After 75 years of failure, one would imagine that a people would learn what works and what doesn’t, both from their own experience, as well as the experience of others.
In the 2000 #CampDavid peace negotiations… #Arafat’s refusal to accept a #Palestinian state on all of the #Gaza Strip and nearly all of the #WestBank was indeed tragic and misguided
What is striking about #Arafat’s refusal to accept the deal offered at #CampDavid—a state on all of #Gaza and 90+% of #WestBank, including a capital in #EastJerusalem—and his subsequent turn to #violent confrontation is just how popular it was and remains🔥
There was not anywhere within #Palestinian politics a minority camp that opposed this move, that warned against the possible consequences, that organized #protests and galvanized #opposition parties
As happened 30 and 50 years before, in the months after #CampDavid and well into the #SecondIntifada, the rhetoric was as militant as ever, and triumphalist too.
Less-moderate voices hoped that violence could replicate #Hezbollah’s success in forcing a full #Israeli withdrawal from #Lebanon without Israel receiving anything in return
What happened instead was a wave of Palestinian violence… with the goals of eliminating Israel over freedom—that has been the preference of generations of #Palestinian leaders.
A people on the cusp of liberation instead suffered war deaths and the moral rot caused by the veneration of suicide and murder.
> Israel just launched a ground war on Gaza. Outcome will be a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions for years to come. Voting against Arab #UNGA resolution means approving this senseless war, this senseless killing.
Millions will be watching every vote. History will judge.