Over the next weeks and months, Israel will be pressured by the US into accepting a ceasefire. At least if past wars are any indication.
However, before agreeing to a ceasefire, fundamental issues must be brought to the forefront to show that the war conducted by the Palestinian Arabs and their Iranian allies is far from over.
∙ The official Voice of Palestine, operating on Israel government radio and TV frequencies, continues its daily incitement.
∙ The Palestinian Authority "Pay for Slay" law continues, mandating a salary for life for anyone who killed a Jew.
∙ The PLO charter places the Palestinian Arabs in a permanent state of war until all Jews have been expelled from all areas that had been Mandatory Palestine.
∙ The PLO has now spawned a new Palestinian Arab constitution, which does not recognize the right of any Jews to live anywhere in Palestine.
∙ The Palestinian Arab areas designated as Jew-free include all of the territory which today constitutes the state of Israel.
∙ The Palestinian Arab war curriculum continues to educate all Palestinian Arab children to live a life of permanent war with the Jews, until all Jews are expelled from "Palestine".
∙ UNRWA transforms generous humanitarian aid into cash for arms training to prepare the next generation for war. Sixty-seven nations pour 1.6 billion dollars into UNWRA for humanitarian services. UNRWA hosts five million descendants of Arabs who left Israel in the wake of the 1948 war, still called them refugees, and who remain in 58 "temporary" refugee camps under the premise and promise of the right of return to Arab villages that existed before 1948
All the above begs the question: What about the Palestinian Security Forces (PSF), established by Israel security to provide at least one Palestinian Arab partner whom it could rely on for cooperation?
Already receiving hefty salaries on the PA payroll, all levels of Israel security document that PSF officers are consistent perpetrators of terrorism against the civilians and security forces of Israel.
Glorified as “martyrs," all PSF groups are complicit.
The Palestinan Security Forces were formed under the Oslo Agreement signed in September 1995: “In order to guarantee public order and internal security for the Palestinians of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip… shall establish a strong police force that consists of the Palestinian Police and other branches responsible for national, preventive, public and presidential security" - all of which are, in theory, supposed to combat terrorism and collaborate with Israel on security matters.
PSF officers hold parallel positions in ‘resistance’ movements, either civil or military, such as the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades (the military arm of Fatah), using armed confrontation with Israel; rather than upholding public order and preventing terrorism, they themselves carry out acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians and members of Israel’s security forces.
No ceasefire can be implemented in the Middle East until each of these issues is resolved.
One must always keep in mind that the ceasefire that the Palestinian Arabs offer: A hudna to stop firing, a term which is too often misconstrued to mean a “truce" or a “cease fire."
A hudna connotes no more than a temporary respite and does not remotely resemble either a “truce" or a “cease fire."
Here, then, are four terms now in use in the Arabic understanding of what a cease fire connotes:
• Hudna: a tactical pause intended only for rearmament,
• Tahida: a temporary halt in hostile activity which can be violated at any time
• Hudaybia: No fighting for 10 years: invoking after the “treaty of Hudaybia" in 628 AD
• Sulch: a total cessation of hostile activity
The reality is that a hudna, tahida or hudaybia do not compare to the mu’ahada - the treaty of peace that Egypt signed with Israel in 1979, or the mu’ahada treaty of peace that Jordan signed with Israel in 1994.
The authoritative Islamic Encyclopedia (London, 1922) defines hudna as a “temporary treaty" which can be approved or abrogated by Islamic religious leaders, depending on whether or not it serves the interests of Islam, and that a hudna cannot last for more than 10 years.
That Islamic Encyclopedia ads that the Hudaybia Treaty is the ultimate hudna.
When our news agency sent a crew to monitor Yassir Arafat speeches after the Oslo peace accords , the PLO leader constantly proclaimed that the Oslo accords were like the Hudaybia Treaty.
No one listened.
David Bedein is founding head of the Israel Resource News Agency and serves as Director of The Center for Near East Policy Research.