Palestinians fear irrelevance more than anything else ~ EoZ

Monday, February 22, 2016

Palestinians fear irrelevance more than anything else

There is nothing that upsets Palestinian Arabs more than the idea that they are really not the center of the universe.

Their "nakba" is trivial next to what is happening in Syria. Their "Gaza genocide" is nothing compared to the number of Arabs killed by fellow Arabs in Libya and Yemen. The worst things to happen to Palestinians in the past two years - the horrific death of the Dawabshe baby and the murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir - happens every single day in Iraq.

They used to enjoy worldwide coverage as if they were the most important people on Earth.

Using Time magazine covers as a barometer, the Gaza wars of 2014 and 2012 (as far as I can tell) did not make the cover of Time; the 2009 war only made the cover in its European edition. The last time Palestinians were on the cover of Time, in a sense, in the US is arguably ten years ago.

Like children, they can't stand that they are no longer the center of attention. They feel that they are the main victims of the Arab Spring - because it showed how little they matter in the Arab world, let alone to the world at large.

And like children, Palestinians will do anything they can - from meaningless symbolic stunts to threatening and igniting violence, their equivalent of a temper tantrum - to get the attention they crave.

Their entire strategy is based on fooling the world into believing that they hold the key to world peace and that as long as they cannot get their demands, the world will forever be held hostage to the prospect of new outbreaks of Arab violence.

That prospect is happening without them. Egypt fighting in the Sinai, and Libya's bloodshed, and Lebanon's periodic flareups, and Syria's multiple warring factions, and Saudi Arabia's bombing Yemen, and Iraq's disintegration have nothing to do with them.

But they cannot even imagine changing tactics - to, say, compromise for peace and move on with their lives.

The latest pathetic example of Palestinians trolling for attention comes from the Wafa news agency, in a story that will be rightly ignored by the world.

Saeb Erekat, speaking in Amman, said that Palestinians are in the forefront of battling ISIS-type religious extremism. No real evidence is offered, and none exists. If ISIS is where the news is, Erekat wants to make it look like the PLO is part of the fight against them.

The contrary is closer to the truth.The PLO is in talks yet again to unify with the Hamas terror group, which admittedly fights against Salafi-type extremism in Gaza that threatens its rule but which also seems to be helping ISIS in the Sinai, if Egypt is to be believed.

But Erekat also says in his little talk that the Palestinians are fighting another form of terrorism. Of course, he is referring to Israel. And his examples are - drumroll, please - Khdeir and Dawabshe, two events that sickened Israelis as intensely as the daily stabbing and shootings of Jews are celebrated by Erekat's people.

Erekat ended off his talk with the main theme that Palestinians desperately want the world to believe again:

Our struggle is not religious but political, and therefore we say to the world, if you really wanted to fight terrorism and defeat Daash, be aware that it will not be in isolation from draining the swamp of the Israeli occupation and establishing an independent Palestinian state on the '67 borders and Jerusalem as its capital.

There you have it. As long as there isn't a Palestinian state, groups like ISIS will be beheading civilians, according to Palestinian officials. It is almost like they want extremist Muslims to do unspeakable acts just so they can pretend to be relevant.

This isn't the only example of the PLO's tone-deafness. Look at the last two press releases from the PLO's Negotiations Affairs Department. One is a bitter complaint that the EU had the audacity to refer to stabbing random Jews to death as terror attacks and that it didn't 'include the mantra of "1967 borders" in a statement. Another is an extended whine about British legal guidance against public institutions boycotting Israeli products.

Both these press releases were roundly ignored by the world.

The world is sick of being blackmailed with lies like the idea that world peace is linked to giving in to all Palestinian demands. The Arab world long ago realized that Palestinians are nothing but an irritation that wastes resources and time, and for years they have only paid lip service to this supposedly central cause. They want the Palestinians to finally accept peace, shut up and move on with their lives.

The West is slowly catching up with that viewpoint, as the thesis of "linkage" that was so popular a few years ago has died a timely death everyone outside Ramallah.

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