Palestinians choose terror

In 2000 Bill Clinton gathered Ehud Barak and Arafat together at Camp David in order to agree on acceptable terms for a lasting peace in the Middle East. During the Camp David negotiations, Israel made unprecedented concessions to the Palestinian authority. Among other things, Israel offered more than 93% of the West Bank as well as Arab east Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state. The Palestinians categorically rejected these offers and refused to put forward any plausible ideas on their own. Dennis Ross, Clinton's top negotiator, talks extensively about this in his book, The Missing Peace.

For years, all sides in the peace process have been talking about their hopes for establishing a peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Politicians and diplomats in every party from every country concerned about the Middle East have waxed eloquent about continuing the pursuit of peace. But as we learned from 2000, the only way the two sides can reach an agreement is if BOTH sides put offers on the table that contain reasonable concessions on both sides.

If there was any question left as to how serious the Palestinians are about peace with Israel, the answer came yesterday. Hamas, officially sanctioned by the US State Department as a terrorist organization, won a majority of the vote in the Palestinian election. In all seriousness, I would love for someone to tell me how you can have peace negotiations with a people whose government is ruled by a terrorist organization that has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel.

As one columist has written, this election was an earthquake. The secularists have been outed. The Islamists now control.