“Accepting a peace proposal places before the Palestinian people a challenge their leaders fear they cannot meet: building a society based on constructive ideals, not merely a desire to kill Jews and loot their property.”
Gaza City, May 21 – Concerns over the contents of a much-anticipated and much-touted proposal by the American president to engender a regional resolution to the decades-old Arab-Israeli conflict have prompted leaders in Ramallah and Gaza to renew calls for Israel to supply them with an aerial defense system, this time to intercept the proposal instead of rockets.
During the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas, Palestinian and international officials demanded that Israel supply its proprietary Iron Dome system to Gaza so the civilians there – among whom Hamas and other Jihadist fighters had embedded themselves – could enjoy similar protection to that which Israel gave its residents by deploying the system against Hamas rockets. The calls died down once the fighting subsided, but now Palestinian leaders fear that their outright rejection of yet another proposal – at least the sixth since the conflict erupted in earnest a century ago, and the fourth in twenty years – will erode what remains of their credibility as seekers of a peaceful resolution, and thus of financial and diplomatic backing. They therefore have reissued their demand for Iron Dome, this time to be used against the Trump “Deal of the Century” before it can damage their standing and revenue.
Experts explained that Palestinian Presidnet Mahmoud Abbas of the ruling Fatah faction, on one hand, and Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, on the other, while they remain bitter rivals, agree on the importance of scuttling any genuine peace plan before a formal acceptance or rejection becomes necessary. “The Palestinian ethos that has developed over the last eighty years or so needs to be at war with Zionism to preserve its identity,” observed Bahrain-based commentator Itbah al-Salaam. “In the thinking of the Palestinian leadership today, as well as under Yasser Arafat and Mufti Husseini, there exists no coherent Palestinian people independent of opposition to Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land. Accepting a peace proposal that ends the conflict once and for all not only places any leader who does so in the crosshairs of those factions who reject it as treasonous; it places before the Palestinian people an unfamiliar challenge their leaders fear they cannot meet: building a society based on positive, constructive ideals, not merely a desire to kill Jews and loot their property.”
“Demanding Iron Dome makes sense in that respect on multiple levels,” concurred Saudi analyst Qassem Mayhem. “First, it sounds reasonable since a UN official already said it in 2014; second, it puts the onus on Israel to supply it or appear unwilling to engage, when in fact Israel has accepted, even made, multiple proposals; and third, if Israel does give them Iron Dome, the Palestinians can shoot down the proposal before it reaches a critical point.”
“I don’t see it happening, though,” added Mayhem. “And if it does, it’s just going to end up being another way the Palestinians shoot themselves in the foot.”
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