So what’s to negotiate?

It’s a hard and fast rule of nature that every time a terrorist organization like Hamas or Hezbollah runs low on ammunition, they call for a cease fire and want to negotiate. The question is, what’s to negotiate when the prime position of those with whom you are negotiating is your complete and utter destruction?

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That’s why I think Israel made a strategic error in agreeing to sit down with Hamas in Egypt this week to talk things over. They’ve done this so often over the past 60 years that it’s frankly becoming tiresome. Whether it’s the Six Day War of 1967 or the Lebanese incursion of 2006, the situation is usually the same: Israel is attacked by (fill in the Arab nation[s] or terrorist group[s] here). Israel retaliates and counterattacks (fill in the Arab nation[s] or terrorist group[s] here). (Fill in the Arab nation[s] or terrorist group[s] here) then calls for an urgent cease-fire and negotiations to resolve the issues. Stopping the violence in the Middle East is a no-brainer. All that needs to happen, as has been amply demonstrated over the past six decades is for Israel to be left in peace. It’s somewhat tedious to have to repeat this, but which part of “don’t lob mortars and missiles into Israeli territory” are Hamas, Hezbollah and all the other terrorist organizations having trouble understanding? There will never be “peace” in the Middle East, that’s a given. No matter how many concessions Israel makes, no matter how much “occupied” territory it returns to the Palestinians and no matter how often the combatants stop fighting in order to negotiate, if the prerequisite for peace is the annihilation of Israel, then there will never be peace because Israel cannot allow itself to be destroyed. At one point, during those famous Oslo Accords stick-handled by Bill Clinton, the Palestinians had 95% of all they asked for and for a brief moment it looked as though peace had finally come to the Holy Land. But then Yasser Arafat flew home and launched the Intifada, which put the kibosh on peace. Given that the Palestinian people have found themselves stateless for the past 60 years, the blame and the shame for this disgraceful state of affairs should fall onto its Arab “neighbours” who have had it within their means to establish a Palestinian state during this time. But given the fact that there is no functioning democracy in the Middle East (except maybe for Iraq after the US’s Surge) it is in the interest of these totalitarian Arab regimes to ensure the Palestinians remain stateless refugees for all eternity, as this provides a method of turning attention away from their own authoritarian shortcomings and focusing on the evils of Israel. And there is certainly no shortage of players in their game as shouts of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” have become the clarion call of the Arab Middle East. More and more Arab clerics compare Islam to the West by saying that Muslims “love death the same way Americans and Europeans love Life”. Well, if that’s truly the case, then Israel is only obliging their inner wishes in hunting down and killing Hamas terrorists. There’s no amount of self delusion on the part of “progressive” Europeans and North Americans that will erase the simple fact that this implacable enemy is fully and totally committed to what the Nazis used to call the “Endlösung” (final solution) of the Jewish question. They aren’t even subtly using euphemisms the way the Nazis did in stating their goals. World War II showed that it is not possible to negotiate with those of a totalitarian mindset in attempts to dissuade their genocidal aims. Nearly 70 million people died in the process. Let’s hope they did not die in vain.