Biden Readies to Repeat Obama’s Mideast Peace Mistakes

By Aaron Kliegman In 1972, during the Summer Olympics in Munich, Palestinian terrorists kidnapped, tortured, and murdered 11 members of the Israeli team. The butchers belonged to Black September, a Palestinian terrorist group. To any decent person, the Munich Massacre was heinous. To the Palestinian Authority (PA), it was a “quality operation.” Seriously, that’s a direct quote. Indeed, on the recent anniversary of the death of Ali Hassan Salameh, who commanded Black September, a reporter for official Palestinian Authority TV hailed him as a hero. Salameh was “given command of the special operations against the occupation worldwide, and his name was connected to ‎many quality operations,” the reporter said, according to Palestinian Media Watch. “Black September,” the reporter continued, “changed the rules of the game, ‎especially after the Munich operation, which Israel exploited to justify a series of assassinations against the ‎Palestinians, including .” In other words, the PA, the Palestinians’ self-governing body, classified the Munich massacre as a “quality operation.” A video shared by Fatah, a major Palestinian political party (and the party of PA President Mahmoud Abbas), echoed the same message. Salameh “was characterized by his long arm, which reached ‎across all of Europe, and by high intelligence that enabled him to hunt ‎Mossad agents," the Facebook page of the Fatah Commission of Information and Culture read. “After was appointed to command the special ‎operations against the Israeli intelligence service in ‎the world,” the post added, “his name was connected to many quality operations, such as ‎sending explosive packages to many Mossad agents in Europe.” The video then praised other Palestinian terrorists “who love , who view him as a beacon guiding ‎them on the path to liberation and return.” The celebration of Salameh came just a few days before the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day last week. The Palestinian leadership doesn’t exactly prioritize Jewish sensibilities. These examples don’t just show egregious behavior. More importantly, they further prove what should already be an obvious fact: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues solely because of the Palestinians’ hatred of Israelis. For decades, the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected Israel’s offers of statehood. This includes 2008, when Israel offered the Palestinians even more territory than the full area of the West Bank and Gaza, agreed to take 150,000 Palestinian refugees, and proposed for Jerusalem that "what's Arab is Arab, and what's Jewish is Jewish" — in other words, the best deal realistically possible for the Palestinians. It didn’t matter. Abbas rejected the deal. Of course, this shouldn’t be surprising. Abbas, along with the rest of the Palestinian leadership, doesn’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state, thus rejecting the basic premise of a two-state solution: two states for two peoples, one Arab and one Jewish. And that’s just scratching at the surface of the problem. Palestinian law forbids the selling of land to Jews, making such a crime punishable by hard labor, imprisonment, and even execution. The PA allocates hundreds of millions of dollars of its annual budget to pay terrorists and their families for attacking Israelis. (Abbas has suggested that ensuring such payments is the PA’s top priority.) The PA even employs released terrorists. It is simply impossible to make peace with such a partner. Which is why, for the US, distancing itself from Israel and appeasing the Palestinians will never resolve the conflict. The Palestinians will only push for more concessions and never actually agree to live next to a Jewish state. Only when the Palestinians seek to build up their own society rather than tear down Israel’s will there be peace. Only when the Palestinians care more about their own happiness than denying Israelis theirs will there be peace. Neither has happened. Hence the conflict persists. This isn’t difficult to understand. Yet it is for our diplomatic establishment and many so-called experts. Ditto the Biden administration, which last week announced plans to resume contact with Palestinian leaders, reopen the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Washington, and restore American contributions to the UN agency which provides aid to Palestinians. Each action reverses a policy implemented by the Trump administration. State Department spokesman Ned Price defended the moves, saying they’re in America’s best interest and arguing the Trump administration’s decisions didn’t produce “political progress.” How ironic. Never mind for the moment that the Trump administration brokered deals to normalize relations between Israel and four Arab states, debunking the conventional wisdom espoused by the likes of John Kerry in the process. Instead, ignore that historic progress toward Arab-Israeli peace and just focus on the narrower Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Barack Obama became the first American president in decades to make no political progress toward the goal of a two-state solution. Why? Because he intentionally created “daylight,” as he put it, between the US and Israel in order to gain credibility with the Arabs. Biden seems poised to follow his former boss’s footsteps. We know where that path leads: failure — and no peace. Newt hosts monthly virtual events in which he discusses news of the day and why it matters to you and your community. These Newt Live events are your opportunity to communicate directly with Newt. We hope you will join us next time and let Newt answer your questions and provide his insight on the issues that concern you most. JOIN TODAY to be a part of this special event and receive a BONUS GIFT. Click here to join Newt’s Inner Circle.