Allow the Palestinians to Grow Up

The Canadian Media, led by the CBC, poorly reported the events that led up to and followed the Israeli action in Jericho where they laid siege to and eventually took custody of several terrorist prisoners from the jail where agreement between the PA and the state of Israel (the Ramallah Agreement) determined that they would be incarcerated. The Israeli action has been described as aggressive and provocative without noting that the prisoners in the Jericho jail were supposed to have been held as prisoners and not honoured guests by the terms of the Ramallah Agreement.

Beyond relaxing all rules in the jail, as they did, for the six prisoners Hamas indicated that they planned to release them counter to the Ramallah Agreement. Mahmoud Abbas suggested that he might not block the move as if he had any control over the Hamas government. He blamed the British and American monitors for leaving the jail rather than disregarding their own safety in a situation where the Palestinian people and particularly their government are acting without respect for agreements designed to provide the sense of security required for a lasting peace.

Given the breakdown of the Ramallah Agreement the Israelis were perfectly justified in recovering the security to their people that had previously been afforded by that, now dishonoured, agreement. That the response by the Palestinians was the pandemonium that has occurred proves that the move was necessary.

The pro-Palestinian position, "How could they be expected to do anything less," is patronizing in the extreme and demeans all groups who are placed in difficult positions and don't resort to sending high velocity, warfarin coated fragments into school yards and cafes with the help of a suicide bomber. It suggests that, for this subset of the human race, it is acceptable for anger to be resolved by mass murder. This is not a condition that would be accepted in civilized society and to accept it here is to exclude the Palestinians from civilized society and place them squarely in the “Noble Savage” category – how very Victorian and Imperialistic of them.

The Palestinians need to be dealt with as equals on the world stage with the respect and dignity that implies. The first step is for them to acknowledge Israel's right to exist and protect itself. They renounced and acknowledgement of that when they elected Hamas as their government and they plunged themselves back into their dark ages. They need to renounce terrorism - the indiscriminate murder of innocents in order to highjack the peace process - and start dealing with Israel as they would wish to be dealt with.

As long as the Palestinians deal in a medieval manner with their neighbours they cannot and should not expect any other treatment from them.