under a League of Nations mandate.

That juxtaposition of Israeli independence and naqba is not accidental. We are meant to understand that Israel’s creation caused the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs.

But the truth is different. A British document from early 1948, declassified last year, tells the story: “the Arabs have suffered … overwhelming defeats[.] … Jewish victories … have reduced Arab morale to zero and, following the cowardly example of their inept leaders, they are fleeing from the mixed areas in their thousands.”

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The very existence of naqba commemorations is therefore instructive in a way few realize. It informs us that Palestinians have not admitted or assimilated the fact – as Germans and Japanese have done – that they became victims as a direct result of their efforts to be perpetrators.

It informs us that Palestinians would still like to succeed today at what they miserably failed to achieve then.

And it informs us that they take no responsibility for their own predicament, which is uniquely maintained to this day at their own insistence.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/06/09/no-end-to-the-palestinians-self-inflicted-tragedy/