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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/18596/full/18596/do-palestinians-seek-a-state-or-israel-s-demise/ <br /><br /> <b>Do Palestinians seek a state or Israel’s demise?</b> <br /> Friday, October 11, 2002 | by <p>Evelyn Gordon </p> <br /><br /><p>What are the Palestinians really fighting for? Anyone who wants an honest answer to this question should study the list of the intifada's "achievements" offered by various Palestinian public figures in honor of its second anniversary last week.<br /><br /> Ali Sha'ath, the son of Palestinian Authority cabinet minister Nabil Sha'ath, for instance, told a conference in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago that the intifada has three principal achievements to its credit: It has undermined Israel's security, weakened Israel's economy and caused Jews to leave the country.<br /><br /> An unnamed Palestinian public figure interviewed by Ha'aretz columnist Ze'ev Schiff last week offered a similar list of achievements. First, he said, the Palestinians have gotten better at killing Israelis: Whereas in the early days of the intifada, dead Palestinians outnumbered dead Israelis 11 to 1, the ratio is now down to 3 to 1.<br /><br /> And second, Israel's status in the court of international public opinion has plummeted. What is noteworthy about these lists is that all of the cited "achievements" are Israeli losses rather than Palestinian gains. The speakers did not, for instance, claim that the intifada has brought the Palestinians any closer to their declared goal of an independent state—largely because, in honesty, they could not. Two years ago, Israel and the United States jointly offered a Palestinian state in all of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank, including eastern Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Today, Israel is refusing to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority at all, and the world's only superpower is backing this refusal.<br /><br /> Nor is it possible to claim that the intifada has increased the Palestinians' personal well-being.<br /><br /> Over the last two years, gross domestic product has fallen more than 50 percent and unemployment is approaching the 50 percent mark. The Israel Defense Force's re-entry into the cities and towns it left seven years ago has imposed a daily burden of roadblocks and curfews unparalleled during the 28 years of Israeli rule that preceded the Palestinian Authority's establishment.<br /><br /> Yet despite these setbacks, a survey published last week by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center found that 71 percent of Palestinians think the intifada's achievements are sufficiently significant to justify continuing the violence.<br /><br /> The only conclusion to be drawn from this concatenation of facts is chilling: To the Palestinians, the goal of creating their own state takes second place to the goal of undermining the Jewish one. Only this can explain why the list of "achievements" cited by Palestinian public figures has nothing to do with improved Palestinian prospects but everything to do with deteriorating Israeli ones: the worsened personal security, the economic crisis, the international contempt. And only this can explain why an overwhelming majority of Palestinians favor continuing a policy that has made their personal lives a misery and distanced the achievement of statehood.<br /><br /> Israelis, Americans and Europeans have frequently found the ongoing Palestinian support for the violent conflict inexplicable. Over and over during the last two years, statesmen, journalists and ordinary people have asked the same question:<br /><br /> How is it that the Palestinians have failed to realize that violence undermines their cause? But if the "cause" is to hurt Israel rather than to promote the Palestinian welfare, the deep commitment to the intifada makes perfect sense.<br /><br /> The "achievements" cited by the Palestinians are very real: Israelis' sense of personal security has deteriorated, Israel's economy has suffered and its international status has plummeted. If those are the goals, the intifada is a superb tactic for attaining them.<br /><br /> The assumption that the Palestinians simply do not understand what the violence has cost them is extraordinarily patronizing. It implies that an entire society is too stupid to grasp such obvious facts as that they are personally less well off today than they were two years ago, that they have lost much of the sympathy they once received from the world's only superpower, or that Israelis are much less willing than before to allow a Palestinian state within shooting distance of their major population centers. That this assumption has nevertheless gained such widespread credence is largely because the alternative—that the Palestinians understand full well what they are doing—is simply too disturbing for most people to contemplate.<br /><br /> But it is time for Israel and the world to face up to what the Palestinians are really saying: that for an overwhelming majority of them, the "achievements" of undermining Israel's economy, security and international support are worth the steep personal and national price they have paid.<br /><br /> And as long as this is so, the idea that a Palestinian state would end the conflict is a pipe dream—because the Palestinian goal is not a thriving Palestine alongside a thriving Israel, but a dying Israel, even at the price of a dying Palestine alongside it.</p> <p> </p>

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