Finally, a Palestinian "Peace Now"?

[vminfla]

What if a group of youthful Palestinian activists, fed up with Hamas and Fatah for leading the Palestinian Arabs over and over down bloody, self-defeating dead ends, were to emerge as a new political and social force—something like a Palestinian "Peace Now"? The Washington Post thinks it has found them.

Palestinians are once again experiencing the futility of the rejectionist strategy. Their effortless victories in UNESCO, with more predicted in the General Assembly, seem only to stoke their frustration. Their expectation of Security Council recognition for a Palestinian state is about to be dashed. Imagine the possibilities, then, in a Palestinian movement revolted by the old militarism, religious fanaticism, and bloodlust; exasperated with Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas for placing a wreath on Yasir Arafat's grave—of all places—to mark the festival of Eid al-Adha; and challenging Abbas's decision to spend lavishly on violent Palestinian inmates released from Israeli prisons in the Gilad Shalit exchange. Imagine their compatriots in Gaza, though necessarily more cautious, offended by Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh for telling Eid al-Adha worshippers that "sacrifices—not only sheep"—are "a way in which we praise God." Couldn't a Palestinian "Peace Now" emerge from recognizing, finally, that neither depraved violence nor an automatic UN majority has brought the Palestinians what they want?

Sure enough, The Washington Post recently ran a feature about an avant-garde group of activists on the West Bank and Gaza—non-Islamist men and women in their 20's, born in the first intifada and teenagers during the second, who are disillusioned with both Fatah and Hamas and uninspired by symbolic victories at the UN. Post reporter Joel Greenberg, a veteran Israel-based advocacy journalist, came upon this "still-undefined, embryonic group of a few hundred." The paper's headline writers billed them as a "new political and social force." Has Greenberg found the future Palestinian leaders who are ready for painful concessions in order to achieve coexistence with the Jewish state?

As a narrative hook, Greenberg focuses on attractive 22-year-old university student Hurriyah Ziada, who is "active in protesting the Israeli occupation of the West Bank." Does this mean that Ziada wants to push Israel back to the 1949 armistice lines? No, she thinks this is "inadequate." What she wants is a single Muslim-majority country from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, its population swelled by the "return" of some 750,000 Palestinian refugees from the 1948 War plus millions of their descendants living in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. And the six million Jews who are presently Israelis? Ziada would munificently grant the new minority "equal rights" in Greater Palestine.

Read more at http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2011/11/14/main-feature/1/finally-a-palestinian-peace-now/r&jtahome

[King_David]

1. In Gaza ? nt

[vminfla]

2. The article states as much

It is probably a death sentence for themselves though. Terrorist organizations have condemned detractors and killed them as conspirators of Israel in the past.