Normally, the Jewish people regard Shabbat as a day delegated for rest and peace. While our Shabbat was certainly restful, we found ourselves enveloped in a series of complicated talks with two speakers, Khaled abu Tomeh, an Arab-Israeli reporter from the Jerusalem Post, and Sheldon Shulman, a former combat/intelligence officer in the Israeli army and government. (More on Shulman at another time)
Tomeh began his career working for media controlled by the PLO, but eventually found that in order to do what he called true reporting of facts not censored for the sake of a political agenda, he could not work for the Arab papers. He began to work as a guide to western reporters who needed help navigating the West Bank. During the second intifada, the Jerusalem post found it increasingly dangerous to send Jewish reporters into the West Bank, and as a result, they turned to Tomeh, and offered him a job as a reporter, which he accepted in about “five seconds.”
Tomeh stated that peace between the Jews and Palestians at the current time is impossible, as the PLO’s demands for peace are unrealistic and unreasonable, while Hamas in Gaza is more concerned with the destruction of Israel than making peace with it. However, Tomeh, also believed that the current problem was a direct result of the implementation of the Oslo Accords and the peace process. The corruption of Yassir Arafat, the past leader of the PLO who the international community recognized as the leading body of the Palestinian people, was corrupt, and embezzled funds, stealing from the very people who he was were supposed to be leading.
Tomeh argued that the international community should have given the Palestinian people an opportunity for democracy, like the one currently existing in Israel. However, since they instead chose to put Arafat in control of the billions of dollars of international aid sent to help the Palestinian people without holding his government accountable, the Palestinian people themselves never got to see the aid meant for them. As a result they became disillusioned with the peace process. The Palestinian people saw the corruption, and turned to a political group other than the PLO, that had no regard for the peace process, Hamas. With Hamas looking to wipe out not only all the Jews, but also the moderate Muslims (like Tomeh) who they consider a threat to their ideology, they have caused a great deal of the instability in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead of a two state solution that was originally proposed, the Palestinians now are left with two states, the West Bank administered by a historically corrupt PLO, while Gaza is administered by a radical fundamentalist government in Hamas, both of which have fought with each other for political control. Tomeh suggested that all Israel can do is sit back and wait for the Palestinian people to accept the situation at hand and come to the negotiating table with reasonable expectations. Until then Israelis must defend themselves if attacked, although not with excessive force.