In recent days the Tribune has printed a flood of editorials and letters to the editor, all blaming the Israeli settlements as the root cause of the trouble in the Middle East.
It is not the settlements that are the cause of the trouble in the Middle East. It is the Arabs’ refusal to accept Israel’s very existence in the region.
Long before the settlements were on the map, indeed long before Israel itself even existed, Arabs were already rioting against their Jewish neighbors. In 1929, an Arab mob massacred some 50 Jews living in Hebron; anti-Jewish violence erupted again in 1936. When the United Nations voted in 1947 to partition Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states, the Arab countries’ response was to invade tiny Israel with the goal of destroying it. They were defeated, and in the turn of events, some 600,000 Arabs were forced to leave their homes.
Rather then resettle them, the Arab governments have cynically used these refugees as a breeding ground of hatred toward Jews and Israel.
As long as the Arabs’ goal is to turn the clock back, there will not be peace in the Middle East, with or without the settlements.
