May 12, 2011

Last month, Fatah, the governing body of the Palestinian Authority (P.A.), signed a unity agreement with the terrorist group Hamas. The deal included forming a single government to lead the Palestinians, and called for new elections within a year.

This new partnership surprised nearly everyone. Fatah and Hamas have been sworn enemies since the two began warring shortly after the death of former Fatah leader and terrorist kingpin Yasser Arafat in 2004. This conflict has led to many bloody clashes between the two groups that have resulted in hundreds of Palestinian deaths. In fact, until recently about the only thing these two groups seem to have agreed upon is their common hatred of Israel.

What could be the motivation for this agreement? One likely possibility is that P.A. president Mahmoud Abbas brokered the deal so that the Palestinians will present a unified front to the world when they go to the United Nations in September to seek recognition of a Palestinian state. After all, a unified people speaking with one voice would seem to be more prepared for the difficult task of building a nation than a people fractured by division and violence.

But, of course, there is a huge difference between real unity the sort of unity necessary to birth a functional state that stands ready to take its place in the world community and the "unity of convenience" entered into only to achieve a certain end. Commentary magazine's Rich Richman described the possibility of Palestinian statehood in harshly realistic terms:

    If you can't finish drafting your constitution; if your "president" is in the seventh year of his four-year term; if you have no functioning legislature and cannot hold parliamentary elections; if half your putative state is occupied by terrorists; if your education system is a cesspool of anti-Semitism; if you insist upon dedicating public squares to those who massacred civilians; if your ruling party is corroded by corruption; if you have no free press or independent judiciary…and if you haven't finished Phase I of the Roadmap...well, you might not be ready for a state.
Israel, of course, cannot accept a Palestinian state built on a Fatah-Hamas coalition government. Such a state would be eternally at war with the Jewish state. Neither Hamas nor Fatah has taken the fundamental first steps toward forming a viable Palestinian state, namely the recognition of neighboring Israel as the Jewish homeland, and an unequivocal renunciation of terrorism. These — not the façade of "unity" Fatah and Hamas have attempted to create through their agreement — must be the fundamental building blocks of any future Palestinian state.

The psalmist once plaintively cried out to God, "Too long have I lived among those who hate peace. I am for peace; but when I speak, they are for war" (Psalm 120:6-7). Sadly, there is no verse in all Scripture that better describes the situation Israel faces today. Let us pray for the day when a true partner for peace with Israel will emerge in the Arab world — one that will not just tolerate Israel's existence, but work together with the Jewish state to promote the blessings of peace, democracy, and prosperity throughout the region.

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein
President