I was going to write a post on the benchmarks proposal (my view, of course, is that it’s absurd because the benchmarks are there with no assurance of quid pro quo, thus giving the Palestinians yet another chance to prove that Israel must obey an agreement, but they may not), but Khaled Mashaal has made things very easy for me. He says NFW will Hamas agree to the plan.
The benchmark document, recently submitted to Israel and the Palestinians, calls on Israel to remove many West Bank roadblocks and improve operations at Gaza’s crossings. The Palestinians are asked to halt rocket fire from Gaza and weapons smuggling into the coastal strip.
Mashaal told the Al Jazeera satellite TV station that Palestinians should not agree to halt rocket fire in exchange for an easing of travel restrictions.
“I swear it’s a joke … The equation has now become: dismantling the checkpoints, in exchange for (giving up) resistance,” he said. “This has become the Palestinian cause”.
So why, exactly, doesn’t he want to implement the plan? Because Hamas is busy firing kassam rockets into Sderot.
Since Friday Palestinian Qassam cells in Gaza have fired at least five rockets towards Israel, one of which directly hit a Sderot residence.
You know, sometimes it pays to sit on a story. Because then you no longer have to write it.
The real problem with the current US plan is that it’s just another plan. None of the others have worked, and basically, they are all the same: Israel will do this, the Palestinians will do that. None of them address the real issue, which is that the Palestinians want to destroy Israel, not live in peace alongside it.
Until a plan addresses this reality, it is not only worthless, it prolongs the agony, it delays the action that will eventually end this war: Transfer the enemy Arabs out of Eretz Yisrael; out of Gaza, Samaria, and Judea.