Golda Meir Quotes

Mohamed Anwar El-Sedat

He and the government had just given the OK for a targeted assassination of the Palestinian terrorist who had designed the bombs and recruited the suicide bombers which led to the deaths of over 100 Israelis. Shortly thereafter, a cell phone the engineer was using blew up killing him by the same method whereby he had killed so many. This was the first targeted assassination of terrorist leaders, which then became an operational policy.

Al-Alusi attended an anti-terrorism conference in Israel. He was arrested by conservatives who cited a law passed under the Hussein regime prohibiting any contact with Israelis. However, he was immediately released citing the new freedom of Iraqis to travel anywhere they want and meet with whomever they want.

Israel had again been attacked by Arab armies and at the same time the parties were in peace negotiations. Some argued that there should be a cease fire while negotiations were ongoing, but Rabin explained that if the two did not go on simultaneously and independently, neither might go well.

While it is true that there is a powerful minority of Palestinians and Palestinian organizations—Hamas & Hezbollah, for example whose official position is that there must be no compromise with Israel and Jews must be killed unless they convert to Islam, there are ultra-orthodox, religious, Jewish groups who believe that all the land in dispute was given to the Jews by God and there can be no compromise. The majority of Israelis believe that there is no Palestinian leadership who can stand up to the powerful minorities. The majority of Palestinians believe that the Israeli governments will never stand up to thieir powerful minorities. The Israeli Prime Minister was trying to signal the Palestinians, that if they compromise, the Israelis will also, but neither side has a lot of credibility when it comes to land, borders, and religious identity and that is especially true of this Israeli Prime Minister, who many Israelis (and many Americans) doubt that he will compromise on the land and borders with all the Israeli settlers already inhabiting enclaves of what is, by every law (International, Israeli, and traditional Arab—with the exception of God’s law of the Old Testament—which agrees that the Israelis or the Jewish People do not have title to or control over the lands outside of Israel proper.

A major issue amongst Israeli’s is to how they should relate to those hostile Islamic nations in their area who claim they are at war with Israel or the Jewish People. This position in effect says that the oratory of those Islamic groups that claim that they are in a war—a holy war even—should be taken at their word and treated as a wartime enemy and Israel should actively attempt to kill and destroy them.

At that time the Israelis had been rebuffed after offing several major peace proposals and most were convinced that the Palestinians were so fractionated that no one would dare sign a peace even giving Palestinians their own state and sharing Jerusalem as the capital. So they just organized around security needs and walling Israel off from terrorist attacks while maintaining the occupation until something radially changes amongst the Palestinians. The Palestinians and the other Arabs did not want to negotiate either as they felt so weak that they believed they could never get decent terms, and they hoped for some military or terrorist victories where the Israelis would make large concessions to a strong opponent. At the same time there were a few ultra-orthodox Jews who did not want a peace and wanted to do what conquering nations had done throughout history—annex more conquered territory. There were a number of Arab groups, in addition to some Palestinians who did not want a peace at all, as for them there was no satisfactory solution so long as there was a Jewish state in their midst. See {632822} for more on the Israeli attitude then.

At that time the Israelis had been rebuffed after offing several major peace proposals and most were convinced that the Palestinians were so fractionated that no one would dare sign a peace even giving Palestinians their own state and sharing Jerusalem as the capital. So they just organized around security needs and walling Israel off from terrorist attacks while maintaining the occupation until something radially changes amongst the Palestinians. At that time there was little point to most Israelis to debating terms of a peace treaty as the odds of ever getting one in the next couple of years were about the same as their going to Mars.

Erecat was expressing his frustration with the peace negotiations and the lack of progress.