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Showing posts with label Abbas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Abbas. Show all posts
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
What do do About Palestinian Aid?
National Interest:
But this doesn’t mean the Palestinians should get a free pass. Specifically, Abbas’s recent diplomatic adventurism should not go unpunished. He manufactured the recent crisis at the UN. He also has presided over a corrupt political and economic system.
Until now, fear of an ascendant Hamas has prevented Washington from challenging Abbas. Because the Obama White House cannot identify a legitimate and moderate successor to Abbas, and because Hamas appears to be the only alternative, the PLO journeyman has been free to consolidate power—and, according to some, abuse it.
One egregious example is the Palestine Investment Fund, a sovereign wealth fund that Abbas controls through a board he handpicked and whose by-laws he rewrote. Since 2006, the PIF has awarded contracts exclusively to Abbas’s cronies, including his sons, Yasser and Tareq.
The Abbas family is now said to be worth millions, with lavish property holdings and investments throughout the Middle East.
Moreover, the Abbas machine quietly enriches Hamas as it enriches itself. According to a former Palestinian Authority adviser, Yasser Abbas staffed the Karni Crossing cargo terminal in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip with the stated purpose of ensuring that goods and aid reached Gaza without reaching Hamas. But the customs and border unit at the crossing is not on the Palestinian Authority payroll, and it abuses its monopoly on Gaza’s only cargo terminal to pocket fees and kick them back to Hamas.
The PA also funds an electric power plant in Gaza but allows Hamas to collect the bills. In other words, Hamas raises funds for its operations by billing Gazans for electricity generated by the PA.
What’s needed here is not a wholesale cut in aid, which would punish the Palestinians who have been powerless under Abbas, but a concerted effort to root out PA corruption. This would include U.S. Government Accountability Office audits of Abbas’s presidential budget, international oversight of the PIF, and a much closer look at the troubling financial relationship between the Abbas machine and Hamas in Gaza.
Such an effort would not necessarily mean the end of Abbas’s rule—though his term ended in 2009—but it would entail curtailing his personal power while excising the cancerous parts of Palestinian aid. It would also put Washington back in the driver’s seat during an era of waning American power, keeping Europeans and other regional actors at bay.
Most importantly, it would give the White House and Congress what they both seek: new leverage over the wayward Palestinian leadership.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Quite simply, they want it all
Barry Rubin, JPost:
No matter what the Palestinian Authority is offered – money, concessions and even steps toward statehood– the response is always “no.” Media, academic “experts” and governments seem to find this amazing phenomenon very hard to understand.The answer is simple, but a lot of the people paid to deal with this stuff don’t get it. So let me elucidate: The Palestinian Authority (PA) wants everything.
The PA wants an independent state on all the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem with no restrictions, no recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, no serious security guarantees, no limits on militarization, no agreement that this means an end to the conflict, no insistence that Palestinian refugees be resettled in the state of Palestine, and nothing to prevent them from pursuing a second stage of wiping Israel off the map entirely.
Now, one could say it’s common for people to want everything and to give nothing in exchange but that certain factors – missing in this case – push them toward compromise.
These factors include:
• Knowing they can’t get a better deal. The Palestinians know the West will always offer more if they are intransigent.
• The impasse favors your adversary because your intransigence will gain it international support. In this case, the more stubborn the Palestinians are, the more Israel is blamed.
• Economic pressure. Since the PA is almost completely supported by foreign aid that is not threatened by its hard line, this pressure does not exist.
• Public opinion pressure to change the situation. In this case, Palestinian public opinion is relatively radicalized and ideological and does not demand a compromise settlement.
• Concern that your political rivals will “outmoderate” you and win by offering to make a deal. In this case, the opposite is true: rivals “out-radicalize” one another and threaten to destroy you politically (and perhaps even physically) if you make a deal.
• Belief that time is not on your side. Due to religious and nationalist ideology, along with misperception of Israel, the PA (and even more so Hamas) believes that time is on its side.
That’s not a complete list. But the point is that the world in general – the United States and Europe, the UN, Arabic-speaking countries and Muslim-majority states – have created a “perfect” system.
Here’s a brief description:
• The PA has no incentive to make compromises for peace, so it won’t.
• The world insists that “peace” is an urgent top priority.
• The only variable is Israel, which must be made to give way. But Israel won’t because of past experience and the fact that the risks are now too high.
Deadlock.
So nothing will change. There will be no peace process, no Palestinian state. No “progress” will be made.
...
This is not left-wing or right-wing but merely an explanation as to why all the schemes and theories of those who do not see these facts never actually take wing. It may not be politically correct, but it is most definitely factually correct.
Now, you might ask, do I just criticize or do I have constructive policy advice?
I do. Here it is: When the Palestinian Authority rejects the Quartet proposal for negotiations, the United States, European Union and anyone else who wants to go along tells them, “We’ve tried to help you and you don’t want to listen, so since we have lots of other things to do, we’ll go do them. Good luck, and if you ever change your mind and get serious about making peace you have our phone number.”
The previous paragraph would send shock waves throughout policy circles, right? But why? If you can’t solve a problem and – let’s be clear here – the problem doesn’t need to be solved immediately, then you work on other problems. There are no shortage of those! I hope you have enjoyed this article and found it useful. We are left, however, with the following problem: Those in positions of political, media and intellectual power don’t get it.
The writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center. He is a featured columnist at Pajamas Media and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) journal.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Direct negotiations are VITAL to peace
Ari Alexenberg, the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New Hampshire, in Sea Coast Online:
Abbas coming to the U.N. for acceptance of a Palestinian state without acknowledging Israel as a Jewish state is ironic. For it was the United Nations' Resolution 181 in 1947 that recommended British mandated Palestine to become two states, a "Jewish state" and an "Arab state."
It is worthy to note that Resolution 181 called for an "Arab state" not a Palestinian state. The reason for this is that the notion of a Palestinian people didn't exist. A search on Google books (a database of millions of books going back hundreds of years) on the subject of "Palestinians" before 1948 will return no results.
Yet, Netanyahu, in his speech to the U.N. explicitly stated he will accept a state for the Palestinian people alongside Israel. The Israelis have shown a remarkable willingness to compromise, agreeing to cede land that is the heart of Jewish civilization dating back thousands of years, for the sake of peace. Giving the Palestinians statehood without their acceptance of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people portends the continuation of the conflict, not the end.
Israel wants peace! It does not want to rule over another people and it does not want to send their children into battle. But just like any other nation on Earth, they must know their neighbors are not sworn to their destruction. In his speech, President Obama articulated Israel's need for security by saying, "Let us be honest with ourselves: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel's citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel's children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them."
If the Palestinians have a state, its borders will run beside the heart of Israel's population center, a mere primitive rocket launch away from Tel Aviv or Israel's only major airport. How can the Palestinians be granted statehood when approximately 40 percent of its population is ruled by Iranian backed Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist group. Netanyahu made this clear in his speech when he said "Israelis are prepared to have a Palestinian state in the West Bank, but we're not prepared to have another Gaza there."
Peace is not a unilateral decision, it is a partnership. There are difficult issues that need to be negotiated. Borders, status of Jerusalem, settlements, Palestinian right of return, security arrangements and many more. A unilateral declaration of statehood doesn't address or solve the real issues on the ground. As President Obama iterated, "peace is hard, peace is hard." Netanyahu is willing to sit down without preconditions to do the hard work of negotiating peace. Abbas' unilateral declaration avoids doing the work necessary to bring a Palestinian state to fruition. It is a shallow exercise that will yield nothing on the ground for the Palestinians. It will only serve to isolate Israel and embarrass the United States by potentially forcing it to veto a Security Council resolution. The Palestinians need a leader whose vision for creating a democratic Palestinian state is greater than his aversion to accepting a democratic Jewish state.
Friday, October 7, 2011
How many times do Palestinians need to shout?
How many times do the Palestinians have to explicitly state their goal before the world wakes up?
Evelyn Gordon of Commentary Magazine:
PMW is a great organization filled with tons of videos from Palestinian T.V. (including those that have to be approved by the PA and Abbas) that demonstrate the Palestinians' inner feelings and goals. It really isn't so "inner" when they're explicitly stating it, but alas, the world refuses to listen to them. Perhaps if the world would wake up - starting with Western journalists and media outlets - we'd actually be able to advance somewhere and realize what's the obstacle to peace instead of launching peace agreements that the Palestinians will always refuse.
Evelyn Gordon of Commentary Magazine:
If anyone still thinks the Palestinians seek a state that will live alongside Israel in peace, they should examine the map broadcast by the Palestinian Authority’s
official TV station the day after PA President Mahmoud Abbas formally applied for statehood at the UN. The station, as Palestinian Media Watch notes, is directly controlled by Abbas’ office. And here is its idea of statehood: a map showing all of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza wrapped in a Palestinian flag, with a giant key stabbed through it.
The dual message of the flag and the key – both symbols of ownership – couldn’t be clearer: It’s all ours, and we intend to take it back. But lest anyone have doubts, there are also Arabic words alongside to explain: According to PMW’s translation, they read “expelled,” “resolve” and “right to return.”
Read the rest here.
That map really says it all. But if anyone needs more convincing, they should visit the website of the PLO’s official UN mission. Since the statehood application was filed by the PLO, not the PA, what the PLO thinks matters. And lo and behold, it thinks its 1968 charter remains valid: Under the headline “Decisions and Actions Related to the Palestine National Charter” – where you’d expect to find the vaunted decision of the late 1990s to revoke the clauses that negate Israel’s existence – you instead find the unreconstructed 1968 version.
PMW is a great organization filled with tons of videos from Palestinian T.V. (including those that have to be approved by the PA and Abbas) that demonstrate the Palestinians' inner feelings and goals. It really isn't so "inner" when they're explicitly stating it, but alas, the world refuses to listen to them. Perhaps if the world would wake up - starting with Western journalists and media outlets - we'd actually be able to advance somewhere and realize what's the obstacle to peace instead of launching peace agreements that the Palestinians will always refuse.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
The U.N. is the "Theatre of the Absurd"
Melanie Phillips:
True, true, and even more so, true. Excellent article.
Some 1941 years ago, the Romans conquered the ancient Jewish kingdom of Judea by force and attempted to expunge all memory of the Jews’ claim to the land by renaming the area Palestine. Two days ago, Mahmoud Abbas attempted to do the same thing by diplomatic force at the UN.
The whole thing was of course a grotesque charade, outdone in its surrealism only by the reaction of the western world. For the UK and US governments and others said that such a unilateral declaration of independence was a setback for peace and a Palestinian state, which could only be achieved through negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel.
Not so. Negotiations do not have to be re-started in order to achieve this. If Abbas really wanted a state of Palestine to live in peace alongside Israel, he could have said a handful of words in New York which would have ended the conflict there and then and brought such a state into actual being.
For all that is needed is for Abbas to say, in Arabic as well as English, that he accepts the right of Israel to exist as the nation state of the Jewish people, and that his own people will no longer wage war against it. If he were to say that, and to match those words by deeds to show he meant them – for example, by ending the incitement in the educational materials and media under his command to hatred and murder of Jews and Israelis – there would be peace and a state of Palestine.
The problem is not the absence of a state of Palestine. The problem is that the Arabs want to get rid of Israel.But this will never happen. For the dominant assumption in the west, the assumption that underpins virtually every political utterance on the subject and every interview on the BBC and the reporting even in notionally pro-Israel papers such as the Times or Telegraph that a state of Palestine would end the Middle East conflict, is not only wholly mistaken but is to mis-state that conflict.
For peace to be achieved, the belligerent has to stop making war. The Arabs have made war on the Jews in their ancient homeland since Israel became a state and indeed for three decades before that. For a solution to be arrived at, it’s necessary correctly to state the problem. The problem is not the absence of a state of Palestine. The problem is that the Arabs want to get rid of Israel.
For anyone paying attention to the actual words used, the evidence was there in Abbas’s own speech. His people, he declared, had been suffering for 63 years. What happened 63 years ago? The state of Israel came into being. So what Abbas was saying was not that the absence of a state of Palestine was the problem. The problem for him was the very existence of the state of Israel.
He also said:
‘...we agreed to establish the State of Palestine on only 22 per cent of the territory of historical Palestine – on all the Palestinian Territory occupied by Israel in 1967.'
But the West Bank and Gaza were not 22 per cent of historical; Palestine; they were far, far less. It was Israel that was established on a fraction of ‘historical Palestine’, having settled for that fraction as better than nothing at all. And if the Palestinians truly had accepted a state merely in the West Bank and Gaza, why then did they refuse the offer of precisely such a state on more than 90 per cent of that territory which was made to them in 2000 and 2008? Why does the very Palestinian logo on their flags and insignia show a map of this state of Palestine to which they aspire as having swallowed up Israel altogether?
In Ramallah on September 16, Abbas made his position even plainer. 'The Palestinian people', he stated, 'have been abused for 63 years, generation after generation, under occupation'.
No, it is not the settlements but the existence of Israel itself that is the problem which Abbas believes UN recognition of a state of Palestine would help resolve. It is Israel itself that Abbas wants to subsume into Palestine. In other words, as he himself has previously said, declaring UDI at the UN was a way of internationalising the conflict with Israel. UN recognition of a state of Palestine is therefore not a move towards peace but a signal for genocidal war.
The truly incredible bone-headedness (or worse) of the western response was encapsulated by a BBC Today programme interview on Friday morning with the UK’s former ambassador to the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock. Sir Jeremy declared that a state of Palestine was ‘not a threat to Israel’, and that the Palestinians were ‘desperate’ to end the ‘injustice’ done to them and to restart negotiations. Eh? What ‘injustice’? The Palestinians are the ones waging war on Israel, not the other way round. What desperation, when they have repeatedly turned down the offer of a state? What keenness to re-start negotiations, when Israel repeatedly offers them negotiations and they repeatedly refuse?
Even worse, Sir Jeremy also said that what was much more important for Israel than a state of Palestine was not to imperil any further its relationship with other countries in the region such as Egypt, Turkey or Iran. What?? Doesn’t Sir Jeremy realise that the Palestinians are despised by every country in the region? Hasn’t Sir Jeremy noticed that Turkey is now pursuing an Islamist agenda, with appalling implications not just for Israel but for the interests of the UK and the west, and that Egypt may well fall to the Islamists too? And as for Israel not upsetting Iran by its attitude to the Palestinians, hasn’t Sir Jeremy Greenstock understood that Iran is threatening Israel with nuclear extinction because it is a Jewish state? On what planet is Sir Jeremy Greenstock living?
To anyone with a scintilla of knowledge of the nine-decade Arab and Islamic war against the Jews in the Middle East, Abbas’s speech at the UN consisted of lie after lie after lie. He claimed that Israeli settlements in the West Bank were illegal and in breach of international law (untrue); he claimed that the settlements were in breach of the terms of negotiation (untrue; it is Abbas’s own unilateral declaration which tears up successive bilateral treaties); he claimed that Israel was targeting Palestinian civilians in Gaza (untrue; Israeli attacks, which carefully avoid hitting civilians wherever possible, are only in defence of its civilians against Hamas attacks --with which Abbas has now publicly lined himself up, not least by hailing as ‘martyrs’ those in Gaza who murder Israelis).
As for his claim that the settlements were the reason there was no peace, this was demonstrably ridiculous. As Netanyahu said in his own fine speech at the UN:
‘President Abbas ... said that the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the settlements. Well, that's odd. Our conflict has been raging for -- was raging for nearly half a century before there was a single Israeli settlement in the West Bank. So if what President Abbas is saying was true, then the -- I guess that the settlements he's talking about are Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jaffa, Be'er Sheva. Maybe that's what he meant the other day when he said that Israel has been occupying Palestinian land for 63 years. He didn't say from 1967; he said from 1948. I hope somebody will bother to ask him this question because it illustrates a simple truth: The core of the conflict is not the settlements. The settlements are a result of the conflict.’The Arab response has always been to refuse and instead to attempt to destroy the Jews’ presence in their own ancient homeland.
History records that, from the 1930s onwards, the Jews have never stood in the way of a Palestinian state if that would end the war of annihilation the Arabs have continuously waged against them. A Palestine state has been on repeated offer. The Arab response has always been to refuse and instead to attempt to destroy the Jews’ presence in their own ancient homeland. As certain Palestinian spokesmen themselves have acknowledged, Palestinian identity was itself constructed purely to destroy Israel. The reason for the objection to a state of Palestine is that it would be used to bring about the final destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, an aspiration which Abbas never ceases to proclaim.
As Netanyahu said in his speech:
‘We believe that the Palestinians should be neither the citizens of Israel nor its subjects. They should live in a free state of their own. But they should be ready, like us, for compromise. And we will know that they’re ready for compromise and for peace when they start taking Israel’s security requirements seriously and when they stop denying our historical connection to our ancient homeland.I often hear them accuse Israel of Judaizing Jerusalem. That’s like accusing America of Americanizing Washington, or the British of Anglicizing London. You know why we’re called “Jews”? Because we come from Judea.”’What Israel should be stating explicitly and repeatedly is that it is the Jews who are the indigenous people of what are now Israel and the West Bank – and indeed beyond. Commentators often refer to Judea and Samaria as ‘Biblical’ names as if they can therefore be disregarded today. Not so. Judea and Samara were the true historical names for Israel and the West Bank, used in international treaties and official documents of the Palestine Mandate period, and throughout which land the Jews were given the legal right to settle. Only now as the west mimics the Arab attempt to airbrush the Jews out of their own history have these names become synonymous with Jewish extremism.
What really illustrates the west’s moral bankruptcy over Israel and the Palestinians is that the day before the Abbas charade, the very same UN gave the stage to Iran’s Ahmadinejad from where he spouted his murderous lies and hatred of the west, including his implication that 9/11 was a US conspiracy. This is the leader of a regime which executes teenagers for homosexuality and which is developing nuclear weapons to commit genocide against Israel and hold the western world hostage. Yet far from expressing outrage at this use of the UN by such a man, far from drawing attention indeed to the utter suicidal madness of having the UN as a global policeman when its own Security Council is now chaired by Lebanon, a country in thrall to Iran through Hezbollah, the appearance of Ahmadinejad elicited barely a shrug by western media which instead worked themselves into a frenzy over Abbas and the ‘plight’ of the Palestinians.
Netanyahu again called it right. He said the world was menaced by a malignancy.
‘That malignancy is militant Islam. It cloaks itself in the mantle of a great faith, yet it murders Jews, Christians and Muslims alike with unforgiving impartiality. On September 11th it killed thousands of Americans, and it left the twin towers in smouldering ruins. Last night I laid a wreath on the 9/11 memorial. It was deeply moving. But as I was going there, one thing echoed in my mind: the outrageous words of the president of Iran on this podium yesterday. He implied that 9/11 was an American conspiracy. Some of you left this hall. All of you should have.'Netanyahu called the UN a ‘theatre of the absurd’ and the ‘house of lies’. The western media mostly didn’t bother to report that, just as they didn’t bother to report much of his speech. What they are really waiting for is for the Palestinians to resume attacking Israelis as a sign of their ‘desperation’. They won’t report those attacks either. But they will report the Israelis’ response and call that ‘aggression’. That’s the prospect over which the western media, sensing a final kill, are now slavering.
True, true, and even more so, true. Excellent article.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon - "Palestinians are using settlement issue as distraction"
JPost:
A fellow blogger, Elder of Ziyon, confirms this tactic by showing multiple maps and pictures of Gilo in relation to the Green Line and Arab villages, and shows that Gilo isn't a settlement but rather a neighborhood on area that would be kept as Israel in any peace agreement.
But once again, the Palestinians must always seek an excuse as to why they can't enter into negotiations.
"It's Israel's fault, they want to actually negotiate, instead of giving up everything in preconditions! This isn't something we will accept!"
"It's Israel's fault, they're building homes for residents of Israel in areas that would remain Israel in any peace agreement!"
"It's Israel's fault for building settlements! The settlements are the obstacle to peace! That's why terrorism against Zionists started in the 1920's, and the 1948 and 1967 war, and many acts of terrorism, took place before 1967 - before any settlements!"
"It's Israel's fault for refusing to give into our lunatic demands that Israel commits suicide! Israel doesn't want to negotiate!"
"Israel is the obstacle to peace! Our incitement of hatred on Palestinians T.V., newspapers, indoctrination of youth, declaring all of Israel as "occupied," refusal to accept any peace talks - including the very generous Olmert offer in 2008 -, training our children to become terrorists, throwing stones at Israelis which led to the death of Asher Palmer and his infant son, have nothing at all to do with the failure to establish peace!"
Speaking of Danny Ayalon here, check out his excellent video, "The Truth about the West Bank," to learn more about the West Bank and the settlements.
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said on Sunday that the Palestinians are using the issue of settlement construction in order to distract the world from the so-called Quartet of Middle East mediators' demand to renew peace talks, according to Israel Radio.
Speaking during a tour of Gilo for foreign journalists, Ayalon added that construction plans for the east Jerusalem neighborhood are not a matter of "political timing," but rather a response to the needs of residents.
Israel on Sunday formally accepted the Quartet's proposal for re-starting negotiations with the Palestinians, following a meeting between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his senior ministers.
"Israel welcomes the Quartet's call for direct negotiations without pre-conditions with the Palestinian Authority, which was already suggested by US president Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, even though Israel has a number of reservations which it will bring up in the negotiations."
Israel received rebukes from European and American diplomats over the plans in Gilo, with the US calling the move "counter-productive" and Europeans, including European Foreign Affairs chief Catherine Ashton, saying it was the kind of "provocative" action that should be avoided as per the Quartet's statement.
Ashton called on Israel to "reverse" its decision to build 1,100 new housing units in Gilo.
The government, however, has insisted that construction in the Jewish neighborhoods of Gilo is standard Israeli policy, and that Gilo is not a settlement nor should construction there be considered settlement development.
The statement called on the PA to enter negotiations without delay.
A fellow blogger, Elder of Ziyon, confirms this tactic by showing multiple maps and pictures of Gilo in relation to the Green Line and Arab villages, and shows that Gilo isn't a settlement but rather a neighborhood on area that would be kept as Israel in any peace agreement.
But once again, the Palestinians must always seek an excuse as to why they can't enter into negotiations.
"It's Israel's fault, they want to actually negotiate, instead of giving up everything in preconditions! This isn't something we will accept!"
"It's Israel's fault, they're building homes for residents of Israel in areas that would remain Israel in any peace agreement!"
"It's Israel's fault for building settlements! The settlements are the obstacle to peace! That's why terrorism against Zionists started in the 1920's, and the 1948 and 1967 war, and many acts of terrorism, took place before 1967 - before any settlements!"
"It's Israel's fault for refusing to give into our lunatic demands that Israel commits suicide! Israel doesn't want to negotiate!"
"Israel is the obstacle to peace! Our incitement of hatred on Palestinians T.V., newspapers, indoctrination of youth, declaring all of Israel as "occupied," refusal to accept any peace talks - including the very generous Olmert offer in 2008 -, training our children to become terrorists, throwing stones at Israelis which led to the death of Asher Palmer and his infant son, have nothing at all to do with the failure to establish peace!"
Speaking of Danny Ayalon here, check out his excellent video, "The Truth about the West Bank," to learn more about the West Bank and the settlements.
How the Palestinian Leadership is Ignoring History
Alan Dershowitz (a professor of Harvard law school and advocate for Israel; wrote numerous pro-Israel books such as "The Case for Israel"):
The Palestinians are in the process of seeking sovereignty from the United Nations, but in doing so, they are asking for more than what was offered them in any prior negotiation with Israel—including during the talks involving President Clinton and Ehud Barak in 2000 and 2001. Rather than more, it is imperative that the Palestinians get less.
It is imperative to world peace that the Palestinians pay a price—even if it’s only a symbolic price—for rejecting the generous Clinton/Barak offer and responding to it with a second intifada in which 4,000 people were killed. It is also important that Israel not return to the precise armistice lines that existed prior to the 1967 war. If the Palestinians were to achieve a return to the status quo prior to Jordan’s attack on Israel in June of 1967, then military aggression will not have been punished, it will have been rewarded. That’s why Security Council Resolution 242—which was essentially the peace treaty that resulted from the end of the Six Day War—intended for Israel to retain territory necessary to give it secure boundaries (Indeed, in the formal application submitted by Abbas, he sought membership based on UN General Assembly Resolution 1810-11 of November 29, 1947, which would put the borders where they were before the Arab armies invaded the new Jewish state in 1948. This would reward multiple aggressions.)
Yet, however important it is that aggressive and unjustified violence not be rewarded, the international community seems bent on doing just that. If the end result of Jordan’s 1967 attack on Israel—an attack supported by the Palestinian leadership and participated in by Palestinian soldiers—is that the Palestinians get back everything Jordan lost, there will be no disincentive to comparable military attacks around the world. If the Palestinians get more than, or even as much as, they rejected in 2000 and 2001 (and did not accept in 2007), then further intifadas with mass casualties will be encouraged. A price must be paid for violence. That’s how the laws of war are supposed to work and there is no reason to make an exception in the case of the Palestinians.
I support a two-state solution based on negotiation and mutual compromise. But the negotiations must not begin where previous offers, which were not accepted, left off. They must take into account how we got to the present situation: The Arab rejection of the UN partition plan and the attack on the new Jewish state that resulted in the death of one percent of Israel’s population; the attack by Jordan and its Palestinian soldiers against Israel in 1967, which resulted in Israel’s capture of the West Bank; Israel’s offer to trade captured land for peace that was rejected at Khartoum with the three infamous “no’s”—no peace, no recognition, no negotiation; Israel’s generous offer of statehood in 2000-2001 that was answered by violence; and Olmert’s subsequent, even more generous, offer that was not accepted by President Abbas.
Efforts to achieve peace must look forward but they must not forget the past. A balance must be struck between not rewarding past violence and not creating unreasonable barriers to a future peace. But the Palestinians made it clear last week that they reject such balance.
I was at the United Nations on Friday when President Abbas made his speech demanding full recognition of Palestine as a state with the borders as they existed just before the Jordanians and Palestinians attacked Israel. In other words he wants a “do over.” He wants the nations that attacked Israel to suffer no consequences for their attempt to destroy the Jewish State. He wants to get back The Western Wall, The Jewish Quarter, and the access road to Hebrew University. Only then will he begin negotiations from this position of strength.
But why then negotiate if the UN gives him more than he can possibly get through negotiation? Will he be in a position to seek less from Israel than what the UN gave him? Will he survive if he is seen as less Palestinian than the UN? Abbas blamed Israel for the self-inflicted wound the Palestinians cynically call the Nakba (the catastrophe). He denied the Jewish history of the land of Israel and he quoted with approval his terrorist predecessor Arafat. He refused to acknowledge Israel’s legitimate security needs. Abbas’s message, in sum, left little or no room for further compromise.
I also sat in the General Assembly as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered to begin negotiations with Abbas, with absolutely no preconditions, in New York, at the United Nations, that very day. He said he would come to Ramallah to negotiate with him or keep the door of his Jerusalem office open. He did not even require as a precondition to negotiations that the Palestinians acknowledge what the UN recognized in 1947—namely, that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people.
Although many in the international communities and on the editorial pages of newspapers claim that Abbas wants to negotiate a two-state solution, while Netanyahu has refused to do so, the truth was on full and open display at the General Assembly on Friday: Netanyahu wants to negotiate a peace now, whereas Abbas wants to win recognition from the United Nations before any negotiations begin. As Netanyahu put it: “Let’s stop negotiating about negotiating and let’s just start negotiating right now.”
If the Palestinians accept Netanyahu’s offer to negotiate a peaceful two-state solution, it will get a real state on the ground—a state that Israel, the United States, and the rest of the international community will recognize. It will not be on the pre-1967 borders because the Palestinians are not entitled to such borders and because such borders are not conducive to peace, but it will be close. The Palestinians will get a viable state and Israel will get a secure state.
If, on the other hand, the UN were to reward nearly a century of Palestinian rejectionism and violence by simply turning the clock back to 1967 (or 1947), it will be encouraging more cost-free rejectionism and violence. The Palestinians must pay a price for the thousands of lives their rejectionism and violence have caused. The price must not be so heavy as to preclude peace, but it must be heavy enough to deter war.
Why did Abbas go to the U.N.?
Charles Krauthammer:
While diplomatically inconvenient for the Western powers, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s attempt to get the United Nations to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state has elicited widespread sympathy. After all, what choice did he have? According to the accepted narrative, Middle East peace is made impossible by a hard-line Likud-led Israel that refuses to accept a Palestinian state and continues to build settlements.
It is remarkable how this gross inversion of the truth has become conventional wisdom. In fact, Benjamin Netanyahu brought his Likud-led coalition to open recognition of a Palestinian state, thereby creating Israel’s first national consensus for a two-state solution. He is also the only prime minister to agree to a settlement freeze — 10 months — something no Labor or Kadima government has ever done.
To which Abbas responded by boycotting the talks for nine months, showing up in the 10th, then walking out when the freeze expired. Last week he reiterated that he will continue to boycott peace talks unless Israel gives up — in advance — claim to any territory beyond the 1967 lines. Meaning, for example, that the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem is Palestinian territory. This is not just absurd. It violates every prior peace agreement. They all stipulate that such demands are to be the subject of negotiations, not their precondition.
Abbas unwaveringly insists on the so-called “right of return,” which would demographically destroy Israel by swamping it with millions of Arabs, thereby turning the world’s only Jewish state into the world’s 23rd Arab state. And he has repeatedly declared, as recently as last week in New York: “We shall not recognize a Jewish state.”
Nor is this new. It is perfectly consistent with the long history of Palestinian rejectionism. Consider:
●Camp David, 2000. At a U.S.-sponsored summit, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offers Yasser Arafat a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza — and, astonishingly, the previously inconceivable division of Jerusalem. Arafat refuses. And makes no counteroffer, thereby demonstrating his unseriousness about making any deal. Instead, within two months, he launches a savage terror war that kills a thousand Israelis.
●Taba, 2001. An even sweeter deal — the Clinton Parameters — is offered. Arafat walks away again.
●Israel, 2008. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert makes the ultimate capitulation to Palestinian demands — 100 percent of the West Bank (with land swaps), Palestinian statehood, the division of Jerusalem with the Muslim parts becoming the capital of the new Palestine. And incredibly, he offers to turn over the city’s holy places, including the Western Wall — Judaism’s most sacred site, its Kaaba — to an international body on which sit Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Did Abbas accept? Of course not. If he had, the conflict would be over and Palestine would already be a member of the United Nations.
This is not ancient history. All three peace talks occurred over the past decade. And every one completely contradicts the current mindless narrative of Israeli “intransigence” as the obstacle to peace.
Settlements? Every settlement remaining within the new Palestine would be destroyed and emptied, precisely as happened in Gaza.
So why did the Palestinians say no? Because saying yes would have required them to sign a final peace agreement that accepted a Jewish state on what they consider the Muslim patrimony.
The key word here is “final.” The Palestinians are quite prepared to sign interim agreements, like Oslo. Framework agreements, like Annapolis. Cease-fires, like the 1949 armistice. Anything but a final deal. Anything but a final peace. Anything but a treaty that ends the conflict once and for all — while leaving a Jewish state still standing.
After all, why did Abbas go to the United Nations last week? For nearly half a century, the United States has pursued a Middle East settlement on the basis of the formula of land for peace. Land for peace produced the Israel-Egypt peace of 1979 and the Israel-Jordan peace of 1994. Israel has offered the Palestinians land for peace three times since. And been refused every time.
Why? For exactly the same reason Abbas went to the United Nations last week: to get land without peace. Sovereignty with no reciprocal recognition of a Jewish state. Statehood without negotiations. An independent Palestine in a continued state of war with Israel.
Israel gave up land without peace in south Lebanon in 2000 and, in return, received war (the Lebanon war of 2006) and 50,000 Hezbollah missiles now targeted on the Israeli homeland. In 2005, Israel gave up land without peace in Gaza, and again was rewarded with war — and constant rocket attack from an openly genocidal Palestinian mini-state.
Israel is prepared to give up land, but never again without peace. A final peace. Which is exactly what every Palestinian leader from Haj Amin al-Husseini to Yasser Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas has refused to accept. Which is why, regardless of who is governing Israel, there has never been peace. Territorial disputes are solvable; existential conflicts are not.
Land for peace, yes. Land without peace is nothing but an invitation to national suicide.
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