Palestinians also do not accept Jewish holy sites and Jewish neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem as part of Israel, even if parts of eastern Jerusalem were to be made the capital of a Palestinian state. Support for that idea was only 44 percent a year ago and today has fallen further, to 33 percent.
These polls over five years clearly indicate that Palestinians do not accept Israel and are not ready for peace with the Jewish state.
As former IDF chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon said in an address to American Jewish leaders on January 10, “Israeli leaders and the Israeli public have misled themselves. The Palestinian Arabs do not support a two-state solution and do not accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. We have misled ourselves, not only about Yasir Arafat, but also Mahmoud Abbas.”
It is vital that the United States understand the actual situation on the ground, rather than accepting groundless assertions that Palestinians are ready for peace and continuing the policies of funding generously the PA while urging further Israeli concessions.
It is clearly time for the Bush administration to review the evidence and push hard for Abbas to educate the Palestinian public for peace, to dismantle the terrorist movements, to collect illegal weaponry, to jail terrorists, and to end the incitement to hatred and murder and glorification of terrorism in the PA.
It is not enough for the U.S. to make statements to the effect that the Palestinians must fulfill their obligations. Washington has to make it clear that there are consequences for the PA’s failure to do so – and that those consequences include an end to all financial aid and a suspension of negotiations with the PA.