Bad timing - The Jewish Standard

The United Nations General Assembly now has before it an officially submitted draft of a declaration of Palestinian statehood. Not only should it be voted down, it should not even be allowed to be brought up.

We are not opposed to Palestinian statehood. A two-state solution continues to be the only truly viable solution to the seemingly insolv able Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which has gone on much too long. This long has been the stated goal of the members of the United Nations. In speech after speech and vote after vote, they have affirmed that peace can best be achieved when a Palestinian state resides next door to the Jewish one.

To grant the Palestinians statehood status now, however, is to reward bad behavior in the extreme. Several times over the years, the Palestinians and Israel came thisclose to settling the issue, only to have the Palestinian side reject the proferred deals. The late and unlamented (by us) Yasir Arafat even rejected an offer that would have created a Palestinian state with a portion of Jerusalem as its capital. His successor has resisted every attempt at serious negotiations since taking over the reins of the Palestinian Authority.

To be sure, the Israelis have not been all that willing to make concessions for peace, but that has more to do with the fact that it has already made so many concessions for peace without serious response from the other side than it has to do with unwillingness to deal at all.

Granting the Palestinians the status of statehood is to say no to the peace process. That is not the way to bring about peace. It is the way to guarantee more war.

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