Dr. Mordechai Kedar – I incite, therefore I am
Descartes famous saying, paraphrased, serves to define the reason for the Palestinian Authority’s existence.
There are a good many people, both in Israel and the rest of the world, who note the Palestinian Autonomy’s (PA) anti-Israel incitement and activity in international institutions, hear the hate-filled rhetoric of “moderate leader” Mahmoud Abbas and ask themselves some pointed questions:
Are the Palestinians peace partners or do they actually want to establish their state on the ruins of the Jewish one? And if their goal is the destruction of Israel, why don’t they hide their plans until such time as they have a state with the ability to carry them out?
The answers to these questions are part of the very essence and raison d’être of the Palestinian Authority. This administrative entity was not established by the Arab League, founded in 1945 (one wonders why), before the establishment of the state of Israel, nor by Egypt and Jordan who controlled Judea, Samaria and Gaza from 1948 to 1967 – but by Israel, whose government failed in its attempt to expel the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leadership to Lebanon in 1992, and naively expected Arafat to eliminate Hamas and Islamic Jihad “without the courts and the Betselem Human Rights NGO” as Yitzchak Rabin phrased it This is the slogan which enabled the government of Rabin, Peres and Beilin to sell the Oslo Accords to Israelis.
Accordingly, there is no escaping the fact that Israel expected the PA to be a ruling body that would do its dirty work, dishing out to Hamas and Jihad what they deserve. In this, as opposed to Israel, they would be unrestrained by human rights organizations and the Supreme Court of Justice, those self-appointed guardians of universal ethics that allow terror – in Israel and outside it – to blossom almost without interference. In other words, Israel brought Arafat in so that he would take care of the leaders of Hamas without any moral constraints, without human rights organizations looking over his shoulder and without a legal system worthy of the name. Looking back, one tries vainly to understand what exactly Rabin’s government, those so moral leftists and lovers of democracy, were thinking? That an Arab would kill an Arab for us because we are incapable of it? Is there anything less moral than that?
The problem with the government of Israel and the entire Jewish people is that Arafat, his advisors and those who keep his spirit alive worldwide had no intentions of being the “border guards” of Israel for the Jews. All he – and they – did from the minute the PA was established in 1994 was a charade, they actually gave a green light – openly and subtly – to Hamas and Jihad to do whatever they wished, because had the PA leaders not allowed these terror organizations enough rope, the PA ruling echelons would have lost what little legitimacy they still retained in the eyes of their constituency since the noticeable shrinking of their power base with Arafat’s death.
In order to prevent Hamas from a total takeover of public support, the PLO created the Tanzim, otherwise known as “The Al Aksa Martyr’s Brigade,” a group of terrorists which has to its “credit” a significant number of murders of Israeli civilians during the Second Intifada that erupted in 2000. Israelis have forgotten that no other than Arafat along with his deputy, Mahmoud Abbas, directly funded this group. The chairman of the PA was directly involved up to his ears in funding terror and there are still Israelis who consider him a partner for peace because he realized at some point that the terror he funded only hurt the Palestinian Arabs and made the whole world view them as terrorists. That’s why he began calling for non-violent tactics, such as incitement and questioning Israel’s legitimacy, the waging of an economic, moral and legal war against Israel and of course, the BDS Movement.
The deeper explanation for the PA’s move to another kind of war against Israel is the fact that without a war against Israel, the PA has no substance. They know well that there is no Palestinian People, certainly not one that history books, even the Arab ones, recognize. They know well that the PA has to way of broadening its public base because it is seen by the people as nothing more than an employer who gives out work when he has the money to pay for it. When the money runs out, the PA can go to hell, as far as its employees are concerned. The corruption, blatant nepotism, massive embezzlement of funds and a disconnect from the people and their problems have turned the PA and PLO into an illegitimate and expendable body in the people’s eyes. That is why the PA creates legitimacy through anti-Israel activity, so as not to go the way of Qaddafi and Assad.
The split between Hamas and the PLO proves that a very significant number – close to two million, almost half of those who call themselves “Palestinians” – do not consider themselves part of the PLO’s political and national plans, do not see the PLO as their representative. The PLO’s status as the representative of the Palestinian Arabs is not based on any sort of positive message; it is based solely on denying Israel’s right to exist, the struggle against the Jewish state and incitement against its citizens. If not for that struggle and incitement there would be no existential reasons for the PLO and PA to function. That’s why they continue to build squares, streets and schools and name them for terrorists neutralized by Israel, to call all of the Land of Israel by the name “Palestine,” to fill in the area with the colors of the PLO flag and arrange condolence visits to the families of terrorists whose knifings and Jihadist lust for Jewish blood were brought to a dismal end by Israel.
Incitement against Israel is the only thing that the PA and PLO it established can do, because Israel has never exacted a real and tangible price for the incitement and assaults against Israel as the Jewish national homeland and its Jewish citizens. This is why the PA has adopted the religious symbols of Palestinian Arab existence, the Al Aksa mosque for example, whose surrounding area was once called “Al Haram Al Shairf.” They prefer to call the entire area of the Temple Mount by the name Al Aksa, because that is mentioned in the Koran, which does not mention Al Haram Al Sharif nor the Palestinian People. By the way, the Koran does mention the Children of Israel and Jewish people many times, but not the Palestinians. I wonder why…
There is, unfortunately, no escaping the conclusion that the PA and PLO must continue their anti-Israel incitement. They have no substance or legitimacy without this struggle, so that one can deduce as a founding principle that even if another Palestinian State, in addition to the one created by Hamas over nine years ago in Gaza, is established in Judea and Samaria one day, this state will not cease its incitement against Israel, so as to justify its existence.
The proof that this is an accurate assessment is what went on in Syria under the Assad family regime, who belong to the Allawite sect: Because they were seen as heretics, collaborators and idol worshippers, they had absolutely no legitimacy and made use of anti-Israel incitement to glue together the various tribes and families who were under their dominance but who had never been a Syrian nation. There never was a united, recognized Syrian nation, a bitter truth revealed by the last five years of bloodshed and massacres. And in the same vein, there is no Iraqi, Libyan or Algerian nation either – wait a minute, there is, nevertheless, a Palestinian one? Whom are we kidding?
That is the reason the international and Israeli demand that the PA refrain from anti-Israel incitement is a demand that the PA cannot and will not accept. Ceasing incitement pulls the rug from under the already shaky feet of the PA. and is a demand that cannot be acceded to. If the incitement brings people, mainly youth, to grab a knife in order to stab Israelis, or to load a gun in order to shoot at a civilian car, that is a necessary result of the very existence of the Palestinian Authority, whose entire being is contingent on a total war against Israel, one also being waged in the media, academia, the courts and the marketplace in Israel and around the world.
Dr. Mordechai Kedar
Dr. Mordechai Kedar is a senior lecturer in the Department of Arabic at Bar-Ilan University. He served in IDF Military Intelligence for 25 years, specializing in Arab political discourse, Arab mass media, Islamic groups and the Syrian domestic arena. Thoroughly familiar with Arab media in real time, he is frequently interviewed on the various news programs in Israel.
Translated from the Hebrew by Rochel Sylvetsky, Op-ed and Judaism Editor, Arutz Sheva
