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When Palestinians Say "No," Westerners Explain It Means "Maybe"

(Telegraph-UK) Einat Wilf - Much of the criticism of the U.S. peace plan emerges from the assumption that there is another plan to be found; a better, more just and fairer one, to which the Palestinians would say yes, and which would then truly bring about peace. Sadly, there is no evidence for such an assumption. Decades of determined words and actions have made it very clear that the Palestinian leadership will say yes only to plans that bring about the end of Israel as the sovereign state of the Jewish people. Westerners who genuinely want to believe that there is a peace plan that allows both a Jewish Israel and an Arab Palestine to live side by side in peace have sought to square the Palestinians' decades of consistent rejectionism by engaging in a practice I term "Westplaining." It means that when Palestinians say "no," Westerners explain it means "maybe." Westplaining has sought to mask the Palestinian view that if the price of an Arab state of Palestine is that the Jewish people will be allowed to retain their sovereign state and self-rule in another part of the land, then that is too high a price to pay. Faced with such choices in 1937, 1947, 2000 and 2008, the Palestinians have considered it far better to keep fighting. The writer is a former Labor member of the Knesset and the author, together with Adi Schwartz, of the upcoming book The War of Return.
2020-02-04 00:00:00
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