Is It Better to Give (and Give and Give) and Never, Ever Receive?

Maybe if you're a blooming saint it is, but if you're the world's sole Jewish polity--and despised because of it--it's an exercise in futility and self-sabotage:

The current talks are a case in point. To launch them, Israel agreed to release 104 vicious murderers in four stages–an incredibly painful concession. And what did the Palestinians give in exchange? They certainly haven’t ceased anti-Israel incitement, which leading human rights expert Prof. Irwin Cotler described just last week as “far worse than checkpoints”; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu detailed numerous recent examples of such incitement in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday. Nor did they agree to let Israel continue building in areas that every peace plan ever proposed has concluded will remain Israeli; they’re threatening to boycott tomorrow’s planned negotiating session over Israeli plans for 1,200 desperately needed new housing units in huge Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the major settlement blocs. 

In fact, Palestinians made exactly one “concession” in exchange for the talks: They agreed to show up without an Israeli commitment to accept all their territorial demands before negotiations even began (though they claim the U.S. did promise to support those demands). In other words, their one “concession” was agreeing to negotiate at all. Given that Palestinians claim to want a state on lands only Israel can give them, it’s hard to understand why Israel should be expected to bribe them merely to embark on talks aimed at satisfying that desire. Yet that has been the norm ever since the “peace process” began in 1993.