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Time for Palestinians to Stop Fighting Lost Battles
(Wall Street Journal) Daniel J. Arbess - Palestinian Arabs need to realize it's time to stop fighting lost battles and accept reality. Israel is the ancestral and legal homeland of the Jewish people. Its capital is Jerusalem, as the U.S. has belatedly recognized, with other countries following. Israel's enemies lost the Six-Day War more than 50 years ago and relinquished the West Bank and the ancient city of Jerusalem. The 1967-borders-and-land-swaps formula of the 1993 Oslo Accord is an artifact of history, overtaken by developments on the ground, and the Palestinians rejected it. A broad alignment is coalescing among Israel and its treaty partners, Egypt and Jordan, and the consensus now informally includes Saudi Arabia and the UAE, among others. With this Israeli-Arab detente, the Palestinians are finding that they are the last holdouts of an Arab world that has accepted Israel and will make peace with it. Arab leaders who truly want to help their people know the path is through creativity, negotiation and compromise, not violent "resistance" - a euphemism for terrorism - and war. Polls show the Israeli public wants a dignified outcome that integrates the Palestinian people into Israel's thriving economy and culture of innovation. But security comes first. How could Israel ease security restrictions while Palestinian leaders are indoctrinating and inciting new generations to violence? The writer is CEO of Xerion Investments and a co-founder of No Labels.