The current Palestinian leadership has proved itself as a totally unreliable partner for negotiations with Israel. Many, maybe even most, ordinary Israelis feel they were conned by this leadership: taken for a ride; double-crossed; stabbed in the back… (Am I getting through here?). Most Israelis fail to see any change in the current Palestinian attitude, not that they would be taken in a second time as easily as the first.
Not until the current Palestinian leadership begins to treat the Palestinian terrorists as they treat those suspected of collaboration with the Zionist enemy (tortured, dragged through the streets, hanged on electricity poles in the town square to the cheers of the crowd… believe you me, you’d be prepared to pay a lot of money to be a Palestinian terrorist in an Israeli prison, to avoid the fate of a suspected collaborator, or a homosexual, in a Palestinian one), will ordinary Israelis begin to trust the current Palestinian leadership. Maybe.
All these supposedly peace-y people abroad, don’t seem to realize that building trust goes both ways.
Right now, the Israeli people have no choice but to support a government that does the work the current Palestinian leadership swore to do, over and over again: look after the lives of Israeli citizens by taking strong action against Palestinian terrorists.
Note: I would like to point out that I do not, in any way, condone torture, dragging through streets, hanging, or any type of physical violence as means of punishment. Sadly, the current Palestinian leadership does, but only for certain crimes. The mass murder of Israeli innocents is not one of them.
A comment by John Williams:
The phrase, ' The current Palestinian leadership...' might lead the unwary reader to think that there was ever any other Palestinian leadership outside of Arafat. He is the only constant in all the conflicts. I am reminded of Newton's law,
Whenever one body exerts force upon a second body, the second body exerts an equal and opposite force upon the first body
Arafat has been exerting force on Israel since his return to the territories and is in my opinion responsible for the election of equal and opposite force in the shape of three hard Israeli leaders. He provokes, they respond. He is a permanent impediment to peace and should be taken out of the equation.