The things that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said in Berlin (of all places) were chilling, and deserved all the condemnations they garnered, and even more. But the question is what conclusion should be drawn about Israel and its interests. Those who oppose dividingng the country and are ready to pay for it with one country west of Jordan in which a Jewish minority controls a non-Jewish majority hold up Abbas' remarks to show that Israel doesn't have anyone to talk to, and therefore doesn't need to do anything other than leave a non-Jewish and non-democratic entity.
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Anyone who sees themselves as a Zionist cannot view that as an option. If Yasser Arafat wasn't an appropriate partner in peace, and Mahmoud Abbas isn't a partner either, there can be only one conclusion – that Israel needs to spearhead a unilateral move.
Arab Israelis, even before they started defining themselves as Palestinians, saw Jewish aliyah as a threat to their lives there. The Zionist movement, which was mainly a movement dedicated to saving European Jewry from persecution, did not understand their fears and found it difficult to understand why they weren't welcomed in the land of their forefathers. The Palestinians, who saw how they were purchasing their land, evacuating them, and trying to inculcate the idea of "Jewish labor," saw what we perceived as pioneering as annexation, and made a huge effort to stop the Jews making aliyah and settling the land.
The Holocaust of European Jewry gave Zionism a moment of mercy because of what had happened to the Jews, and support for the 1947 Partition Plan. The monstrous magnitude of the Holocaust did not allow the world, which had stood by while it happened, to do anything but recognize a Jewish state, and an Arab state alongside it. The Arabs started to portray the Holocaust as just another pogrom, and failed. They thought that the smaller the Holocaust seemed, the less legitimacy Israel would have, and what there was might crumble.
Most Arab leaders have tended to play down the Holocaust. Many – from Hajj Amin al-Husseini to Anwar Sadat – were supporters of the Nazis, or at least allies. Israel, which struck a historic reparations deal with Germany exactly 70 years ago, could not allow itself to boycott world leaders who leaned toward Nazism but remained in power. The terrible dispute between David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin about reparations was decided by pragmatism, because Israel's security and growth were the top priority, with all the pain.
When Begin took the most important diplomatic step in Israel's history and negotiated with Sadat about an Israeli withdrawal from an area three times the size of its sovereign territory, he didn't ask him to deny his admiration of Hitler. The opponents of the Sinai withdrawal criticized Begin for that. He was smart enough to give precedence to a peace treaty with what was then Israel's biggest enemy.
Mahmoud Abbas is a pragmatic leader who understands that peace with Israel is vital for the success of the Palestinian national enterprise, and that living alongside Israel is the best option for the development of a Palestinian state. His insufferable comments about the Holocaust (even if he took back what he said, calling it the biggest crime in modern history) shouldn't stop us from making an effort to reach a peace deal. Anyone who believes there is a possibility of a deal like that won't wait for a more moderate Palestinian leaders.
But those who want to talk about Israel as a democratic, Jewish, liberal country but aren't willing to talk with the leader in Ramallah have to get up and lead a unilateral move, with all the dangers that entails, and draw a border that will remain in place until peace is negotiated. Giving into the people who prefer the entire land of Israel over the state of Israel is a true danger to the future of this country.
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