http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/30/gaza-hamas-palestinians-israel

I have been a very outspoken critic of Israeli policies for many years. Nevertheless, those who, like Nir Rosen here, go into endless diatribes to ascribe sole responsibility to Israel for the current situation are hypocritical at worst and ignorant at best. In this age of political correctness it is always sexy to support the underdog. But political correctness does not always yield wise political judgment.

Abba Eban, Israel’s dovish foreign minister for many years, coined the immortal saying “The Palestinians never miss a chance to miss a chance.” Even though lives are lost almost every hour now, I ask the reader to bear with me for a brief excursion through history.

Eban was right: Palestinians never miss a chance to miss a chance. They make every conceivable wrong decision. This does not constitute an excuse for Israel’s policies, but it makes it impossible for Israeli governments to take risks for peace. Every government is primarily responsible for its citizens’ security, and Israel is no exception. So far, Palestinians have forced Israeli governments into hardline positions by their policies.

Far from being only victims, Palestinians have made many active decisions in the last century and they have shaped their own fates and are co-responsible for the current situation. The first decision was to opt for the Husseini, rather than the Nousseibeh, clan in the 1920s. The Nousseibeh clan was cosmopolitan, and open to cooperation. The Husseini clan was belligerent, and ended up founding a Waffen-SS battalion committed to the Nazi-Endlösung of exterminating all Jews in the 1940s. The second decision was to reject the UN partition plan in 1947, and to join the all-out attack on Israel, a state sanctioned by the international community. As a result, in the 1948 war Israel had the opportunity to expel 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. The third decision was to build the policies of the Palestine Liberation Organisation on the explicit plan to annihilate Israel rather than to seek compromise. The fourth was to answer the Camp David summit of 2000 and the Taba summit of early 2001 with the second Intifada, a wave of suicide bombing attacks on Israel. This led to the fall of the Ehud Barak government, and put Ariel Sharon in power.

Here we come to the fifth Palestinian mistake. Israel unilaterally left the Gaza Strip in 2005. Since taking over the Gaza Strip, Hamas has chosen to try gaining points against Fatah by keeping up the barrage of southern Israel in order to show its constituency that it is not a “collaborator of the Zionists”, but instead resists Israel. Hamas is totally cynical in its policies. Israel has made it clear through every possible channel that, like any sovereign state, it cannot accept constant rocket barrages on its civilian population, and that the reaction to such barrages would be harsh. But Hamas really doesn’t care about civilian casualties of its own constituency. All that matters to them is to show that they resist Israel.

Let me be very clear: I think that Israel needs to let go of the West Bank as soon as possible, and I believe that the population of Gaza must be given the opportunity to live in peace, prosperity, liberty and dignity. But how on earth can the Israeli electorate be convinced to subscribe to this idea, as long as Hamas pushes every button of Israeli fears about its existence? How are we to open the borders, when Hamas cares more about smuggling in materials for rockets than medication?

I have fought for, and will continue to argue, for broadminded Israeli policies. I am impatiently waiting for the moment in which there will be a Palestinian state and in which no Palestinian child will have to see an Israeli soldier in his or her lifetime. But the Palestinian decision-making process is making this very difficult, if not impossible.

In the meantime, politically correct moralists who make lives easy for themselves by letting Palestinians off the hook and turning Israel into the sole culprit make a huge mistake. It is high time that Palestinians begin to face their responsibility for their fate. Sacrificing their sons either as Shahids through suicide bombings or as targets behind which Hamas hides its arsenals of explosives in population centres is the perfect recipe for traumatising or killing another generation of Palestinian children.