If that's how they act in Lebanon, Gaza, Jordan...

When will the Palestinians learn that they will have to learn how to live in peace...amongst themselves and with their neighbors?

The armed Palestinian organizations in the Gaza Strip are demonstrating once again what has become a norm among the Palestinians - that the agreements to which their leaders commit have no value. It's enough just to listen to Palestinian citizens complaining about how the cease-fire agreements there have no meaning. Agreements are made and signed, and immediately violated.

In this latest round of violence, the warring parties have already decided on a cease-fire five times. Each time, within hours, they were back to killing each other and injuring bystanders in the process. If this is how they behave among themselves, why should they be any more scrupulous in abiding by agreements with outside elements such as Israel, Jordan, Lebanon or Egypt? This is an important lesson that Israel must learn from the recent events in Gaza.

The phenomenon did not originate in Gaza. During the civil war in Lebanon in the 1970s and '80s, the Palestinians agreed to and signed more than 90 cease-fires. Most were violated with terrible bloodshed. The desire to be rid of the Palestinians was the reason that many Shi'ites welcomed the IDF forces that entered Lebanon. The goal of stopping Palestinian unruliness was also one of the reasons behind Hafez Assad's invasion of Lebanon. In Jordan, the Palestinians continued to violate the agreements they reached with King Hussein until he sensed that the government was slipping from his hands. There, too, they caused a civil war in which they were beaten by the Jordanian army. The peak occurred not long ago, when the Palestinians crudely violated the Mecca agreement for the establishment of a Palestinian unity government even before the ink was dry.