Compulsion to make concessions is a dead-end way to resolve conflicts

PanARMENIAN.Net - The future Palestinian state, as Obama believes, has to be created on the territory the Palestinians themselves abandoned years ago, not receiving the promised support from the Arab States. Or rather, the support came, but it turned into nothing after the Six-Day War in the very year of 1967. And now Obama suggests that the Jews sacrifice their own safety for the sake of a state that will yet take a long time to establish. The fault here lies not on the Jews but on the Palestinians, who preferred war and terrorism to peace. Refusing to the State of Israel the right to existence, Hamas and Fatah thus make the proclamation of Palestine problematic.

As a Rafi Smith Institute poll commissioned by the radio station Reshet Bet revealed, 66% of the Israelis are opposed to borders of a future Palestinian state to be based on the lines of June 4, 1967, thus supporting the position of Benjamin Netanyahu. Only 26% supported this idea promoted by the Palestinians, left-wing radicals and the American and European leaders. 85% of supporters of the coalition parties share the position of Mr. Netanyahu. Here it should be noted that about 20 representatives of the Israeli left political wing signed an open letter to the European Union, calling for recognition of a Palestinian state in pre-1967 borders.

As regards the Republic of Artsakh, we can say that its existence is also dependent on the seven districts that make up the security zone, and to give these territories to Azerbaijan (on what the world community yet indirectly insists) would mean to simply cease to exist. What Baku can do in the absence of this very security zone Artsakh knows firsthand. And just like the Palestinians, Azerbaijan refuses to Artsakh the right to exist. History shows that this is a dead-end way to resolve conflicts, and sooner or later reality will force Azerbaijan to recognize the independent Karabakh, and the Arabs, too, will have to put up with the existence of the State of Israel. All this is possible but on one condition only: the world powers, primarily the U.S., the OSCE Minsk Group and the Middle East Quartet should not interfere in the settlement process the way they do now.

At this point it is appropriate to recall the history. On November 29, 1947 at its second session the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 181on the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

Under the plan, the City of Jerusalem was to be established as a corpus separatum under a special international regime and administered by the United Nations to avoid conflict over its status.

Most of the Jews welcomed the proposed plan for the partition of Palestine. Arab leaders, including the Arab League and the (Palestinian) Arab Higher Committee categorically rejected the UN plan for partition. On 24 November 1947 Jamal al-Husayni, Acting Chairman of the Arab Higher Council, threatened: “Palestine shall be consumed with fire and blood, if the Jews should have at least part of it.”

In November of 1949 the UN General Assembly considered the plan for turning Jerusalem into an international zone. Israel flatly rejected the plan, as it did not take into account the demographic situation, the position of Jerusalem in the historical consciousness of the Jewish people and the desire of the Jewish majority in Jerusalem to be an integral part of the State of Israel. A month later Head of the Israeli government, David Ben-Gurion declared West Jerusalem the capital of Israel and announced in the Knesset about the transfer of government agencies from Tel Aviv into there.

Much but not totally the same could be observed also in Artsakh. In the Karabakh conflict, there was no UN plan for partition, people of Artsakh themselves won the war and became independent. And it is precisely this independence that the Artsakh people are wanted to be deprived of and forced to make completely incomprehensible concessions to the Azerbaijani side in the form of transfer of their own territories. And if Israel’s right to these territories is supported by the Bible, which in general is questionable, then Artsakh has conquered this right and reinforced it by more accurate historical information. But be that as it may, nobody has the right to demand nations to make concessions in order to please the ambitions of presidents and “peacekeepers”, especially the nations that protected their right to existence by giving their life’s blood.