Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, told Newsmax on Monday that because Israel doesn’t have a partner in peace in the Palestinian Authority, it can only hope to manage crises on its home front instead of finding a resolution.
Israel Defense Forces on Monday killed nine Palestinians in a large-scale operation in the West Bank that the army labeled an "extensive counterterrorism effort," involving airstrikes and hundreds of troops. The raid targeted the northern city of Jenin and was the largest in the West Bank since the second Palestinian intifada in July 2000.
“In the last few decades, we realized that we really don't have a partner for peace when we have an Oslo agreement [in 1993 and 1995] that did not go anywhere because the Palestinian Authority at the time, [leader Yasser] Arafat decided to go into an intifada instead of accepting peace,” Hassan-Nahoum told “The Record With Greta Van Susteren.” “What we have is conflict management. When you can't have a conflict resolution, the best the country can do is manage the conflict.”
Hassan-Nahoum said she doesn’t think such a strategy will be successful long term.
“Is it going to solve it for a while? Hopefully, but this is why we have a war in Gaza once a year. It's ridiculous.
"Once a year, we have a two-, three-, four-day war, but it's becoming shorter actually because that's how we can create a little bit of stability. Get rid of weaponry, find some more tunnels, blow them up and push them back.
“Are we resolving it? We're not. Can we resolve it at the moment with this current [Palestinian] leadership? I wish it were different, but we can't, and so the only thing we can do is manage and do damage limitation.”
Hassan-Nahoum said the Palestinian Authority has deliberately lost control of its own security, leaving a vacuum for more radical elements to take control.
“Instead of taking all the hundreds of millions of dollars in aid the whole world has been giving the Palestinian Authority for years and years and years, creating an ecosystem for economic development, creating opportunity, building hospitals, building schools, they’ve been spending their money in corruption,” Hassan-Nahoum said. “You have a Palestinian Authority that is a kleptocracy, essentially, that hasn't had an election in 19 years, and that has lost the faith of the people.
“So, what's happened is these armed militias, which are funded by Iran, have gained momentum and what we've seen in the last six months, horrible terror attacks every week.
"We've had loss of lives of young men, women, children, elderly people. Every single month for the last six months. And so it builds up to the point that we have to go and clean up and do the job that the Palestinian Authority is incapable or unwilling to do.”
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