Abbas, the Palestinians, and Spring

Mahmoud Abbas returned from his triumphant reception in the General Assembly to the heroic welcome reserved for the Palestinian conquering commander. His speech relayed the soaring hope and the need for steadfastness and unity in their purpose. He concluded declaring the start of the Palestinian Spring. What has yet to be spelled out is exactly the nature of this Palestinian Spring. Abbas specifically called for it to be a mass demonstration of the Palestinian expectation on the world, or at least the world body called the United Nations, to fulfill the Palestinians demand for recognition of their new country independent from Israel and without making any of those pesky compromises which world have resulted from negotiations with the evil Israelis. Abbas also depicted in his speech that this Palestinian Spring will be a peaceful group of activities showing unity of purpose. But, what exactly should the world, and the Israelis especially, expect from this Palestinian spring. Will it truly be peaceful or will it become the next violent intifada?

The first thing that the would had best understand, and is probably already understood by numerous Israelis, is that peaceful activities of a Palestinian Spring will not be completely peaceful. The Arab Spring in Egypt was sold to the world as a peaceful group of Egyptian democracy seeking people with noble intentions and acts. What people tended to ignore was that the actions in Egypt were not consistently peaceful, especially for the Coptic Christians and many of the foreign press as attacks on the western media went mostly unreported. Remember Laura Logan, and her experience was not as unique as the media wished to report. Even if this Abbas declared Palestinian Spring is mostly peaceful initially, the longer the delay of the Palestinians seeing progress in the United Nations declaring their state, the higher the likelihood of violent events and the entire Palestinian spring transforming into the Third Intifada. This is the threat that sits perched over the deliberations at the United Nations, and that is the increasing potential and probability of violence should the Palestinian dreams be smashed on the rocks of reality. If the Palestinian Spring should turn into the Third Intifada, the world will pressure Israel to make immediate concessions and allow the formation of the Palestinian state; anything, just stop the violence.

Should the world take this route, something I fear is quite a likely outcome, if not now, eventually, then it would set precedence that would lead to regret. The Palestinians already know that the threat of violence and even the implementation of violence if done in an acceptable manner, which means against IDF checkpoints and occasional public targets of terror if it is within the “settlement areas”, will produce pressure from the Europeans on Israel in order to prevent the violence from spreading, especially spilling into Europe. Should the world respond to Palestinian violence by forcing Israel to accept a Palestinian state, then the world should expect much more violence whenever the Palestinians wish to have further concessions from Israel or the world in general. Once they have their Palestinian State and it runs out of funds, what do you think will be their recourse? Should their Palestinian State not include all of the Old City of Jerusalem and that area be made a Heritage Site under United Nations administration, expect there to soon be a turn to violence demanding Palestinian rule over Jerusalem. Whenever the Palestinians feel the world or the Israelis are not being sufficiently supportive in providing all things necessary for the Palestinian State to succeed, expect another round of violence. Once the precedent is set that the world will respond in a manner to the deference of the Palestinian demands once violence is used, eventually simply the threat of violence will produce results and there will be no end to the demands and accompanying threats.

Beyond the Cusp