A Muslim Arab who gets it

Hisham Jarallah - a journalist based in the 'West Bank' - cuts through the nonsense to the real reason why the 'peace process' is dead: The Arab and Muslim world is not ready to accept a Jewish state.

Abbas is in fact searching for any excuse not to return to the negotiating table with Israel.

His demand that Israel stop building in the settlements sounds more like a joke: has he just discovered that there are settlements in the West Bank?

Why did his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, negotiate for many years with Israel while the construction in the settlements was continuing? And why did Abbas also negotiate with Israeli leaders before Benjamin Netanyahu was elected prime minister more than three years ago -- while the construction work was continuing?

By demanding that Israel recognize the pre-1967 lines as the borders of a future Palestinian state, Abbas is actually asking that Israel commit itself in advance to giving him everything -- even before the negotiations have resumed.

Abbas's two new conditions - the release of prisoners and import of weapons - came as a surprise even to some Palestinians in the West Bank. It is not even clear how the release of Palestinians who were involved in terror attacks would advance the cause of peace.

It is also not clear how bringing additional rifles and pistols into the Palestinian Authority-controlled territories is supposed to help achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Abbas is right in saying that the peace process is "clinically dead." The peace process has been dead for some time now.

It died the day a majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas in a free and fair election in 2006.

The peace process died when Hamas expelled the Palestinian Authority from the Gaza Strip and established an Islamic emirate in the area.

The peace process died even long before that. It passed away the day Yasser Arafat said no to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at the botched Camp David summit in 2000.

...

The peace process is dead because a majority in the Arab and Islamic world still has not come to terms with Israel's right to exist.

Indeed.