The Israel-Palestinian conflict has gone on longer than even Queen Elizabeth’s reign.
In 1947, the UN offered Jews and Arabs living under British rule a checkerboard plan for two states. The local Jews accepted the plan, while the Arabs categorically rejected it. In 1948, the British pulled out of mandatory Palestine, and the resulting War of Independence led to the establishment of the State of Israel. More wars were to follow and in 1969, Richard Murphy, assistant secretary of state in the Nixon administration, first formally suggested land for peace: Israel would give back captured lands and the Arabs would make peace. Well over 50 years have passed and the prospect of peace between the Palestinians and Israelis seems as remote as ever. The question is why?
One quality that the British gained through their colonial activities was their ability to understand the mindset of the local population. Running large countries like India (containing today’s Pakistan) or smaller states like Singapore gave the British up-close, firsthand knowledge of how the locals think, live, eat, and go about their lives. The US, lacking colonial history similar to its European counterparts, oftentimes does not understand the mentality of non-Western populations. This lack of understanding has shown itself to be disastrous in wartime in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. I remember some of the first casualties in Iraq were Marines helping a pregnant woman get out of a car; she then detonated herself and killed the Marines. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the Americans imported Western views and installed women judges; in the latter country, men punished by said judges are now looking for these women to exact revenge. And the lack of understanding local customs, thinking, and mentality has led to failures not only in battle but in diplomacy as well. And it is this failure to understand the Palestinian mentality that is the root cause for decades of failure in fruitless negotiations sponsored by presidents from Nixon to Biden. President Clinton got the Oslo Accords signed because he figured that everyone gives and takes in negotiations; Yasser Arafat showed him how wrong he was in assuming that everyone thinks like an American.
Our oldest son and I were wounded in a suicide bombing in March of 2002 during Arafat’s second Intifada. I had two screws pass through my left arm, while our then seven-years-old son had the head of a Philips screw pass through his right brain. We found the body of the same screw in the washing machine after our clothes were washed of their blood. I wrote a book about our experiences in the bombing and I also was invited to give talks. One thing that I did during the talks was to ask if each person knows someone whom he hates. A lot of people have no hate in their hearts but most people cannot stand somebody. So I then asked if they could see themselves detonating a nail-laden bomb to kill that person but also themselves. The crowd, generally Americans visiting Israel, looked at me as if I was from outer space. Who would put together a nail-filled bomb to kill and die? The answer is the Palestinian suicide bomber and those who prepare him—or her—for an attack. As Americans, generally Jews or Christians, the idea of killing someone because we hate them seems odious, and that gives me great hope for America but not for its ability to conduct peace agreements with a side that thinks that such attacks are okay. And if you get into the nitty-gritty, the Palestinian policeman who detonated himself behind us on King George Street in downtown Jerusalem did not know me or my family. He also did not know the three people he killed, including a woman pregnant with twins and her young husband. So, think how intense this hatred must be to kill someone as described above, but you don’t even know the person—he just represents a class of people you hate. After the exercise, I would note that the Nazis never gave an order to any soldier to kill himself in order to kill a Jew.
We and other American families harmed during the Intifada sued the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in federal court in New York. Our lawyers for Sokolow v PLO went through thousands of pages of confessions from Palestinian terrorists, many of whom were paid employees of the Palestinian security services. In our attack, the aforementioned policeman was sent to downtown Jerusalem by an intelligence officer of the PA, while the bomb was provided by the head of the PA intelligence service. One of the two women who brought the bomber downtown even bragged in a video that I saw in court that the PA paid for her driving lessons, so that she could drive the bomber to downtown Jerusalem. One wonders how the US gives such people hundreds of millions of dollars each year, but again, Washington does not understand the mindset of the Palestinian leaders and their foot soldiers. Our lawyers saw from the confessions that terrorists were told to sit tight if Israel was giving away the farm. Once there was any resistance—on Jerusalem, or a “right of return”—orders came down the chain-of-command to start attacks. Picture Coke negotiating with a water company to buy out the latter. The water company feels that it is getting low-balled, so it sends a couple of thugs to blow up a Coca-Cola bottling plant. If such an event were to occur, there would be outrage. With the Palestinians, not so much.
In February of 2015, Sokolow went to court. After weeks of testimonies and legal haggling, the PA and the PLO were found guilty on all 24 counts by a jury of New Yorkers. The judgment for the 32 American plaintiffs was for $218.5 million which was trebled under the Anti-Terrorism Act to $655.5 million.
After we won, the State Department, in the person of Tony Blinken, petitioned the judge in the case to set a low appeals bond, which he did. Again, did Tony Blinken or his boss understand that twelve off-the-street New Yorkers had found over two days of deliberation that the US-funded PA actively engaged in activities that led to the death and injury of US citizens? The State Department always argues that the PA is the last defense against Hamas or worse taking over; when will it understand that the PA is little different from Hamas and probably has more terror attacks to its name than its Islamic competitor? The US is living under a fantasy that the PA is a peace-loving body and that it yearns for an agreement with Israel. The PA wants Israel to disappear and only differs with Hamas as to the role of negotiations and playing nice with the West in order to make it happen. The US refuses to see the PA for who it is and we have paid for that myopic delusion as our case, rather than being settled, continues on in the US justice system.
In the years after the 2002 attack, I lobbied the Department of Justice not to let Israel release Palestinian prisoners who had harmed Americans. An FBI agent told me once that he had seen such a list prepared by DoJ but it was never transmitted to the Israelis. So when Israel released 1,000 terrorists for the soldier, Gilad Schalit, there were those involved in harming Americans who walked free. The two women who brought the terrorist to King George Street got out. But the FBI could not figure out which American-harming terrorists were released. They did not know how to write the names in English and they had incomplete identity numbers. So it was another lawyer of ours who sent the FBI, by FedEx, a summary of American-harming terrorists who were released: name of terrorist, which attack, US victims’ names. The FBI could not figure this out for themselves. One of those terrorists, Ahlam Tamimi, the mastermind of the Sbarro bombing in 2001, still sits in Amman and knows that the Americans won’t use the signed US-Jordanian extradition treaty to get her out. Arabs respect strength (remember Bin Laden’s strong horse analogy), and the US demanding Tamimi would show resolve and that the US means business on terror. But the US fears the “Arab Street” and in its weakness, it again strengthens the hands of those who see that violence pays.
The US can only be a broker when it understands the motivations and thinking of the parties involved in the negotiations. The Palestinians, including those in the PA, have not given up the dream of wiping Israel off the face of the map and taking all of the land “from the sea to the river” for themselves. What they in turn do not understand is that were that G-d forbid to happen, the Jordanians, Egyptians, Syrians, and Lebanese would swoop in to grab the land out from under their legs. If the US wants to negotiate peace between Israel and the Palestinians, then it must realize that the two parties do not have similar goals. As such, negotiations should focus on minimizing violence until the Palestinians give up completely on terror and commit themselves to living peacefully with Israel. I doubt that will happen as the heir-apparent for PA president Abbas is one Hussein al-Sheikh, who conveniently was involved in our attack, according to the indictments of the other members of the terror cell. He provided money and weapons and actually wrote the letter of responsibility for Al-Aksa Martyr Brigades. It will take generations for the Palestinians to want peace. Will the US figure this out and act accordingly?