Jonathan Agronsky: Blame Arafat

I mostly admire Gwynne Dyer, a London-based “independent journalist.” However, he totally missed the mark in his Oct. 29 column “Netanyahu’s truth” in which he takes Israel and Netanyahu to task for the alleged “colonization of Palestine.”

According to Dyer, the spate of recent fatal attacks against Israeli Jews by Palestinians is due to the Palestinians’ “loss of faith in” Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ “ability to get a Palestinian state.”

If Palestinians are in fact fed up with Abbas’ failed policies, they should take the matter up with him, rather than take out frustrations on history’s favorite scapegoat: the Jews.

Palestinians could have had their own state decades ago if former leader Yasser Arafat had accepted the generous terms offered to the Palestinians first by former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was slain by an angry right-wing Israeli settler for his efforts, and by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Instead, Arafat scorned the Israeli offers, apparently preferring to keep his people in a state of perpetual unrest.

If and when the Palestinians ever get their own house in order and sit down at the table with the Israelis to seriously talk peace, they just might discover that the elusive goal they claim they desire is well within reach.

This story was originally published November 1, 2015 at 1:00 PM with the headline "Jonathan Agronsky: Blame Arafat."