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editorial

Wide Culture Gap Hinders Peace Chances

A

s Israelis condemn Jewish
terror targeting Palestinians,
including so-called “price-
tag” attacks by Jewish extremist set-
tlers, Palestinians justify the spate
of terror waged largely by young
Palestinians against Israelis.
Therein lies a core difference
between Israeli and Palestinian cul-
ture. In Israel, homebred terror is an
aberration wrought by radicals deserv-
ing only of justice. Within the Fatah-
led Palestinian Authority (P.A.), which
governs much of the West Bank, terror
is glorified as heroic defiance.
This dramatic divide in values
makes the potential for meaningful
peace talks to end the decades-long
Israeli-Palestinian conflict so remote.

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SHARP CONTRAST
While Israelis clearly view any sort of
terror as abhorrent, Palestinians seem-
ingly embrace the homegrown variety
as a counter to Israel’s military occupa-
tion of the West Bank. Palestinians eye
the Fatah-governed areas of the West
Bank, the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip
and the Arab-dominated eastern sec-
tor of Jerusalem for an internationally
recognized Palestinian state.
The 3½-month wave of Palestinian
stabbing, shooting and car attacks
against Israeli civilians and soldiers is
mostly the work of Palestinians ages
15 to 25 who aren’t organized, but
whose leaders have spread the myth
that Israeli aggression is the cause of
their hopelessness. A December poll
by the Palestinian Center for Policy
and Survey Research found two-thirds
of Palestinians favor the violence and
almost the same percentage favors
another armed intifida, or uprising.
As Israel-based Palestinian Media
Watch put it, the poll underscores the
P.A. “is entrenching hatred and terror”
via “constant terror glorification, pro-
motion of violence and libels against
Israel.”

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CRACKING DOWN
Israel, meanwhile, is actively inves-
tigating and prosecuting suspects
in the deadly July firebombing of a
Palestinian home that killed a toddler
and his parents in the West Bank vil-
lage of Duma. Settler zealots and their
supporters seek revenge via nation-
alistically driven crimes typically in
reprisal for Israel’s freezes on new
settlements and demolition of illegal
settlements or to exact retribution

against Palestinian attacks on Jews.
Israeli police report assigning spe-
cial units in the West Bank to monitor
and deal with such hate crimes. The
units seek intelligence to effect arrests
and indictments. Israeli authorities
now allow suspects accused of com-
mitting nationalistically motivated acts
to be detained up to six months with-
out trial, contentious as the proceeding
is, in a bid to limit price-tag attacks.
According to an Aug. 14 story in the
Jerusalem Post, data from 2014 reveals
a 30 percent increase from 2013 in
Jewish extremism cases handled by
authorities, a 98 percent increase in
criminals detained and a 75 percent
increase in related indictments.
For their part, Palestinian leaders
are telling kids, via official P.A. TV, the
“State of Palestine” will swallow the State
of Israel. Planting such seeds of hate is
not unique to Hamas; the P.A. and Fatah
also have done so for decades.

The Palestinian
Authority “is
entrenching hatred
and terror.”

NO STANDING STILL
Adopting a zero-tolerance policy
would make Israel’s stepped-up efforts
to prosecute homegrown terror against
Arabs even stronger. It’s the demo-
cratic and necessary thing to do.
As for the Palestinians, they can’t
make a believable case for another
Arab state until they recommit not
only to direct bilateral negotiations
with Israel, but also to end teaching
that the way to succeed in “revolu-
tion” against Israel is to “water it with
blood” — blood of Palestinian “mar-
tyrs” and the Israelis they victimize.
It was P.A. President Mahmoud
Abbas, Israel’s erstwhile peace part-
ner, who implored his people, many
desperate and impressionable, to
“spill their blood” to defend the Al
Aqsa Mosque atop Jerusalem’s Temple
Mount against Jews and their “filthy
feet” — despite Israel denying any
interest in changing longstanding wor-
ship practices atop the site that is holy
for Jews and Muslims alike.

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