The Impossible Dream

Why is it that the American media is so myopic in its coverage of world events? Or are they propounding an agenda that restricts what they chose to report? Did you know that Egypt recently offered the Palestinian Authority (PA) 618 square miles of the Sinai adjacent to the Gaza Strip for the settlement of Palestinian refugees. I didn’t … until I just read about it in Commentary Magazine. This offer should have made banner headlines in the New York Times but, as of yet, this newspaper and other American media outlets seem to have run out of ink for such a startling revelation (see: Commentary Magazine Article.) After all the Gaza Strip itself is only 139 square miles. This Egyptian offer would have more the quintupled the living space in Gaza.

Of course, Mahmoud Abbas of the PA rejected this offer with the feeble excuse that “[I]t’s illogical for the problem to be solved at Egypt’s expense. We won’t have it.” Of course the real reason that Abbas rejected this extremely generous offer is that the presence of these all-suffering Palestinian refugee pawns in an over-crowded Gaza Strip is what keeps fulminating the PA’s attacks on Israel … and what elicits the sympathy of the world to their plight. If a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian eternal conflict is ever going to be achieved, it will never be done by carving up Israel. This Egyptian proposal would have opened the door to a real two-state solution and a lasting peace in this area.

But I guess peace is not what is deep-down desired. Even for the “moderates” such as Abbas, the objective clearly is the ultimate destruction of this Jewish state. The sooner the world comes to accept this reality, the sooner it will stop dreaming the impossible dream.