The Palestinian Authority’s reaction to the Hebron community’s municipal upgrade last week has become unhinged. Sensing the move essentially means that the Jewish residents of the city will not be removed from what is the Jewish people’s second most holiest city, Palestinian Arabs now understand that the coming parameters of a “peace deal” may not be to their liking.
“The order jeopardizes any political settlement in the area, which stands in contradiction with the peace process and the establishment of a Palestinian state,” Kamel Hamid the Palestinian Authority representative who also acts as their governor in the Hebron area said to the PA’s Wafa news agency.
More and more Israelis are recognizing that the blatant land theft as well as the continued twisting of history on the part of Arabs living in the area makes it near impossible to reach a final status agreement. In place of that, Israel has had no choice but to begin to extend its sovereignty to areas that have been historically Jewish since before the Arab population occupied them in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century.
In 1929, the Arab population rioted and killed 68 Jews in the ancient Jewish community. The rest of the community fled. The Jewish community existed there since ancient times with the main building known as the Tomb of the Patriarchs being built over the grave site of Israel’s Patriarchs and Matriarchs by King Herod more than 2000 years ago.
The Arab population has gone out of its way to erase Jewish history in the city. The latest upgrade by Israel, essentially freezes the assumption that Hebron is on the negotiating table. With this in mind, a two-state solution seems to be the farthest thing from reality.
More importantly Israel has finally begun to call the Palestinian Arab bluff and started to make moves to integrate important parts of its biblically significant homeland into pre-1967 Israel. This movement to finally assert Jewish sovereignty over what was always been Jewish land means a weakening of the Palestinian Authority control over Judea and Samaria.
With Hebron now off the table and continued reclamation of Jewish property in Jerusalem continuing, the PA has little claim to the rest of Judea and Samaria. Abbas and his clan may have grown rich off of siphoning money from Western investments into their political racket dubbed the Palestinian Authority, but they are losing their grip on what matters most.
Israel’s growing control over its historical homeland may appear slow-moving, but it is moving forward none-the-less. It is this movement at the end of the day which will determining the sovereign in Judea and Samaria.