Palestinian Authority's ‘New Framework’ Not So New

JERUSALEM, Israel -- While the Palestinian Authority is talking peace, they're also teaching the next generation to hate their Israeli neighbors.

In an interview this week with the Washington Post, P.A. Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah said they’re hoping to resume negotiations within a “new framework.”

“We need outside intervention from the U.N., from the superpowers, from the United States,” said Hamdallah. “Once there is a resolution, whether the U.N. asking for Israeli withdrawal [to 1948 armistice lines] and for the establishment of the [Palestinian] state, this has to be guaranteed by the superpowers.”

Yet while seeking international backing for their cause, they simultaneously indoctrinate their children on official Palestinian television.

On a typical children’s program aired earlier this spring, the Jerusalem Post reported a little girl recited a poem that refers to “the sons of Zion…who murdered Allah’s pious prophets” as “barbaric monkeys” and “the most evil of creations” and Jerusalem as “the eternal capital of Palestine.”

“Jerusalem opposes your throngs,” she says full face to the camera. “Jerusalem vomits from within it your impurity.”

“Because Jerusalem, you impure ones, is pious, immaculate. And Jerusalem, you who are filth, is clean and pure,” to which the lovely young hostess exclaims, “Bravo!”

“Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Palestine. We will never forget it,” she instructs her young audience.”

In another program posted by MEMRI, a Moppet-like puppet says, “I am certain that Jaffa -- and not only Jaffa, but also Haifa, Acre, Nazareth and all the Palestinian cities occupied in 1948 -- will return to us one day.”

Far from a willingness to seek mutually agreeable solutions that would pave the way for “two states living side by side in peaceful coexistence,” many P.A. demands would jeopardize Israeli security, making them nonstarters.

Bar-Ilan University Prof. Efraim Inbar points out in his latest op-ed, genuine reconciliation with the Palestinian Authority is impossible at this time.

Inbar, like other Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, says the P.A.’s refusal to recognize Israel as the Jewish nation-state is at the core of the historical conflict.

“While Israel, under the leadership of then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin, recognized the ‘legitimate rights of the Palestinian people in 1978,’ the Palestinians still have not reciprocated,” he writes.   Inbar says the growing appeal of Islam within Palestinian society is making recognition of the Jewish state “increasingly difficult.”

“Denying the legitimate right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel only reinforces the large Israeli consensus that the Palestinians are not a serious partner for peacemaking,” he concludes, calling the protracted conflict “intractable.

“The two-state solution everyone pays lip service to is simply not a realistic outcome under the current circumstances,” Inbar concludes.

So while the Europeans and others press Israel to accept the P.A.’s “new framework,” Israeli leaders realize the only real solution is “conflict management.” At the same time, the Israeli government continues pursuing programs to educate the Arab population and help aspiring youngsters to succeed, while making sure Israelis are as safe as possible from those seeking to harm them. 

Given the official and regular diatribes against the Jewish state, some say the Palestinian Authority’s latest pitch for renewing talks with Israel is empty talk.