Why Biden's 'Gestures' to the Palestinians Will Not Bring Peace or Stability

by Bassam Tawil  

• The Biden administration might do itself a favor if it understood that previous "gestures" made by Israel did not contribute to peace and stability in the region, and did not advance any peace process between the Israel and the Palestinians.
• There is much that the Palestinian Authority can do to ease tensions and help create a suitable atmosphere for the resumption of the peace process with Israel. The PA could, for example, stop the incitement against Israel, halt payments to families of terrorists, condemn terrorism and crack down on terror groups operating under its control.
• It is this unresponsive governance by the Palestinian Authority to everything except killing Jews -- not the absence of "gestures" -- that strengthens the support for Hamas.
• The Palestinians correctly spot these fig-leaf public relations "gestures" as just political plumage for Abbas that does not require him to change how he mistreats them. So why not try Hamas?
• It was hard, in fact, to find anyone in the Gaza Strip who saw Israel's withdrawal as a positive development or as a sign that Israel wanted peace and calm. Instead, it was seen as a validation of terrorism: We shoot, they run. Great! It's working! So, let's keep on doing that!
• Until today, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group controlling the Gaza Strip, continues to portray the withdrawal as a "defeat" for Israel and "victory" for the terror groups. In addition, Hamas continues to describe the "expulsion" of Israel from the Gaza Strip as a first step towards achieving its goal of eliminating Israel and replacing it with an Iranian-backed Islamist state.
• Here is what the official Fatah Facebook page published as late as May 25, 2022: "No statute of limitations will apply to our historical right to take back all the Palestinian land from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea,  -- thereby making an alliance with Hamas all the more tempting in order to accelerate the process.
• The "gestures" and "concessions" will, in fact, be seen by the Palestinians, like Israel's retreat from the Gaza Strip, as a reward for their ongoing incitement and terrorism against Israel.
• The "gestures" the Biden administration is demanding are, according to the Israeli group Regavim, illegal...
• In addition, talk about increasing the Palestinian Authority presence at the Allenby Bridge border crossing between Israel and Jordan -- to signal joint sovereignty and authority over Israel's border and the secession of its control and sovereignty over the Jordan Valley -- will only create an immensely destabilizing situation, for which the Biden administration will justly be blamed.
• If the PA is unable or unwilling to fight against the Palestinian terror groups, how can it be trusted to assume control over a border crossing between Israel and Jordan? Does the Biden administration seriously believe that Abbas's representatives at the border crossing would thwart attempts by terrorists to smuggle weapons into Israel?
• The US delegation, however, does not seem to care about the Palestinian incitement and terror, or even how the Palestinian people are misgoverned.
• The Biden administration is making a big mistake by forcing Israel to make concessions to the Palestinian Authority. Rewarding it for bad behavior will only aggravate tensions between the Palestinians and their government, embolden the extremists among them and drive the Palestinian people even further into the waiting arms of Hamas.