Prime Minister Netanyahu says Israel is not threatened by unilateral steps taken at the UN by the Palestinians.
Netanyahu and Abbas. (photo credit:REUTERS)
The unilateral move by the Palestinian’s at the UN on Wednesday will lead to Hamas taking over the West Bank, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday evening while lighting candles for the third night of Hannuka at his office.
“Abbas thinks that by taking unilateral steps he threatens us; he doesn’t understand that their result will be Hamas taking over the West Bank,” Netanyahu said.
“We will never allow this and will never accept unilateral diktats. We will always protect our security.”
Jordan formally submitted to the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday a draft resolution calling for peace between Israel and the Palestinians within one year and an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank by the end of 2017.
The Palestinian-drafted resolution was formally submitted to the 15-member council, which means it could be put to a vote as soon as 24 hours later, but it does not guarantee it will happen. Some drafts formally submitted have never been voted.
Diplomats say negotiations on the text could take days or weeks. Jordan’s UN envoy Dina Kawar said she hoped the council could reach a unanimous decision on the resolution.
Reuters contributed to this report.
These European parliaments are also turning a blind eye to the fact that, under the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, there is no respect for the rule of law, free speech, transparency or accountability.
These Western parliamentarians are in fact acting against the interests of the Palestinians, who are clearly not hoping for another corrupt dictatorship in the Arab world.
“The situation in Palestine does not conform at all with democracy or the rule of law… Wake up and see the loss of rights, law and security.” — Freih Abu Medein, former Palestinian Authority Justice Minister.
“Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] wants to concentrate all authorities in his hands and the hand of his loyalists. He’s acting in a dictatorial way and wants to be in control of everything, especially the finances.” — Yasser Abed Rabbo, Secretary General of the PLO.
By turning a blind eye to human rights violations, as well as assaults on freedom of expression, the judiciary and the parliamentary system in the Palestinian territories, Western parliaments are paving the way for a creation of a rogue state called Palestine.
European parliaments that are rushing to recognize a Palestinian state are ignoring the fact that the Palestinians have been without a functioning parliament for the past seven years.
The Palestinian parliament, known as the Palestinian Legislative Council [PLC], has been paralyzed since 2007, when Hamas violently seized control over the Gaza Strip and expelled the Palestinian Authority [PA].
These European parliaments are also turning a blind eye to the fact that, under the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, there is no respect for the rule of law, free speech, transparency or accountability.
Ironically, the EU Parliament vote coincided with an unprecedented crackdown by the Palestinian Authority leadership on the Palestinian Legislative Council and its secretary-general, Ibrahim Khraisheh, in Ramallah.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas ordered the arrest of Khraisheh for allegedly criticizing PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah. Following strong protests by leaders of various Palestinian factions, who described the decision as a flagrant breach of freedom of expression, Abbas was forced to backtrack.
But for Abbas, this was not the end of the story. After canceling the arrest order against Khraisheh, Abbas dispatched policemen to the parliament building in Ramallah to prevent the top official from entering the compound. The presence of the policemen at the main entrance to the parliament building drew sharp denunciations from many Palestinians.
The Palestinian Legislative Council building in Ramallah. (Image source: Alarab
Khraisheh was removed from his job because he dared to criticize the Palestinian government for arresting Bassam Zakarneh, head of the public employees’ union in the West Bank. Many Palestinians have also denounced the arrest of Zakarneh as an assault on workers’ rights and an attempt to intimidate them.
But the EU Parliament and other parliaments that voted in favor of recognizing Palestinian statehood did not see a need to comment on Abbas’s measures against the PLC and one of its senior officials.
EU parliamentarians who voted in favor of Palestinian statehood are most likely unaware of what the former PA Justice Minister, Freih Abu Medein, had to say about the rule of law and order in the Palestinian Authority.
Abu Medein drew a bleak picture of what the future Palestinian state would look like. In a damning article he published last week, Abu Medein wrote: “The situation in Palestine does not conform at all with democracy or the rule of law, because the Palestinian mentality is too coarse to cope with transparency of the law and its regulators and provisions.”
Abu Medein’s scathing attack, which is directed first and foremost against Abbas, ended with an appeal to Palestinians to “wake up and see the loss of law, rights and security” in the areas controlled by the PA and Hamas.
The former Palestinian Authority justice minister is not the only prominent Palestinian who seems to understand that a Palestinian state under the current circumstances would be anything but democratic.
Yasser Abed Rabbo, the secretary-general of the PLO who until recently was considered one of Abbas’s top confidants, was quoted last week as strongly condemning the Palestinian Authority president’s “dictatorial” rule.
Referring to Abbas by his nom de guerre, Abed Rabbo said: “Abu Mazen wants to concentrate all authorities in his hands and the hands of his loyalists. He’s acting in a dictatorial way and wants to be in control of everything, especially the finances. I don’t know what this man wants and why he’s behaving in this way. What will happen after Abu Mazen’s departure?”
The parliament members of Sweden, Britain, France and Portugal who voted in favor of recognizing Palestinian statehood do not seem to care about their Palestinian colleagues, who have been deprived of carrying out their parliamentary obligations as a result of the power struggle between Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah faction.
Nor do they seem to care if the Palestinian state would be another corrupt dictatorship where there is no room for the rule of law, transparency or freedom of speech.
Obviously, Western parliamentarians see no wrongdoing or evil in the actions of the Palestinian leadership and Hamas. They are prepared to vote in favor of a Palestinian state even if it does not appear to be headed toward democracy and transparency.
These Western parliamentarians are in fact acting against the interests of the Palestinians, who are clearly not hoping for another corrupt dictatorship in the Arab world. By turning a blind eye to human rights violations, as well as assaults on freedom of expression, the judiciary and the parliamentary system in the Palestinian territories, Western parliaments are paving the way for the creation of a rogue state called Palestine.
The New York Times is by no means alone in making the “news” fit its ideological narrative. For an excellent analysis of how and why it happens, please read Sharyl Attkisson’s recent book Stonewalled.– DM)
The practice of ignoring such malevolence partly stems from the fact that the New York Times wishes to present a certain narrative at the expense of the facts and partly stems from a systematic inability of some Western media outlets to hold Arabs to a Western standard of decency and morality. Thus, Arab anti-Semitism, the same kind of anti-Semitism practiced in Europe some 75 years ago, is either ignored or attributed to mere cultural differences.
Rarely is the sort of vitriol witnessed in the videos expressed in English to Western audiences. Only the crassest among them publicly share their feelings about Jews, and the West for that matter. But behind closed doors it’s an entirely different story. Groups like MEMRI, CAMERA, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) and many others do an excellent job in exposing the malevolence hiding just beneath the surface. The problem is no one seems to care. No one cared 75 years ago either.
*****************
A shockingly, disturbing video has recently surfaced exposing the true and pernicious face of Palestinian extremism and xenophobia. The video, made available by Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) shows a bearded sheikh giving what appears to be an impromptu sermon on the Jews. (After all, what else is there to talk about?) The venue is the Al-Aqsa Mosque, considered by those who practice the “religion of peace” to be their third holiest site after Mecca and Medina.
The speech itself is filled with gut-wrenching anti-Semitism, the kind that would even make the editors of the New York Times blush. The sheikh describes how the Jews possess the vilest of traits, how they were responsible for killing the “prophets,” how they attempted to assassinate Muhammad, how their time for “slaughter is near,” how they will be slaughtered “without mercy,” and of course there’s the perfunctory, “Jews are apes and pigs” thing.
Interestingly, the speaker doesn’t mention the longing for Palestinian statehood or independence. Instead, he talks of the establishment of the “Islamic Caliphate.” “Oh Allah’” he states, “Hasten the establishment of the State of the Islamic Caliphate,” and further rants, “Oh Allah hasten the pledge of allegiance to the Muslim Caliph.” He spews forth the latter statement three times to chants of “Amen!” from the large, approving crowd congregating around him.
These comments, which would register horror and revulsion in the West (at least in some quarters) are almost banal among Palestinians. In fact, a similar video featuring a different speaker some days earlier at the same venue, conveyed identical sentiment, expressing admiration for the Islamic State and calling for murder of Jews and annihilation of America.
Guttural anti-Semitism is ingrained and interwoven in the fabric of Palestinian society. Despite their minuscule numbers, 78% of Palestinians believe that Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars while a whopping 88% believe that Jews control the global media and still more believe that Jews wield too much power in the business world.
Much of the blame for this can be placed squarely on the doorstep of Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which subjects the Palestinian population to a steady diet of hate-filled, Judeophobic rhetoric through state-controlled media and educational institutions. It is so well entrenched that the process of deprogramming, if it were ever attempted, would take generations to reverse.
Some of the blame however, rests with the Obama administration and the European Union, which continues to fund the Palestinian Authority with an endless supply of taxpayer money without demanding any form of accountability. Western money is openly used to fund the Palestinian Authority’s hate apparatus with money flowing into institutions that propagate anti-Semitism and encourage terrorism.
Some Western media outlets are also culpable in perpetuating the Palestinian culture of hate. The New York Times for example has frequently and diligently covered so-called “price tag” vandalism attacks; a practice universally condemned by nearly all Israelis and vigorously prosecuted by Israeli authorities but rarely, if ever, covers the type of venomous hate speech witnessed in the above-noted videos.
Hate crimes inspired by this type of pernicious speech are also routinely ignored. Highlighting this point is the disturbing case of Asher Palmer, an American citizen who, along with his infant son was murdered when a rock thrown by a Palestinian crashed through the windshield of the car he was driving, hitting him flush in the face. The New York Times ignored the gruesome murders and only mentioned the incident in passing a few days later in the context of a reprisal “price tag” attack against a mosque. Under the unbelievably skewed editorial policies of the New York Times, it took an act of vandalism, ostensibly committed by Jews, to highlight the horrific murder of Asher Palmer and his infant son at the hands of Arabs.
The practice of ignoring such malevolence partly stems from the fact that the New York Times wishes to present a certain narrative at the expense of the facts and partly stems from a systematic inability of some Western media outlets to hold Arabs to a Western standard of decency and morality. Thus, Arab anti-Semitism, the same kind of anti-Semitism practiced in Europe some 75 years ago, is either ignored or attributed to mere cultural differences.
Indeed, the New York Times no longer even bothers to hide the fact that it engages in duplicitous double standards when it comes to reporting Palestinian-Arab racism and hate speech as evidenced from a telling exchange between New York Times’ opinion page staff editor, Matt Seaton and Tamar Sternthal, a director at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).
Rarely is the sort of vitriol witnessed in the videos expressed in English to Western audiences. Only the crassest among them publicly share their feelings about Jews, and the West for that matter. But behind closed doors it’s an entirely different story. Groups like MEMRI, CAMERA, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) and many others do an excellent job in exposing the malevolence hiding just beneath the surface. The problem is no one seems to care. No one cared 75 years ago either.
From the point of view of Obama, the more pressure on Israel, the better. Europe agrees. The European parliaments, one after another, have favoured the recognition of Palestine in non-binding resolutions.
***************
The world is totally committed to the two-statesolution. European country after country is passing non-binding resolutions to recognize Palestine in principle. The parameters of the deal which have been set in stone, notwithstanding that all issues are to be decided by negotiations, are the ’67 lines plus swaps and the division of Jerusalem.
Never mind that such a deal is not good enough for the Arabs. Hamas rejects it outright. Mahmoud Abbas, as President of the PA, is still clamoring for the so called right of return and is unwilling to recognize Israel as the home of the Jews while at the same time insisting that “Palestine” be yudenrein.
The EU has already put a boycott on goods from Judea and Samaria and is drafting legislation imposing sanctions on Israel. It is even rumored that the US is contemplating doing the same. That’s ironic considering that both want to ease sanctions on Iran.
Israel, for its part is going along to get along, at least that is, to a degree. Netanyahu has agreed to negotiate the two-state solution subject to three pillars, “One, genuine mutual recognition; two, an end to all claims, including the right of return; and three, a long-term Israeli security presence.” This is according to his remarks to the Saban Conference. He did not mention borders. Would he accept ’67 lines plus swaps? He didn’t say but I think it is implied. Even so, there are no takers.
The Palestine Authority (PA) has turned its back on negotiations which would require it to accept these pillars and instead is getting ready to ask the UN Security Council to recognize the state of Palestine and to call for Israel to evacuate the territories calling for a full Israeli withdraw to the pre-1967 lines by November 2016.
The Obama administrations is working to prevent this but at the same time is considering the implications of not vetoing it. From the point of view of Obama, the more pressure on Israel, the better. Europe agrees. The European parliaments, one after another, have favoured the recognition of Palestine in non-binding resolutions.
Congress, on the other hand, in their spending bill, provides as follows, according to the Washington Post, “The bill stops assistance to the Palestinian Authority if it becomes a member of the United Nations or UN agencies without an agreement with Israel. It also prohibits funds for Hamas.” and provides “$3.1 billion in total aid for the country (Israel) plus $619.8 million in defense aid”. It has yet to pass.
Meanwhile the PA continues its incitement and lies. A recent poll of Palestinians showed that 80 percent supported individual attacks by Palestinians who have stabbed Israelis or rammed cars into crowded train stations and 59.6 percent supporting rocket fire at Israel. Is this a partner for peace? This poll may have been intended to promote the resistance.
At long last Israel is mounting certain responses. 1) Greater police presence in Jerusalem with fewer restrictions on them, 2) Greater penalties, like longer sentences, for any violent rioters and 3) Enacting zero tolerance laws prohibiting incitement. The Bill, not yet passed into law, states, “A call to an act of violence or terror deserves condemnation in the criminal realm as well, even if it is insufficient to lead to violence or terror. It does not deserve to be protected by the principle of freedom of expression.”
Wednesday, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon attributed the building freeze in Judea and Samaria to pressure from the Obama administration and suggested Israel has to wait him out.
Speaking to reporters in Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that objection to “settlements” was longstanding and would not change after President Barack Obama leaves office in 2017 and said “Our policy has been consistent for quite some time,”
I am not so sure. Besides, she misses the point. While all administrations, from President Reagan on have considered settlements, while not illegal, to be an “obstacle to peace”, none of them forced Israel to freeze construction and even planning for construction and certainly not in Jerusalem.
The US and the EU continually allege that ‘settlements’ are an obstacle to peace. Have you ever heard them claim the same about PA incitement, or its support of terror or its refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state or its unwillingness to forego the “right of return”? Maybe, a little bit in passing, but they have done nothing to change their position and hardly condemned them.
Furthermore, Obama’s decision to back negotiations based on borders along the ’67 lines plus swaps was a big mistake. Doing so was contrary to his often stated position that any settlement must come through direct negotiations. He has forever repeated the mantra that neither side should take any unilateral moves which pre-determine the outcome. He himself, by predetermining the borders, is pre-determining the outcome.
Had he not pre-determined the borders of the final settlement, then Israel would have been entitled to build everywhere at its peril, meaning that when borders are agreed upon, if ever, the housing on Israel’s side would remain and the housing on the Palestinian side would have to be vacated if the PA insists on the Nazi doctrine of making the land yuden frie (Jew free) and the West supports such a doctrine.
The only unilateral moves proscribed by the Oslo Accords and all subsequent agreements, are those which change the status of the land. By this is meant, claiming sovereignty. So Israel can’t annex the land andthe PA can’t go to the UN and ask them for sovereignty, not so long as the Oslo Accords have not been formally abrogated. The construction of housing by Israel in no way changes the status of the land. And neither does land use planning.
And if you think that Israel will agree to divide Jerusalem, their eternal capital, think again. Nir Barkat, the Mayor of Jerusalem, when addressing the JPOST Diplomatic Conference attended by over three hundred of diplomats, gave a very upbeat assessment of the transformation of Jerusalem that is taking place and will continue to take place. He stressed the commitment by him and the government to maintain the status quo between all religions. He ended by disabusing the audience of any thoughts they might have about dividing Jerusalem. It will never happen, he said, and I believe him.
Israel is consumed with the issue of whether to pass the nation-state bill which essentially declares that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. To do so, claims the left in Israel, is to diminish it as a democratic state. But there is no evidence to support this.
Eugene Kontorovich wrote a two part article in the Washington Post onThe legitimacy of Israel’s nation-state bill in which he said the bill was unremarkable when compared to many European constitutions with similar, and stronger, national homeland provisions.
He also argued that:
“The proposed measure must also be understood in the context of Israel’s diplomatic situation. Israel’s biggest diplomatic issue is the status of Jerusalem and the West Bank, and international pressure to create a new Arab state there and in Gaza. The major argument by proponents of territorial withdrawal (including President Obama and Sec. Kerry) is that despite the serious security risks, Israel must retreat in order to maintain a “Jewish state.” Indeed, even foreign leaders, like President Obama and Secretary Kerry have both justified their pressure on Israel by invoking the preservation of the Israel’s Jewish identity.”
And went further:
“Thus supporters of Israel leaving the West Bank believe having a Jewish state is worth security risks, surrendering historical homeland and religious sites, and expelling over 100,000 Jews. That suggests a Jewish state is not merely a legitimate thing, but one that is worth a great deal. Yet the same voices calling for Israel to undertake dangerous diplomatic concessions in the name of preserving the state’s Jewish identity balk at legislation declaring that the state in fact is what they claim they want it to remain.”
According to a Israel Democracy Institute recent Poll, 75% of Israeli Jews see no contradiction between Israel being Jewish and being dermcratic.
MEMRI, the NGO that for years has translated the Arab media to document what the Arabs including the PA say among themselves as opposed to what they say in English to the West, prefaced their latest report with this:
“Preacher At Al-Aqsa Mosque In Jerusalem Tells Jews: ‘We Shall Slaughter You Without Mercy’ and ‘I Say To [You] Loud And Clear: The Time For Your Slaughter Has Come’; Says Koran Depicted Jews ‘In The Most Abominable Images,’ Allah Turned The Jews ‘Into Apes And Pigs’; Calls To ‘Hasten The Establishment Of The State Of The Islamic Caliphate’”
The poll found 86 percent of respondents believe the Al-Aqsa mosque is in “grave danger” from Israel. It said 80 percent supported individual attacks by Arabs who have stabbed Israelis or rammed cars into crowded train stations.
****************
An overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arabs support the recent spate of terrorist attacks against Israelis, an opinion poll released Tuesday finds, according to The Associated Press (AP).
The poll also found that more than half of Palestinian Arabs support a new “intifada” (uprising) against Israel, and that Hamas would win presidential elections if they were held today.
Palestinian Arab pollster Khalil Shikaki said the results reflected anger over Israeli statements about Jerusalem, as well as a loss of hope following the collapse of U.S.-brokered peace talks and Israel’s recent war with Hamas in Gaza.
Shikaki heads the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which interviewed 1,270 people in the Palestinian Authority-assigned areas of Judea and Samaria and Gaza last week. The poll had an error margin of 3 percentage points.
“There is an environment in which violence is becoming a dominant issue,” Shikaki told AP. “This seems to be one of the most important driving forces.”
There has been a spate of attacks in Jerusalem over the past month and a half, at a time of rising tensions over the Temple Mount. The wave of attacks has come to be known as the “silent intifada”.
The poll found 86 percent of respondents believe the Al-Aqsa mosque is in “grave danger” from Israel. It said 80 percent supported individual attacks by Arabs who have stabbed Israelis or rammed cars into crowded train stations.
Islamists have been regularly clashing with Israeli police on the Temple Mount and escalated a campaign of harassment against Jewish visitors, who are already under severe restrictions due to Muslim pressure. The violence reached a peak with the recent attempted murder of prominent Jewish Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick.
Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has blamed Israelfor the ongoing tensions in Jerusalem.
(His views must, if we are to credit Obama and many others, not be Islamic. Nor, of course, could they represent the views of Hamas or the “moderate” Palestinian Authority, as to which Israel is told to show restraint. — DM)
Egyptian and Saudi rulers take charge of Arab affairs
Netanyahu may or may not opt to brandish Israel’s diplomatic breakthrough to the Arab world as campaign fodder to boost his run for re-election. Whatever he decides, the rulers of Saudi Arabia, the Arab emirates and Egypt are turning out to have acquired an interest in maintaining him in office as head of the Israeli government, in direct opposition to President Obama’s ambition to unseat him.
******************
The six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) rulers meet in the Qatari capital of Doha next week amid high suspense across the Arab world. Its agenda is topped by moves to finally unravel the 2010 Arab Spring policy championed by US President Barack Obama, moves that also bear the imprint of extensive cooperation maintained on the quiet between Israel and key Arab rulers.
DEBKAfile reports that the Doha parley is designed to restore Egypt under the rule of President Abdel Fatteh El-Sisi to the lead role it occupied before the decline of Hosni Mubarak. Another is to root out the Muslim Brotherhood by inducing their champion, the young Qatari ruler, Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, to drop his government’s support.
At talks taking place in Riyadh ahead of the summit, Qatari officials appeared ready to discontinue the flow of weapons, funds and intelligence maintained since 2011 to the Brothers and their affiliates across the Arab world (Libya, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Hamas-ruled Gaza), as well shutting down the El Jazeera TV network – or at least stopping the channel’s use as the Brotherhood’s main propaganda platform.
The Doha summit is designed to crown a historic effort led by Saudi King Abdullah, UAE ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and President El-Sisi to undo the effects of the Obama administration’s support for elements dedicated to the removal of conservative Arab rulers, such as the Brotherhood.
They have found a key ally in this drive in Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who took advantage of the chance of an epic breakthrough in relations with the leading bloc of Arab nations, with immediate and far-reaching effect on Israeli security and its standing in the region.
Yet at the same time, Netanyahu has kept this feat under his hat – even while smarting under a vicious assault by his detractors – ex-finance minister Yair Lapid and opposition leader Yakov Herzog of Labor – on his personal authority and leadership credibility (“everything is stuck,” “he’s out of touch.”) and obliged to cut short the life of his government for a general election on March 17.
He faces the voter with the secret still in his pocket of having achieved close coordination with the most important Arab leaders – not just on the Iranian nuclear issue and the Syrian conflict, but also the Palestinian question, which has throughout Israel’s history bedeviled its ties with the Arab world.
When Yair Lapid, whom Netanyahu sacked this week, boasted, “I am talking to the Americans” while accusing the prime minister of messing up ties with Washington, he meant he was talking to the Americans close to Barack Obama, whom Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, hand in hand with Netanyahu, have judged adverse to their regimes.
This Arab-Israeli collaboration encompasses too many areas to keep completely hidden. Its fruits have begun breaking surface in a string of events.
This week, Israel apparently out of the blue, quietly agreed to Egypt deploying 13 army battalions in Sinai (demilitarized under their 1979 peace treaty), including tanks, and flying fighter jets over terrorist targets.
A joint Saudi-Israeli diplomatic operation was instrumental in obstructing a US-Iran deal on Tehran’s nuclear program.
Another key arena of cooperation is Jerusalem.
Friday, Dec. 5, Jordan announced the appointment of 75 new guards for the Al Aqsa Mosque compound on Temple Mount. The director of the mosque, Sheikh Omar al-Kiswani, said they will begin work in the coming days.
This was the outcome of Jordanian King Abdullah’s talks with the Egyptian president in Cairo Sunday, Nov. 30, in which they agreed that the Muslim Waqf Authority on Temple Mount must change its mode of conduct and replace with new staff the violent elements from Hamas, the Al Tahrir movement and Israeli Arab Islamists, which had taken charge of “security.”.
The Moslem attacks from the Mount on Jewish worshippers praying at the Western Wall below and Israeli police have accordingly ceased in the two weeks since Israel lifted its age restrictions on Muslim worshippers attending Friday prayers at Al Aqsa. Israel groups advocating the right to Jewish prayer on Temple Mount were discreetly advised to cool their public campaign.
The Palestinian riots plaguing Jerusalem for months have died down, except for isolated instances, since, as DEBKAfile revealed, Saudi and Gulf funds were funneled to pacify the city’s restive Palestinian neighborhoods.
Cairo and the Gulf emirates have used their influence with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to get him to moderate his invective against Israel and its prime minister, and slow his applications for Palestinian membership of international bodies as platforms for campaigning against the Jewish state.
Concerned by the way the mainstream Arab world was marginalizing the Palestinian question, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal chose his moment Friday – ahead of the White House meeting between the Jordanian monarch and President Obama – to try and re-ignite the flames of violence in Jerusalem. He went unheeded.
Netanyahu may or may not opt to brandish Israel’s diplomatic breakthrough to the Arab world as campaign fodder to boost his run for re-election. Whatever he decides, the rulers of Saudi Arabia, the Arab emirates and Egypt are turning out to have acquired an interest in maintaining him in office as head of the Israeli government, in direct opposition to President Obama’s ambition to unseat him.
Only in an alternate, Orwellian universe could only one group of people on earth—Jews—be enjoined from praying on the single site most holy to their faith, and, moreover, be told that their presence there is not only provocative but is repugnant and befouls the very ground on which those of another faith—Muslims—have staked a triumphalist religious claim and now wish gather and pray.
***************
As an example of what the insightful commentator Melanie Phillips referred to as a “dialogue of the demented” in her book The World Turned Upside Down, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is continuing a long tradition of attempting to de-Judaize Jerusalem by expressing his mendacious notion that, as he put it, “Jerusalem has a special flavor and taste not only in our hearts, but also in the hearts of all Arabs and Muslims and Christians,” and “Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Palestinian state and without it there will be no state.” The same scholar of history who wrote a doctoral dissertation that questioned the extent and truthfulness of the Holocaust was now making his own historical claim that there had never been a Jewish presence and history in the world’s holiest city.
In recent weeks, Abbas has been at it again, adding new layers of rhetoric to his tactical campaign to de-Judaize Jerusalem, in general, and to the Temple Mount, specifically. In an October PA TV broadcast, Abbas made the breathtakingly absurd claim that Jews not only had no historic claim to the Temple Mount, but they also should never even be allowed to have their presence known at that location. “The settlers have arrived . . . ,” he said. “This is our Sanctuary, our Al-Aqsa and our Church [of the Holy Sepulchre]. They have no right to enter it . . . [or] right to defile it. We must prevent them . . . .”
Only in an alternate, Orwellian universe could only one group of people on earth—Jews—be enjoined from praying on the single site most holy to their faith, and, moreover, be told that their presence there is not only provocative but is repugnant and befouls the very ground on which those of another faith—Muslims—have staked a triumphalist religious claim and now wish gather and pray.
This attempt to airbrush out a Jewish presence from Jerusalem—in fact, all of historic Palestine—is not a new message for Abbas, of course. In 2000 he expressed similar contempt for the idea that a Jewish temple had ever existed on the Temple Mount and that, even if it had existed, the offenses committed by Israel against the Palestinians negated any claim Jews might have enjoyed, absent their perfidy. “Anyone who wants to forget the past [i.e., the Israelis] cannot come and claim that the [Jewish] temple is situated beneath the Haram,” Abbas absurdly asserted in an article in Kul Al-Arab, an Israeli Arabic-language weekly newspaper. “ . . . But even if it is so, we do not accept it, because it is not logical for someone who wants a practical peace.”
Judging by the October 30th statement by U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki, forgetting the past is something in which the John Kerry’s office is also complicit. “We’re extremely concerned by escalating tensions across Jerusalem and particularly surrounding the Haram al-Sharif, Temple Mount,” Psaki said, pointedly, and dangerously, referring to the Temple Mount by its Arab name first and thereby fortifying, and seeming to lend equal weight to, the Palestinian’s spurious claim to spiritual and territorial rights to the site, and to the wider area described now as East Jerusalem.
“It is actually critical that all sides exercise restraint, refrain from provocative actions and rhetoric and preserve the status quo,” she added, suggesting that Jews not be allowed to pray on the Mount and that the status quo prohibiting Jews from praying on the site be ordered to continue so as to not incite Muslim sensibilities.
But in characterizing East Jerusalem —or any part of Jerusalem, for that matter —as territory that Israel “occupies” but over which it enjoys no sovereignty, Abbas (and U.S. State Department, too) is misreading, once again, the content and purpose of 1967′s U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 that suggested an Israeli withdrawal “from territories [not all territories]” it acquired in the Six-Day War. Critics of Israeli policy who either willfully misread or deliberately obscure the resolution’s purpose say that the Jewish State is in violation of 242 by continuing to occupy the West Bank and Jerusalem, including what is spuriously now referred to as “Arab” East Jerusalem. But the drafters of Resolution 242 were very precise in creating the statute’s language, and they never considered Jerusalem to have been occupied by Israel after the Six-Day War. Former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Arthur Goldberg, one of the resolution’s authors, made this very clear when he wrote some years later that “Resolution 242 in no way refers to Jerusalem, and this omission was deliberate[.] . . . At no time in [my] many speeches [before the U.N.] did I refer to East Jerusalem as occupied territory.”
But the true danger of the Palestinian thinking about Jerusalem—and, indeed, about all of the Palestine that they covet, including Israel itself—was revealed in Yasser Arafat’s own view that he expressed in a July 2000 edition of al-Hayat al-Jadida when he threatened that “They can occupy us by force, because we are weaker now, but in two years, ten years, or one hundred years, there will be someone who will liberate Jerusalem [from them].”
“Liberating” Jerusalem, of course, does not mean transforming it into a pluralistic, open city where members of three major faiths can live freely and practice their religions openly. Liberating Jerusalem for the Palestinians would be more in keeping with the type of liberation that Transjordan’s Arab League effected when they burned and looted the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem in 1948; expelled and killed its hapless Jewish population; destroyed some 58 synagogues, many hundreds of years old; unearthed gravestones from the history-laden Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives and used them for latrine pavers; and barred any Jew from praying at the Western Wall or entering the Temple Mount.
But false irredentist claims, Islamic supremacism which compels Jews and Christians to live in dhimmitude under Muslim control, and an evident cultural and theological disregard for other faiths— while troubling in the battle over sovereignty in Jerusalem—are not, according to Dore Gold, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, the most dangerous aspects of a diplomatic capitulation which would allow the Palestinians to claim a shared Jerusalem. In his engaging book, The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City, Gold pointed to a far more troubling aspect: in their desire to accede to Arab requests for a presence and religious sovereignty in Jerusalem, the State Department, EU, UN member states, and Islamic apologists in the Middle East and worldwide may actually ignite jihadist impulses they seek to dampen with their well-intentioned, but defective, diplomacy.
Why? Because, as Gold explained, “In the world of apocalyptic speculation, Jerusalem has many other associations—it is the place where the messianic Mahdi [the redeemer of Islam] is to establish his capital. For that reason, some argue that it also should become the seat of the new caliphate that most Islamic groups—from the Muslim Brotherhood to al-Qaeda—seek to establish.”
When Yasser Arafat in July 2000 gave expression to the eventual “liberation” of Jerusalem as a sacred and unending ambition for the Palestinian cause, he defined it as a recapture of what had been, and should be, in his view, Muslim land, just as the eventual extirpation of Israel and the reclamation of all of historic Palestine would accomplish. The establishment of the Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem is the first important step in the long-term strategy to rid the Levant of Jews and reestablish the House of Islam in Palestine. “Jerusalem’s recapture is seen by some as one of the signs that ‘the Hour’ and the end of times are about to occur,” Gold suggested. “And most importantly, because of these associations, it is the launching pad for a new global jihad powered by the conviction that this time the war will unfold according to a pre-planned religious script, and hence must succeed.”
So far from creating a political situation in which both parties—Israelis and the Palestinians—feel they have sought and received equal benefits, such negotiations and final agreements would have precisely the opposite effect: destabilizing the region and creating, not the oft-hoped for Israel and Palestine “living side by side in peace,” but an incendiary cauldron about to explode into an annihilatory, jihadist rage. Those in the West who are urging Israel “to redivide Jerusalem by relinquishing its holy sites,” Dore cautioned, “may well believe that they are lowering the flames of radical Islamic rage, but in fact they will only be turning up those flames to heights that have not been seen before.” If the State Department and other Western diplomats are intent on mollifying the Arab street by pressuring Israel to divide Jerusalem as a peace offering to the Palestinians, it may well be setting into motion the exact opposite result—a jihadist, apocalyptic movement invigorated by the misguided diplomacy of the West that, once more, asks Israel to sacrifice its security and nationhood so that Islamists can realize their own imperial and theological ambitions at the Jewish state’s expense.
All indications are that US mediation efforts to revive peace talks have failed,” says Abbas.
Talestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas ( abu mazen ).. (photo credit:REUTERS) o
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday threatened to halt security coordination with Israel unless the peace talks are revived.
“We are no longer able to live with the status quo,” Abbas said in a speech before an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo.
He also reiterated the Palestinians’ refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
“We recognize the State of Israel, but we won’t recognize a Jewish state at all,” Abbas stressed.
The meeting was held to discuss the latest developments surrounding the Palestinian issue in light of Abbas’s plan to seek a UN Security Council resolution that sets a timeline for Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.
Abbas is hoping to win the Arab ministers’ support for his plan in wake of US pressure to refrain from presenting it to the Security Council.
Abbas has said in the past that he intends to present the plan to the Security Council by the end of this month.
“The situation in the West Bank is dangerous and can’t continue as it is,” Abbas said in his speech. “The most dangerous thing facing the Palestinian cause at this time is the continuation of the status quo.”
He said that Israel knows very well that there would be no Palestinian state without the Gaza Strip. Israel, he charged, is continuing with its policy of creating facts on the ground by building settlements on Palestinian territories.
“Israel does not know where its borders are and is refusing to define them,” Abbas said. “We will present an Arab plan to the Security Council calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state. All indications are that US mediation efforts to revive the peace talks have failed.”
He said that the PA had asked US Secretary of State John Kerry to work together to draft the resolution that would be presented to the Security Council. The PA also asked Kerry to put pressure on Israel to stop settlement construction, Abbas added.
Amb. Prosor addresses UNGA debate on the Question of Palestine”
Mr. President,I stand before the world as a proud representative of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. I stand tall before you knowing that truth and morality are on my side. And yet, I stand here knowing that today in this Assembly, truth will be turned on its head and morality cast aside.The fact of the matter is that when members of the international community speak about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a fog descends to cloud all logic and moral clarity. The result isn’t realpolitik, its surrealpolitik.
The world’s unrelenting focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an injustice to tens of millions of victims of tyranny and terrorism in the Middle East. As we speak, Yazidis, Bahai, Kurds, Christians and Muslims are being executed and expelled by radical extremists at a rate of 1,000 people per month.
How many resolutions did you pass last week to address this crisis? And how many special sessions did you call for? The answer is zero. What does this say about international concern for human life? Not much, but it speaks volumes about the hypocrisy of the international community.
I stand before you to speak the truth. Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, less than half a percent are truly free – and they are all citizens of Israel.
Israeli Arabs are some of the most educated Arabs in the world. They are our leading physicians and surgeons, they are elected to our parliament, and they serve as judges on our Supreme Court. Millions of men and women in the Middle East would welcome these opportunities and freedoms.
Nonetheless, nation after nation, will stand at this podium today and criticize Israel – the small island of democracy in a region plagued by tyranny and oppression.
Mr. President,
Our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It has always been about the existence of the Jewish state.
Sixty seven years ago this week, on November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Simple. The Jews said yes. The Arabs said no. But they didn’t just say no. Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon launched a war of annihilation against our newborn state.
This is the historical truth that the Arabs are trying to distort. The Arabs’ historic mistake continues to be felt – in lives lost in war, lives lost to terrorism, and lives scarred by the Arab’s narrow political interests.
According to the United Nations, about 700,000 Palestinians were displaced in the war initiated by the Arabs themselves. At the same time, some 850,000 Jews were forced to flee from Arab countries.
Why is it, that 67 years later, the displacement of the Jews has been completely forgotten by this institution while the displacement of the Palestinians is the subject of an annual debate?
The difference is that Israel did its utmost to integrate the Jewish refugees into society. The Arabs did just the opposite.
The worst oppression of the Palestinian people takes place in Arab nations. In most of the Arab world, Palestinians are denied citizenship and are aggressively discriminated against. They are barred from owning land and prevented from entering certain professions.
And yet none – not one – of these crimes are mentioned in the resolutions before you.
If you were truly concerned about the plight of the Palestinian people there would be one, just one, resolution to address the thousands of Palestinians killed in Syria. And if you were so truly concerned about the Palestinians there would be at least one resolution to denounce the treatment of Palestinians in Lebanese refugee camps.
But there isn’t. The reason is that today’s debate is not about speaking for peace or speaking for the Palestinian people – it is about speaking against Israel. It is nothing but a hate and bashing festival against Israel.
Mr. President,
The European nations claim to stand for Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité – freedom, equality, and brotherhood – but nothing could be farther from the truth.
I often hear European leaders proclaim that Israel has the right to exist in secure borders. That’s very nice. But I have to say – it makes about as much sense as me standing here and proclaiming Sweden’s right to exist in secure borders.
When it comes to matters of security, Israel learned the hard way that we cannot rely on others – certainly not Europe.
In 1973, on Yom Kippur – the holiest day on the Jewish calendar – the surrounding Arab nations launched an attack against Israel. In the hours before the war began, Golda Meir, our Prime Minister then, made the difficult decision not to launch a preemptive strike. The Israeli Government understood that if we launched a preemptive strike, we would lose the support of the international community.
As the Arab armies advanced on every front, the situation in Israel grew dire. Our casualty count was growing and we were running dangerously low on weapons and ammunition. In this, our hour of need, President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, agreed to send Galaxy planes loaded with tanks and ammunition to resupply our troops. The only problem was that the Galaxy planes needed to refuel on route to Israel.
The Arab States were closing in and our very existence was threatened – and yet, Europe was not even willing to let the planes refuel. The U.S. stepped in once again and negotiated that the planes be allowed to refuel in the Azores.
The government and people of Israel will never forget that when our very existence was at stake, only one country came to our aid – the United States of America.
Israel is tired of hollow promises from European leaders. The Jewish people have a long memory. We will never ever forget that you failed us in the 1940s. You failed us in 1973. And you are failing us again today.
Every European parliament that voted to prematurely and unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state is giving the Palestinians exactly what they want – statehood without peace. By handing them a state on a silver platter, you are rewarding unilateral actions and taking away any incentive for the Palestinians to negotiate or compromise or renounce violence. You are sending the message that the Palestinian Authority can sit in a government with terrorists and incite violence against Israel without paying any price.
The first E.U. member to officially recognize a Palestinian state was Sweden. One has to wonder why the Swedish Government was so anxious to take this step. When it comes to other conflicts in our region, the Swedish Government calls for direct negotiations between the parties – but for the Palestinians, surprise, surprise, they roll out the red carpet.
State Secretary Söder may think she is here to celebrate her government’s so-called historic recognition, when in reality it’s nothing more than an historic mistake.
The Swedish Government may host the Nobel Prize ceremony, but there is nothing noble about their cynical political campaign to appease the Arabs in order to get a seat on the Security Council. Nations on the Security Council should have sense, sensitivity, and sensibility. Well, the Swedish Government has shown no sense, no sensitivity and no sensibility. Just nonsense.
Israel learned the hard way that listening to the international community can bring about devastating consequences. In 2005, we unilaterally dismantled every settlement and removed every citizen from the Gaza Strip. Did this bring us any closer to peace? Not at all. It paved the way for Iran to send its terrorist proxies to establish a terror stronghold on our doorstep.
I can assure you that we won’t make the same mistake again. When it comes to our security, we cannot and will not rely on others – Israel must be able to defend itself by itself.
Mr. President,
The State of Israel is the land of our forefathers – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is the land where Moses led the Jewish people, where David built his palace, where Solomon built the Jewish Temple, and where Isaiah saw a vision of eternal peace.
For thousands of years, Jews have lived continuously in the land of Israel. We endured through the rise and fall of the Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek and Roman Empires. And we endured through thousands of years of persecution, expulsions and crusades. The bond between the Jewish people and the Jewish land is unbreakable.
Nothing can change one simple truth – Israel is our home and Jerusalem is our eternal capital.
At the same time, we recognize that Jerusalem has special meaning for other faiths. Under Israeli sovereignty, all people – and I will repeat that, all people – regardless of religion and nationality can visit the city’s holy sites. And we intend to keep it this way. The only ones trying to change the status quo on the Temple Mount are Palestinian leaders.
President Abbas is telling his people that Jews are contaminating the Temple Mount. He has called for days of rage and urged Palestinians to prevent Jews from visiting the Temple Mount using (quote) “all means” necessary. These words are as irresponsible as they are unacceptable.
You don’t have to be Catholic to visit the Vatican, you don’t have to be Jewish to visit the Western Wall, but some Palestinians would like to see the day when only Muslims can visit the Temple Mount.
You, the international community, are lending a hand to extremists and fanatics. You, who preach tolerance and religious freedom, should be ashamed. Israel will never let this happen. We will make sure that the holy places remain open to all people of all faiths for all time.
Mr. President,
No one wants peace more than Israel. No one needs to explain the importance of peace to parents who have sent their child to defend our homeland. No one knows the stakes of success or failure better than we Israelis do. The people of Israel have shed too many tears and buried too many sons and daughters.
We are ready for peace, but we are not naïve. Israel’s security is paramount. Only a strong and secure Israel can achieve a comprehensive peace.
The past month should make it clear to anyone that Israel has immediate and pressing security needs. In recent weeks, Palestinian terrorists have shot and stabbed our citizens and twice driven their cars into crowds of pedestrians. Just a few days ago, terrorists armed with axes and a gun savagely attacked Jewish worshipers during morning prayers. We have reached the point when Israelis can’t even find sanctuary from terrorism in the sanctuary of a synagogue.
These attacks didn’t emerge out of a vacuum. They are the results of years of indoctrination and incitement. A Jewish proverb teaches: “The instruments of both death and life are in the power of the tongue.”
As a Jew and as an Israeli, I know with utter certainly that when our enemies say they want to attack us, they mean it.
Hamas’s genocidal charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews worldwide. For years, Hamas and other terrorist groups have sent suicide bombers into our cities, launched rockets into our towns, and sent terrorists to kidnap and murder our citizens.
And what about the Palestinian Authority? It is leading a systemic campaign of incitement. In schools, children are being taught that ‘Palestine’ will stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. In mosques, religious leaders are spreading vicious libels accusing Jews of destroying Muslim holy sites. In sports stadiums, teams are named after terrorists. And in newspapers, cartoons urge Palestinians to commit terror attacks against Israelis.
Children in most of the world grow up watching cartoons of Mickey Mouse singing and dancing. Palestinian children also grow up watching Mickey Mouse, but on Palestinians national television, a twisted figure dressed as Mickey Mouse dances in an explosive belt and chants “Death to America and death to the Jews.”
I challenge you to stand up here today and do something constructive for a change. Publically denounce the violence, denounce the incitement, and denounce the culture of hate.
Most people believe that at its core, the conflict is a battle between Jews and Arabs or Israelis and Palestinians. They are wrong. The battle that we are witnessing is a battle between those who sanctify life and those who celebrate death.
Following the savage attack in a Jerusalem synagogue, celebrations erupted in Palestinian towns and villages. People were dancing in the street and distributing candy. Young men posed with axes, loudspeakers at mosques called out congratulations, and the terrorists were hailed as “martyrs” and “heroes.”
This isn’t the first time that we saw the Palestinians celebrate the murder of innocent civilians. We saw them rejoice after every terrorist attack on Israeli civilians and they even took to the streets to celebrate the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center right here in New York City.
Imagine the type of state this society would produce. Does the Middle East really need another terror-ocracy? Some members of the international community are aiding and abetting its creation.
Mr. President,
As we came into the United Nations, we passed the flags of all 193 member States. If you take the time to count, you will discover that there are 15 flags with a crescent and 25 flags with a cross. And then there is one flag with a Jewish Star of David. Amidst all the nations of the world there is one state – just one small nation state for the Jewish people.
And for some people, that is one too many.
As I stand before you today I am reminded of all the years when Jewish people paid for the world’s ignorance and indifference in blood. Those days are no more.
We will never apologize for being a free and independent people in our sovereign state. And we will never apologize for defending ourselves.
To the nations that continue to allow prejudice to prevail over truth, I say “J’accuse.”
I accuse you of hypocrisy. I accuse you of duplicity.
I accuse you of lending legitimacy to those who seek to destroy our State.
I accuse you of speaking about Israel’s right of self-defense in theory, but denying it in practice.
And I accuse you of demanding concessions from Israel, but asking nothing of the Palestinians.
In the face of these offenses, the verdict is clear. You are not for peace and you are not for the Palestinian people. You are simply against Israel.
Members of the international community have a choice to make.
You can recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, or permit the Palestinian leadership to deny our history without consequence.
You can publically proclaim that the so-called “claim of return” is a non-starter, or you can allow this claim to remain the major obstacle to any peace agreement.
You can work to end Palestinian incitement, or stand by as hatred and extremism take root for generations to come.
You can prematurely recognize a Palestinian state, or you can encourage the Palestinian Authority to break its pact with Hamas and return to direct negotiations.
The choice is yours. You can continue to steer the Palestinians off course or pave the way to real and lasting peace.
anneinpt
artaxes
danmillerinpanama
davidking1530
Peter Hofman
Joseph Wouk
Peter
Louisiana Steve
WarSclerotic 
Recent Comments