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Tal Ben-Shahar is a Graduate Fellow at Harvard University's Center for Ethics,
and the author of .
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By Tal Ben-Shahar
July 1, 2002
In a fundraising event for a Palestinian cause, Cherie Blair, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said that, "As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up, you are never going to make progress." Following her comment, Blair came under attack for justifying, or at the very least expressing her understanding for, the suicide murders committed by the Palestinians. Those who attack Blair, however, do not acknowledge that what she says is true: Palestinians do feel a sense of hopelessness, they do feel that they are making no progress, and given the current situation, it makes sense that suicide murder seems like the only alternative to them.
The question that needs to be asked, though, is what Palestinians hope for, and what, in their eyes, would constitute progress. For over fifty years Palestinian refugees have been told by their leadership, and the entire Arab world, that it is just a matter of time before Jews are expelled from the entire land of Palestine and pushed into the sea.
Arab leaders, like Yasser Arafat, have cultivated, what turned out to be, a false sense of hope in the Palestinian refugees. These leaders, until 1967, truly believed that Israel's existence was a passing phenomenon, and that it was a matter of time before the refugees would return to their homes. Following Israel's overwhelming victory in 1967, however, these same leaders and their heirs realized that the Jewish State could not be destroyed without first weakening it, and it was then that they introduced the phased plan - the strategy of gradually destroying Israel through a combination of diplomatic and military activities. To carry out the diplomatic part of the plan - to weaken Israel through having it make diplomatic concessions - the Arab leaders exploited the refugees, depicting them as poor victims of occupation.
Beyond exploiting the refugees for gaining support in the public relations war, Arab leaders had other reasons for continuing to cultivate the conviction in the minds of the refugees that one day they will be sole rulers of Palestine. First, such belief helped abate demands from the refugees for resettlement somewhere on the vast Arab lands; second, the belief helped foment the refugees' hatred toward Israel so that they could be used as soldiers - or suicide murderers - against Israelis.
The hope of returning to their homes in Israel is a false hope. Israel will not permit all the refugees into Israel because such an act would spell the end of the Jewish State. Libyan dictator Mohammar Qaddafi has himself said that if the refugees return "there would be no more Israel... If they accept, then Israel would be ended." In 1949, the Egyptian foreign minister, Muhammad Salah al-Din, stated that the return of the refugees would lead to "the liquidation of the State of Israel."
So here is the reality that the refugees are facing. Israel is a strong country and the refugees no longer believe that it can be destroyed; they have been let down too many times before - whether by Egyptian president Gamel Abdel Nasser in the 1960s or, more recently, by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The refugees also recognize that Israel will not grant them their "right of return" and, what makes it worse, that the United States is siding with Israel on this issue.
Given that reality, if the Palestinian's hope is to destroy Israel, then they really do not have any alternative, as Cherie Blair claimed, but to revert to blow themselves up while killing as many Israelis as they possibly can. Not that suicide murder will win the war, but from the perspective of the Palestinians it evens the playing field. The stones of the first Intifada killed few Israelis; now, with their new weapon killing hundreds of Israelis, they are making some real "progress."
If, on the other hand, Palestinians hope to have their own thriving state in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip, then they have a simple alternative to suicide murders: recognizing, in words and deeds, Israel's right to exist, and refocusing their efforts from destruction to creation. The majority of Israelis, for the last fifty four years, have supported a two-state solution - given that this solution would indeed end the state of perpetual war.
Israel, regardless of how many suicide bombers explode on its land, will not commit suicide by indulging the false hopes of the Palestinians. Rather than pointing a finger at Israel, world leaders, and their spouses, must openly condemn those who cultivate false hope and plant the seeds of death.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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