By Steven A. Hemmat, , Seattle
The editorial by Rainer Waldman Adkins and Teri Citterman (“Sharing Jerusalem: The key to peace?“ April 30) supportive of a “two-state solution” and Barack Obama’s public criticism of Jewish construction in Jerusalem reminds me of Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
The failed Oslo process and past Israeli concessions have not resulted in Palestinian abrogation of violence to obtain its political goals. Let’s look at the facts. First, to date the Palestinian National Covenant has not explicitly omitted the language denying Israel’s right to exist. Official Palestinian pronouncements continue to assert that the Jews have no historic claim to Jerusalem and no Jewish Temple ever stood on what they call the “Haram-al-Sharif” — The Temple Mount. Second, all Israeli territorial withdrawals over the past decade have been reciprocated not with compromise by Arabs but with increased violence. Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000 was met with an emboldened Hezbollah, kidnappings of Israeli soldiers, and the bloody second intifada. Moreover, the number of rockets fired at Israel from Gaza more than tripled after Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in August 2005 — with nearly 6,000 rockets and mortars were launched between August of 2005 and the January 2009 Gaza war.
In light of these undisputed facts, Adkins and Citterman now suggest that a cessation of building in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem will lead to peace and a two-state solution — notwithstanding the fact that all prior concessions and efforts made by Israel have been met with Palestinian violence. This is insanity.
Jewish blood should not have been shed in vain, and over 20 centuries of prayers to return to Jerusalem dismissed, because of the political left’s severe cognitive dissonance. As simply stated by Golda Meir, “We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”