Resolving the Arab - Jewish conflict

The San Remo Conference 1920

2011-04-26T15:08:00.000-07:00

The San Remo Conference has been rightly described as the "Magna Carta of the Jewish People" grounding its right in international law to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Palestine.

The following news item from CBN News on 9 July 2010 explains the importance of this Conference and its relevance 91 years later in 2011

You can view the CBN news item here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijS8mFP4I1A&feature=youtube_gdata_player

The importance of the San Remo Conference is discussed by Howard Grief at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWWvKsrb8u8&feature=related

A summary of the San Remo Conference and its importance in resolving the current conflict can be seen at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNgt7Nxb1ms&feature=related

Return of the Jordanian Option

2011-04-24T15:08:00.000-07:00

Asaf Romirowsky's article "Revisiting the Jordanian Option" elicited the following response "Return of the Jordanian Option" on 23 April 2011.

The international community needs to get serious on the issue of sovereignty in the West Bank,East Jerusalem and Gaza.

If the Palestinian Authority is not prepared to get its act together with Hamas and accept sovereignty in the 95% offered to be ceded by Israel (with a land swap of Israeli sovereign territory for that remaining 5%) - then Jordan should be invited to negotiate with Israel on restoring as far as is now possible the status quo that existed at 5 June 1967 within the framework of their 1994 Peace Treaty.

It seems the sensible way to go in an attempt to avoid escalating conflict.

The only thing preventing it happening is the acute embarrassment and loss of face that would be suffered by the United Nations and its member states after pursuing the two-state solution for the last 17 years. Surely by now it must be obvious to them all that such a solution will never be capable of coming to fruition.

If I had to choose between saving Jewish and Arab lives OR eating humble pie - I know which one I would choose.

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Return of the Jordanian Option

Because the Palestinian Arabs have perpetually refused to end hostilities with the Jews through accepting a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one, some Israeli Knesset officials are revisiting the Jordanian option.

Amid the unrest now sweeping the Middle East, Israeli government and security officials are quietly discussing an unusual strategy that would pass the Palestinians’ political future off to Jordan. With the odds of a negotiated two-state solution at an all-time low, former Defense Minister Moshe Arens, Knesset Member Arieh Eldad, and Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin resurrected the “Jordan is Palestine” model for regional peace.

Israeli officials fear that a Palestinian Intifada could break out on both sides of the Jordan River, and they seek to make it as much a Jordanian problem as an Israeli one.

Although anti-Zionist radicals of the sort that frequent Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, and the UK Guardian look upon the Jordanian option with extreme distaste because it means the resolution of the conflict, that is not Israel's problem.

Nor is it mine, of course.

The fact is that Jordan comprises about 77 percent of British mandated Palestine and the Palestinians represent something like 75 percent of the population of that country. This means that Jordan is, essentially, "Palestine."

As a long-time supporter of the two-state solution it is more than a little disappointing that oppressed and occupied Palestinians absolutely refuse to end their oppression and occupation by accepting a state for themselves in peace next to Israel.

It's just very unusual. In the long history of human oppression, I have never heard of any oppressed people who refuse to give up their oppression until their conditions are met.

It's remarkable, in fact.

From early in the twentieth century until today the Palestinians, and before them the Arabs of the British mandate, have never accepted the partition plan and have never accepted a Jewish state on any part of formerly Muslim controlled land. For reasons having to do with extreme, Koranically-sanctioned, hatred toward Jews, as well as the requirements of the Sharia, the Arabs have consistently refused acceptance of Israel as the Jewish state.

As anyone who reads this blog knows my stance is to respect the Palestinians by respecting their decision. Their decision is "no." For almost a hundred years their position has consistently been "no."

No negotiations. No recognition. No peace.

These are the three famous "nos" of Khartoum, issued by the Arab League immediately following the "humiliating" Arab defeat in the 6 Day War, and there is very little, if anything, to indicate that they are not still in effect.

That being the case we need to accept the fact that "no means no." And since "no means no," since the Palestinians have consistently refused to end the conflict via a negotiated settlement, Israel needs to resolve the conflict in a manner that does not depend on a negotiated settlement. One way to do that, the way that I have generally supported, is for Israel to declare its final borders on the western side of the Jordan river and then move the IDF behind those borders.

That represents one potential resolution, but the Jordanian option represents another possibility. Given that its population is three-quarters Palestinian, it makes sense to declare Jordan the Palestinian state, with an annexation of much of the western bank of the river.

At the moment only a relatively small proportion of Israelis see the Jordanian option as viable, but given the circumstances of perpetual Palestinian intransigence and refusal to accept a state for themselves, it's an option that Israel should explore. What's needed is for Israel to come up with the incentives necessary to bring the Jordanian government into agreement.

This will certainly not be easy, but what's there to lose?

Besides, as PLO executive Zuheir Mohsen acknowledged:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

Heck, they'd barely even need to modify their flags.

Revisiting the Jordan Option

2011-04-23T22:54:00.000-07:00

The following article appeared on Y Net on 23 April 2011.

Jordan's involvement in resolving the issue of sovereignty in the West Bank and East Jerusalem continues to be more likely as the two-state solution continues to go nowhere.

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Revisiting the Jordan option

Op-ed: With hopes fading for two-state solution, ‘Jordan is Palestine’ option may be best alternative

Asaf Romirowsky
Published: 04.23.11, 14:21 / Israel Opinion

Amid the unrest now sweeping the Middle East, Israeli government and security officials are quietly discussing an unusual strategy that would pass the Palestinians’ political future off to Jordan. With the odds of a negotiated two-state solution at an all-time low, former Defense Minister Moshe Arens, Knesset Member Arieh Eldad, and Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin resurrected the “Jordan is Palestine” model for regional peace.

Israeli officials fear that a Palestinian Intifada could break out on both sides of the Jordan River, and they seek to make it as much a Jordanian problem as an Israeli one.

In February, Human Rights Watch, the world’s self-proclaimed defender of minority rights, produced a 60-page report entitled, “Stateless Again: Palestinian-Origin Jordanians Deprived of their Nationality.” The paper details how Jordan deprives its Palestinian citizens of West Bank origins their basic rights, such education and healthcare. The report received scant attention back then. But the problem of Jordanian Palestinians, amidst growing unrest in the Hashemite Kingdom, has put the issue back on the front burner.

Israeli analysts worry that if the Jordanian government is to become more representative, it is possible that the country’s 72% Palestinian population could effectively take control. Jordan, in effect, could become “Palestine.”

The notion of a Palestinian controlled polity in Jordan is not new. From the war of Israeli independence in 1948 through the Six-Day War in 1967, Israeli politicians on the Left and Right advanced a policy of “Jordan is Palestine.” While defending Israel from Arab aggression, they proposed that Jordan become the Palestinian homeland. Israeli officials proposed various scenarios for a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation that fused the East Bank and West Bank of the Jordan River under one administration.

However, it is not as simple as that. Dan Schueftan, author of A Jordanian Option, correctly noted in 1986 that such an arrangement would be dependent on Israeli-Jordanian relations and how the two parties view potential threats from the Palestinian populations in their midst.

Inseparable security needs

To be sure, in the years after the Six-Day War, the Jordanian monarchy was wary of the Palestinians. Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat challenged the sovereignty of the country in 1970. After that, the kingdom had blocked the flow of Palestinians from the West Bank into the East Bank in order to preserve the kingdom’s Hashemite political structure. To a certain extent, the Jordanians renounced all claims to the West Bank in 1988, backed the creation of the Palestinian Authority in the early 1990s, and then made peace with Israel in 1994 in an attempt to prevent further flooding of Palestinians into their country.

To a certain extent Jerusalem has long looked to the Hashemite monarchy to maintain stability and security on both sides of the river. Both Amman and Jerusalem, in fact, recognize that their security needs are inseparable. Jordan has benefited from the periods of relative quiet and prosperity in Israel. Accordingly, Jordanian security forces have been increasingly involved in the West Bank, where they conduct joint training sessions with Palestinian forces. It has been a win-win-win situation for Jordan, Israel and the Palestinians.

The problem now is that Jordan’s traditional power centers are unhappy with the rise of Palestinian influence in the country. Tribal leaders resent Jordan’s Queen Rania, born in Kuwait to a family with roots in the West Bank, for her vocal advocacy of the Palestinian cause. In fact, 36 tribal leaders recently published their objections to Rania’s position, fearing that it will accelerate a slow Palestinian takeover of the kingdom.

With hopes fading for a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, this seemingly far-flung notion may become the last, best option. The problem is that it could embolden Palestinian radical groups, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood, which derive much of their power from disillusioned Palestinians in the West and East Banks. With the rise of such groups in Jordan, the peace agreement between Amman and Jerusalem would be in peril.

Nevertheless, as uncomfortable as it might be for Palestinians, Israelis and Jordanians to admit, the Jordanian option might be the best one they have.

Asaf Romirowsky is an adjunct scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former liaison officer from the Israeli Defense Forces to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Obama Won't Become Israel's Embalmer

2011-04-17T03:21:00.000-07:00

[Published April 2010]

Speculation is rife that a far-reaching shift is taking place in how the United States views the Jewish-Arab conflict - and how aggressively America might push for a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Whilst nothing concrete has yet emerged to confirm such speculation - there is plenty of evidence available to suggest that President Obama will not be attempting to publicly impose any settlement on Israel that would not have first been approved of by Israel before its release.

America’s special relationship with and commitment to the future of the Jewish people extends over 90 years and was first made by United States President Woodrow Wilson on 3 March 1919 when he declared:

“I am persuaded that the Allied Nations, with the fullest consent of our own Government and people, are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundation of a Jewish Commonwealth”

The reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in Palestine subsequently became accepted at the San Remo Conference on 25 April 1920, was confirmed by Article 95 of the Treaty of Sevres on 10 August 1920 and adopted by the unanimous approval of the League of Nations in the Mandate for Palestine on 24 July 1922.

America was not a member of the League of Nations but on 30 June 1922 a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the United States unanimously endorsed the Mandate.

On September 21, 1922 President Harding signed the joint declaration of approval to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Two days later a Memorandum was presented to the League of Nations by the British Government denying the Jews the right to establish their national home in 77% of Mandatory Palestine - today called Jordan.

This left the remaining 23% of Palestine west of the Jordan River - today called Israel, the West Bank and Gaza - as the only remaining location available for fulfilling the Mandate’s Jewish National Home objective

The Mandate was clear in stating that:

1.The Jewish National Home was to be established in Palestine whilst safeguarding the civil and religious - (but not any political) - rights of “the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” irrespective of race and religion.

2.Jewish immigration and close settlement on the land, including state lands and waste lands not required for public purposes was to be encouraged.

The demise of the League of Nations in 1945 did not mean an end to these rights vested in the Jewish people. They were preserved by the introduction of Article 80 - known as “the Palestine Clause” - in the United Nations Charter. America took a leading role in the drafting and inclusion of Article 80.

At midnight on May 14, 1948, the Provisional Government of Israel proclaimed a new State of Israel. 11 minutes later the United States, in the person of President Truman, recognized the provisional Jewish government as de facto authority of the Jewish state (de jure recognition was extended on January 31, 1949).

On 15 May 1948 six Arab armies invaded Palestine.

At the conclusion of hostilities Egypt had occupied Gaza and Jordan had occupied the West Bank. Both continued to do so until Israel assumed control of both areas on 10 June 1967 following the conclusion of the Six Day War.

America led the drafting of Security Council Resolution 242 - passed on 22 November 1967 - which did not require Israel to return to the armistice lines existing since 1949 - but only to secure and recognized boundaries.

The conditional acceptance by Israel of President Bush’s Roadmap issued on 30 April 2003 led to Israel proposing a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza - but only after it had received the following written assurances from President Bush on 14 April 2004:

•The United States would do its utmost to prevent any attempt by anyone to impose any other plan.

•The United States reiterated its steadfast commitment to Israel’s security, including secure, defensible borders, and to preserve and strengthen Israel’s capability to deter and defend itself, by itself, against any threat or possible combination of threats.

•The United States understood that after Israel withdrew from Gaza and/or parts of the West Bank, and pending agreements on other arrangements, existing arrangements regarding control of airspace, territorial waters, and land passages of the West Bank and Gaza would continue.

•The United States was strongly committed to Israel’s security and well-being as a Jewish state.

•It seemed clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement would need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.

•As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it was unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations would be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution had reached the same conclusion. It was realistic to expect that any final status agreement would only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.

The importance of these American commitments to Israel was stressed in a speech given in the Knesset by Prime Minister Sharon on 22 April 2004 when he stated:

“The political support we received during my visit to the United States is an unprecedented accomplishment for Israel. Since the establishment of the State, we have not received such vast and staunch political support, as was expressed in the President’s letter.”

President Bush’s letter of commitment to Israel was subsequently approved by the US Senate and House of Representatives on 23 June and 24 June 2004.

On 11 April 2005 President Bush again confirmed these American commitments to Prime Minister Sharon in Crawford - Texas.

At the Annapolis Conference convened on 27 November 2007, Israel made its future negotiating stance clear when Israel’s then Prime Minister - Ehud Olmert - said in the presence of President Bush:

” The negotiations will be based on previous agreements between us, UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the Roadmap and the April 14th 2004 letter of President Bush to the Prime Minister of Israel.”

For President Obama to unilaterally seek to impose a settlement contrary to these American commitments extending over 90 years would be a complete abnegation of America’s credibility in the international arena. America would be exposed as a nation whose commitments are not worth the paper they are written on. America’s proud record of standing by and honoring the commitments it makes would be shattered forever.

Israel’s enemies are unceasing in their determination to end the Jewish State’s existence. President Obama is not going to oblige them and become Israel’s embalmer by breaching any of America’s solemn commitments made to the Jewish people.

Palestine and Paranoia - Jordan, Jerusalem and Jitters

2011-04-17T03:08:00.000-07:00

[Published April 2010]

King Abdullah’s recent interview in the Wall Street Journal indicates the extent of His Majesty’s concern at the continuing failure to achieve the slightest breakthrough in creating a new Arab state between Jordan, Israel and Egypt following 17 years of failed international diplomacy to bring such a new state into existence.

The King is clearly worried that other solutions will need to be looked at if:

•the lives of the West Bank Arab population are to be transformed,

•there is to be any resolution on the future status of Jerusalem and

•the refugee status of those former Arab residents of Palestine now living in Syria and Lebanon is ended.

King Abdullah understands that any such solutions must involve Jordan and that Jordan cannot sit on the sidelines any longer. He is not at all happy with facing the challenges that will throw the spotlight on Jordan and the role it will have to play if the current status quo is to be changed

Jordan has allowed Israel to shoulder the sole responsibility for changing the status quo of the West Bank since ceding any claims to the West Bank in 1988 - and has happily sat back and let Israel bear the international odium for failing to do so - although :

1.Jordan comprises 77% of the former territory of Palestine and together with Israel constitute the two successor States to the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine

2.Jordan unified and incorporated the West Bank into the state boundaries of Jordan between 1948-1967 with the acquiescence and consent of the West Bank Arab population and granted Jordanian citizenship to its residents

3.Jordan refused to negotiate with Israel to return to the status quo existing at 6 June 1967 after the conclusion of the Six Day War when not one Jew lived in the West Bank.

4.The overwhelming majority of Jordan’s residents were born in - or are descendants of - Arabs originating from that part of former Palestine west of the Jordan River that is today called Israel and the West Bank.

King Abdullah’s concerns are particularly frank and very revealing as indicated by his following comments during the above interview:

“the status quo is not acceptable; what will happen is that we will continue to go around in circles until the conflict erupts, and there will be suffering by peoples because there will be a war.”

Jordan surely now has a responsibility to prevent any such war or suffering occurring and must embark on a diplomatic path to avoid these outcomes .

The way to achieve this is for Jordan to negotiate and divide the future sovereignty of the West Bank with Israel thereby freeing the majority of the existing Arab population from continuing Israeli control whilst making them citizens of Jordan once again .

“Jerusalem specifically engages Jordan because we are the custodians of the Muslim and Christian holy places and this is a flash point that goes beyond Jordanian-Israeli relations.”

As such custodians Jordan has an obligation to negotiate with Israel on Jordan’s role in the future of those holy places - and can do so under the framework of the signed existing 1993 peace treaty concluded between Israel and Jordan which acknowledges Jordan’s role in this regard.

King Abdullah however seeks to instill a climate of fear into the West Bank’s existing Arab population and to totally mislead and misrepresent what Jordan’s return to the West Bank will entail for the refugees in Syria and Lebanon when he states:

“In America specifically, you hear, well, why doesn’t Jordan take the Palestinians into our country? … That would create tremendous instability. So if the Israelis want to push the Palestinians into Jordan, I don’t see how that makes sense and how the international community will accept that because that would be an exodus of 1.8 million Palestinians from their homes into Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.”

Negotiations between Jordan and Israel on the future status of the West Bank need not involve one Arab having to pack up and leave his current residence or business in the West Bank, He will stay where he currently is with Jordanian citizenship in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Where the West Bank Arab population falls within the expanded borders of Greater Israel - those Arabs affected can be offered Israeli citizenship or compensation to move to the other side of the new international boundary between Israel and Jordan if that is their wish. A similar option will be afforded to those West Bank Jews finding themselves within the boundaries of Greater Jordan.

Those refugees living in Syria and Lebanon can be offered the alternatives of absorption and citizenship in Syria or Lebanon or offered financial compensation to move and settle within the expanded borders of Greater Jordan and being granted Jordanian citizenship. Their miserable existence as stateless refugees will be ended after 62 years of interminable hardship and suffering.

These arrangements may not end the Arab-Jewish conflict but will certainly bring about a major change in the existing status quo and hopefully avert the consequences of war and suffering predicted by King Abdullah.

The King can continue to sit on the sidelines and criticize and deprecate. He will be committing a gross error of judgment if he does so.

It could ultimately see an attempt to overthrow his ruling Hashemite regime in Jordan - as was attempted in 1970 by the PLO but ultimately failed. The King is already jittery at the thought of such a possibility.

International financial aid and international military assistance should be offered as inducements to Jordan to assist its re-entry into the West Bank once again - coupled with a mutual defense pact between Israel and Jordan to prevent any attempted takeover of Jordan by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic Brotherhood or Islamic Jihad.

Jordan must be ruing the day in 1967 when it decided to join in the Six Day War in defiance of Israel’s request not to do so - and lost the then Jew-free West Bank and East Jerusalem as a result.

Now is the time for Jordan to make amends for that decision. The sooner it does so - the sooner the world might be able to focus and concentrate its efforts on resolving far more serious issues involving human and political rights in places such as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Haiti, Thailand, Sri Lanka and North Korea.

Palestine - The Lord High Executioner Comes To Jerusalem

2011-04-17T02:46:00.000-07:00

[Published March 2010]

In the best traditions of Ko Ko - the Lord High Executioner in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon set Jerusalem alight as his entourage trumpeted the words -

“Behold the Secretary-General
A personage of noble rank and title-
A dignified and potent officer,
Whose functions are particularly vital!
Defer, defer,
To the Lord High Executioner!”

The Secretary General had flown in from Moscow - where the Quartet comprising the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations had called on Israel and the Palestinian Authority to resume negotiations - declaring:

“These negotiations should lead to a settlement, negotiated between the parties within 24 months, that ends the occupation which began in 1967 and results in the emergence of an independent, democratic and viable Palestinian State living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its neighbours,”

It is hard to believe the Secretary -General - and indeed the Quartet - could spout such nonsense bearing in mind that the strict time frames laid down to achieve precisely this outcome in the 1993 Oslo Agreement , the 2003 Road Map and at Annapolis in 2007 had all come and gone with the same goal - the inappropriately named “two -state solution“ - never having got off the ground.

The Secretary General continues to demean whatever authority and credibility the United Nations might think it has - and the Quartet also does likewise - by seeking to pursue a solution that has no possible chance of coming to fruition.

A dignified officer the Secretary-General Mr Ban may be - but a decidedly impotent one for sure.

Our modern version of the Lord High Executioner had an additional message to convey as he made the short trip from Jerusalem to Ramallah to meet Mahmoud Abbas - the modern counterpart of Pooh Bah in the Mikado .

Abbas - like Pooh Bah - claims to be self-important or high-ranking yet possesses limited authority while taking impressive titles.

Abbas clings to the title of the President of the Palestinian Authority although his use by date expired 15 months ago. His Parliament and Prime Minister are self appointed whilst the elected Parliament and elected Prime Minister languishes powerless in Gaza.

Abbas has been politically neutered by Hamas and cannot guarantee the Palestinian Authority to honour any agreement with Israel.

Abbas still calls himself the Chairman of the PLO and wears two hats - one that calls for Israel’s destruction and the other that supposedly is anxious to negotiate with Israel and recognize Israel as the Jewish State.

Yet this is the man whom the Secretary-General comes to visit - taking the opportunity to repeat the following canard that has been part of the United Nations flawed thinking for the last 43 years:

“Let us be clear. All settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory and must be stopped.”

Let me be absolutely clear - and let the Secretary-General use the vast resources at his power to prove me wrong. There are no binding authorities in international law that support the Secretary-General’s statement.

There are legal opinions that support the Secretary-General’s view that are based on the provisions of the 1949 Geneva Convention.

The most notable of these is the “top secret” legal opinion given in September 1967 by Theodor Meron - then legal counsel to the Israeli Foreign Ministry - only retrieved by a historian Gershom Gorenberg when researching material to include in his book - The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 - which was published in 2007.

As Gorenberg tells the story:

” As for that legal opinion: It was written by Foreign Ministry legal counsel Theodor Meron, a Holocaust survivor with a doctorate in international law from Harvard. Meron was the government’s top expert in the field. A decade later, he accepted an academic appointment in the United States and became a world-renowned authority on international law. Today he is a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

His status gives particular weight to the words he wrote 41 years ago: “My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

Meron’s opinion - and others that support him - certainly must be considered but they are not the be all and end all of legal opinions on the right of the Jews to build settlements in the West Bank.

There are other legal opinions - by people of similar status to Meron - that take the contrary view who determine that the settlements are legal based on the provisions of the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and Article 80 of the 1945 United Nations Charter - two crucial pieces of international law that were not even considered by Meron or as far as I am aware by any of those supporting Meron‘s opinion.

These opinions include:

•The International Court of Justice in an advisory legal opinion on the effect of article 80 on 21 June 1971.

•Professor Paul Riebenfeld - an international lawyer who spent his life researching the Mandate Archives in Geneva and was present at the debates that took place at the San Francisco Conference in 1945 that led to the inclusion of Article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

•Judge El Araby - a member of the International Court of Justice.

•Eugene Rostow former Dean of Yale Law School and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in the Johnson Administration and Director of Disarmament and and Arms Control in the Reagan Administration.

The Secretary General would do well to heed the following words sung by Ko Ko:

“Wafted by a favouring gale
As one sometimes is in trances,
To a height that few can scale,
Save by long and weary dances”

Few can indeed ascend to the dizzying heights to which the Secretary-General of the United Nations can lay claim.

However that position carries with it the responsibility to be very careful about what he says. Being scrupulously honest and unbiased - especially when it comes to the provisions of the United Nations Charter that he is sworn to uphold - is essential.

Wafted by a gale of Jew hatred that seeks the elimination of the Jewish State promised by the Mandate for Palestine and the United Nations Charter - has blinded the Secretary General to his obligations. If he wants to play the role of the Lord High Executioner and have people defer to and respect his pronouncements - the Secretary General needs to be sure of his facts before chopping the head off his intended victim.

Hillary Huffs,Arab League Puffs,Abbas Blows The House Down

2011-04-17T01:31:00.000-07:00

[Published March 2010]

It may seem discourteous to Jews and Arabs to refer to their current spat in the same breath as the tale of the three little pigs.

There is rare unanimity between Jews and Arabs when it comes to pigs - both religions forbid the eating of pig or any product derived from pig.

However this common bond has been trashed into pig swill when it comes to Jews and Arabs living within cooee of each other on a postage sized piece of land comprising 5% of historic Palestine with an area approximating the size of Delaware.

The squeals and snorts emanating from the Arab side at the thought of Israel building 1600 housing units in East Jerusalem to accommodate the burgeoning population growth among religious Jewish families averaging 5-6 children continues with ever piercing ferocity. It is almost certain to erupt in a frenzy of demonstrations and stone throwing.

You would think the Arabs were being led to the slaughter and were being pushed out of their existing residences to make way for the Jews. Certainly there have been Court ordered evictions of Arab squatters on Jewish owned properties in East Jerusalem but the 1600 planned units were not slated to be built on the site of those disputed properties.

Israel certainly did commit a huge PR gaffe in announcing its intention to build those 1600 housing units in East Jerusalem for a group of religious Jews who do not even support the existence of Israel as a Jewish State.

To make that announcement was extremely naïve and provocative at precisely the time that the Vice President of the United States - Joseph Biden - was visiting Jerusalem - with an entourage that had booked out 200 hotel rooms - to launch the beginning of proximity negotiations to supposedly advance the resolution of competing Arab and Jewish claims to sovereignty in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The Arab League - believing it could now renege on giving its blessing to those negotiations commencing - - then promptly committed its own PR gaffe in withdrawing its consent to those proximity talks being held - - just two days after agreeing those talks should go ahead .

The American Vice President however appeared to accept Israel’s apology unreservedly.

There the matter should have ended and the proximity talks begun but for the intervention of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who roundly condemned Israel for spoiling what would have been seen as a triumph of American diplomacy in bringing a recalcitrant Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas back to the negotiating pen.

Clinton’s verbal onslaught on Israel encouraged Abbas to believe he could now get America to demand Israel halt all building activity in East Jerusalem before the proximity talks were begun.

America - albeit reluctantly - had accepted Israel’s position almost four months ago that there would be no such halt as a condition to the resumption of any negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

Abbas now mistakenly sniffed a new opportunity to wheedle out of the proximity negotiations with an enraged Hillary Clinton’s backing.

The Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator - Saeb Erekat - certainly conveyed that impression when making the following statement:

“The PA “welcomes the statements from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Quartet condemning the Israeli government decision to build settlements in the eastern sector of Jerusalem…

We want these positions to become binding and for Israel to scrap its settlement decisions, especially its plan to build 1600 homes in Jerusalem…

We want a total halt… we want to stop this Israeli policy that is useless and destructive for the peace process, especially for the US administration’s honest efforts to relaunch real and serious negotiations.”

Hillary Clinton’s huff however had more to do with something ingrained in Arab culture - the loss of face and the need to regain face as soon as possible.

Abbas already had found himself suffering a distinct loss of face when he agreed to commence proximity negotiations - and only after the Arab League provided him with the face saving cover to do so.

His political opponents - Hamas - and other radical Palestinian Arab groups had ridiculed his decision and denigrated his authority when commenting on Abbas’s decision:

“This decision will have serious repercussions for the Palestinians and their cause,” said Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip. “This decision will help Israel in ending the state of isolation it has been in because of its war crimes against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

Another Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, condemned the decision to resume the negotiations as a “crime” against the Palestinians.

“We consider these negotiations, which will take place in the wake of Israeli escalation against our people and holy sites, a national crime,” he said. “Anyone who negotiates with the occupation is a criminal against our people.”

Abbas was feeling decidedly threatened by his own brethren until Israel’s intemperate announcement provided the Arab League and himself with what he thought was an opportunity for another opportunity to miss an opportunity and regain the loss of face he had sustained by bending to American pressure to agree to proximity negotiations in the first place.

Vice President Biden’s immediate acceptance of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s apology however left the Arab League and Abbas high and dry yet again and subject to even further loss of face if Abbas limply crawled back to the negotiating table in the face of Israel’s provocative announcement to build those 1600 units in East Jerusalem. Hamas would have had a real field day in denouncing Abbas.

Hillary’s attempt to play piggy in the middle by rapping Israel severely over the knuckles thereby restoring Abbas’s loss of face among his own power base, saving his bacon and enabling him to once again agree to conducting proximity negotiations - had backfired.

Abbas misinterpreted Hillary’s huff as a signal that America would now pressure Israel to cease all building activity in East Jerusalem before he was required to commence any proximity negotiations.

If Abbas believes that America will insist Israel do that - then pigs might really fly.

Reuters Reprehensible Report Requires Retraction

2011-04-17T01:03:00.000-07:00

[Published March 2010]

Reuters - considered the world’s top news source - has allowed its credibility to be seriously damaged with the publication of its “Timeline: Path to new Israel-Palestinian talks” on 7 March 2010.

Its cursory - almost totally dismissive - omission of Jewish claims to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Palestine - are made blatantly clear at the beginning of its Timeline which states:

“Here are key dates on the path to this point:
1897 - European Jews in Zionist movement declare goal of creating a Jewish state in Ottoman Turkish-ruled Palestine.

1917 - British forces take Palestine from collapsing Ottoman empire in World War One. British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour declares support for Jewish “national home” there.

1945 - Revelation of Nazi Holocaust and new Jewish migration to Palestine bolster Western support for creating Jewish state.

1948 - Britain quits and great powers recognize Israel as U.N. partition plan dissolves in war that leaves Jewish state on 78 percent of land and half of Palestine’s Arabs as refugees.”

1967 - In what it calls pre-emptive strikes on Arab states, Israeli forces seize rest of British-mandate Palestine, taking West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan and Gaza Strip from Egypt. Israel captures Golan Heights from Syria.

1988 - After a year of Intifada (uprising), exiled PLO leader Yasser Arafat, widely acknowledged as speaking for Palestinians, renounces “terrorism” and accepts Israel’s right to exist.

Omitted from this hastily concocted version are the following crucial - and critical - dates:

1920: Treaty of Sevres entrusts the administration of Palestine to a Mandatory for putting into effect the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.

1922: Britain appointed Mandatory for Palestine by unanimous vote of the League of Nations. 78% of Mandate Palestine excluded from inclusion in the future Jewish National Home in area known as Transjordan which is exclusively reserved for Arab homeland.

1937: Peel Commission recommends division of Palestine into two States - one Jewish, one Arab . Arabs reject recommendation.

1939: Britain severely limits Jewish emigration to Palestine in breach of Mandate for duration of World War Two.

1945: League of Nations wound up and United Nations created. Article 80 inserted in United Nations Charter preserves Jewish rights to establish Jewish National Home in Palestine.

1946: Britain grants Transjordan independence in 78% of Mandate Palestine.

1947: United Nations votes to divide remaining 22% of Mandate Palestine into two states - one Jewish, one Arab. Arabs reject recommendation. Fighting breaks out between Jews and Arabs.

1948: Reuters omits to mention that

•six Arab armies invaded Palestine
•Egypt occupied Gaza and Transordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem
•The Palestinian National Conference decides to place the West Bank under the sovereignty of Transjordan and
•Erroneously states that Israel ended up with 78% - not 17% - of the land

1949: Transjordan changes its name to Jordan

1950: The West Bank and Jordan are unified into one country by the Jordanian Parliament comprising equal number of West Bank and Jordanian representatives

1967: Reuters omits to mention Security Council Resolution 242 requiring Israel to only withdraw to secure and recognized boundaries.

1988: Jordan cedes any claims to the West Bank

This perversion of the history of Palestine is either induced by ignorance or a deliberate suppression of critical information that goes to the heart of the debate currently raging at the moment.

Inclusion of the above dates in Reuters Timeline would substantiate Jewish claims to be entitled to sovereignty in all or part of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and to build settlements there based on the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter - rights grounded in international law.

Their absence from the Timeline needs to be explained or justified by Reuters if it is to regain any credibility in its reporting in the Middle East.

This Timeline has now been distributed throughout Reuters extensive network and can be viewed on its American, British and Indian websites and has been published and reproduced by other web sites and news services.

It has also been distributed on Reuters AlertNet site which proudly claims:

“AlertNet attracts upwards of ten million users a year, has a network of 400 contributing humanitarian organizations and its weekly email digest is received by more than 26,000 readers

It was started in 1997 by Reuters Foundation - an educational and humanitarian trust - to place Reuters’ core skills of speed, accuracy and freedom from bias at the service of the humanitarian community.”

Any claim to Reuters possessing these core skills is exposed as a sham and continues the gross media bias that continues to bury Jewish claims in international law to the West Bank and Gaza and to settle there to reconstitute the Jewish National Home.

Reuters continues the practice of the United Nations which similarly omitted any mention of many of these critical dates when seeking an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in 2004 on the legality of the construction of the security barrier on and over the 1967 armistice lines.

Judge Elaraby - gave this warning to his fellow 14 judges sitting on that case:

“,,, the international legal status of the Palestinian Territory merits more comprehensive treatment”.

Judge Elaraby identified the need for such a review saying:

“A historical survey is relevant to the question posed by the General Assembly, for it serves as the background to understanding the legal status of the Palestinian Territory on the one hand and underlines the special and continuing responsibility of the General Assembly on the other. This may appear as academic, without relevance to the present events. The present is however determined by the accumulation of past events and no reasonable and fair concern for the future can possibly disregard a firm grasp of past events. In particular, when on one or more than one occasion, the rule of law was consistently sidestepped.”

Judge Elaraby continued:

“The point of departure, or one can say in legal jargon, the critical date, is the League of Nations Mandate which was entrusted to Great Britain”

The bias of the United Nations against Israel in omitting to refer to the Mandate when approaching the International Court is par for the course.

Reuters omission to similarly inform its millions of readers now places it on a similar pedestal following the publication of its grossly inaccurate and misleading Timeline.

The best thing Reuters can do is immediately withdraw its Timeline. I would hope it has the integrity and honesty to do so with an appropriate - and prominent - apology for its publication in the first place.

Palestine - Israeli Bombshell Bounces Off Mediterranean Parliamentarians

2011-04-17T00:10:00.001-07:00

[Published March 2010]

A bombshell was lobbed into an International Meeting in support of Israeli- Palestinian Peace organized by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean Union [PAM] and the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People [CEIRPP] of the United Nations in Malta on 12 and 13 February 2010.

Yet the explosion passed over the heads of those present without scarcely a ripple.

The meeting was attended by a number of Member delegations of PAM, parliamentarians from other national and regional assemblies, government officials, experts including Israeli and Palestinians, UN Member States and observers, intergovernmental and civil society organisations.

In all there were 35 countries, 13 Inter-Governmental Organizations, 14 Civil Society Organizations and Academic Institutions, totaling around 200 participants.

Israel Parliamentarians were not officially represented at the Conference. The two members of the Israeli Knesset were reported by the Malta Times to have pulled out of the conference after they objected to comments by Palestinian officials about the situation in Gaza and the building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The bombshell nevertheless was delivered by one of the two Israelis present at the conference - Mr Alon Liel.

Described in the official transcript of the proceedings as “Lecturer of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem” Mr Liel told the Conference (as recorded in the transcript):

“he was not representing the Israeli Government, adding that, unfortunately, there was no member of the Israeli Government at the present Meeting. He said that many in Israel felt that the peace process had crashed to the extent that the two-State solution looked impossible at the moment, adding, “You need an unbelievable earthquake, 8 on the Richter scale, on the political map of Israel, to bridge the gap between Israel and the Palestinians”. The talks between Palestinians and Mr. Olmert were over. Even if the Americans managed to arrange proximity talks and enter a hotel and sit in one room, with the existing political map in Israel, “the gap is unbridgeable”. He acknowledged that with a broken heart, but did not see the possibility of a Palestinian State being created in the foreseeable future. And he was not even speaking of Jerusalem or refugees, but about borders only, he said.“

Mr Liel’s modest qualifications as recorded in the transcript belied his extensive diplomatic experience and public service which includes:

•Nov 2000 - April 2001 Director General, Ministry of Foreign Affairs

•1997-1999 Foreign Affairs advisor to Ehud Barak, Chairman of the Labor Party

•1992-94 Israeli Ambassador to South Africa (Non-resident Ambassador to Mozambique and Zimbabwe)

•1990-1992 Consul General of Israel to the Southeastern United States (based in Atlanta, Georgia)

•1988-1989 Foreign Ministry Spokesman; Member of Israeli delegation to the United Nations General Assembly; Member of the Israeli negotiating team at the Taba talks with Egypt

•President of the Israel-Syria Peace Society

Only two people present at the Conference seemed to have absorbed the import of Mr Liel’s statement.

One - a representative from Tunis said he had been optimistic at the start of the Meeting, but he was very pessimistic now after having listened to Mr. Liel.

The other was the Palestine Authority’s chief negotiator - Saeb Erekat who was reported as saying:

“what Mr. Liel had done was “transparent and honest”. He had reflected the facts as they were. The Coalition Government in Israel today was not up to the two-State solution with the 1967 borders. The Palestinian leadership had reached the same conclusion. But that did not mean the Palestinians should give up.“

Mr Erekat’s last comment seemed rather hollow considering the Palestinian Authority’s steadfast refusal to resume negotiations with Israel for the last three months following Israel‘s ten months freeze on residential construction in the West Bank announced last November.

What else can now be possibly done to achieve the “two-state option” - the creation of a new Arab state between Israel , Jordan and Egypt - after 16 years of failed diplomacy and negotiations in attempting to make even the slightest breakthrough?

Mr Liel had previously warned in an interview in Asharq Alawsat on 18 March 2008:

“…we think that peace with the Palestinians today is unrealistic. There is a split between Hamas and Fatah, and there is a coup in Gaza, which has exacerbated the situation. There are burning issues the present government cannot resolve now, such as the issues of Jerusalem, the refugees, and the borders. These are very difficult issues.”

What was true in 2008 is even more valid in 2010. Nothing has changed in those two years.

Further negotiations with the Palestinian Authority will assuredly prove to be a complete waste of time and effort.

The Palestinian Authority’s use by date and credentials to negotiate the future sovereignty of the West Bank have well and truly expired.

Yet those present at the Malta Conference continued to repeat the need for the Jewish-Arab conflict to be resolved by the creation of yet another Arab State in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Like ostriches with their heads in the sand - they failed to listen to what Mr Liel and Mr Erekat were telling them.

Perhaps those present at the conference should heed what Mr Liel had to say almost ten years ago on 1 November 2000 when taking up the position of Director General of Israel’s Foreign Ministry in the aftermath of the failed Camp David negotiations brokered by President Clinton:

“The peace process between Israel and the Palestinians has suffered a terrible blow, just as Israel and the Palestinians were on the very brink of realizing their dreams of peace and reconciliation. At the last kilometer of the marathon, as we were nearing the finishing line, Arafat turned around and ran back in the opposite direction. This retrogressive and illogical action goes against the tide of history, it is contrary to the wishes of the international community, and it is surely detrimental to the interests of his own people. Arafat started running in the opposite direction, and he has not stopped for a moment. In doing so, he has harmed the peace process, while undermining his own standing and personal reputation. Arafat has chosen to renounce his status as a statesman, preferring instead to revert to his old role as the leader of a campaign of incitement, violence and terrorism. Arafat has a golden opportunity to lead his people to a new and promising future. Instead, he has taken a dangerous step backwards towards the abyss.”

Mr Liel’s words could be just as appropriately applied today to Mahmoud Abbas’s rejection of the peace offer made by Israel’s former Prime Minister - Ehud Olmert - in 2008.

Whilst the international community continues talking - and not listening to those with intimate knowledge and understanding of the hopelessness inherent in bringing the two-state option to fruition - both Jews and Arabs are set to endure a lot more suffering and trauma before the reality sinks in and a new course is charted to try and bring some closure to the conflict.

Palestine - Mediterranean Union Misses Making Its Mark

2011-04-16T23:51:00.000-07:00

[Published February 2010]

An International Meeting in support of Israeli- Palestinian Peace was organized by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean Union and the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People [CEIRPP] of the United Nations in Malta on 12 and 13 February 2010.

The Union now includes all 27 member states of the European Union, along with 16 partners across the Southern Mediterranean and the Middle East.

The meeting turned out to be the usual talkfest in flogging a dead horse - the creation of a 22nd Arab State between Jordan, Israel and Egypt - also known as “the two-state solution“. This solution has been unsuccessfully pursued for the last 16 years and there is no possible chance that such a resolution will be achieved at any time in the future.

The two-state solution could have been availed of in 1937,1947, between 1948-1967, in 2000/2001 and 2008 but was rejected on each occasion by the Arabs. It will continue to be rejected by the Arabs who are not prepared to tolerate Israel gaining sovereignty in any part of the West Bank.

Despite the hopelessness of ever reaching the two-state solution - those present in Malta still concluded in their final communique :

“The Organizers appreciated that the participants had stated their firm commitment to ending Israeli occupation which started on 4 June 1967 in order to achieve a permanent two-State solution in which Israel and Palestine would live side by side in peace and security within mutually recognized borders. …

The Organizers support the firm stance by the international community not to recognize any changes to the pre-1967 borders including with regard to occupied Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties.”

These statements go to the heart of explaining why the two-state solution can never be achieved for the following reasons:

•Israel’s occupation of the West Bank as a consequence of the Six Day War in 1967 is conveniently forgotten

•The use of the term “borders” is clearly wrong. There were in 1967 - and still are in 2010 - only armistice lines - a legacy of the Arab League‘s refusal to recognize Israel and settle the final boundaries between Israel, Jordan and Egypt following the conclusion of hostilities in 1948.

•No recognition is given to Security Council resolution 242 which does not require Israel to withdraw from the entire West Bank but only to withdraw to secure and recognized boundaries

•The statement ignores the Palestinan Authority’s continuing refusal to surrender its claim to even one square metre of the West Bank to Israel.

•America has recognized that a change to the 1967 armistice lines is necessary given the changed circumstances on the ground where 500000 Jews now live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The notion that these Jews can be forcibly evicted from their homes is racist and offensive.

•No account has been taken of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine which provides that the West Bank and East Jerusalem were to form part of the area within which the Jewish National Home was to be reconstituted and that such right has been preserved by Article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

No doubt the tone and language of the final communique was inevitable given the involvement of the CEIRPP, whose participation ensured that no attention would be paid to Arab intransigence and lost opportunities over 62 years - which has been largely responsible for any progress in finalizing the two-state solution.

What was particularly interesting was the frequent reference to the importance, observance and respect for the rule of international law in resolving the conflict to achieve the two-state solution. Such a reference appears on six separate occasions in the communique.

Yet the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter didn’t rate a mention in Malta.

Strangely enough these critical documents were also omitted from inclusion by the United Nations Secretary General in the brief submitted to the World Court when seeking the advisory opinion of the Court on the legality of the construction of Israel’s security barrier in the West Bank.

One wonders whether any of these august bodies will eventually take the time to read the Mandate and article 80 and fully understand what was determined by the League of Nations in 1922 following the Treaty of Sevres in 1920.

This is not ancient history but has been kept alive and is relevant today by virtue of Article 80.

Whilst the United Nations and its member States flagrantly breach the terms of the UN Charter pursuing a course of conduct that is completely devoid of compliance with and acknowledgment of international law, any hope of a peaceful resolution of the conflict between Jews and Arabs relating to the territory once called “Palestine” will be impossible.

The reference by the Malta Meeting to the West Bank as “occupied Palestinian land” rather than “territory disputed between Jew and Arabs” further indicates an Arab bias that needs to be eradicated if the Mediterranean Union wishes to play any future role in resolving the conflict.

A hint of things to come was apparent in the following terms of the final communique:

“They [the participants] expressed their hope that the ten-month freeze of settlement expansion declared by the Israeli Government would be comprehensive, extended to East Jerusalem and retained indefinitely. “

Israel will no doubt be subjected to intense pressure to comply with this demand - irrespective of whether the Palestinian Authority resumes negotiations within the ten months time frame or not.

Rather than exploring new ideas to end the conflict, the Malta Meeting trotted out the old and familiar phrases that have formed the vocabulary of Middle East diplomacy for decades.

In doing do the Mediterranean Union has shown itself unable to break free from the failures of the past and embrace new and innovative ideas - such as the return of Jordan to the West Bank - which might offer some hope to resolving what President Obama has described as “an intractable problem”.

Abdullah Abdicates Rationality For West Bank Nationality

2011-04-16T23:36:00.000-07:00

[Published February 2010]

At midnight on the 31 July 1988, one million Arab residents living in the West Bank who had been “Jordanians” since 1950 were no longer “Jordanians”

On 1 August 1988 those one million Arabs amazingly became subjected to a semantic conversion - to be known thereafter as “Palestinians”.

This remarkable transformation came about by an amendment to the Jordanian Nationality Law as a result of a speech given by Jordan’s King Hussein on 31 July 1988 announcing the severance of Jordan’s administrative and legal ties to the West Bank and relinquishing claims of Jordanian sovereignty in the West Bank. No laws were passed by Jordan on the details of such disengagement.

Two days before the king’s disengagement speech, Jordan’s Ministry of Interior had issued disengagement instructions comprising 22 articles.

Article 2 of those instructions provided for withdrawal of Jordanian nationality from residents of the West Bank stating:

“Every person residing in the West Bank before the date of 31/7/1988 will be considered as [a] Palestinian citizen and not as Jordanian.”

With one stroke of the pen one million West Bank Arabs entitled to exercise self determination as citizens of Jordan were reduced to a group of stateless citizens with no political rights at all.

There are strong arguments to justify the claim that the substance and manner of that decision violated Jordanian law.

Article 1 of the 1952 constitution stated :

“The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is an independent Arab State. It is indivisible and no part of it may be ceded…. “

Furthermore Article 33(ii) of the constitution required parliamentary approval by the National Assembly for all decisions affecting the general or personal rights of Jordanians. None was obtained.

The government maintains that King Hussein relinquished the West Bank and East Jerusalem in an administrative act, not an agreement or a treaty, and therefore the constitutional article does not apply.

Jordan - prior to its unification with the West Bank in 1950 - occupied the 78% of historical Palestine located east of the Jordan River. Jordan had only received its independence and release from the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1946 - and from that time on was called “The Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan”.

The West Bank and East Jerusalem were subsequently captured by Transjordan following the end of Britain’s mandate over the remaining 22% of Palestine - located west of the Jordan River - and in the ensuing Arab-Israeli war in 1948.

On 1 December 1948 the Palestinian National Conference in Jericho decided to place the West Bank under the sovereignty of Transjordan - which in 1949 then changed its name to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

On 11 April 1950 elections were held for a new Jordanian Parliament in which the West Bank Arabs were equally represented.

On 24 April 1950 the Parliament unanimously passed the following resolution:

“In the expression of the people’s faith in the efforts spent by His Majesty, Abdullah, toward attainment of natural aspirations, and basing itself on the right of self-determination and on the existing de facto position between Jordan and Palestine and their national, natural and geographic unity and their common interests and living space, Parliament, which represents both sides of the Jordan, resolves this day and declares:

First, its support for complete unity between the two sides of the Jordan and their union into one State, which is the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, at whose head reigns King Abdullah Ibn al Husain, on a basis of constitutional representative government and equality of the rights and duties of all citizens….”

Only Great Britain and Pakistan recognized this unification but it continued to exist uninterrupted until 1967 when Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the Six Day War,

The relevance of these historic, geographic and demographic facts becomes very relevant when looking to solutions to allocate sovereignty in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in 2010.

Jordan’s current ruler - King Abdullah - in a recent interview asserted:

“There are pushes by certain elements of the Israeli government to say Jordan takes a role in the West Bank. That is never going to work and we have to be very clear that Jordan absolutely does not want to have anything to do with the West Bank.

All we will be doing is replacing Israeli military with Jordanian military. The Palestinians do not want that. They want to have their own statehood.

And again, what type of West Bank are we talking about? We are talking about a viable entity. What I think these people are offering to try and pull Jordan in is really nothing that would create enough statehood or make the Palestinians feel that they have something that’s called their home. So Jordan –I’m on the record; we’ve said this so many times –we will not have any role in the West Bank.”

King Abdullah is deluding himself in seeking to believe his re-entry to the West Bank would merely involve replacing the Israeli Army with the Jordanian army.

As easily as

1. His great-grandfather -Abdullah - was able to unify the West Bank and the East Bank and make West Bank Arabs Jordanian citizens

2. His father - Hussein - was able to sever the West Bank from Jordan and make the West Bank Arabs “stateless Palestinians”

- so Abdullah can once again as easily re-unify the West Bank with the East Bank, free the stateless Palestinians from Israeli occupation and make them once again Jordanian citizens.

As the idea of creating a separate state in the West Bank between Jordan and Israel - the “two state solution” - disappears down the drain in the face of continuing Palestinian Authority intransigence to change its negotiating stance over the last 16 years - the re-entry of Jordan into the West Bank to be granted sovereignty in such of the area as shall be agreed between Jordan and Israel becomes increasingly more attractive.

The Hashemites - not the PLO or Hamas - have been responsible for securing that 78% of Palestine - today called Jordan - has remained exclusively as an Arab homeland for the Arab residents of former Palestine after it had been first included in the area destined for the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home.

An opportunity is now opening for Jordan to regain a substantial part of the West Bank and once again reunify it with Jordan after an absence of 43 years.

Abdullah could reclaim a substantial part of what historically was part of Jordan for 19 years and offer to some 2.5 million Arabs now living there statehood rather than statelessness.

The West Bank is not - and never has been - a viable entity. Its reunification with Jordan will restore the political reality for its citizens that existed between 1950-1988 and its territorial status prior to its loss to Israel in 1967.

Such a solution may not end the Arab-Israeli war nor give the West Bank Arabs their own separate state - but it will be an effective end to the Israeli occupation of the majority of the West Bank and the statelessness of its Arab residents.

Hopefully this time round Jordan would also receive United Nations backing and Arab League blessing - as no other negotiated solution is remotely possible

Abdullah Bristles As Palestine Fizzles

2011-04-16T23:14:00.000-07:00

Jordan’s King Abdullah is clearly feeling the pressure as the spotlight increasingly focuses on the role Jordan will have to play in resolving the allocation of sovereignty in the West Bank between Jews and Arabs.

This became very clear in the interview given by the King to Fareed Zakaria, in Davos Switzerland during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting on 29 January.

The two-state solution - designed to create a new Arab State between Israel, Jordan and Egypt in the West Bank and Gaza - has comprehensively failed despite the most intensive diplomatic efforts to achieve such an outcome during the last 17 years

The root cause of failure has been the Arab League’s refusal to budge from its 43 years old negotiating position that demands:

1.the ceding by Israel of sovereignty in 100% of the West Bank and Gaza

2.Israel accepting millions of Arabs into the Jewish State

Offers by Israel to cede sovereignty in excess of 90% of the West Bank - which houses 95% of the Arab population living there - were rejected by the Arabs in 2001 and 2008.

Israel is not prepared to cede any further territory in the West Bank for security reasons. This area also houses the majority of the 500000 Jewish population who currently live in the West Bank.

Israel’s evacuation of Gaza in 2005 has proved disastrous with Hamas seizing control from the Palestinian Authority in 2007 - effectively dividing the proposed new State into two separately controlled fiefdoms.

The failure of President Obama to get Israel and the Palestinian Authority to resume negotiations for the last twelve months - which assuredly won’t go anywhere even if they were to be resumed - has sent power brokers scurrying to find alternatives to the two-state solution.

King Abdullah in his above interview expressed his own fears when stating:

“Actually, this is probably the first time where I am somewhat pessimistic”

His gloomy mood was further emphasised when he said:

“…sooner or later there is an invisible line in the sand that we will cross that will be clear to everybody, whether or not the viability of a two-state solution is there. And I hope we haven’t crossed that yet but when –or God forbid –we do cross that line, then I think we doom the Middle East and the region to many decades of instability.”

With the deepest respect to His Majesty - that invisible line was crossed when the Palestinian Authority rejected the offer made by Israel in the negotiations conducted in 2008.

Israel’s chief negotiator in 2008 - Udi Dekel - spelt out the reasons for that failure when he told Ha’Aretz on 25 January in a revealing interview:

"The Palestinian approach was in principle the demand of 100 percent of their rights from 1967. The practical aspect interested them less. They are not willing to discuss any further compromise," he said. "We tried to build scenarios, some of them were imaginary, about specific compromises, but we found the Palestinians taking an approach of ‘all or nothing’."

Israel’s former National Security Advisor - Giora Eiland - has recently called for Jordan to replace the Palestinian Authority as Israel’s negotiating partner.

This has clearly upset King Abdullah who said in the above interview:

“There are pushes by certain elements of the Israeli government to say Jordan takes a role in the West Bank. That is never going to work and we have to be very clear that Jordan absolutely does not want to have anything to do with the West Bank.

All we will be doing is replacing Israeli military with Jordanian military. The Palestinians do not want that. They want to have their own statehood.

And again, what type of West Bank are we talking about? We are talking about a viable entity. What I think these people are offering to try and pull Jordan in is really nothing that would create enough statehood or make the Palestinians feel that they have something that’s called their home. So Jordan – I’m on the record; we’ve said this so many times –we will not have any role in the West Bank.”

King Abdullah is in a state of denial and needs to reverse his negative stance for the following reasons:

1.Jordan was the last Arab occupier of the West Bank between 1948-1967 when it could have - but failed - to give the Palestinians their own statehood in 100% of that territory after the Jews living there had been driven out following Jordan’s conquest of the West Bank in the 1948 War of Independence. Jordan’s return to the West Bank would substantially restore the status quo existing in 1967.

2.Jordan extended its sovereignty, and consequently all applicable domestic law, to the West Bank and East Jerusalem in April 1950. Reinstatement - where necessary - could be easily achieved.

3.West Bank Arabs were Jordanian nationals between 1950 - 1988 - until their nationality was withdrawn by Jordan. Jordanian nationality could now be as easily reinstated by Jordanian legislative decree.

4.Jordan ceded its claims to sovereignty in the West Bank in 1988 in favour of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) - which itself had previously ceded any claims to “exercise regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” under Article 24 of the 1964 Charter of the PLO. These semantic name games can again be easily reversed.

5.Jordan - together with Israel - comprise the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine possessing sovereignty between them in 94% of former Palestine. Only 6% of Palestine - the West Bank and Gaza - remains unallocated between them.

6.Jordan’s return to the West Bank can immediately free its Arab residents from Israeli occupation and control, give them Jordanian nationality, a home and a State -Jordan.

7.Jordan’s 1994 peace treaty with Israel provides mechanisms for peacefully settling outstanding issues such as water, refugees and Jerusalem.

King Abdullah needs to heed the following advice given by him in his interview with Fareed Zakaria:

“Don’t take no for an answer. There are members of my society that, when I say ‘Let’s do something’, there’s a – I wish I could translate it into English–but it’s ‘Tsk’. The Arabs will know what I mean when I say ‘Let’s move this sector of society’ –‘Tsk, that’s never going to happen. We can’t find the money’. And I think that has been the major challenge that I’ve had over the past 10 years. It is not to be intimidated by the ‘Tsk’ that I get from society."

King Abdullah must show real leadership at this time of crisis and ready himself for negotiations with Israel - for nothing else has a chance of succeeding. This will avert the doom and instability predicted by the King following the collapse of the two-state solution.

Now is certainly not the time for King Abdullah to say “Tsk”. Please think again Your Majesty.

Palestine - Jordan And Egypt In State Of Denial

2011-04-16T22:59:00.000-07:00

[Published January 2010]

Jordan and Egypt need to replace the Palestinian Authority as the Arab partner to negotiate with Israel on the allocation of sovereignty in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem according to a paper entitled “Regional Alternatives To The Two State Solution” written by Israel’s former National Security Advisor - Giora Eiland

Eiland’s paper contains two suggested alternatives to the “two-state solution”. He states that there are other creative alternatives that will present themselves once Jordan and Egypt replace the Palestinian Authority as Israel’s negotiating partner.

Eiland presented his paper to a special Ambassadors’ Forum briefing for members of the diplomatic community representing around 30 countries in Israel and at a conference hosted by the University’s Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies last week.

In an introduction to Eiland’s paper BESA’s Director - Professor Efraim Inbar - commented:

“It is clearly a study that challenges conventional wisdom. The great difficulty of changing thought patterns that have become entrenched within dominant paradigms, such as the widespread notion of the need to establish a Palestinian state, is well known.”

The time to change those entrenched thought patterns has now emerged for the following reasons:

1.Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority have gone nowhere in the last 16 years

2.The Palestinian Authority now refuses to further negotiate with Israel until Israel ceases all building activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem - which Israel is not prepared to do

3.The Palestinian Authority shows no preparedness to change the negotiating position which its alter ego - the PLO - has adopted for the last 42 years - namely a sovereign and fully independent state in 100% of the West Bank and Gaza with its capital situated in Jerusalem and no recognition of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people.

4.The Palestinian Authority has lost its status as sole spokesman for the Palestinian Arabs since 2007 and is now locked in a bitter power struggle with Fatah for total control of the Palestinian Arabs and the government of any future state

5.Gaza and the West Bank have been split into separate fiefdoms governed respectively by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority and no unification of the two areas under one government appears likely to occur.

Eiland asserts that Israel made a grave mistake in trying to resolve the Palestinian problem on its own without the involvement of Egypt and Jordan. The position has now been reached in his opinion where no allocation of sovereignty in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem will ever occur without the direct involvement of these two nation states.

There are very strong and supportive views for this position:

•Egypt was the last Arab State to occupy Gaza between 1948-1967 and Jordan the last Arab State to occupy east Jerusalem and the West Bank during the same period of 19 years.

•During those 19 years no Jew resided in these areas and the “two state solution” could have been implemented at any time by Jordan and Egypt in that period if the Arabs had wanted to do so.

•The loss of those areas to Israel in 1967 and the fact that 500000 Jews now live there makes it impossible to return to the 1967 armistice lines that then separated the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem from Israel.

•Since 1967 both Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with Israel - Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994 - that have been maintained and respected by all signatories.

•Jordan - with Israel - are the two successor States to the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and currently exercise sovereignty in 94% of Mandatory Palestine. They are obviously the best negotiating partners - with Egypt - to resolve Arab and Jewish claims to sovereignty in the remaining 6% - the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

The Egyptian response to Eiland’s proposal has been less than lukewarm.

A representative of the Egyptian embassy in Israel said that the Palestinian problem should not be turned into an Egyptian problem.

This view is hard to accept since Egypt partially created the problem by doing nothing between 1948-1967 in Gaza when it had the opportunity to do so.

Jordan severed its ties with - and any claims to sovereignty of - the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1988 to the PLO. The failure of the PLO and its successor - the Palestinian Authority - to achieve Arab sovereignty in the last 22 years only highlights the need for Jordan to resume negotiations with Israel to try and achieve a better outcome.

This is especially so since the signing of Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel in 1994 already deals with such contentious issues as refugees, water and Jerusalem. The only issue still to be resolved is the new border to be drawn between these two sovereign states.

Whilst there has been no official response from Jordan to Eiland’s suggestion, it is interesting to note that a Jordanian prosecutor agreed on 21 January to hear a lawsuit against two Israeli lawmakers - Speaker Reuven Rivlin and Arye Eldad - after they called for turning Jordan into a Palestinian state.

Arye Eldad - made the following response to such news:

“Apparently in Jordan, telling the truth is against the law. This is a ridiculous attempt to impose Jordanian law on Israel - which allows freedom of speech. No lawsuit can change the fact that Jordan is Palestinian and that the Hashemites are ruling over the Palestinian majority in a dictatorship.”

Eldad said he would continue his efforts to persuade American congressmen and leaders all over the world that Jordan must be the Palestinian state.

“There need to be two states for two peoples,” Eldad said. “The Palestinians have a state, Jordan, and I will continue my campaign to make sure the world realizes this. The next time the world sees a stalemate in the diplomatic process, they must know that this is as a realistic option.”

Eiland’s proposal for negotiations between Israel, Jordan and Egypt indeed remains the only possible way to finally resolve sovereignty in the West Bank ,Gaza and East Jerusalem.

Perhaps Eiland should replicate the advice given by US Embassy spokesman in Israel - Keith Hoyer - when commenting on American Special Envoy George Mitchell’s shuttle diplomacy:

“He’s just trying to persuade, and sometimes you persuade by restating your position, again and again and again, until you get an agreement”

As time goes by and the “two state solution” sinks slowly to the bottom of the harbour - Eiland’s message - if repeated often and loud enough - will be eventually heard by the international community and the Arab League looking for a lifeline to avoid them all going down with the ship.

Palestine - Abbas Attempts The Turkey Trot

2011-04-16T22:39:00.000-07:00

[Published January 2010]

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas visited Turkey on 6 January and attempted to dance his own version of the Turkey Trot - 100 years after its first introduction to the ballroom floor.

The Turkey Trot was a dance made popular in the early 1900s. The basic step consisted of four hopping steps sideways with the feet well apart, first on one leg, then the other with a characteristic rise on the ball of the foot, followed by a drop upon the heel. The dance was embellished with scissor-like flicks of the feet and fast trotting actions with abrupt stops.

Abbas seems to have now adopted some similar fancy footwork in his approach to resuming negotiations with Israel

He reportedly told Turkey’s assembled diplomats that he was ready to resume talks with Israel if Israel recognized the legitimacy of the Annapolis peace process initiated in November 2007 - which he said was a road map that required Israeli withdrawal from occupied Palestinian and Arab territory and from East Jerusalem.

His statement to the Turkish diplomats marks a remarkable sideways step by Abbas who had previously refused to resume negotiations with Israel unless Israel froze all building activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and also recognized the 1967 armistice lines as the border of a future Palestinian State.

Abbas however seems to have been dancing on one leg in front of the Turkish diplomats because the Annapolis process

•Does not bind the current Israeli Government
•Does not require Israeli withdrawal from “occupied Palestinian and Arab territory and from East Jerusalem”

- as Abbas led the Turkish ambassadors to believe for the following reasons:

1.The then Israeli Government in 2007 never ratified Annapolis - nor did the Knesset - Israel’s sovereign Parliament.
2.The one document that binds Israel is its ratification of the 2003 Road Map formulated by President Bush and adopted unanimously by the Quartet - America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations subject to 14 reservations made by Israel and communicated in writing to President Bush.
3.Israel’s then Prime Minister - Ehud Olmert - made it quite clear to Abbas and the world leaders assembled at Annapolis on 27 November 2007 that the negotiations under Annapolis were to be “based on previous agreements between us, UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the Roadmap and the April 14th 2004 letter from President Bush to the Prime Minister of Israel.”

Letters from American Presidents to Israeli Prime Ministers are important documents and none was more important than the one President Bush wrote to Ariel Sharon on 14 April 2004 to procure Israel to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza.

That letter made it clear - amongst many other commitments - that the Arabs could not expect to regain 100% of the West Bank and Gaza in any negotiations with Israel.

The Arabs however refused to play ball and insisted on 100% - not the 93% offered by Israel plus an additional area from Israel’s sovereign territory to make up the remaining 7% that would be retained in the West Bank by Israel.

Instead of pressuring the Arabs to accept this proposal the Quartet - America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - sought to pressure Israel into more concessions that would have seen the West Bank ethnically cleansed of Jews who had returned to live in their biblical heartland since 1967 - after having been kicked out of there in 1948 by six invading Arab armies.

In going for Israel’s jugular the Quartet cut its own collective wrists and - with assured predictably - failed to get an agreed outcome by the Annapolis expiry date - 1 January 2009.

Abbas’s crocodile tears and slick foot movements are now the order of the day. Like the Annapolis Conference they are a total waste of time.

Perhaps Abbas should now reflect on the only game in town - the Roadmap - and Israel’s 14 reservations to it - and reflect why six years of negotiations have so far come to nought.

Abbas’s cursory dismissal of these 14 reservations by Israel has been one of the major obstacles to achieving any negotiated settlement of the claims by Jews and Arabs to sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza

The first of those reservations immediately indicates why the Roadmap cannot succeed whilst it remains unimplemented:

“In the first phase of the plan and as a condition for progress to the second phase, the Palestinians will complete the dismantling of terrorist organizations (Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front, the Democratic Front Al-Aqsa Brigades and other apparatuses) and their infrastructure, collection of all illegal weapons and their transfer to a third party for the sake of being removed from the area and destroyed, cessation of weapons smuggling and weapons production inside the Palestinian Authority, activation of the full prevention apparatus and cessation of incitement. There will be no progress to the second phase without the fulfillment of all above-mentioned conditions relating to the war against terror. The security plans to be implemented are the Tenet and Zinni plans.”

There is nothing unambiguous in Israel’s demands - dismantle Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the other terrrorist groups, end weapons smuggling and weapons production.

If Abbas seriously wants to return to the Annapolis process then he needs to affirm the parameters on which any negotiations will be conducted and acknowledge the centrality of the letter from President Bush to then Prime Minister of Israel - Ariel Sharon - on 14 April 2004 and accept Israel’s reservations to the Road Map.

The sooner Abbas acknowledges and accepts these two crucial documents as integral to any negotiations, the sooner he might find a partner to do the Turkey Trot with him.

Both partners will still however have to really engage in some scissor like flicks of the feet - if any progress is ever going to be made in achieving the creation of a brand new sovereign Arab State between Israel, Jordan and Egypt.

Fatah and Hamas - Reconciliation Or Divorce Of The Year?

2011-04-16T22:23:00.000-07:00

[Published January 2010]

The world waits with bated breath as the marriage counsellor - Egypt - frantically tries to bring Fatah and Hamas to the mosque to renew their vows once again after a particularly bruising and public slanging match that has seen the West Bank and Gaza split into separate Hamas and Fatah fiefdoms whilst supporters of both factions have been murdered, imprisoned, tortured, discriminated against and had their legs broken over the past two years.

The situation in the past year alone is best summarized by the Cairo Institute For Human Rights Studies in its December 2009 Report titled “Bastion of Immunity, Mirage of Reform” :

“Under the cover of the war in Gaza, Hamas embarked on several repressive measures targeting Fatah members, figures who oppose Hamas’ rule, and suspected collaborators with Israel, and it is suspected that dozens of people were killed, either shot to death or as a result of torture. Hamas personnel also broke the legs and arms of dozens of other people to compel them to stay in their homes. Also, some government employees in Gaza were replaced with Hamas loyalists.

In the West Bank, under the authority of Fatah, hundreds of Hamas sympathizers remain in detention; it is thought that at least two of the detainees have died as a result of torture. The West Bank authorities fired civil servants and teachers suspected of Hamas sympathies, while the salaries of thousands of employees of the Palestinian authority inside the Gaza Strip were suspended. Licensing for associations and companies in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip is now preceded by a security check,and those organizations that have affiliations with the “wrong” party are refused Licenses.”

News reports are very confusing concerning the progress reached by these two antagonists in becoming reconciled once again with each other.

Sri Lanka’s Daily News reports that Hamas head Khaled Meshall visited Saudi Arabia on 2nd January and told Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Affairs Minister:

“We made great steps forward reconciliation,”

though he made clear that Hamas still has some points to settle regarding the Egyptian reconciliation proposal which was made last October and unconditionally signed by Fatah in Cairo but not by Hamas since then.

On the other hand Xinhua News Agency reported that Mohamed Dahlan a member of the Fatah Central Committee ruled out any forthcoming reconciliation stating:

"Hamas movement is the only party that obstructs reaching an inter-Palestinian reconciliation deal… it is also because that Hamas stance is controlled by regional powers."

He was no doubt referring to Hamas’s financial backers, arms suppliers and exporters of terrorism - Syria and Iran.

Yet any delay in reconciling was denied by Hamas spokesman - Ahmed Yousef - who said that reports that Hamas does not want to sign the Egyptian reconciliation protocol are:

“… untrue and rootless. Hamas leaders are ready to go to Cairo once they are invited to sign the pact. Hamas movement doesn’t want to make any change in the text of the Egyptian drafted pact of reconciliation. However, there are some notes that need to be clarified and amended through a session of dialogue, then Hamas will sign the reconciliation agreement"

No doubt any such side understandings will be not be made public making any publicly revealed document not worth the paper it is written on.

However Egypt may not be issuing an invite to Hamas to visit Cairo very soon following protests over an international aid convoy to Gaza, led by George Galloway, which turned violent on 6 January at the border between Egypt and Gaza killing one Egyptian soldier and leaving dozens injured.

Egypt has also come under fire recently from Hamas for stepping up efforts along the Egyptian border to stop tunnel smugglers from moving supplies into Gaza. Egypt’s construction of an underground barrier to cut off the tunnels has drawn criticism from a number of neighbouring Arab states, who call the barrier a “wall of death.”

Egypt maintains that it is protecting its borders, and that aid to Gaza should be sent via internationally recognized channels.

Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is certain to have further exacerbated relations with Hamas by telling Kuwait Times on 6 January:

"They (Egypt) have a right to protect their borders," he said, hinting the tunnels were being "misused".

The international community is certainly anxious to see the reconciliation take place as soon as possible. European Union Foreign Affairs supremo Catherine Ashton told the Strasbourg Parliament on 15 December 2009:

“Today, however, the Palestinians are divided both politically and physically. Credible negotiations require a strong and united Palestinian partner. Israel stands to gain, not lose from a strong Palestinian partner.”

I doubt that Israel will see it this way. Any idea of negotiating on the future status of the West Bank with a team containing any Hamas members would be a certain “no-no”. Israel regards Hamas as a terrorist organization and would be extremely reluctant to engage in negotiations with a joint Fatah-Hamas team.

Israel’s national interest must surely be best served by keeping Hamas from gaining any position of power, control or influence in the West Bank.

Hamas has also made it clear that it will never negotiate with Israel. On 21 June 2008 Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan slammed negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and told Xinhua News Agency :

"We are not thinking of trying the ridiculous negotiations that the others have tried but failed to remove a single checkpoint in West Bank….

adding that

"the Zionist enemy must depart and recognize the Palestinian people’s rights."

Article 13 of the Hamas Covenant 1988 also makes this refusal to negotiate with Israel abundantly clear in stating:

“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavours."

All in all the prospects of reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah look very bleak indeed - especially when one looks at the provisions of Article 27 of the Hamas Covenant which make it clear that Hamas is opposed to a secular State of Palestine as proposed by Fatah - the major organization that controls the Palestine Liberation Organization:

"Secularism completely contradicts religious ideology. Attitudes, conduct and decisions stem from ideologies. That is why, with all our appreciation for the Palestinian Liberation Organization - and what it can develop into - and without belittling its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, we are unable to exchange the present or future Islamic Palestine with the secular idea. The Islamic nature of Palestine is part of our religion and whoever takes his religion lightly is a loser. The day the Palestinian Liberation Organization adopts Islam as its way of life, we will become its soldiers, and fuel for its fire that will burn the enemies.”

Therein lies the basic problem forever preventing any lasting reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah - unless Fatah abandons the secular State and adopts the formation of an Islamic State as its goal.

For Hamas to also give up - and surrender - its present territorial power over Gaza to Fatah seems a most improbable scenario.

If however Hamas and Fatah were - for whatever reason - to eventually reach a reconciliation of convenience they would certainly not be sleeping in the same bedroom. Neither could possibly trust the other after what has occurred between them over the past two years.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Join in this discussion

2010-12-23T13:24:00.000-08:00

Professor John Quigley - Professor of Law at Ohio State University - has urged America to recognize a Palestinian State. His article can be viewed at:
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/12/23/3277847/us-can-hot-wire-mideast-peace.html

I have posted a reply and urge others to do likewise. I will respond to all comments to my post.

Brainwashed Or Brain Dead?

2010-12-03T16:14:00.000-08:00

Editor: When you read Marty Morrison's article you will see how Goebbels was right: in claiming that if you repeat a lie often enough, it is believed. I did what we all have to do when this happens and responded to her anti-Israel article with "just the facts", just the provable facts, point by point.

Hats off to the Independent Australian as well for publishing both the article and my response.

[Published 27 November 2010]

Marty Morrison's article ‘Marty In Palestine’ (9.11.2010) contains factually false and/or misleading statements, contends David Singer.

1. “The sympathy that the world community had for Jews following the horrors of World War II blinded people to the dispossession of the Palestinians.”

In fact world sympathy for the Jews had been established after World War 1 with the creation of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1920 calling for the “reconstitution of the Jewish National Home” in Palestine after thousands of years of exile, anti-Semitism and pogroms.

The Arabs have never recognized this unanimous and binding legal declaration by the League and this has been the source of their misfortune ever since.

2.” historians say the Palestinians have inhabited the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Dead Sea for more than 13 centuries.”

There was no designated group called “Palestinians” until 1964. During the 400 years rule of the Ottoman Empire (1519-1919) the population was divided into “Jews”, “Moslems” and “Christians”. This practice continued during the Mandate (1920 -1948). The Mandate document itself only referred to “the existing non-Jewish communities”. The UN partiton Plan (1947) only spoke of a "Jewish" state and an "Arab" state.

3. “In 1917 at the time of the Balfour Declaration Palestinians comprised 70 per cent of the population and owned more than 90 per cent of the land.”

The Arabs only owned 8% of the land and the Jews 6%. The rest was state land vested in Turkey and forming part of the Ottoman Empire.

4. “One way to do this is to stand with the Palestinians and Israeli activists when homes are being destroyed, when more Jewish settlements are being constructed on Palestinian land”

Homes have been destroyed pursuant to court decisions ruling their construction illegal or as a result of the application of Jordanian laws still applicable in the West Bank. The land is not “Palestinian land”. It is at this point of time "no man's land". Its legal status is that it forms part of the remaining 5% of the territory of the Mandate for Palestine still unallocated in accordance with the terms of the Mandate. Jews are legally entitled to settle anywhere in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate and article 80 of the UN Charter.

5. “One can understand the Palestinians’ frustration and apprehension for the future when one considers that when the United Nations partitioned Palestine into two states in 1947 the Jewish state received 55 per cent of the land and the Arab Palestinians and Christian Palestinians got 45 per cent of the land”

More than 70% of the 55% offered to the Jews comprised the arid and sparsely populated Negev desert. The 45% offered to the Arabs was mostly the fertile and contained the majority of the Arab populated areas. The Arabs rejected the UN offer as they had previously done in 1937 when rejecting the Peel Report recommendations.

The Arabs could have had what they now demand in 2010 - at any time between 1948-1967. Had they been prepared to negotiate and recognize Israel in the five years following the 1967 War the political landscape today would have been entirely different. Their refusal to accept less than 100% of the West Bank and Gaza over the last 17 years and their expressed desire to destroy Israel has seen their position further deteriorate.That is their prerogative but it is a bit late to cry over spilt milk. Their leaders have led them – and apparently well intended persons such as Marty – up the proverbial garden path.

6. “In the ensuing war the Israelis captured even more land, so that at the cease-fire the Jews were in control of three-quarters - leaving just 22 per cent of land for the Palestinians (the West Bank and Gaza)."

The Jews only controlled 17%. Jordan controlled 83%, which it unified into one country with the consent of the West Bank Arabs in 1950. Only Great Britain and Pakistan recognized that reunification. The Arabs could have created a separate state out of that 83% at any time between 1948-1967 but did not do so and did not request one. They were the architects of their own missed opportunities.

7. “The boundary at this time came to be known as the Green Line.”

There was no boundary – only an armistice line that had been in existence following the end of hostilities in 1949.

8. “After the war in 1967 the Israeli army conquered all of Mandated Palestine”

Incorrect. 78% of Mandated Palestine had been granted independence in 1946 and was not conquered by Israel in 1967. The West Bank (Judea and Samaria are the Biblical names for this area) and Gaza – conquered by Israel in 1967 – was only 5% of Mandated Palestine.

9.” I hate to write this but I firmly believe that Israel, by and large, wants the Palestinians to disappear and are therefore deliberately colonising the West Bank”

Israel is clearly failing in this “objective” if Marty only took the time to look at the increasing West Bank Arab population and improvements in their standard of living. Since 95% of the West Bank Arab population is now under total Palestinian Authority administration after the Oslo Agreements in 1993. Marty's “firm belief” is a load of nonsense and amounts to racial vilification,

10. “Jews are invited to come to live in the West Bank from every country on earth.”

Why does this worry Marty? Jews have this right legally granted to them under the Mandate and article 80 of the UN Charter. They had done this prior to 1948 before they were driven out of the West Bank by six invading Arab armies.

11. “Settlers live freely without any of the curtailments of the Palestinians”

The Jews live behind barbed wire and stringent security restrictions with their schools and public places all under security guard protection and for good reason.

12. “I realise that the burden of my account is at odds with the information supplied by the skilled Israeli public relations officers and government ministers.”

Marty's account sure is. She appears to have relied on a whole lot of dishonest material given to her by her Arab hosts. It is a pity she didn’t check the veracity of this material before rushing into print. Had she done so she might have had a better perspective on the conflict between Jews and Arabs that has gone on for the last 130 years.

West Bank - Jews Worldwide Have Legal Rights

2010-11-27T02:47:00.000-08:00

[Published January 2010]

Catherine Ashton - High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission - was merely parroting European Union policy when she told the European Parliament in Strasbourg on 30 December 2009:

"East Jerusalem is occupied territory, together with the rest of the West Bank.”

It was justification enough however for Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon to pen an article in the Wall Street Journal on 30 December 2009 pointing out that Israel considers these territories to be “disputed territories” rather than “occupied territories” - the nomenclature adopted by the United Nations General Assembly and the International Court of Justice.

Mr Ayalon stated the reasons for Israel‘s position as follows:

“That’s because the land now known as the West Bank cannot be considered "occupied" in the legal sense of the word as it had not attained recognized sovereignty before Israel’s conquest. Contrary to some beliefs there has never been a Palestinian state, and no other nation has ever established Jerusalem as its capital despite it being under Islamic control for hundreds of years.”

Mr Ayalon criticised the perception that:

“... Israel is occupying stolen land and that the Palestinians are the only party with national, legal and historic rights to it. Not only is this morally and factually incorrect, but the more this narrative is being accepted,the less likely the Palestinians feel the need to come to the negotiating table.”

Mr Ayalon was affirming that the West Bank was at present “no man’s land” in which no recognized State - including Israel - had yet attained sovereignty.

The current claimants - Israel on behalf of the Jewish people and the Palestinian Authority (PA) on behalf of the Palestinian Arabs - are yet to finally negotiate on and conclude the allocation of sovereignty between them based on their competing claims.

It was therefore particularly pleasing that Ms Ashton stated:

“ Negotiations should be based on international law and respect previous agreements.”

This should be seen as a welcome statement from the European Union since the international law dealing with the legal status of the West Bank and Jewish rights to claim sovereignty there has been consistently and studiously - perhaps even deliberately - overlooked since Israel‘s capture of the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is a prime example of such oversight.

In its 2004 advisory opinion on the legality of the security barrier constructed by Israel - the ICJ omitted to even mention - let alone consider - the international law applicable to the entitlement of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in the West Bank by close settlement on West Bank land - including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.

These rights were vested in the Jewish people pursuant to Articles 94 and 95 of the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine 1920 and Article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

The failure of the ICJ to consider these Jewish rights is exacerbated by the fact that one of the Judges who heard the security barrier case - Judge Elaraby - gave this warning to his fellow 14 judges sitting on that case:
"... the international legal status of the Palestinian Territory merits more comprehensive treatment" .

Judge Elaraby identified the need for such a review saying:

"A historical survey is relevant to the question posed by the General Assembly, for it serves as the background to understanding the legal status of the Palestinian Territory on the one hand and underlines the special and continuing responsibility of the General Assembly on the other. This may appear as academic, without relevance to the present events. The present is however determined by the accumulation of past events and no reasonable and fair concern for the future can possibly disregard a firm grasp of past events. In particular, when on one or more than one occasion, the rule of law was consistently sidestepped."

The failure of the ICJ to consider the legal status of the West Bank was therefore inexplicable.

Judge Elaraby continued:

"The point of departure, or one can say in legal jargon, the critical date,is the League of Nations Mandate which was entrusted to Great Britain"

True the Arab League has never accepted the Mandate in which inalienable Jewish rights to closely settle the West Bank were created. But they were created by the unanimous vote of the then members of the League of Nations, still do exist for the benefit of the Jewish people today and are entitled to be taken into consideration in negotiations on the future sovereignty of the West Bank.

The Jerusalem Post reported on 25 September 2008 that there were 13.3 million people around the world who define themselves as Jewish and who do not belong to any other faith according to a survey conducted by Prof.Sergio Della Pergola from the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute and the Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University.

5.55 million Jews live in Israel and 7.75 million live outside Israel, meaning 58.7 percent of World Jewry now resides outside the Jewish state.

The reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in the West Bank is as much a concern for a large number of those Jews living outside Israel as those who live within Israel - if not for themselves going to live there then for their children and future generations who might want to do so.

Ms Ashton is therefore to be commended on drawing attention to the need to base any resumed negotiations on international law.

Ms Ashton further stated:

“The EU will continue to support and work closely with the US via the Quartet [America, Russia, EU and the United Nations - author]. The Quartet needs reinvigoration. The current stalemate in the peace process demands it. The Quartet can provide the careful yet dynamic mediation that is required.”

The first steps in that invigoration should involve the Quartet gaining a full understanding of:

1. The current legal status of the West Bank and
2. Jewish rights to claim sovereignty in the West Bank under international law.

Ms Ashton said she will be travelling to the region shortly adding:

“ My main objective will be to meet the main actors and see first hand how the EU can be a force for change. I think we all share the overall and overriding priority of a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Not negotiations for negotiations sake but negotiations to achieve a peace deal and turn the page. We cannot, and nor, I doubt can the region tolerate another round of fruitless negotiations. Negotiations have taken place on and off for several years starting with the Oslo Declaration of Principles signed in September 1993.”

Negotiations to achieve that peace deal can only realistically take place within the context of the European Union recognizing Jewish rights to sovereignty in the West Bank and comprehending the current legal status of the West Bank.

Otherwise her visit to the region will end up in total failure like the hundreds - if not thousands - of earlier attempts at peace making by well intended but totally misinformed envoys.

Headhunt Hamas or Heil Haniyeh

2010-11-27T02:26:00.000-08:00

[Published January 2010]

What is Israel - and the World - to conclude when Gaza’s Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh addresses 100000 cheering Gazan Arabs on 14 December 2009 to mark 22 years since the formation of Hamas and tells them:

“We will never give up on Palestine from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea.

It is not enough for Hamas to liberate Gaza, nor to establish an emirate in Gaza, nor a state, nor an independent entity… Hamas strives to liberate all of Palestine.”

Is this the rant of a madman or a leader on a deadly - but seemingly hopeless - mission to get rid of 6.5 million Jews who live in what was formerly 22% of the British Mandate for Palestine - today called Israel and the West Bank?

When Haniyeh talks of liberating “all of Palestine“ does he also include the remaining 78% that is today called Jordan?

Is his territorial conquest only related to “all of Palestine” or does it extend far beyond Palestine’s former boundaries?

One can draw an analogy in Haniyeh’s message with a disbelieving world which blithely ignored Hitler’s warnings in his book “Mein Kampf” - written in 1923 - calling for territorial conquest and a war on the Jews. 16 years later and because of such complacency World War 2 resulted.

Hitler was in 1923 the failed leader of a coup, possibly a future potential leader but without power, land or an army and languishing in prison. His writings in 1923 could have been regarded as no more than expressed fantasies incapable of fulfillment.

Hamas- formed in 1987 - had its own constitution which clearly set out its quest for the identical goals as Hitler wrote about in 1923 - territorial conquest and a war on the Jews - but in addition contained provisions calling for the subjugation of Christianity and Judaism to Islam, the defeat of secularism and the overthrow of secular Arab regimes making peace with Israel.

The major difference from 1923 was that the Jews now had their own country - Israel - and an army to defend them. Israel represented the major obstacle to Hamas achieving all its stated goals.

This made the Hamas fantasy far more difficult to believe as its sights were directed towards the improbable destruction of Israel as the first step in achieving its international ambitions.

Hamas in 1987 - like Hitler in 1923 - was a dream without any foundation of power, land or an army.

Yet today Hamas exercises power and rules over territory which contains 1.5 million citizens. Gaza is home to a large number of terrorist groups many of whom swear allegiance to Hamas and others who are allowed to operate from Gaza with impunity.

Hamas has an army of well trained and disciplined fighters and is steadily building up a huge supply of rockets and armaments in pursuit of its goal to liberate all of Palestine.

The acquisition of nuclear weapons by Hamas cannot be discounted.

Haniyeh’s coup in ousting the Palestinian Authority from political control of Gaza in 2007 did not fail as Hitler did in 1923 - but was achieved in a matter of days with spectacular success.

Whilst the governments of Canada, the European Union, Israel, Japan, Australia, and the United States classify Hamas as a terrorist organization - Haniyeh basks in the international limelight with such persons as Iran’s Ahmadinejad, Syria’s Assad, Britain’s George Galloway and former American President Jimmy Carter beating a path to his door.

Haniyeh hides behind the findings of the Goldstone Report believing Israel’s hands are tied in the actions it can take in future to uproot Hamas from Gaza following its unsuccessful attempt to do so one year ago.

Haniyeh basks in the international opprobrium following Israel’s invasion that sees well meaning but ill informed organizations and members of the public focusing their anger on Israel for seeking to protect its citizens from threats like that being uttered by Haniyeh - instead calling for boycotts of - and divestment from - anything that has to do with Israel.

These sympathisers ignore the provisions of the Hamas Covenant which provide that:

1. Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction of the principles of Hamas… These conferences are only ways of setting the infidels in the land of the Moslems as arbitrators.
2. There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavours.
3. Liberation of Palestine is an individual duty for every Moslem wherever he may be. It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Moslem generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.
4. Freemasons, Rotary Clubs and Lions Clubs, are nothing more than cells of subversion and saboteurs… These organizations operate in the absence of Islam …. The Islamic peoples should perform their role in confronting the conspiracies of these saboteurs. The day Islam is in control of guiding the affairs of life, these organizations, hostile to humanity and Islam, will be obliterated.
5. Jews were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate,making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration,formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.
6. Leaving the circle of conflict with Israel is a major act of treason and it will bring curse on its perpetrators. Egypt has already been cast out of the conflict, to a very great extent through the treacherous Camp David Accords, and she has been trying to drag other countries into similar agreements in order to push them out of the circle of conflict. [Jordan has since signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 - author]
7. Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.
8. Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions - Islam,Christianity and Judaism - to coexist in peace and quiet with each other. Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam.
9. Secular thought is diametrically opposed to religious thought.

These are no longer expressed fantasies being dreamt up by someone powerless to execute them - nor are they limited to hatred of Jews only. Christians, secularists,and Arab States making peace with Israel are also targets.

From the Hamas perspective the time for achieving these goals is rapidly approaching - particularly as consistent efforts are made by many in the international community to delegitimize the State of Israel.

There is no longer any room for complacency - as might have existed in 1987. Appeasement is not an option.

The defeat of Hamas and its hatred filled agenda, its removal from Gaza and the freeing of Gaza’s citizens fed up with the devastation wreaked by Hamas control must be confronted and dealt with before Hamas sucks the world into another unwanted war.

Palestine - Two-State Option Stymied

2010-11-27T02:02:00.000-08:00

[ Published December 2009]

Any hope of creating a new Arab state between Israel, Egypt and Jordan has been stymied after the following statement was made by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on December 28:

“Today, 8 months after our government was formed, we have formulated a broad national consensus on the principles to approach the negotiations with the Palestinians in order to achieve peace and security. The two principles are clear, there are others - the recognition of the state of Israel as a Jewish state, and of course, security measures that guarantee effective demilitarization and other principles that I have already expressed.”

These two principles -

1.recognizing Israel as a Jewish State and
2.demilitarization of a future Palestinian State

- were first stipulated by Israel as two of fourteen reservations made by Israel at the time of its acceptance of the Road Map issued by President Bush in April 2003.

They have been consistently maintained by all Israeli Governments since then.

Reservation 5 made by Israel to President Bush stated :

“The character of the provisional Palestinian state will be determined through negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. The provisional state will have provisional borders and certain aspects of sovereignty, be fully demilitarized with no military forces, but only with police and internal security forces of limited scope and armaments, be without the authority to undertake defense alliances or military cooperation, and Israeli control over the entry and exit of all persons and cargo, as well as of its air space and electromagnetic spectrum.”

Reservation 6 stated:

“ In connection to both the introductory statements and the final settlement, declared references must be made to Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and to the waiver of any right of return for Palestinian refugees to the State of Israel.”

On 23 May 2003, then Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice made the following statement from the White House:

"The roadmap was presented to the Government of Israel with a request from the President that it respond with contributions to this document to advance true peace. The United States Government received a response from the Government of Israel, explaining its significant concerns about the roadmap.

The United States shares the view of the Government of Israel that these are real concerns, and will address them fully and seriously in the implementation of the roadmap to fulfil the President’s vision of June 24, 2002.”

On 25 May 2003, the Israeli Cabinet met and by a majority resolved:

“Based on the 23 May 2003 statement of the United States Government, in which the United States committed to fully and seriously address Israel’s comments to the Roadmap during the implementation phase, the Prime Minister announced on 23 May 2003 that Israel has agreed to accept the steps set out in the Roadmap.

The Government of Israel affirms the Prime Minister’s announcement, and resolves that all of Israel’s comments, as addressed in the Administration’s statement, will be implemented in full during the implementation phase of the Roadmap.”

Palestinian Authority President - Mahmoud Abbas - told Haaretz on 28 May 2003 that the 14 reservations made by Israel had nothing to do with him. He said:

“They don’t interest me,”

Haaretz reported that as far as Abbas was concerned, the only document that mattered was the road map that was finalized in December 2002 and handed over to the parties at the end of April 2003. Nothing more, nothing less. Abbas continued:

“We do not accept each side picking and choosing only those specific elements that are convenient for them in the road map.

The map was prepared last December and we accepted it, despite our own comments and reservations. We wanted to give this initiative a chance, but it’s impossible to continue inventing comments and reservations after it was submitted.”

This was a very intransigent - indeed foolish and naïve - attitude to adopt in the face of President Bush having specifically invited both sides to comment on the Road Map.

The response from President Bush to Israel’s reservations acknowledged that Israel’s concerns were real and they would be fully and seriously addressed during the implementation phase.

It is inconceivable that President Obama would repudiate the Bush assurances given to Israel.

Both principles have been rejected by the Palestinian Authority on numerous occasions in the past and no doubt will be met by further adverse comment after Mr Netanyahu’s announcement this week.

Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat commented on 16 June 2009 in Haaretz on the issue of demilitarization:

“He (Netanyahu) will have to wait 1,000 years before he finds one Palestinian who will go along with him with this feeble state.”

President Abbas told Reuters on 27 April 2009 on recognizing Israel as the Jewish State:

“I do not accept it. It is not my job to give a description of the state. Name yourself the Hebrew Socialist Republic—it is none of my business.”

Israel’s reservation went far beyond an issue of terminology - and Abbas knew it. It was resisted by Abbas because it was seen as denying millions of Arabs the right to emigrate to Israel thereby changing the demographics of Israel to seriously dilute or even overtake the Jewish majority.

Rejection by the Palestinian Authority of demilitarization and the recognition of Israel as the Jewish State coupled with rejection by Israel of the Palestinian Authority’s demands that Israel cede sovereignty over every square metre of the West Bank and remove 500000 Jews presently living there amount to a joint public declaration by both sides that any further negotiations between them - if ever resumed - are going to be a complete waste of time and will achieve no result.

The Palestinian Authority has shown no interest in resuming negotiations with Israel since it announced a ten months moratorium on housing construction in the West Bank on 25 November.

The announcement now made by Mr Netanyahu will only act as a further excuse for the Palestinian Authority to continue to refuse to negotiate.

The Palestinian Authority’s use by date as a negotiating partner with Israel to determine the allocation of sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza has surely now been reached.

Exchange of Letters In The Globe and Mail

2010-09-19T16:16:00.000-07:00

[Published 16 September 2010]

From: Watching China

To: David Singer

Dear Mr. Singer;

Why should the Arabs negotiate? Why should they have approved of the giveaway of Palestine by those who didn't own it?

You can quote all the nonsense you want, but the one salient fact is that Palestine does not belong to the Jews; it belongs to the Arabs who inhabited it for the past 2,000 years.

Yes, the UK promised to give it to you, but wasn't theirs to give. And now you forcibly occupy 95% of it and are still salivating for the remaining 5%, at which time your victory will be complete.

It's THEIR land. You took it, and they want it back. End of discussion.

************************************************************************************

From: David Singer

To: Watching China

You state:

"You can quote all the nonsense you want, but the one salient fact is that Palestine does not belong to the Jews; it belongs to the Arabs who inhabited it for the past 2,000 years."

Sorry but your "salient fact" is wrong.

Palestine did not belong to Arabs - or the Jews - who lived there at the end of World War 1. It had belonged to the Ottoman Empire for the previous 400 years and before that to a string of conquerors following Rome's conquest of Eretz Yisrael - the sovereign state of the Jews - 2000 years ago.

You are confusing sovereignty with habitation.

When the British and French conquered Palestine they were perfectly entitled to allocate sovereignty of the conquered Ottoman territories as they determined and as was approved by the League of Nations. The Arabs were to get 99.999% and the Jews 0.001%

You further state:

"And now you forcibly occupy 95% of it and are still salivating for the remaining 5%, at which time your victory will be complete."

Israel is the sovereign ruler in only 17% of the Mandate. Jordan is the sovereign ruler in 77% of the Mandate - and the West Bank and Gaza makes up the remaining 6% where sovereignty still remains unallocated between Jews and Arabs. Your percentages are pure fiction.

Israel has agreed to cede its claim to more than 90% of the West Bank and Gaza which has been rejected by the PA.

If the Palestinian Arabs do not want to negotiate that is their perfect entitlement. The PLO Charter makes it clear that they regard the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate as being null and void. That is the reality and the Palestinian Arabs show no intention of being bound by international law.

They are paying - and have paid - a heavy price for taking this stance.

With 21 Arab Moslem states around the world still continuing to deny the Jews the right to have their own state in their biblical - and internationally sanctioned - homeland the prospects for a peaceful outcome seems very bleak indeed.

My letter published in Palestine Note

2010-09-19T16:07:00.000-07:00

[Published 18 September 2010]

To: M J Rosenberg

Israel requires the PA to accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish State because the PLO Constitution contains the following clause:

"The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong."

Perhaps if you can get them to unequivocally revoke this clause (and some other choice clauses) your argument [that Israel should not require acceptance and recognition by the PA of Israel as a Jewish State] might have merit.

And why is the only alternative to the "two-state solution" the "one state solution"?

What about dividing sovereignty of the West Bank between Israel and Jordan which would see Jordan probably getting sovereignty in about 90% of the West Bank, virtually return the West Bank territory to the status quo that existed in June 1967 and involve no Jew or Arab having to leave their current homes in the West Bank.

I bet you and King Abdullah could negotiate the new boundary in six weeks. There is already an existing peace treaty with Israel that deals with contentious issues such as water, refugees and Jerusalem.

The solution is in front of your eyes. Open them and see the possibilities.

Palestine - Netanyahu Courts Disaster Without Political Gain

2010-09-15T00:10:00.000-07:00

[Published December 2009]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ten months suspension of residential house construction in the West Bank reached Israel’s High Court of Justice on 23 December - without any sign of the Palestinian Authority showing the slightest interest in resuming negotiations one month after the moratorium was announced on 25 November.

During the past month Jewish residents angered by the suspension have mounted large demonstrations and clashed with police and building inspectors seeking access to settlements. Tensions have been rising between Jewish and Arab neighbours.

The Yasuf mosque arson on 13 December and the murder yesterday of a 45 years old Jewish father of 7 in a terrorist ambush are grim portents of what may happen in future in the present state of indecisiveness caused by the moratorium.

Civil disobedience is set to continue which the Government has indicated will be met with firm resistance by the police and civil authorities - and if necessary by the Army - to ensure the moratorium is observed and no new residences are constructed.

Thousands of would be occupants of dwellings slated for building or halted by the moratorium in various stages of construction - not to mention builders and building suppliers - will suffer huge financial losses requiring compensation claims being made against Israel. It is impossible to quantify the damages that will be have to be paid at this time but they obviously will be substantial.

Add to this the public cost of providing additional police, building inspectors, possibly deploying large parts of the army to assist in enforcing the moratorium and the costs of prosecutions for, and demolition of, illegal building work - and you have a picture of chaos and confusion set to involve Israel’s courts and civil authorities for years to come.

That Israel is not prepared for the consequences of its moratorium was made clear by the High Court of Justice which on 23 December gave the State 30 days to let it know when a compensation claims court included in the military order freezing settlement construction would be established and begin work.

The panel of three justices, headed by Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch, demanded to know

1. when the compensation claims committee would be established,
2. when it would start working,
3. what the grounds would be for applying to it,
4. how applications would be filed,
5. what the hearing procedures would be and
6. what body the settlers could turn to if they were dissatisfied with the committee’s decisions.

This decision is only going to cause greater distress and anxiety for those affected by the moratorium as a further 30 days is given to the State to provide these details whilst the moratorium continues to drift for another month with no assured response from the Palestinian Authority on the resumption of negotiations.

One must seriously question the continuation of the moratorium in the absence of any signal from the Palestinian Authority of its intention to resume negotiations.

The idea of a moratorium is not in issue. It has been done before. If it achieved its intended result of negotiations being resumed then it can be justified - even if those negotiations eventually lead to nowhere which is the most likely scenario that will occur.

Menachem Begin instituted a three months moratorium on settlement construction when he commenced negotiations with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. But the distinction then from the present moratorium is that it was given in consideration of the actual negotiations being undertaken.

This is not the case in the present moratorium where there are no such understandings or commitment.

Netanyahu’s failure to place a deadline on the continuation of the moratorium being dependent on the Palestinian Authority resuming negotiations - only encourages the Palestinan Authority to sit around and do nothing for 10 months ostensibly trying to extract a more comprehensive moratorium from Israel including a total freeze on any construction whatsoever in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Meanwhile the financial and social costs to Israel arising from the moratorium soar exponentially as the time frame of the moratorium increases and civil disobedience escalates.

Any expectation of lasting political gain being obtained by Israel by announcing the moratorium is minimal.

Although American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the moratorium as “unprecedented” nevertheless US Special Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell said on 27 November:

“The United States also disagrees with some Israeli actions in Jerusalem affecting Palestinians in areas such as housing, including the continuing pattern of evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes,”

It is precisely these Israeli actions that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has given for refusing to accept the current limited moratorium and seeking its widening to cover such actions.

The Americans can therefore hardly blame Abbas if he sits on his heels for 10 months and does nothing whilst professing to express his earnest desire to resume negotiations if Israel ceases any such evictions and demolitions during the moratorium.

Freezing all settlement construction has been urged for years by the Quartet - America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations. Again the Quartet cannot complain at Abbas’s demand that the moratorium be extended to all such construction - not merely residential houses.

Whilst President Obama had urged Abbas and Netanyahu to enter into negotiations without preconditions prior to the current moratorium offered by Israel, Abbas will lose little support from the Quartet - if any - as he continues to refuse to negotiate until there is a total freeze.

Netanyahu should have prevented the current state of uncertainty arising by initially putting a deadline on the resumption of negotiations and declaring that in default the moratorium would end and a resumption of unrestricted building activity in the West Bank would immediately follow.

As time drags on the folly and consequences of failing to stipulate this time constraint becomes clear for all to see. Overlooking such a small but highly significant detail is unforgivable.

The moratorium in its present form is bad news for Israel and a classic blunder that has caused and will cause significant financial and social consequences for Israel and its citizens until it is rectified.

Perhaps Netanyahu will come to his senses now that the issue has come before the Courts.

The sooner a deadline for the resumption of negotiations is announced by Israel - the sooner some clarity and certainty will be established to replace what is developing into a very tense and dangerous political void.

Palestine - Perpetuating Propaganda Prevents Peace

2010-09-11T01:11:00.000-07:00

[Published December 2009]

Propaganda can be a very effective ploy in promoting false viewpoints and opinions and has been used by the Arabs with great success in the Israel-Arab conflict.

No more has this been evident than in their concerted and continuing efforts to mislead and confuse world opinion in relation to the location of the geographical entity once called “Palestine” and the allocation of sovereignty that has taken place within that territory between Jews and Arabs over the last 90 years.

These are not esoteric statements but have real practical consequences for any lasting solution—be it “the two state solution”, “the one state solution” or any other solution that might be proposed for ending the territorial claims by both Arabs and Jews to the territory once called “Palestine”.

Arab propaganda has created the impression that Israel is located on 78% of Palestine whilst the West Bank and Gaza comprise the remaining 22% of Palestine - thereby claiming that the Jews possess sovereignty in the major part of Palestine.

In fact Israel is only 16% of historic Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza is 6% of historic Palestine and Jordan is 78% of historic Palestine - which substantiates that it is in fact the Arabs that possess sovereignty in the major part of Palestine.

In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour as recently as 4 November 2009 Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator with Israel still continued to promote this canard against the Jews stating:

“We have accepted and recognized Israel on 78 percent of historic Palestine and accepted to have our state on the remaining 22 percent of the land. Now, it seems to me that Mr. Netanyahu wants to partition this 22 percent. If this is the case, this is a non-starter.”

Ms Amanpour accepted Mr Erekat’s response without demur. She obviously believed what he was telling her - and so did the hundreds of thousands of viewers watching the interview.

This statement was repeated as fact not once - but twice - by well known Israeli commentator Akiva Eldar on 21 December when he wrote the following in an article in Haaretz:

“Without receiving anything from Israel in return, the Palestinian National Security Council declared a state [in 1988] on territory captured in the Six-Day War - 22 percent of Mandatory Palestine”

and was repeated later in the same article:

“In the eyes of the world in general, not to mention the Arab world, this 22 percent is not up for negotiation.”

These statements are utter nonsense, factually misleading and hinder - rather than assist - in efforts to find a negotiated settlement for the following reasons:

1. They fail to take into account that a sovereign Arab state already exists in 78% of Palestine and that any negotiations on the allocation of sovereignty in the remaining 6% of Palestine - without the inclusion of Jordan - are destined to fail.
2. The world has recognized by the passing of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 that Israel will not be required to withdraw from the entire West Bank and Gaza but only to “secure and recognized borders.”
3. America has indicated that circumstances on the ground - namely the presence of 500000 Jews living in territory captured by Israel in 1967 - make it impossible for 100% of the West Bank and Gaza to become sovereign Arab territory.
4. The declaration of statehood by the PLO in 1988 was meaningless since the PLO never had and until this day has not achieved effective control over the area claimed by it.

Mr Eldar - not content with supporting Mr Erekat’s propaganda on the false geographical location of Palestine - also in the same article promotes another piece of choice propaganda uttered by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as recently as 15 December 2009 when he stated:

“We will renew negotiations if the settlements are completely halted and the 1967 borders recognized as the borders of the Palestinian state,”

Mr Eldar’s article is itself titled ” Talk about 1967 borders, not settlement blocs.”

In the body of the article he makes mention of this fact once again when writing:

” Until we [ Israel] reach an agreement with the Palestinians on the basis of the 1967 borders…"

However the references to “1967 borders” by both President Abbas and Mr Eldar are factually incorrect and misleading.

There were no “1967 borders” between Jordan and Israel or Egypt and Israel in 1967. They were only armistice lines that had been fixed in 1949 after the Jews had repelled six Arab armies that had invaded the fledgling Jewish State of Israel the day after it announced its independence on 14 May 1948.

It was not until 1979 that Israel’s border with Egypt was settled in negotiations. It was not until 1994 that Israel’s border with Jordan was demarcated in negotiations.

Specifically the 1994 Peace Treaty between Jordan and Israel stipulated that the defined and agreed boundary between their respective states:

“...is the permanent, secure and recognised international boundary between Israel and Jordan, without prejudice to the status of any territories that came under Israeli military government control in 1967.”

The permanent boundary in the Peace Treaty between Israel and Egypt is

“..the recognized international boundary between Egypt and the former mandated territory of Palestine…without prejudice to the issue of the status of the Gaza Strip.”

The status of both the West Bank and Gaza are therefore still undetermined and have to be decided between the current negotiating parties—Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Both maintain claims to exercise sovereignty in these areas in which at present neither has sovereignty.

Abbas’s demand that he be granted sovereignty in 100% of the territory is a demand and nothing more.

Describing the armistice lines as “borders” has become an integral part of propaganda used by the Arabs to suggest that the West Bank and Gaza are and have always been under Arab sovereignty. This is wrong and needs to be corrected whenever the term “1967 borders” is used. The Arabs have no monopoly or entitlement to any part of the West Bank or Gaza until their claim and Israel’s claim have been negotiated and settled.

The terms appearing in Mr Eldar’s article in Haaretz to describe the 1967 armistice lines as “1967 borders” and the West Bank and Gaza as being “22% of mandatory Palestine” are very concerning and does the paper’s editor no credit.

Accuracy in reporting should be a primary goal of one of Israel’s major newspapers. Adopting the incorrect language of your enemies is shameful and misleads its readers into adopting views based on false facts.

I cannot believe that Mr Eldar is not fully aware of the true facts concerning these two fundamental issues that must materially impact on the conduct of negotiations designed to end the Israel-Arab conflict.

If Mr Eldar is innocently parroting the falsehoods of Mr Erekat and President Abbas then he really shouldn’t be writing op-eds on current issues involving Israel and its Arab neighbours.

Haaretz needs to raise its game or risk losing a substantial part of its readership and its journalistic integrity as well.

Palestine - Abbas Aborts Any Two State Solution

2010-09-11T00:55:00.000-07:00

[Published December 2009]

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has now made it abundantly clear that he does not intend to enter into further negotiations with Israel to create a new Arab State between Israel, Jordan and Egypt - by insisting on conditions for resuming negotiations with Israel that prejudge fundamental issues that were supposed to be only settled in negotiations.

Speaking before the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee in Ramallah on 15 December Abbas said:

“We will renew negotiations if the settlements are completely halted and the 1967 borders recognized as the borders of the Palestinian state,”

In demanding that the 1967 “borders” - they are in fact only armistice lines - be recognized as the “borders” of the Palestinian state before negotiations are resumed - Abbas has repudiated one of the key issues that was to be decided by negotiations.

His demand is both peremptory and racist - amounting effectively to an ultimatum that Israel agree to 500000 Jews being evicted from their present homes and businesses in the West Bank prior to the Palestinian Authority even agreeing to resume negotiations on the future of the West Bank’s Jewish population.

Abbas has now reached the end of the road of no return in making the irrational demands he has.

In welcoming Israel’s 10 months moratorium on residential building activity in the West Bank as “unprecedented” in an effort to induce Abbas to resume negotiations with Israel - United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had declared on 25 November:

“We believe that through good faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome that ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish State with secure and recognized borders.”

The Secretary of State’s expressed belief that Abbas would agree to land swaps has now been comprehensively and publicly rejected by Abbas in his latest statement.

Abbas’s statement also amounts to a rejection of United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 which do not require that Israel withdraw from all the land it occupied following the Six Day War in 1967.

There seems to be a general ignorance about the status in international law of the West Bank and Gaza which are at present not under the recognized sovereignty of any State.

In international law the West Bank and Gaza are the only remaining areas of the Mandate for Palestine still unallocated between Jews and Arabs pursuant to the 1922 League of Nations Mandate whose provisions still apply today by virtue of Article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

Both Jews and Arabs claim the West Bank and Gaza - which are “no man’s land “ in common parlance.

Although all Jews living in Gaza evacuated their homes there in 2005 no formal abandonment of Jewish claims to sovereignty in Gaza has yet been conceded by Israel.

Both Jews and Arabs maintain claims to sovereignty in the West Bank that can only be peacefully resolved by negotiations between them.

The Palestinian Authority has now made it plainly clear that it is not prepared to enter into further negotiations with Israel to settle their respective claims to sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza by stipulating the Palestinian Authority be granted sovereignty in 100% and not one square metre less as a pre-condition to resuming negotiations.

Israel now needs to find an Arab negotiating partner or partners that will not demand such a pre-condition. Until that happens the unsatisfactory status quo will continue - which clearly is in no one’s interest.

In response to Abbas’s latest demands Mark Regev the spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on 17 December 2009:

“Up until now, he (Abbas) was talking about a settlement freeze. Now he is adding (a return to) 1967 borders. It’s like we have to accept the outcome of negotiations before negotiations start. We are concerned that they are trying to avoid negotiations.

The reason we haven’t been negotiating is the Palestinians have been placing new preconditions on talks.”

Israel needs to go much further than Regev has articulated.

Any hope that Abbas will withdraw or modify his latest conditions for resuming negotiations is fatuous.

Israel initially erred in not conditioning its 10 months building moratorium on the Palestinian Authority agreeing to resume negotiations with Israel within a fixed period of time after the date when the moratorium was first announced on 25 November 2009.

In theory the Palestinian Authority was given up to 10 months to decide whether to negotiate any further with Israel - during which time no further houses would be commenced in the West Bank even if the Palestinian Authority made no decision to negotiate during that time.

This moratorium has already caused much personal distress, confusion and financial loss as well as large demonstrations in Israel and on the West Bank protesting the moratorium. Continuing the moratorium in view of Abbas’s latest demands will not advance the peace process one iota.

There is at this point of time no possible hope whatsoever in negotiations being resumed by Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

In view of Abbas’s latest statement Israel should now make it very clear that:

* Abbas’s conditions for resuming negotiations with Israel are completely unacceptable
* If Abbas does not resume negotiations with Israel by 20 January 2010 without the preconditions stipulated by Abbas then Israel will cancel the 10 months moratorium and resume building houses in the West Bank in accordance with the rights vested in the Jewish people by the Mandate for Palestine and the United Nations Charter.

The time for playing diplomatic word games is surely over.

Arab Human Rights Abuses Uncovered In Explosive Report

2010-09-11T00:38:00.000-07:00

[Published December 2009]

“A man spends his first years learning how to speak and the Arab regimes teach him silence for the rest of his life” Algerian writer Ahlem Mosteghanemi, “Memory in the Flesh”

The above quote forms the backdrop to an explosive report titled “Bastion of Impunity, Mirage of Reform” released this week by the Cairo Institute For Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) on the state of human rights in the Arab World for 2009.

Given the Report’s contents and the existence of CIHRS as a non government organization since 1993 - one wonders how it has managed to survive to continue its valuable work openly in Egypt exposing human rights abuses in the Arab World.

Perhaps the reason can be found in the associations CIHRS has built up over the years with other human rights organizations around the world that has now enabled it to produce this second comprehensive annual report in which it notes the worsening of human rights in the Arab world since 2008.

The CHIRS web site describes these associations as follows:

“CIHRS enjoys consultative status with the United Nations ECOSOC, and observer status in the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. CIHRS is also a member of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) and the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX). CIHRS is registered in Egypt, France and Geneva, has its main offices in Cairo, an office in Geneva for its work at UN human rights mechanisms and an institutional presence in Paris. CIHRS was awarded the French Republic Award for Human Rights in December 2007.“

The Report notes that in the Arab world in 2009

“Human rights defenders and advocates of democratic reforms were targeted for various threats and acts of repression.”

The Report cites Syria as the worst offender, describes Tunisia as a “Police State” and includes Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt and Sudan as sanctioning state authorized acts of repression against human rights defenders. It lists a large number of specific individual cases and actions taken in these countries to support its claims.

The report is particularly revealing about three of the six Arab countries that currently sit on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) - Bahrain, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia - a body that spends most of its time and discussions on condemning human rights abuses committed by Israel.

Saudi Arabia is exposed as having no independent media and according to the Report

“... it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of internet websites are blocked. Some Saudi bloggers were subjected to arbitrary arrest, and one Saudi citizen was sentenced to five years in prison and 1,000 lashes on charges of publicly proclaiming a sin, following statements he made on a program carried by a Lebanese satellite channel…

… remains dangerous for human rights defenders and advocates of reform. Authorities refuse to grant legal status to the few human rights organizations that exist in the Kingdom and many reformers have been detained for long periods of time without trial and tortured. An Islamist reform activist was sentenced to a prison term for opposing government policies, and several rights defenders were banned from travel.

… a great many people detained in connection with terrorism cases were subjected to physical and psychological torture, including cuffing, beatings, sleep deprivations, and the denial of family visits. Some people detained for their advocacy of political reform were also tortured.”

Bahrain - according to the Report:

“… continued to block political, news, and advocacy websites, as well as online forums. In a space of just three months in early 2009, more than 70 websites were blocked, among them online newspaper sites. Lawsuits were filed against journalists on charges ranging from slandering officials to undermining the judicial authority to harming national unity…

…Torture remains a routine practice in Bahrain, used especially against activists in social and political movements seeking an end to the institutionalized discrimination against Shiites; several human rights defenders were also tortured.”

Egypt has been in a state of emergency for the last 28 years and according to the Report:

“The greatest infringements of freedom of expression in Egypt were seen in the broad attacks launched by the security apparatus on bloggers and internet activists, dozens of whom were placed under administrative detention, abducted, or temporarily taken to undisclosed locations, usually State Security police headquarters; some have been detained for more than two years without charge or trial….

… continued to top the list of countries in which torture is routinely and systematically practiced. In 2009 Egyptian authorities used torture not only against those accused of political crimes or terrorism, but also against adherents of minority religions such as Shiites as well as suspects of criminal offences. Indeed, the threat of torture hangs over anyone who steps foot in a police station, whether to give a statement or file an assault charge, or pursuant to a summons by an officer, who might discipline or abuse citizens on behalf of influential persons.”

The Report comments as follows on the consequences of the split governance by Hamas in Gaza and by Fateh in the West Bank :

“Under the cover of the war in Gaza, Hamas embarked on several repressive measures targeting Fateh members, figures who oppose Hamas’ rule, and suspected collaborators with Israel, and it is suspected that dozens of people were killed, either shot to death or as a result of torture. Hamas personnel also broke the legs and arms of dozens of other people to compel them to stay in their homes. Also, some government employees in Gaza were replaced with Hamas loyalists.

In the West Bank, under the authority of Fatah, hundreds of Hamas sympathizers remain in detention; it is thought that at least two of the detainees have died as a result of torture. The West Bank authorities fired civil servants and teachers suspected of Hamas sympathies, while the salaries of thousands of employees of the Palestinian authority inside the Gaza Strip were suspended. Licensing for associations and companies in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip is now preceded by a security check,and those organizations that have affiliations with the “wrong” party are refused Licenses.”

Few of the 22 members of the Arab League are spared criticism in the Report which should be required reading for anyone interested in seeing some balance restored in any deliberations regarding the numerous and ongoing conflicts in the region.

No doubt this Report will not even rate any serious review or investigation by the UNHCR.

Whilst the Arab man in the street is prevented from expressing his opinion freely and without fear - the Arab world shall continue to present the monolithic Arab view of those few repressive regimes who rule to the detriment of the rest of the populations they rule over.

Such is the state of denial that the world currently finds itself in where the Arab world is concerned.

Washington Bumbles As Two State Option Crumbles

2010-09-10T23:45:00.000-07:00

[Published December 2009]

Israel’s 10 months suspension of some building activities in the West Bank has yet to induce the Palestinian Authority to resume negotiations with Israel on the creation of a new Arab State between Israel, Jordan and Egypt.

In welcoming Israel’s moratorium United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared on 25 November:

“We believe that through good faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome that ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish State with secure and recognized borders.”

Regrettably Ms Clinton seems to have got the Palestinian goal wrong but the Israeli goal correct.

The Palestinian Authority is not interested in land swaps. It wants all 500000 Jews kicked out of their homes in the West Bank and is not prepared to concede its claim to sovereignty in one square metre of territory in the West Bank.

Land swaps had been proposed by Israel in 2008 and rejected by the Palestinian Authority. They were offered as a creative way of Israel retaining sovereignty of West Bank settlements created since 1967 on what is still “no man’s land” in international law - land included in the former League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in which sovereignty still remains unallocated between Jews and Arabs.

Israel’s withdrawal from 100% of the West Bank has been an unchanging Arab demand since 1967.

US Middle East Special Envoy George Mitchell in a press briefing given the same day following Ms Clinton’s announcement seemed to back away from his boss’s remarks omitting any mention of “agreed swaps” when he said:

“As we and others have said many times, the way to move forward is to enter negotiations without preconditions and reach agreements on the two-state solution: a Jewish state of Israel living side by side in peace and security with an independent, contiguous, and viable Palestinian state."

Mr Mitchell - in so doing - was correctly putting the Palestinian position contradicting what the Secretary of State had said earlier that day.

Land swaps are not on the Palestinian agenda although agreement to such a proposal could dramatically help towards the successful conclusion of any negotiations.

Ms Clinton in correctly pointing out the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized boundaries - raised one of the most contentious issues requiring Arab acceptance.

Mr Mitchell however questioned the Secretary of State’s remark when in an answer to a question a few minutes later he stated:

“Well, as I said, we believe that the best way forward is to re-launch negotiations in an atmosphere in which they can succeed. We will encourage both sides to continue to take steps that will lead to that result and enable us to begin negotiations in a way that affords what I believe to be a reasonable and good prospect of achieving what the Palestinians want and what we want; that is, a two-state solution with an independent and a viable and a contiguous Palestinian state, and a state of Israel living with secure and recognized borders with security for all of its people. And we are going to continue to pursue that objective.”

Specifically omitted from Mr Mitchell’s answer was that one critical word used by the Secretary of State - “Jewish”.

Recognition of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people has been consistently rejected by the Palestinian Authority for the last 16 years and there has not been the slightest indication of any change of heart in that position.

Indeed it would be reasonable to expect that anyone in a position of leadership in the Palestinian Authority would be signing his own death warrant were he to make that concession since it completely negates the provisions of the PLO Covenant and the Charter of Hamas which both call for the dismantling of the Jewish State.

I do not believe that Mr Mitchell’s omission of the word “Jewish” was the result of oversight. It was deliberate and follows the pattern of conduct he has followed before as he tailors his comments before audiences depending on whether he is speaking to Jews or Arabs.

It is notable that he also said this is “what the Palestinians want and what we want”.

It certainly is what the Palestinians want. From the American perspective it does not appear to be what the Americans want judged by the remarks of the Secretary of State just hours before.

Whilst America speaks with two tongues any influence it may have in procuring successful negotiations to be concluded will prove a fruitless exercise.

Perhaps the Americans think that ambivalence and ambiguity is the best strategy to follow to keep both parties guessing what its final position will be in supporting either of the parties in the achievement of their respective goals.

It is clear however that the parties are as far apart as ever in resolving their cardinal differences and that America still appears unclear as to what the goals of each of the parties to the conflict are.

Until the Palestinian Authority disabuses itself of the notion that

1. Israel will withdraw from 100% of the West Bank
2. Israel will evict 500000 Jews who live in the West Bank
3. Israel will give up its claim to be recognized by the Palestinian Authority as the national homeland of the Jews

then the efforts of the Americans “to re-launch negotiations in an atmosphere in which they can succeed.” will be a total waste of time and effort.

Bibi's Big Blunder

2010-08-17T03:04:00.000-07:00

[Published December 2009]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu incredibly appears to have committed a major blunder in announcing his cabinet’s decision on 25 November 2009:

“ authorizing a policy of restraint regarding settlements which will include a suspension of new permits and new construction in Judea and Samaria for a period of ten months.”

The statement further elaborated on this offer by clarifying that :

“..this suspension will not affect construction currently underway. It will not include the schools, kindergartens, synagogues and public buildings necessary for the continuation of normal life over the period of suspension. Obviously, any infrastructure that may be needed to protect our national security or to safeguard the lives of our citizens will also be provided during this time. … We do not put any restrictions on building in our sovereign capital."

Nowhere in the Prime Minister’s statement is there a cut off point for the Palestinian Authority to accept Israel’s offer before it is deemed to be withdrawn.

It seems that this offer is to be kept on foot for ten months during which period the Palestinian Authority will be given the time to decide whether it will enter into negotiations or not.

The Palestinian Authority is clearly not happy with the limited suspension of building activity set out in Mr Netanyahu’s statement and is trying to get America to pressure Israel into making further concessions before agreeing to enter into negotiations.

Y NET News reported the following on 25 November:

“Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statements do not constitute a progress which will enable the Palestinians to resume negotiations. Erekat claimed the move was unsatisfactory.

Presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said that the resumption of negotiations requires total cessation of settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem. "We will not accept any arrangement in which Jerusalem is not part of the proposal," Abu Rudeina said."

If the Palestinian Authority eventually decides to enter into negotiations with Israel in say seven months time, that will leave only three months to complete those negotiations. What will happen at the end of those three months if such negotiations have not been finalised? Will further extensions have to be granted by Israel to keep the negotiations alive?

Mr Netanyahu’s statement goes on to say:

“When the suspension ends, my government will revert to the policies of previous governments in relation to construction.”

This would appear to clearly indicate that if the Palestinian Authority does not enter into negotiations in ten months the moratorium period is over.

However if Israel were not to extend the moratorium period once the negotiations had begun - it would soon be branded as irresponsible and the prime cause of any breakdown in negotiations by unreasonably refusing to extend the moratorium period to enable the negotiations to continue.

The longer the negotiations continue the greater the pressure on Israel to extend the moratorium period to allow those negotiations to be finalized.

Since the parties have been negotiating for sixteen years without any result it would not be too unrealistic to assume that the Palestinian Authority could enter into negotiations within the next ten months and thereafter indefinitely delay the end of the moratorium period.

What Israel should have done is make it quite clear that:

1. The Palestinian Authority was to be given until 25 December 2009 to enter into negotiations with Israel.

2. If negotiations were commenced within that time then the moratorium period would be extended until 25 September 2010

3. If negotiations were not concluded by 25 September 2010, no extension of the moratorium period would be granted as a condition of the negotiations continuing.

Israel appears to have fallen into a trap of its own making. It urgently needs to clarify the intent and meaning of its statement and remove any ambiguity as soon as possible.

Juggernaut Coming Down The Road

2010-08-17T01:04:00.000-07:00

[Published November 2009]

American broadcaster and Palestinian Arab Ray Hanania’s Two State Peace Plan to allocate sovereignty in the West Bank between Jews and Arabs and end the 130 years old conflict between them has already got off to a flying start.

The main features of his proposal that markedly depart from the current policy of the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League are:

1. Israel will be recognised as the Jewish State
2. Jewish settlements in the West Bank will become part of Israel in exchange for an equivalent area of land from Israel to the new Arab state
3. Arabs shall not have any right to emigrate to Israel
4. Arab refugees and Jewish refugees from Arab lands shall be entitled to compensation from an international fund set up to deal with claims
5. Arabs living in Israel shall only vote in elections in the newly created State

The impact of his proposal can be judged by the effect it has already had on Bradley Burston - the columnist for Ha’aretz and senior editor of Ha’aretz.com.

Burstons bio is very revealing:

"Bradley Burston is a columnist for Israel’s Haaretz Newspaper, and Senior Editor of Haaretz.com which publishes his blog, "A Special Place in Hell." During the first Palestinian uprising, he served as Gaza correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, and was the paper’s military correspondent in the 1991 Gulf War. In the mid-1990s he covered Israeli-Arab peace talks for Reuters. He is a recipient of the Eliav-Sartawi Award for Mideast Journalism, presented at the United Nations in 2006.

Burston was born and raised in Los Angeles. After graduating from UC Berkeley, he moved to Israel, where he was part of a group which established Kibbutz Gezer, between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Burston served in the IDF as a combat medic, later studying medicine in Be’er Sheva for two years before turning to journalism."

Burston has been extremely critical of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s current Government.

On 22 July 2009 Burston wrote the following in the Huffington Post:

“Permit me at this point to save some time, and to speak candidly. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, whether they are willing to publicly acknowledge this or not, knows that obstacles are precisely what West Bank settlements were put there to be.

Settlements, whether considered legal or illegal, whether granted overt or blind-eye Israeli government sanction, or placed there by unruly-eyed fanatics who hate the Israeli government almost as much as they hate Arabs, have a common goal.

They were built to be explicit, intentional, physical, literal obstacles to any peace process that would include ceding West Bank land to Palestinians. And that, everyone knows, describes any conceivable future peace process.”

Burston followed this up with the following statement in the Huffington Post on 29 July 2009:

“There is no little irony in the circumstance that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose Palestinian recognition of Israel as "the national state of the Jewish People" as a central tool in efforts to stave off peace talks and deflect demands for a settlement freeze.”

Hanania’s proposals have shredded these controversial statements by Burston into tiny pieces.

Burston has been one of the first Israeli-critical journalists to hop on the Hanania bandwagon.

In an article in Ha’aretz on 24 November entitled “A Palestinian peace plan Israelis can live with” Burston enthusiastically endorses Hanania’s proposals.

“What Hanania is proposing is a two state solution that addresses not only quantifiable issues, but underlying emotional grievances, and the anguish in the histories of both sides. Cynics, and, in particular, the extremists among them, will reject it out of hand as simplistic and artificially balanced. But if peace is ever to be made in the Holy Land, it will be made despite extremists and not by them.

As in every potentially workable peace proposal, Hanania’s plan has something in it to upset and disappoint everyone. But its underlying principle of compromise based on mutual respect and compassion, its openness to the needs and wounds of two victimized peoples, and its suggestion that grassroots sentiment for peace can succeed where leaders have so consistently failed, are surely as worthy of serious consideration, as anything currently on the table. “

Israel as the Jewish National Home and existing Jewish settlements in the West Bank are no longer regarded as obstacles to peace under Hanania’s proposals but are recognized now as the eventual outcomes of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

One swallow doesn’t make a summer. However the attractiveness of Hanania’s plan has already been endorsed on a number of web sites in the 14 days since it first saw the light of day.

The real test will come when official responses to Hanania’s proposed plan as the basis for future negotiations are sought from the main parties trying to resolve the current impasse in negotiations - Israel, the Arab League, the Palestinian Authority, America, Russia and the European Union.

The people best able to approach those decision makers for comment are journalists - especially those of the calibre of Hanania and Burston.

In collaboration they already constitute a lobby of great influence. It is not always numbers that count but rather the quality of the people involved who are in a position to get proposals aired and discussed in public and not relegated to the backburner.

The responses when they come will be crucial in deciding whether an immovable roadblock will threaten the end of what has been the most innovative two state solution yet raised.

Somehow I don’t see journalists of the calibre of Hanania and Burston giving in very easily without a long and hard struggle to finally get Israel and the Palestinian Authority to sit down and negotiate within the parameters of Hanania’s proposals.

Sit back, enjoy the ride and watch this space for further developments.

European Union Finally Seeing Reality

2010-08-17T00:47:00.000-07:00

[Published November 2009]

The veiled threat by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to approach the United Nations (UN) Security Council to seek its consent to the establishment of a new Arab state between Jordan, Israel and Egypt has received the short shrift it deserved from the European Union (EU).

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt whose country holds the European Union’s rotating Presidency said on 17 November 2009 in Brussels:

“I don’t think we are there yet. I would hope that we would be in a position to recognise a Palestinian state but there has to be one first, so I think it is somewhat premature.

The PA appears to have a totally misconceived notion of the UN as a body that can create states rather than give recognition to States once they have been established - for the purposes of admitting them to membership of the UN.

Mere declarations of statehood are insufficient to receive recognition by the UN and admission to membership.

Applicants seeking admission to the UN need to establish:

1. The borders of the new state
2. Complete and effective control within those borders

It is painstakingly obvious that the PA went way out on a limb when PA Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat declared:

“We have reached a decision to go to the UN Security Council to ask for recognition of an independent Palestinian state with Al-Quds as its capital within June-1967 borders. We are going to seek support from EU countries, Russia and other countries.”

The PA has no authority or control in Gaza and only has control of about 40% of the West Bank with Israel’s current consent.

The “June - 1967 borders” are not borders - only armistice lines agreed with Jordan and Egypt who occupied Gaza and the West Bank from 1948 until they were lost to Israel in the Six Day War in 1967.

The last recognized sovereign occupier of the West Bank and Gaza was Great Britain as Mandatory Authority under the Mandate for Palestine conferred on it by the now defunct League of Nations.

However the provisions of the Mandate in relation to the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in Gaza and the West Bank “without prejudice to the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities” living there - still prevail today by virtue of Article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

As in the case of the PA‘s refusal to resume negotiations with Israel on the future sovereignty of the West Bank without preconditions, the current threatened approach to the UN appears to have been some public relations ploy to put pressure on Israel and keep the cause of a Palestinian State in the media spotlight.

It has in fact achieved the opposite result and blown up in the PA’s face.

The PA is clearly desperate and frustrated as it unsuccessfully pursues alternative diplomatic paths to keep the “two state” solution alive.

Negotiations have hit a brick wall as the PA refuses to change its negotiating stance of the last 16 years by even the slightest concession or admission that Israel also has claims at least as good as the PA to sovereignty in at least those parts of the West Bank in which Jews currently reside.

There are a few other home truths the PA seem to have ignored in its proposed UN tour de force:

* The Arabs were offered - and refused - a state by the UN in 1947 in 100% of the West Bank and Gaza plus additional land in what is now Israel.

* The Arabs could have created a state in 100% of the West Bank and Gaza between 1948-1967 when not one Jew lived there ( having all been driven out by the Arabs) and it was under complete Arab occupation and control - yet failed to do so.

* The current demand that Israel now cede 100% of the West Bank and Gaza in the current changed environment of the Middle East to give the PA what could have been achieved 40- 60 years ago is not going to happen.

* UN Security Council resolution 242 has made it clear that the 1967 armistice lines must be replaced by secure and recognized boundaries that ensure Israel’s safety and security.

* Negotiations involving PA territorial concessions in the West Bank to Israel is the only possible way forward. If the PA refuses to offer any such concessions then they can kiss goodbye to any new state being created. The opportunities existing between 1947-1967 will not be returning in 2009 or at any time thereafter.

* The 500000 Jews now living in the West Bank are legally entitled to do so by virtue of the legal rights conferred on them under the League of Nations and United Nations Charter.

* The PA rejected two Israeli proposals in 2000 and 2008 that would have seen the PA receive sovereignty in 90-100% of the West Bank or its territorial equivalent in area. This offer is unlikely to be renewed by the current Israeli government in the light of Israel’s invasion of Gaza in January, the subsequent Goldstone Commission Report and the continuing power struggle between Hamas and Fatah that threatens to divide the West bank and Gaza into warring fiefdoms for the hearts and minds of the Arab residents who live in both areas.

* If the territorial division of the West Bank cannot be agreed upon then discussion on more difficult issues like refugees, Jerusalem, water and demilitarization will be a complete waste of time.

Arab rejectionism for the last 62 years has come - and will continue to come - at a high price.

The Arabs have had 90 years to mature their views since the small territory of “Palestine” was slated for reconstitution of the Jewish National Home and severed from the other 99.99% of the land freed from the Ottoman Empire by the British and the French and designated for Arab self-determination.

The EU’s instant dismissal of the PA’s proposed approach to the UN serves as a warning notice to the PA to return to the negotiating table and be more flexible in its negotiations with Israel if it ever wants to see the two-state option achieved.

The EU has at long last injected some air of reality into the Middle East. Its about time it did.

Palestine - Mountains And Molehills

2010-08-17T00:29:00.000-07:00

[Published November 2009]

Judging by the fuss and flurry over the past week you would think that the world was in meltdown unless a resolution was found to finalising claims of sovereignty by Jews and Arabs to a piece of land 280 square kilometres in area (equal to just 5% of the size of Delaware) - forming part of the 5640 square kilometre territory called the “West Bank“.

Everyone involved needs to take a deep breath, calm down and review where this dispute is now at and put it in its proper perspective in the light of the events of the last seven days.

Continuing Palestinian Authority intransigence to concede even one square kilometre of this territory to Israel led to a breakdown in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority 12 months ago. Since then there have been large changes in the political landscape including the invasion of Gaza by Israel, the election of a new Government in Israel, the publication of the Goldstone Report and the continuing unresolved division of governance in the West Bank and Gaza between Fatah and Hamas.

The West Bank holds deep emotional and religious ties for the Jews - since it is the biblical heartland of the Jewish people - and is part of the territory within which the Jewish National Home was to be reconstituted under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and Article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

430000 Jews also happen to live in these 280 square kilometres pursuant to legal rights conferred on them by the Mandate for Palestine and the UN Charter. Israel also considers retention of this area to be absolutely essential for its security because of its strategic location.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 predicated that an area of the West Bank would be retained under Israel’s sovereignty as part of its secure and recognized borders in any negotiations.

In a fit of pique the Palestinian Authority has now refused to resume negotiations with Israel - ostensibly because Israel refuses to stop building houses and public buildings in the cities and population centres in the West Bank already designated and established for Jewish development - the so-called “settlements“.

For the Arabs, their interest in continuing to reject Israel’s claim to this 280 square kilometres is directed at driving out its Jewish residents and reducing the security of Israel in pursuit of a policy aimed at eventually destroying Israel by creating yet another Arab state - the 22nd - in the world.

The President of the Palestinian Authority - Mahmoud Abbas - threatened this week not to stand for President at the next elections supposedly to be held in January. Such elections are unlikely since his political opponent - Hamas - has the power to stymie the elections and has indicated it will do so.

Abbas is presently holding on to power illegitimately since his term expired last January. The vacancy caused should have been filled by the Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council - Aziz Dweik - but Mr Abbas refuses to yield.

Notwithstanding his political impotence - Mr Abbas hoped his threatened resignation would bring forth cries to rethink his resignation because a Hamas nominee might become President.

Some in Israel rose to the bait.

Israel’s ceremonial President Shimon Peres and the failed politician Yossi Beilin headed the Israeli chorus calling on Abbas to recant.

Peres recalled that along with Rabin, he and Abbas were among signatories to the 1993 Oslo peace accord and he appealed to Abbas by name not to quit.

“We both signed the Oslo agreement, I turn to you as a colleague, don’t let go.”

Beilin told the Lebanon Daily Star:

“The resignation threat presents a real danger because there is no other Palestinian leader on the horizon who can enjoy the same international prestige and try to lead his public to an agreement with Israel. If Abbas tells US President Barack Obama he is considering resigning, the American leader should not consider this an empty threat. It would constitute a blow to his administration’s regional policies, following long months of wasted time and empty maneuvers.”

Apparently President Obama was unmoved by such pleas as his Secretary of State reportedly accepted Mr Abbas’s resignation. Abbas had clearly lost the poker game on this score.

Abbas will now no doubt try to hold on to the reins of power in the absence of any elections. However he is a spent force incapable of delivering anything he signs or agrees to.

Statements and contradicting statements were also made by various Arab spokesmen during the week threatening to dismantle the Palestinian Authority. This was yet another attempt to pressure Israel to stop all building activity in the “settlements“ as the price for the resumption of negotiations.

As a tactic it could not possibly work. Israel had already made concessions in this area that Secretary of State Clinton had acknowledged to be “unprecedented” .

In a November 4 interview with Jackie Northam of National Public Radio Clinton said:

“What is so clear is that once borders are decided, the settlement issue goes away. The Israelis build whatever they want in their territory, the Palestinians build whatever they want in theirs,”

America had again spoken to clear the air in an attempt to make Abbas see sense and resolve the issue of borders without delay. Her advice seems certain to be ignored. He is in no position to concede any land without bringing the wrath of Hamas on him.

Just in case Abbas was not listening to Clinton - President Obama had the following to say in a taped video played at the Rabin Memorial Commemoration on 8 November:

"Palestinian dreams of statehood will be deferred unless Israelis are assured of their own safety and security”

The abject surrender of control in Gaza to Hamas has destroyed the credibility and effectiveness of the Palestinian Authority to govern any area of the West Bank in a way that could possibly meet Israel’s security requirements.

There is only one Arab State that can possibly do that - Jordan - the last Arab state to occupy the West Bank from 1948-1967 - and with whom Israel has a signed peace treaty that has stood the test of time and many pressures faced by both countries since the treaty was signed in 1994.

A trial balloon was also floated this week suggesting Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Fayyad was seeking a new Security Council resolution to replace Resolution 242 in a bid to win the international community’s support for the borders of a Palestinian state. The move was said to be designed to bring stronger pressure on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank.

This idea is doomed to failure in the Security Council.

All the Arab huff and puff of the past week should be viewed as failed and desperate attempts by the Palestinian Authority to make mountains out of molehills so as to avoid making decisions on borders and to try and shore up support for its rapid decline in political influence.

The Authority and Abbas have jumped head first into the abyss leaving Israel with no reliable or credible negotiating partner. They should both be replaced by Jordan as Israel‘s Arab partner for negotiations on the future sovereignty of the West Bank.

Until this change occurs President Obama should turn his attention and efforts to resolving the really serious problems that presently confront him - Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, climate change, his own domestic economy, universal health care and terrorism within the military.

Leave the Arabs and Jews alone to first sort out this minimalist territorial issue over a sliver of land.

The agreement on borders still remains the first mountain to be climbed by Arab negotiators. There are others to follow but if this - the easiest to climb - cannot be achieved then it is pointless trying to scale the much higher peaks - refugees, water,Jerusalem, demilitarization - that still remain to be conquered.

Palestine,Peres,Pledges And Poppycock

2010-08-16T01:13:00.000-07:00

[Published November 2009]

Israel’s current President - Shimon Peres - has used the 14th anniversary of the assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister - Yitzchak Rabin - to pledge that the former Prime Minister’s vision of peace would not be abandoned.

“The goals bravely sought by Yitzhak, with a bold vision and diplomacy, will not be abandoned,” President Peres said.

The President added that:

“even if they are delayed we will achieve his goals.”

Regrettably - however - President Peres was pulling the wool over the Israelis’ eyes by not articulating what those specific goals were and by suggesting they could ever be achieved.

In order to assess the truth of President Peres’s effusive statements - one needs to look at what Mr Rabin himself proposed.

Mr Rabin’s ideas and visions are set out in the speech he delivered to the Knesset on October 5, 1995 - just days before his assassination - when presenting the 300 page “Israeli - Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip” for approval.

That speech identified the following goals that Mr Rabin was seeking to achieve:

“We are striving for a permanent solution to the unending bloody conflict between us and the Palestinians and the Arab states.

In the framework of the permanent solution, we aspire to reach, first and foremost, the State of Israel as a Jewish state, at least 80% of whose citizens will be, and are, Jews.

At the same time, we also promise that the non-Jewish citizens of Israel—Muslim, Christian, Druze and others—will enjoy full personal, religious and civil rights, like those of any Israeli citizen. Judaism and racism are diametrically opposed.

We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority.

The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.

And these are the main changes, not all of them, which we envision and want in the permanent solution:

A. First and foremost, united Jerusalem, which will include both Ma’ale Adumim and Givat Ze’ev—as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths, Christianity and Islam, to freedom of access and freedom of worship in their holy places, according to the customs of their faiths.

B. The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.

C. Changes which will include the addition of Gush Etzion, Efrat, Beitar and other communities, most of which are in the area east of what was the “Green Line,” prior to the Six Day War.

D. The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.”

Yet President Peres himself has rejected Mr Rabin’s Roadmap - instead endorsing former American President Bush’s Roadmap which calls for a 22nd independent Arab State - rather than Mr Rabin’s “entity” - to be created between Israel and Jordan.

Releasing murderers of Jews and granting them pardons have now become accepted policy under President Peres.

The Palestinian Authority has already rejected offers in 2000 and 2008 by Prime Ministers Barak and Olmert to end the conflict by dividing Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Authority demands that places like Maale Adumin, Efrat and Beitar become part of the new State of Palestine and continue to insist that Israel returns to the 4 June 1967 lines and forcibly remove 500000 Jews now living beyond it.

Gush Khatif and other settlements in Gaza no longer exist because of Mr Olmert’s unilateral abandonment of Gaza in 2005 and the evacuation of 8000 Jews who once lived there.

Israel no longer controls the border with Egypt and allows flagrant breaches of the Gaza Strip maritime zone for fear of creating a public relations backlash.

The idea that the Arabs will ever recognize Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people is a pipe dream.

Israel’s President need to stop engaging in telling fairy stories by suggesting that Mr Rabin’s ideas and visions can still triumph despite his death.

President Peres needs to truthfully acknowledge that Mr Rabin’s ideas and vision are incapable of fulfillment today as Israel pursues a path that is fraught with much greater danger for the continued existence of Israel than Mr Rabin’s proposals ever contemplated.

Ironically President Peres made the following comment on the occasion of the 13th commemoration of Yitzchak Rabin’s death last year:

“The bullets that were fired into Yitzhak’s back didn’t kill his way, because ideas and visions cannot be killed.”

It was not bullets that killed Mr Rabin’s ideas and vision. It was the abandonment of his policies by those who succeeded him in the corridors of power that has been the real cause.

The official public commemoration service to mark Mr Rabin’s death has been postponed until 7 November because of inclement weather last week. A videotaped message from President Obama is due to be played to a crowd expected to reach 100000.

Hopefully President Obama will not indulge in such duplicity. His message will be awaited with great interest.

Sarkozy Seething - Mediterranean Union Hardly Breathing

2010-08-16T00:43:00.000-07:00

[Published November 2009]

French President Nicolas Sarkozy could be excused for being very annoyed at Egypt’s precipitate action in forcing the cancellation of this month’s meeting of the Foreign Ministers from the 43 countries that comprise the Mediterranean Union.

The Union brings together European Union members with States from North Africa, the Balkans, the Arab world and Israel in a bid to foster cooperation in one of the world’s most volatile regions.

It didn’t take long for President Sarkozy’s grandiose plan to unravel when the 43 Presidents and Prime Ministers assembled in Paris at its inaugural summit meeting on 13-14 July 2008 and failed to agree on the wording of a final joint communiqué.

The party pooper was the Palestinian Authority - the only non-state entity in the Union - which belatedly objected to the wording adopted by the other 42 members because it might amount to an abandonment of the Palestinian Authority‘s demand that millions of Arabs be allowed to emigrate to Israel.

Apart from being a totally unrealistic demand, the idea that the Palestinian Authority could thwart the Union in pursuit of policies designed to benefit the region as a whole was a harbinger of worse things to come.

Egypt’s decision to force the cancellation of the Foreign Ministers’ meeting this month was a direct consequence of that initial rebuff fifteen months ago.

Egypt's reasons appear to centre on its Foreign Minister not being prepared to sit in the same room as Israel’s Foreign Minister coupled with Egypt’s view that no further proceedings of the Mediterranean Union should be held until Israel resumes negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.-

The last minute cancellation of the Istanbul conference has prompted an unnamed European Union diplomat to tell the Sunday Times of Malta

“We are risking the death of the Mediterranean Union just after being born. The Union is in complete shambles and no progress has been made since its launch, both on the structure of the organisation and its seat.”

President Sarkozy would be absolutely seething at reports in the media that 16.6 million euros was spent on that inaugural President’s meeting in July 2008.

This sum included a dinner for the 43 invited heads of state and government that cost more than 1 million euros. At a cost of about 5000 euros a head for those invited, one must wonder what delicacies they ate.

No doubt Sarkozy watchers and the media will be rushing around trying to get a copy of the menu. It will certainly make interesting reading. The public enjoy being fed this type of information.

Maybe Palestinian Authority President Abbas was suffering from indigestion or some kind of party hangover that caused him to be odd man out when the final communiqué was prepared. He certainly didn’t do his French host any favour - although he might have gained brownie points in the West Bank and Gaza for continuing the struggle for liberation and self-determination on behalf of 4 million Arabs living there and another 4 million living - unintegrated and unabsorbed - in other Arab countries in refugee camps for the last 60 years.

These goals would be seen as far more important by President Abbas than progressing the objectives of the Union in improving the lives of 735 million people living within the member states - including the area presently under control of the Palestinian Authority.

Abbas will have also probably improved his waning image by not succumbing and selling out the Palestinian Arabs whilst himself personally enjoying the pleasures of hospitality on a grand scale as only the French know how.

An apparent beat up has also been made of the fact that President Sarkozy spent 245000 euros building a luxury shower which he never used - according to French opposition MP Rene Dosiere. ABC On Line says it was custom-built for Mr Sarkozy, with power and massage jet buttons and surround-sound radio.

But government spokesman Luc Chatel told Taiwan News that sum was not for a shower for President Sarkozy, but for eight meeting rooms used by the 43 leaders who attended the summit.

French Budget Minister Eric Woerth poured cold water on the shower cost declaring:

“It would be scandalous if it were true, but it is false,” [Expatica 29 October]

The bills for running the Mediterranean Union will continue to roll in and the costs of cancelling the Istanbul Conference will be substantial.

President Sarkozy no doubt will be subjected to criticism for the amount of money he has spent in promoting a vision that had very little chance of success from the outset. He has found out - if he didn’t know before - that dealing with the Arab States is a decidedly risky proposition - particularly if Israel is brought into the equation.

Like so much of the conflict in the Middle East, the Arab states are unable to raise their sights beyond the conflict between Jews and Arabs over two tiny strips of land - the West Bank and Gaza - and focus on the bigger canvas that demands joint action by them in the Mediterranean Union for the benefit of all.

The Union’s priorities are to fight pollution in the Mediterranean Sea, increase solar energy use, build land and sea highways and cooperate on higher education and research. Its goals are meant to be achieved by joint projects, which it is hoped would also help improve regional integration.

Israel probably possesses the greatest expertise of any of the Union’s member nations in water management and conservation as well as the harnessing of solar power.

This appears of little consequence to the Arab states as they continue their micro war against Israel within the Mediterranean Union at the expense of the macro economic impact the Union could have on their lives.

The French Audit report concluded:

“For its scale, the irregular procedures followed and its massive impact on our public finances, the summit will go down as a record of sorts,”

Perhaps that record will soon be surpassed by the brief lifespan the Mediterranean Union enjoys before it is dead and buried by Arab intransigence and pettiness of mind.

"Palestine" Causes Mediterranean Disunion

2010-08-16T00:22:00.000-07:00

[Published October 2009]

The Mediterranean Union - and its founding sponsor France - have been dealt a severe body blow as Egyptian intransigence has caused the cancellation of a meeting in Lisbon next week of foreign ministers from the 43 member countries comprising the Mediterranean Union.

The reasons given vary.

According to Ha’aretz (27 October) Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner, that Egypt would not attend the conference with Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Sources close to the conference organizers said the Egyptian minister was adamant.

“I’m not coming if Lieberman is there,” he told Kouchner. “Forget it. I won’t sit at a table with him, or even be seen in the same room.”

A different reason emerges in Y Net (27 October) which reports a meeting having taken place between Israel’s Vice Premier - Silvan Shalom - and Egypt’s Ambassador to Israel - Yasser Reda - when Reda told Shalom:

“At the moment the conditions are not ripe for convening such a conference. They may mature when the talks with Palestinians begin.”

Given that Israel is a world leader in programs such as the Mediterranean Solar Plan - a project of the Mediterranean Union to install concentrating solar power in the deserts for the benefits of its members - the cancellation of the meeting in the face of global warming represents a severe set back in world moves to counter the effects of carbon dioxide emissions.

This is the second time in 18 months that France has suffered a serious diplomatic debacle in its efforts to get the Mediterranean Union up and running because of Arab intransigence.

France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy previously was forced to eat humble pie after his ground-breaking plan to establish the Mediterranean Union on 13 July 2008 failed to reach an agreed final communiqué because of the opposition to its wording by the Palestinian Authority (PA) - the only non-state member present.

President Sarkozy’s efforts in bringing Israel and 9 members of the Arab League - including Syria - to that inaugural meeting of the Union promised to introduce a ray of light for Israeli-Arab co-operation and an end to regional turmoil.

The images of President Sarkozy, PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Mr Olmert smiling and enjoying a three way hand shake would have encouraged President Sarkozy into believing that he would be able to achieve the diplomatic breakthrough that had eluded President Bush’s Road Map for the previous 5 years.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner however had sounded a word of warning when he bluntly told European News (12 July 2008):

“Being around the same table with people you have fought is the beginning of something, it is the wind of hope. I’m sorry to say that the talks between the Israelis and Palestinians are not part of this wind of hope”

Little did Mr Kouchner - or President Sarkozy - imagine that the fundamental disagreements between Israel and the PA would be used by the PA to undermine the grand design of President Sarkozy to bring the nations of the Mediterranean and the European Union together in a new spirit of co-operation and joint venture.

The unfriendly wind Mr Kouchner had felt was shortly to blow away any hopes of an agreed summit position when the PA objected to the wording of the summit declaration.

Why the PA thought it necessary to incur the wrath and displeasure of President Sarkozy by importing the Middle-East conflict into the formation of the Mediterranean Union was puzzling. Quibbling over a few words in an otherwise agreed document remained a mystery - until the PA tried to explain the significance - and insidiousness - of its objection.

PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki told reporters according to Xinhua news agency (15 July 2008):

“The Israelis insisted on the inclusion of the words - “state for the Jewish people” - something we are categorically opposed to. It was out of the question for us to accept this wording. We wanted to ensure the final statement was very clear on this point.”

The Israeli delegation had a different take on what had happened telling Xinhua that

"Israel was in agreement with everything that has been adopted in the declaration because it was done by consensus”

Mr Kouchner was more forthcoming on what had actually occurred to spoil President Sarkozy’s party.

He told Xinhua that the standstill had been caused by the use of the expressions:

“nation state, national state, and democratic state”.

This had resulted in:

"a last minute deadlock between the Israelis and the Palestinians which meant that the final text had to undergo some little changes. The use of the expression “national state” implies difficulties in ensuring the return of refugees to the Jewish State or non-Jewish, Palestinian State.”

How the PA could ever hope to succeed in getting the Mediterranean Union members to unanimously agree to wording in the summit declaration that would support the entry of millions of Arabs into Israel and deny the Jewish people its own State is unbelievable.

These two non-negotiable demands of the PA have long been the sticking points in ensuring that the creation of a 22nd Arab state between Israel and Jordan will remain incapable of fulfillment.

Now these demands had been brought to France by the PA to embarrass and undermine President Sarkozy’s vision - the establishment of the Mediterranean Union.

The supine French reaction to these untenable and badly mistimed demands was entirely predictable.

President Sarkozy could have told the PA to take a cold shower or to re-apply for membership of the Mediterranean Union when it had received international recognition as the governing authority of a sovereign and democratic state. Alternatively he could have suggested the PA be given observer status at the Mediterranean Union until statehood was achieved.

Mindful that any such action would have provoked an Arab walkout, President Sarkozy bit his tongue and chose the diplomatic path - sending the hapless Mr Kouchner on an appeasement journey to ease the frustration President Sarkozy must have felt at this upstart non-state thwarting mighty France at the very moment of what was to be one of its greatest achievements.

Mr Kouchner was left to tell Xinhua (July 15) :

“At the last moment we failed , perhaps for half an hour, to advance due to one word”

That one word was “Jewish”.

It will take more than half an hour and more than one word before these nations are disavowed of their evil intention.

The Arab campaign to delegitimize the Jewish State was once again exposed as it continued in earnest in Paris at the birthplace of the Mediterranean Union.

One Jewish State on this planet remains an anathema to most of the 21 Islamic Arab States as they continue resisting it and calling for its destruction wherever and whenever the opportunity arises.

Mr Kouchner fooled no-one as he bent the French knee in 2008 in deference to this racist alliance that has actively opposed the existence of the Jewish State in its ancient homeland since its establishment 60 years ago.

France’s humiliation again at the hands of Egypt this week serves to remind us that continuing appeasement of the Arabs comes at a great price - in this case the welfare and advancement of all 43 members of the Mediterranean Union - including the Palestinian Authority.

France should insist on the Conference going ahead. To back down is a recipe for disaster and will hold the Mediterranean Union hostage to the demands of any member at any time.

Realities Of The Middle East

2010-08-15T23:56:00.000-07:00

[Published October 2009]

Now that Palestinian Authority intransigence and the Jordanian monarch’s cold feet have frozen President Bush’s Middle East peace plan, we are again facing that time honoured lament of Western liberalism:

“why doesn’t the US put more pressure on Israel, why cannot Israel be forced into more concessions?”

But in any event do Mr Abbas and his internationally cosseted entourage really want a peace settlement? A new term is creeping into the Middle East lexicon: Palestinian Authority Incorporated.

This label stems from a growing realisation that the Palestinian leadership has never had it so good, flitting from one capital to another by private jet, with conference-to-conference limousines, police escorts, top hotels and guest palaces, and everything else that goes with the jet-setting potentate. Running a neighbourhood “entity” after this would seem very dull indeed - assuming Mr. Abbas would make the grade in an open election.

But would he? The Wall Street Journal’s Karen Elliott House reported after a Middle East tour last month:

"Almost no one … believes the self appointed President for the Palestinian cause will ever be the directly re-elected leader of the Palestinian people”

She quotes a Jordanian official in Amman:

” The Palestinian Authority isn’t a revolution. It’s a corporation. After all these years, the pay cheques keep coming and the life is good . The Palestinian Authority cares more about preserving its privileges than helping ordinary Palestinians.”

To which Joseph Kraft of the Los Angeles Times syndicate adds the charge that the Abbas Palestinian Authority is:

“ a bureaucracy dedicated to its own survival. Far from being willing to take risks for political goals, Mr Abbas and Co, in this view, prefer to wander from country to country and from summit meeting to summit meeting, selling the cause of Palestine to Arab leaders who need legitimization. The rulers pay out subsidies. In return Mr Abbas gives them the Palestinian Authority seal of fidelity to Arab nationalism.”

What practical good does this do for the average Palestinian Arabs? As the New York Times remarked last November during a peak of Palestinian Authority negativism:

“Let reality now sink in. If those who claim Palestinian leadership cannot contemplate co-existence and persist in preventing King Abdullah and the residents of the West Bank from negotiating a true peace with Israel, then even this territory will soon be out of reach”

And how.

Israeli Government statisticians and demographers predict that within 30 years the Jewish population of Judea and Samaria will reach parity with the projected Arab population of 1.3 million. Long range settlement plans are in hand. The implications of delayed negotiations require no explanation.

..... AND NOW FOR MY CONFESSION...

The above article was written by Michael Barnard under the title “Realities of the Middle East” and published in the Age Newspaper in Melbourne Australia on Tuesday 26 April 1983 …. 26 years ago !!!!

My contribution to updating the article lies solely in substituting a few words to reflect the different parties.

I could have even left in the acronym for the Palestine Liberation Organization - “PLO” - used by Barnard in his article instead of replacing it with “Palestinian Authority” since the latter is just the reincarnation of the former disguised under a different name.

But essentially nothing has changed for the ordinary West Bank Arab in the last quarter of a century as their leaders have missed countless opportunities to resolve the conflicting Arab and Jewish claims to sovereignty in the West Bank.

Abbas clings to power as unelected President although his term expired last January. Calls for his removal have been mounting because he dared to postpone debate on the Goldstone Report at the behest of President Obama. This was only the latest of his woes as he has to answer questions about his relative silence during Israel’s invasion of Gaza last December and January and his alleged tacit - if not collaborative - approval of Israel’s action to destroy his Hamas challengers for supreme political control of the Palestinian Arabs.

Urged on by well intended but policy deficient “do-gooders” such as Presidents Reagan, Carter, Clinton and Bush, the Quartet and a Moslem dominated UN General Assembly, the Palestinian Authority power brokers have chalked up hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer points, have enjoyed the best food and wines in some of the most expensive hotels and restaurants in the world and collected photo albums full of snapshots with the most famous political and celebrity personages.

Surely a quarter of a century later it is time to heed Barnard’s article (as updated by me):

“Let reality now sink in. If those who claim Palestinian leadership cannot contemplate co-existence and persist in preventing King Abdullah and the residents of the West Bank from negotiating a true peace with Israel, then even this territory will soon be out of reach”

The sooner Jordan is brought into negotiations with Israel to determine Arab and Jewish claims to sovereignty in the West Bank the sooner these junkets and excesses by the Palestinian Authority will be ended.

More importantly the West Bank Arabs will be able to go about their work and raise their children free of war and conflict as fully fledged citizens of Jordan - as they were between 1948-1967 until Jordan’s fatal involvement in the Six Day War saw the loss of this territory to Israel.

Israel will not be returning to the armistice lines that existed between Israel and Jordan on the 6th June 1967 - UN Security Council resolution 242 makes that abundantly clear. It will not agree - in the national interest of preserving Israel as the only Jewish state in the world - to millions of Arabs flooding into its country as migrants.

That is best left to welcoming countries like England, France, Holland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The world is a big place and opportunities to settle outside one’s country of birth have never been so easy as millions of Arabs leave their existing 21 Arab States for greener pastures.

Will an article like this still be written in 2035? I certainly hope not.

Israeli Palestinians or Palestinian Jordanians?

2010-08-15T23:39:00.000-07:00

[Published October 2009]

Former Chief Palestinian Authority negotiator Ahmed Qureia first raised the possibility of Israeli residents living in the West Bank becoming Palestinian citizens in any new State created between Jordan and Israel as an answer to forced removal from their existing homes and transfer to Israel.

In an interview in Haaretz on 26 May 2009 the following exchange took place:

“Qureia: “Negotiating the annexation of Ariel to Israel is a waste of time. Ma’aleh Adumim and Givat Ze’ev must also be part of Palestine. Any agreement must guarantee our territorial contiguity; leave historical sites in our hands, especially Jerusalem, as well as natural resources, especially water.”

Question: Do you believe Israel would agree to evacuate Ma’aleh Adumim’s 35,000 residents?

Qureia: “[Former U.S. secretary of state] Condoleezza Rice told me she understood our position about Ariel but that Ma’aleh Adumim was a different matter. I told her, and Livni, that those residents of Ma’aleh Adumim or Ariel who would rather stay in their homes could live under Palestinian rule and law, just like the Israeli Arabs who live among you. They could hold Palestinian and Israeli nationalities. If they want it - welcome."

This theme was taken up by Palestinian Authority Acting Prime Minister Salam Fayyad at the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival in July when he was asked by R. James Woolsey - former director of Central Intelligence under President Clinton - whether the same rights would be available to Jewish citizens of a Palestinian state that were available to the over one million Arab citizens of Israel - such as freedom of religion and speech and the right to vote in elections.

Woolsey also wanted to know whether Jews would be able to sleep at night without worrying that someone might kick their doors down and kill them

Fayyad replied:

“I’m not someone who will say that they would or should be treated differently than Israeli Arabs are treated in Israel. In fact, the kind of state that we want to have, that we aspire to have, is one that would definitely espouse high values of tolerance, coexistence, mutual respect and deference to all cultures, religions. No discrimination whatsoever, on any basis whatsoever. Jews, to the extent they choose to stay and live in the state of Palestine, will enjoy those rights and certainly will not enjoy any less rights than Israeli Arabs enjoy now in the state of Israel.”

This is an argument that would hold little attraction to Israel or the Jewish residents of the West Bank.

The reasons are manifold and include the following:

1. Jews could never be assured that their security would be protected from terrorist attacks.

2. The history of the conflict indicates that wherever possible Jews and Arabs should be separated to avoid clashes between their respective populations. Israel’s successful integration of 1.5 million Arabs into its population as Israeli citizens could not possibly be repeated in the West Bank. The baggage of hatred between the two populations engendered by the PLO Covenant and the Hamas Covenant would prove insurmountable.

3. The Jewish community could be held to ransom by any assorted rag and tag groups to meet Arab demands for millions of Arabs to be allowed to emigrate to Israel, for Arab prisoners to be released from Israeli jails or for any other reason - even simple extortion of money.

4. The Palestinian Authority has been trumpeting the removal of all Jewish residents living in the West Bank for the last 40 years and has legislated for the death penalty for anyone selling land to Jews. It would hardly be seen as a convincing change of heart if these racist attitudes were suddenly abandoned.

However the parallel proposition that the Arab residents of the West Bank acquire Jordanian citizenship has become increasingly more attractive as the “two state solution” continues to founder after 16 years of failed diplomatic efforts to achieve a breakthrough.

The West Bank and Gazan Arabs are considered to be oppressed and victimised communities who have been deprived of the freedom of movement, ability to access goods and services, export their own products as well as exercise their rights as full citizens of a sovereign Arab state. This loss of dignity will continue as the two state solution evaporates and will need to be addressed in some way if there is to be peaceful co-existence between the Arab and Jewish communities in the West Bank.

These problems can be solved if the international boundary between Israel and Jordan is redrawn so that the heavily populated Arab areas of the West Bank become part of Jordan and the heavily populated Jewish areas of the West Bank become part of Israel.

The reasons for this occurring are compelling:

1. Jordan is 77% of Mandatory Palestine and will extend its borders to include about another 3% of former Palestine if this solution is adopted.

2. Jordan - as the last Arab State to occupy the West Bank between 1948-1967 - will resume its historical role as the Arab successor State to the Mandate in allocating sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza between it and the other successor state to the Mandate - the Jewish State of Israel.

3. The Arab residents of the West Bank will resume their status as Jordanian citizens which they enjoyed until 1988 and will be granted Jordanian passports entitling them to the same political rights as the current Jordanian population.

4. The Arab residents on both sides of the Jordan River will be reunited into one political entity - a relationship which has been acknowledged and recognised by both Jordanian and Palestinian leaders such as the late King Hussein, Crown Prince Hassan, the late Yasser Arafat and Abu Iyad.

Jordanian resistance to such an idea might be anticipated, since Jordan has been very wary of attempts to remove the ruling Hashemite regime and replace it with a revolutionary style Government.

However events in Gaza demonstrate the utter folly of repeating the same coup in Jordan.

Jordan needs to be given security and financial guarantees by the Quartet - America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - to enter into negotiations with Israel to divide sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza between them and possibly Egypt.

Given Israel already enjoys signed peace agreements with both Jordan and Egypt and all are already sovereign States - the negotiations could be successfully concluded in a very short space of time.

Such a solution would be preferable to any form of autonomy since it would free the West Bank and Gazan Arabs from Israeli domination and control and allow the West Bank and Gazan Arabs - and indeed all Palestinian Arabs - the right to self determination for which they have been agitating since 1967.

In the absence of such a resolution the future looks very bleak for both Arabs and Jews.

Abbas Gives Obama The Thumbs Down

2010-08-15T04:57:00.000-07:00

[Published September 2009]

Palestinian Authority President - Mahmoud Abbas - delivered a stinging rebuff to President Obama during his address at the United Nations last Friday.

Obama had called on Israel and the Palestinian Authority from the same podium at the United Nations just a few days earlier to enter into final status negotiations - “without preconditions” - designed to lead to the creation of a new Arab state between Israel and Jordan - the so called “two state solution”.

Obama’s statement had greatly disappointed Abbas who had expected that after six months of intense diplomatic activity by the Americans - Israel would agree to the demand by Abbas - supported by Obama - that Israel freeze all construction and building activity on the West Bank as a condition of Abbas resuming negotiations with Israel after an eight months hiatus.

Israel’s response was to curtail - but not freeze - such activities. This position was ultimately accepted - albeit reluctantly - by the American administration, which had no basis at all for insisting on a freeze anyway since Israel had not agreed to its original inclusion in the Road Map first proposed by President Bush in 2003.

Abbas in his address to the UN made it clear to Obama that Abbas would not be returning to the negotiating table unless there was a complete freeze - and - it would seem - a whole lot of new conditions that Abbas lumped in at the same time.

Abbas told the assembled delegates:

“We call upon the international community to uphold international law and international legitimacy and to exert pressure on Israel to cease its settlement activities, to comply with the signed agreements, and desist from the policies of the occupation and colonial settlements, to release the 10000 - correction approximately 11000 prisoners and detainees, to lift - and to lift the unjust siege imposed on the Gaza Strip….”

Whilst not stating what international pressure should be exerted on Israel to achieve these objectives - Abbas no doubt had in mind the collective economic punishment of Israel’s population by imposing boycotts on the importation and purchase of Israeli products, the sharing of intellectual knowledge between universities and divestment by investors of their share portfolios in Israeli companies.

What is crystal clear is that this shopping list of conditions is unacceptable to Israel and will act as an effective bar to the resumption of negotiations - making President Obama’s call for the immediate resumption of those negotiations just a few days before superfluous and already outdated.

It would need an extraordinary loss of face for Abbas to announce his readiness to resume negotiations in the face of his defiant stance and response to President Obama at the United Nations. His arch enemy - Hamas - would pillory him for his submission to American and Zionist pressure.

President Obama can respond in two ways - either do nothing and let the current state of affairs meander along aimlessly - and dangerously - on the road to nowhere or announce his own plan to break the current impasse.

Before proposing his own plan President Obama would be well advised to put a series of questions to both Israel and the Palestinian Authority so as to gauge their respective attitudes to the following matters:

1. Is the Palestinian Authority prepared to recognize Israel as the Jewish National Home reconstituted pursuant to the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter?

2. Does the Palestinian Authority intend to persist with its demand that every square centimeter of the West Bank be ceded to it by Israel or is it prepared to accept less in exchange for an equivalent land swap by Israel?

3. Is the Palestinian Authority still committed to millions of former Arab residents and their descendants of what is now Israel being given the right to return and live there and if so what would be the appropriate number that Israel should accept?

4. Is Israel prepared to allow the creation of a 22nd Arab State between Israel and Jordan with full and unfettered access and control over its air space and maritime waters? If not is the Palestinian Authority prepared to accept something less such as demilitarization?

5. Is Israel prepared to remove all the 500000 Jewish residents living in the West Bank. If not what number are they prepared to remove and from where?

6. Is Israel prepared to divide Jerusalem so that it becomes the capital of both Israel and the new Arab state?

America - unequivocally and unambiguously - needs to present its own answers to both parties on these same questions after first gauging and evaluating their responses and then lay down its own terms as the price for America’s continuing involvement in helping the parties achieve a final resolution of their conflict.

Failure by America to elicit satisfactory and positive responses to these questions from the Palestinian Authority and Israel will only ensure that one can continue to predict with absolute certainty that the two state solution is not going to be the solution to the Jewish-Arab conflict.

Living the dream but experiencing the nightmare that has accompanied this fatally flawed and discredited vision for the last 72 years has proved to be catastrophic for both Arabs and Jews. How much longer will this failed proposal continue to be paraded as the only solution to the conflict? It is about time that the parties put up or shut up.

The thumbs down given to President Obama by Abbas this past week only underscores America’s need to get some answers from the parties to the above questions or vacate the scene - unless America completely revamps its thinking and starts to look at options other than the two state solution.

Obama has already hinted at going in another direction emphasising “dignity” and “security” as the diplomatic drivers in resolving the Jewish-Arab conflict if the two state solution is abandoned.

Such a policy and initiative should surely be welcomed to break the impasse and receive the thumbs up from the international community to enable it to be successfully implemented.

Is Obama Ready To Speak His Mind?

2010-08-15T04:35:00.000-07:00

[Published September 2009]

President Obama’s address at the United Nations on 23 September gave some indication that he would soon be releasing his own plan for achieving the creation of a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan - the so called “two state solution - that has avoided the best efforts of previous American Presidents for the last sixteen years.

In his carefully crafted address he made the following statement:

“The time has come to re-launch negotiations - without preconditions - that address the permanent-status issues: security for Israelis and Palestinians; borders, refugees and Jerusalem. The goal is clear: two states living side by side in peace and security - a Jewish State of Israel, with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people.”

The insistence that such negotiations be opened “without preconditions” was a slap in the face for Palestinian Authority president - Mahmoud Abbas - who has so far refused to enter into such negotiations with Israel until Israel totally freezes all construction activity in the West Bank.

No doubt Obama had hoped that his fruitless trilateral meeting with Abbas and Israel’s Prime Minister - Benjamin Netanyahu - the previous day would have enabled him to tell the United Nations that negotiations were soon to resume. That was not to be.

To compound Abbas’s irrational stance he has now insisted that he would not enter into any negotiations unless their end result would be the withdrawal by Israel from every inch of territory occupied by it since the Six Day War in 1967. [Wafa Palestine News Agency 22 September 2009].

Netanyahu - and previous Israeli Governments - have made it clear Israel would not be obliging Abbas in this demand.

President Obama appears to have supported Netanyahu on this issue by pointedly not calling for an Israeli return to the territorial position that existed at 4 June 1967 - but merely an end to the occupation that began in 1967.

Obama’s insistence that Israel be recognized as a Jewish state also is completely at odds with Abbas’ long standing refusal to accept such a proposal.

Given the above - it is extremely unlikely that Abbas is politically strong enough to get off his high horse, lose face and resume negotiations with Israel without preconditions. Hamas - and his own faction Fatah - will ensure this does not happen.

His preferred course will be to employ the tactics of the past and engage in rhetoric accusing the Israel lobby of controlling President Obama and the Congress and totally ignoring the victims of the conflict and their ongoing suffering.

He will prefer this course and the strong support he expects to receive in his stance from a majority of the morally bankrupt member states of the United Nations who control the affairs of the General Assembly and its Human Rights Council and can pass resolutions ad infinitum excoriating Israel and pursuing a program of delegitimizing Israel as the Jewish National Home.

President Obama has signalled he is not prepared to accept that tactic and allow the question of resuming negotiations and bringing an end to the conflict to meander aimlessly along the road to nowhere.

Slotted into his speech to the United Nations was this clear warning to both Israel and the Palestinian Authority:

“I am not naïve. I know this will be difficult. But all of us must decide whether we are serious about peace, or whether we only lend it lip-service. To break the old patterns - to break the cycle of insecurity and despair - all of us must say publicly what we would acknowledge in private.”

The President was politely laying down an ultimatum - resume negotiations immediately “without preconditions” or he would publicly speak out and lay down his proposals for achieving the two state solution. If those proposals were not finally acceptable to both sides then America would not become further involved in pursuing the two state solution.

One does not need to gaze into a crystal ball to know that no plan the President publicly reveals will ever be acceptable to the Palestinian Authority.

President Obama will not resile from the demand that Israel be recognized as the Jewish State. He will not stipulate that 500000 Jews living in the West Bank will all have to be kicked out of their homes and businesses. The President won’t insist that millions of former Arab residents and their descendants be given the right to live in Israel.

What President Obama has done at the United Nations has made it very transparent that America is not prepared to be dragged along ignominiously for any further length of time in pursuing an objective that is all but totally unattainable.

Crunch time is fast approaching and for America the two state solution is all but dead and buried.

Other solutions and options need to be explored and pursued to separate the warring parties and allow each to live with one another as President Obama so eloquently expressed in his address:

“And after all of the politics and all of the posturing, this is about the right of every human being to live with dignity and security. That is a lesson embedded in the three great faiths that call one small slice of Earth the Holy Land. And that is why - even though there will be setbacks, and false starts, and tough days - I will not waiver in my pursuit of peace. “

America will not depart the scene but it certainly is ready to abandon the two state solution if the parties cannot get down to business very soon and enter into negotiations to try and agree on its parameters.

“Dignity” and “Security” will soon become the diplomatic catchwords that replace “the two state solution”. After sixteen years of trying to achieve the impossible - the new direction being charted by President Obama at least offers some realistic hope of succeeding.

Abbas Only Tells Half The Story

2010-08-15T04:16:00.000-07:00

[Published September 2009]

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has put paid to any prospects of the Palestinian Authority resuming negotiations with Israel after the proposed trilateral meetings to be held with President Obama, Abbas and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House today.

Abbas said at a press conference on 19 September after meeting with his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak that as there was no agreement on halting settlement so there could be no agreement on re-launching negotiations because there was no basis. He continued :

“The basis [ for resuming negotiations] we know is the one stated in the Road Map plan,’ ‘Americans are required to continue their commitment of the first article of the Road Map plan, which clearly states that there must be complete settlement freeze including the natural growth,’.

What Abbas failed to tell the assembled media was that Israel had not accepted that proposal in the Road Map.

When President Bush released his detailed Road Map on 30 April 2003, Israel had then sent a letter to President Bush on 23 May 2003 containing 14 reservations it had before it could accept the plan as a basis for negotiation.

Reservation 9 made by Israel to President Bush stated in part:

“There will be no involvement with issues pertaining to the final settlement. Among issues not to be discussed: settlement in Judea, Samaria and Gaza (excluding a settlement freeze and illegal outposts); “

Israel thus made it clear that whilst it was prepared to discuss a settlement freeze (no mention being made by Israel of restricting natural growth) it was not prepared to accept that there be a complete settlement freeze including natural growth per se.

On 23 May 2003, then Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice made the following statement from the White House:

“The roadmap was presented to the Government of Israel with a request from the President that it respond with contributions to this document to advance true peace. The United States Government received a response from the Government of Israel, explaining its significant concerns about the roadmap. The United States shares the view of the Government of Israel that these are real concerns,and will address them fully and seriously in the implementation of the roadmap to fulfil the President’s vision of June 24, 2002.”

On 25 May 2003, the Israeli Cabinet met and by a majority resolved:

“Based on the 23 May 2003 statement of the United States Government, in which the United States committed to fully and seriously address Israel’s comments to the Roadmap during the implementation phase, the Prime Minister announced on 23 May 2003 that Israel has agreed to accept the steps set out in the Roadmap.

The Government of Israel affirms the Prime Minister’s announcement, and resolves that all of Israel’s comments, as addressed in the Administration’s statement, will be implemented in full during the implementation phase of the Roadmap.”

Nothing could be clearer or more unambiguous - President Bush had accepted Israel’s position that there would be no settlement freeze without it first being discussed and agreed by Israel.

Abbas told Haaretz on 28 May 2003 that the 14 reservations made by Israel had nothing to do with him. He said:

“They don’t interest me,”

“We do not accept each side picking and choosing only those specific elements that are convenient for them in the road map.

The map was prepared last December and we accepted it, despite our own comments and reservations. We wanted to give this initiative a chance, but it’s impossible to continue inventing comments and reservations after it was submitted.”

This was a very aggressive and intransigent - indeed foolish and naive - attitude to adopt in the face of President Bush having specifically invited both sides to comment on the Road Map.

The response from the President to Israel’s reservations acknowledged that Israel’s concerns were real and they would be fully and seriously addressed during the implementation phase.

The past months’ discussions between George Mitchell, Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama in relation to a settlement freeze must be seen and be understood to have taken place within the framework of America’s previous acknowledgment that no such freeze could be imposed on Israel under the Roadmap unless Israel agreed to the terms of any such proposal.

Israel has responded to America’s request by agreeing to curtail - but not totally freeze - settlement activity for some as yet unspecified period whilst negotiations are being held between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This apparently is not acceptable to Abbas. Unless he has a change of heart he intends to spit the dummy and walk away from any further negotiations.

Abbas needs to really take a cold shower and cool down and not tell half the story - especially the half that he does not like.

Gaza,Goldstone and Gallstones

2010-08-15T03:53:00.000-07:00

[Published September 2009]

From a legal perspective Israel is not subject to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court nor do the provisions of the Geneva Convention apply to Gaza since it is not part of the territory of any state signatory - called a “High Contracting Party” - to the Convention.

Gaza still is “no mans’ land” under international law where sovereignty is yet to be decided.

It should be remembered that Israel officially only evacuated Gaza in 2005. It has not ceded any claim to Gaza or parts of Gaza under the rights conferred on the Jewish people pursuant to the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in any part of that territory.

Israel had the inherent right of self defence under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter if an armed attack was made on it. That it absorbed 7000 rocket and mortar attacks after evacuating Gaza in 2005 before undertaking the invasion of Gaza last December would not have been endured for such a lengthy period by any other member of the United Nations had they been the recipient of such a barrage of rockets and mortars indiscriminately fired into civilian population centres.

There may well be some rotten eggs in Israel’s basket. War is a great dehumanizer and soldiers can act in inhuman ways under the stress of war - and can be very trigger happy especially when the enemy you are confronting does not wear uniforms and hides among the civilian population.

Israel has and is still continuing its ongoing investigations into the invasion of Gaza and will no doubt bring to justice those whose conduct is found to be unacceptable. The Goldstone Commission’s dismissal of these investigations as “pusillanimous” is made without a scintilla of evidence in support.

The Report will be extensively used and quoted to beat Israel over the head in a multitude of UN forums and in the General Assembly as part of the campaign by the 56 members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference to delegitimize Israel.

The Report will be used to support new calls for:

(i) economic and political boycotts of Israel
(ii) disinvestment in Israel and
(iii) for outlawing Israel as a pariah state in the international community

The Goldstone Commission came about as a result of a Mandate given to it by the UN Human Rights Council on 12 January 2009 by a vote of 33 to 1 with 13 abstensions. 15 of the 33 affirmative votes were from members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the remainder included countries with disgraceful human rights records like Angola, Cuba, China, Nigeria, the Russian Federation and Nicaragua.

The Commission was appointed on 3 April 2009 and its members comprised Richard Goldstone, Christine Chinkin, Hina Jalani and Desmond Travers.

Goldstone, Jalani and Travers had signed an open letter, published 16 March 2009, addressed to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the United Nations Security Council Ambassadors. It stated:

“...we believe there is an important case to be made for an international investigation of gross violations of the laws of war, committed by all parties to the Gaza conflict…A prompt, independent and impartial investigation would provide a public record of gross violations of international humanitarian law committed and provide recommendations on how those responsible for crimes should be held to account…We urge world leaders to send an unfaltering signal that the targeting of civilians during conflict is unacceptable…The events in Gaza have shocked us to the core…We must also establish the truth about crimes perpetuated against civilians on both sides."

Christine Chinkin had signed a letter dated January 11, 2009, which appeared in The Times, stating:

“Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is not self-defence - it’s a war crime.”

In addition, the letter stated:

“The rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas deplorable as they are, do not, in terms of scale and effect amount to an armed attack entitling Israel to rely on self-defence …Israel’s actions amount to aggression, not self-defence”.

All of the appointed Commissioners had therefore begun this inquiry with their minds made up. Israel was to be hung drawn and quartered. Any semblance of impartiality or lack of bias among the Commission members went out the window before the Commission had even started its proceedings. In failing to disqualify themselves they totally negated the validity of their findings.

Hamas violence against its own Gazan citizens during Israel’s invasion was apparently not deemed to be part of the Commission’s mandate.

A report prepared by Human Rights Watch dated 9 April 2009 alleged that during Israel‘s invasion:

“Hamas security forces or masked gunmen believed to be with Hamas extra-judicially executed 18 people, mainly those accused of collaborating with Israel. Masked gunmen also beat and maimed by shooting dozens of Hamas’s political opponents, especially members and supporters of its main political rival, Fatah.

The internal violence in Gaza has continued since Israel withdrew its forces. Palestinian human rights groups in Gaza have reported 14 more killings between January 18 and March 31, 2009.

So far, this violence has gone mostly unpunished. Despite promises to investigate unlawful killings and other abuses, Hamas authorities, to Human Rights Watch’s knowledge, have only investigated one alleged killing by members of their security forces or armed wing…

Hamas security forces have also used violence against known Fatah members, especially those who had worked in the Fatah-run security services of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Of particular concern is the widespread practice of maiming people by shooting them in the legs, which Hamas first used in June 2007, when it seized control inside Gaza from Fatah. According to the Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR), the human rights ombudsman organization of the Palestinian Authority, unidentified gunmen in masks deliberately inflicted bullet wounds to the legs of at least 49 people between December 28, 2008 and January 31, 2009. [http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/iopt0409web.pdf]

The Goldstone Report will not have anything like the political affect that the infamous “Zionism is Racism” resolution had in the aftermath of its passing by the UN General Assembly on 10 November 1975 until it was subsequently revoked on 16 December 1991.

Israel’s then Ambassador to the United Nations - Chaim Herzog described that resolution in the following terms:

“For us, the Jewish people, this resolution based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance, is devoid of any moral or legal value. For us, the Jewish people, this is no more than a piece of paper and we shall treat it as such.”

Israel should adopt the same view in relation to the Goldstone Report.

Israel’s response should be to proceed apace to build up the state by the ingathering of Jews from around the world and to continue with its brilliant technological , medical and scientific successes, whilst holding its head high among the nations of the world as a true democracy among a sea of repressive and oppressive regimes. It should make sure that the security of its 7.5 million citizens (including 1.5 million Arabs) is guaranteed from anyone who would seek to attack it and ensure it maintains defensible borders to enable this to happen.

This is the best route for Israel to take to avoid any attack of gallstones caused by Goldstone and his kangaroo court.

Obama Reaches Boiling Point On Settlements Freeze

2010-08-15T03:26:00.000-07:00

[Published September 2009]

The announcement by Israel’s Defence Minister - Ehud Barak - on September 7 that Israel will proceed to complete 2500 housing units in the West Bank - and commence building another 455 units there - is Israel’s response to the demand by President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Israel freeze all settlement activity in the West Bank including “natural growth”.

It is also an answer to the Palestinian Authority whose chief negotiator - Saeb Erekat - said on 31 August:

"There can be no middle ground ... He [Netanyahu] needs to stop settlement activities including ‘natural growth’,”

Israel has thus made it abundantly clear that :

1. there will be no “freeze”,

2. that building activity will continue at a rapid pace and

3. that there is no restriction on planning and development approvals being put in place to ensure that building activity is immediately resumed if negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority fail to reach any concluded agreement within a time frame - possibly six months - expected to be announced by President Obama later this month.

Continuing Palestinian Authority intransigence in refusing to concede one square meter of land in the West Bank to Israel - let alone agree to moderate or concede other claims infinitely far more difficult to resolve - ensure that the resumption of negotiations will yet once again lead to a dead end.

This intransigence has been exacerbated as the Palestinian Authority and Hamas find themselves locked in a bitter power struggle for the hearts and minds of the West Bank and Gazan Arabs.

Indeed the urgent need to patch up their presently irreconcilable differences was endorsed at a meeting of the Quartet - America, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations - held at Trieste on 26 June 2009.

The communique issued by the Quartet on that occasion contained the following plea:

“Noting the detrimental effect of Palestinian divisions and underscoring its desire for these divisions to be overcome, the Quartet called on all Palestinians to commit themselves to non-violence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations. Restoring Palestinian unity based on Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) commitments would be an important factor in this process. while facilitating reconstruction of Gaza and the organization of elections. The Quartet expressed support on this basis, for the ongoing mediation efforts of Egypt and the Arab League for Palestinian reconciliation behind President Abbas and appealed to all States in the region to play a constructive role in supporting the reconciliation process”
http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/middle_east/quartet-26jun2009.htm

Clearly the Quartet itself had come to the conclusion that the Palestinian Authority under President Abbas was a toothless tiger incapable of negotiating and concluding any form of binding peace treaty with Israel whilst Fatah and Hamas remained engaged in their deadly and divisive end game struggle.

That struggle has continued unabated since June despite the most intensive efforts of Egypt and the Arab League to effect a reconciliation.

President Obama was therefore seriously in error in ever suggesting that Israel should freeze settlement activity in these circumstances whilst complete Palestinian chaos and disunity prevailed.

The Quartet was talking pie in the sky if it believed Hamas would reconcile behind President Abbas. Hamas regards itself as the legitimately elected Government of the Palestinians. Hamas will not abandon that position in favour of anyone - especially President Abbas.

In this politically charged and uncertain environment there is simply no credible negotiating partner to sit down with Israel to implement the obligations under the Road Map or any other proposal President Obama may be contemplating. President Obama’s belief that any negotiations in this current atmosphere can have any possible chance of success is pure folly.

Indeed this view is supported and highlighted by the Quartet’s own statement that:

“these negotiations must result in the end of all claims.”

Neither Hamas nor Fatah will ever be able to abandon their claim for millions of Arabs and their descendants to emigrate to Israel. It is written into their respective constitutions and forms the very essence of their continued functioning and existence . To concede that right in negotiations would be political suicide and impossible to abandon by either Fatah or Hamas.

The Quartet persisted with the simplistic notion affirmed in its statement that :

“the only viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one that ends the occupation began in 1967 and fulfils the aspirations of both parties for independent homelands through two states for two peoples, Israel and an independent, contiguous and viable State of Palestine, living side by side in peace and security”

“the only viable solution.”.

There are other alternative solutions to “ending the occupation” of West Bank and Gazan Arabs that remain unexplored and unaddressed which do not have to involve the creation of a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan.

The Quartet’s stubborn insistence on its solution being the only viable solution indicates the bankruptcy of its own thinking. It exposes the Quartet’s inability to adjust to the current political void in the Palestinian leadership that has totally destroyed any prospects of the Quartet’s solution even remotely occurring whilst the reconciliation process urged by the Quartet remains unfulfilled.

To expect any other outcome in negotiations whilst the West Bank and Gaza remain split into separate Fatah and Hamas fiefdoms is naive in the extreme.

In these circumstances President Obama’s demand to freeze Israeli settlements was misdirected and totally mistimed.

Freezing building in existing Jewish settlements in an attempt to induce the political eunuch that the Palestinian Authority presently represents to enter into meaningless and ineffectual negotiations would have been a grave error of judgment on Israel’s part.

Israel’s agreement to resumption of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority at this point of time will therefore only be a sop to President Obama. Nothing will come from such negotiations.

The Palestinian Authority now need to decide whether they will take part in such negotiations.

Saeb Erekat has toned down his rhetoric of just one week ago telling Haaretz on 7 September

“Israel’s decision to approve the construction of over 450 new settlement units nullifies any effect that a settlement freeze, when and if announced will have”

Given that there will not be any announcement of a freeze - the ball is now firmly in the Palestinian Authority’s court.

To decide whether to negotiate in the absence of any freeze is rapidly coming to the boil - both for President Obama and the Palestinian Authority.

Both are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

Will Sharon's Legacy Be Obama's Downfall?

2010-08-14T21:20:00.000-07:00

[Published September 2009]

Israel’s former Prime Minister - Ariel Sharon - has been in a coma since 4 January 2006 but his legacy hangs like a heavy cloud over the plans of President Obama to oversee the creation of a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan.

President Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton certainly have a lot on their minds as they grapple with a multitude of the world’s current conflicts which - no doubt - have caused massive overloading of their respective memory banks.

Yet this would be a lame excuse for them forgetting about - or seeking to minimize the existence and crucial importance of the letters exchanged on 14 April 2004 between President Bush and Israel’s then Prime Minister - Ariel Sharon.
[http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Reference+Documents/Exchange+of+letters+Sharon-Bush+14-Apr-2004.htm]

This correspondence enabled courageous and highly dangerous decisions being taken by Israel to kick start President Bush’s stalled 2003 Road Map - which had been enthusiastically endorsed by Russia, the European Union and the United Nations as the key to resolving the Israeli-Arab conflict by 2005.

The President’s letter provided the catalyst - and the political justification - for Israel unilaterally evacuating the entire Jewish population of 8000 from Gaza and withdrawing Israel’s army totally from there without any preconditions or undertakings being given or sought from the Palestinian Authority.

The Presidential letter set out in detail the framework that President Bush would support as Israel attempted to progress his Road Map towards the creation of this new Arab State between Israel and Jordan for the first time ever in recorded history.

President Bush’s letter clearly - and unambiguously - assured Israel that;

1. The borders of this new Arab State would not encompass the entire West Bank despite successive Arab leaders having demanded this outcome for the previous 37 years,

2. Jewish towns and villages in the West Bank would be incorporated into the borders of Israel

3. The Arabs would have to forego their demand to be given the right to allow millions of Arabs to emigrate to Israel and

4. Israel’s existence as a Jewish State would be non-negotiable

Jerusalem Post Editor David Horovitz joined a group of Israeli journalists who met with President Bush in the Oval Office prior to the President’s visit to Israel to take part in its 60th Anniversary celebrations in May 2008.

In his editorial - published on 14 May 2008 - Mr Horovitz revealed the extent of the American loss of memory - even at that time - concerning the President’s 2004 letter in the following terms:

“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, however, has been known to minimize the significance of this four-year-old letter. Just last week, for instance, she told reporters that the 2004 letter “talked about realities at that time. And there are realities for both sides….

Bush’s National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley has also given briefings to the effect that Israel had tried to overstate the importance of a rather vague letter, which was issued at a time when Sharon was seeking to bolster support for the pullout from Gaza.

And in answering my question, Bush did not at first even realize that I was referring to the 2004 letter. Hadley, who was also in the Oval Office, had to prompt him. “Okay, the letters,” the president then said, remembering.”

This was not simply memory loss but something far worse and more sinister. An attempt was being made - even in 2008 - to downplay America’s clear and unequivocal commitments given to Israel as the price for Israel’s total evacuation of Gaza;

Israel has paid a high price in relying on President Bush’s letter.

Gaza has become a de facto terrorist Palestinian State with Hamas now firmly entrenched as the governing authority.

Israel has - since its evacuation of Gaza in 2005 - sustained a never ending barrage of rockets and mortars fired indiscriminately into Israeli population centres from Gaza by a bewildering variety of terrorist groups and sub-groups who would have had no chance of operating so freely from Gaza if the Israeli Army had remained there.

Gaza eventually paid the price for these gross acts of terrorism with Israel’s invasion of Gaza between December 2008-January 2009. However Gaza still remains defiant and unbowed.

Israel now needs to make it perfectly clear to President Obama and his Secretary of State - Hillary Clinton - that any attempt to resile from President Bush’s letter to Ariel Sharon will torpedo the prospects for any further negotiations - that President Obama then will have no one but himself to blame for bringing his own plans to a premature and ignominious end.

Israel’s former Prime Minister - Ehud Olmert - neither forgot - nor overlooked - the critical significance of President Bush’s letter to permitting the resumption of any ongoing negotiations.

President Bush and Ms Rice were quick to claim credit for bringing Israel and the Palestinian Authority together at the international conference held in Annapolis in November 2007 to announce the breakthrough in the resumption of those negotiations.

Maybe President Bush and his former Madam Secretary were so flushed by their apparent success that they failed to hear - or perhaps hoped everyone might overlook - what Prime Minister Olmert told the gathered world leaders at Annapolis about the course of those future negotiations:

“The negotiations will be based on previous agreements between us, U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the road map and the April 14, 2004 letter of President Bush to the Prime Minister of Israel.”

The subsequent failure of the negotiations at Annapolis can be directly attributed to Israel’s insistence that America remain committed to the terms of President Bush’s letter to Ariel Sharon - terms that the Palestinian Authority was not prepared to countenance and which led to the breakdown of those negotiations.

As President Obama gets ready to lay out his own proposals for achieving the two state solution, he needs to be reminded of the commitment made by his predecessor to Ariel Sharon. Israel’s Prime Minister - Benjamin Netanyahu - must insist on President Obama remaining committed to supporting the outline of any proposed resolution to the conflict as clearly laid out in President Bush’s letter.

Jews have accumulated many memories - both pleasant and unpleasant - since losing their State, being expelled from there 2000 years ago and being dispersed to all corners of the globe. The Jews steeled themselves to ensure they never forgot who they were, where they came from and to where they would one day return.

Strength comes from remembering - not forgetting.

President Obama and his Secretary of State would do well to remember - and heed - this lesson as they strive to develop their own plan for ending the conflict.

What Is There To Talk About?

2010-08-14T21:00:00.000-07:00

[Published August 2009]

Excitement mounts and expectations are raised as speculation increases that the man simultaneously wearing three hats as Palestinian Authority President, Fatah Chairman and PLO Chairman - Mahmoud Abbas - might be possibly meeting at the United Nations with Israel’s Prime Minister—Benjamin Netanyahu - around September 23.

They will no doubt be locked in a smiling and happy three-way embrace with President Obama - flanked by as many Quartet and Arab leaders as President Obama can cajole to join in this historic photo opportunity.

Like the failed Annapolis meeting less than two years ago with President Bush - there will supposedly be an announcement by his successor - President Obama - that sixteen years of failed negotiations to create a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan - the so-called “two state solution” - are going to once again be resumed.

Perhaps the announcement will be accompanied by the intention to hold an international gathering in Moscow to formally open the resumption of those negotiations.

However before this chain of events can happen it will certainly be necessary for Abbas to declare he is ready to recognize Israel as a Jewish State - something he has consistently and steadfastly refused to acknowledge.

As President of the Palestinian Authority Abbas is notionally committed to the “two state solution” accepted both by him and his predecessor the late Yasser Arafat- albeit the terms demanded by both of them have ensured the failure of this initiative since 1993.

As Chairman of the PLO Abbas is however committed to advocating the provisions of Article 20 of the PLO Covenant which states:

“The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine and everything that has been based on them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism being a divine religion is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own: they are citizens of the states to which they belong”

As Chairman of Fatah he is sworn to uphold Article 22 of its separate Charter:

“Opposing any political solution offered as an alternative to demolishing the Zionist occupation in Palestine … “

It is no wonder then that Abbas has been loath so far to accept the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in 17% of former Palestine pursuant not only to the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine - but also pursuant to the United Nations Charter.

He still continues to head two organizations that are hell bent on consigning the six million Jews now living in Israel into national oblivion - either by armed struggle or by changing the demographics of Israel’s population from its present ratio of 80% Jews/20% Arabs by continuing to demand the right for millions of Arabs to be allowed to emigrate to Israel.

Abbas is too weak to resist these plans to eliminate Israel as the Jewish National Home for all present - and future - generations of Jews no matter where they might happen to be born or to be living.

He is certainly frank about where his loyalties presently reside.

On 27 April 2009 he told a preliminary conference of the Palestinian Youth Conference at Ramallah:

“A Jewish State, what is that supposed to mean? You can call yourselves as you like, but I don’t accept it and I say so publicly. All I know is that there is the state of Israel, in the borders of 1967, not one centimeter less. Anything else I don’t accept ” [YNet - 27 April 2009]

Abbas had no compunction or embarrassment in accepting a large framed map of “Palestine” covering the entire area of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea after this address. The picture later appeared on the front page of both daily publications of the Palestinian Authority. [Israelinsider - 28 April 2009]

Perhaps Mr Abbas needs reminding that
1. There are no 1967 borders - only armistice lines
2. The United Nations had no trouble in understanding what the term “Jewish State” meant when passing Resolution 181 on 29 November 1947 which declared:

“Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem, set forth in Part III of this Plan, shall come into existence in Palestine two months after the evacuation of the armed forces of the mandatory Power has been completed but in any case not later than 1 October 1948. The boundaries of the Arab State, the Jewish State, and the City of Jerusalem shall be as described in Parts II and III below.”

The Jewish people did not struggle for 2000 years to return to their ancient homeland only to then be delegitimized and categorized as a “non-nation” - not entitled to enjoy in 0.01% of the former Ottoman Empire precisely the same rights of self determination as have been conferred on the Arab nation extending over twenty one sovereign states in the remaining 99.99% of the liberated Ottoman Empire.

Given his intransigent attitude - what will Abbas possibly have to talk about with Netanyahu at the United Nations unless Abbas has a life transforming change within the next three weeks? And why should Netanyahu be a party to such a farce unless Abbas accepts that Jews have the same rights as Arabs to determine their own future in at least some portion of the land where their national identity and destiny was forged more than 3000 years ago.

Pressure And Purges Panic Jordan

2010-08-14T20:46:00.000-07:00

[Published August 2009]

Jordan’s King Abdullah is fast beginning to realise the serious ramifications threatening the continued rule of the Hashemite family dynasty in Jordan resulting from the failure of negotiations over the last 16 years to create a new Arab state between Jordan and Israel - “the two state solution“.

Jordan’s intensive diplomatic support for the “the two state solution” has come apart at the seams as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas - emboldened by comments made by President Obama - now refuses to contemplate re-opening negotiations with Israel until Israel ceases all construction and building activity in the West Bank including the provision of residential housing to accommodate natural growth.

Apparently Abbas regards adding a bedroom, a family room or a parent’s retreat to an existing house as an obstacle to resuming negotiations. Completing partly constructed houses to lock up stage is apparently anathema to the Palestinian Authority. Israel has made it clear that it will not be accommodating Abbas’s farcical demand for a total freeze on all construction in the West Bank.

Some very neat diplomatic footwork will now have to be negotiated by President Obama - if Abbas - and Obama - are to save face and if Abbas is to be persuaded to resume the stalled negotiations.

This process has already begun with President Obama stating on 18 August:

“The Israeli government has taken discussions with us very seriously,” adding that he “was encouraged by what I am seeing on the ground.”

Abbas however now also finds himself embroiled in a serious conflict of interest - negotiating for the “two state solution” as the head of the Palestinian Authority whilst simultaneously chairing Fatah which calls for a “one state solution” - the total destruction of Israel.

Israel needs to seriously consider whether it should resume negotiations with Abbas whilst he retains both positions following his re-election as Chairman of Fatah in Bethlehem last week.

The long running power struggle between Hamas and Fatah continues unabated. The intrusion of a new terrorist movement into Gaza politics - Jund Ansar Allah - has seen 30 Gazans killed and more than 100 wounded in fratricidal blood letting last weekend. Gaza and the West Bank remain divided into separate Hamas and Fatah fiefdoms with no end to that confrontation in sight.

The prospects for the Palestinian Authority ever again being a credible and reliable negotiating partner with Israel in these chaotic circumstances has descended to rock bottom. Further negotiations with the Palestinian Authority have become pointless and have no prospects for success.

For these reasons it has become imperative that a new Arab negotiating partner or partners be found to sit down with Israel to determine the future sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza.

Jordan - as the last Arab State to occupy the West Bank between 1948-1967 - is perfectly suited to fill the role left by the castration of the Palestinian Authority‘s power and influence as a solid and reliable negotiator able to reach an agreement and more importantly ensure that it is enforced.

Jordan has begun to panic as its role in resolving the West Bank sovereignty issue is now being more frequently discussed - as events of the past few weeks have indicated.

Sarah Honig writing in the Jerusalem Post on 6 August - “Another Tack (Trans) Jordan Is Palestine”- highlights Jordan’s origins as one of the two successor States - with Israel - in former Palestine.

A flurry of diplomatic activity reportedly occurred this week as Israeli envoys secretly travelled to Jordan:

“to assuage concerns that Israel plans to transfer Palestinians from the West Bank to the Hashemite Kingdom”

Jordan’s decision to withdraw citizenship granted to those Arab residents who originated from west of the Jordan River seeking a new life and future in Jordan has provoked much resentment and unrest from those affected by that decision.

King Abdullah has now taken the extraordinary action of dismissing dozens of senior officers, including major and brigadier generals who were reportedly forced to agree to early retirement. In an address to the General Staff a few days before undertaking the purge of the generals, the king warned of internal and external plots designed to spark unrest among the Palestinian majority of Jordan‘s population:

“I clearly reiterate that no force can compel us to do anything against the interests of Jordan and Jordanians. The one who speaks about threatening Jordan, its identity and stability, and threatening our national unity, does not know Jordan or Jordanians and has not read their history.”

King Abdullah however needs to pay heed to the following resolution passed at the 8th conference of the Palestinian National Council of the PLO (now also headed by Abbas) in February-March 1971:

“Jordan is linked to Palestine by a national relationship and a national unity forged by history and culture from the earliest times. The creation of one political entity in Transjordan and another in Palestine would have no basis either in legality or as to the elements universally accepted as fundamental to a political entity. It would be a continuation of fragmentation by which colonialism shattered the unity of our Arab nation and our Arab homeland after the First World War.

But this fragmentation has not prevented the masses, either west or east of the River Jordan, from feeling that they are one people, or from remaining united against the conspiracy of imperialism and Zionism.

In raising the slogans of the liberation of Palestine and presenting the problems of the Palestine revolution, it was not the intention of the Palestine revolution to separate the east of the River from the west, nor did it believe that the struggle of the Palestinian people can be separated from the struggle of the masses in Jordan..."

This resolution - whilst posing a direct threat by the PLO to the Hashemite family’s continuing rule in Jordan - can also be used to political advantage by King Abdullah - if he is prepared to rise to the challenge.

Reunifying the heavily populated Arab areas of the West Bank with Jordan in an enlarged Jordan with newly created boundaries would allow all its West Bank residents to enjoy Jordanian citizenship and equal rights with the rest of Jordan’s residents totally freed from Israeli occupation and control.

Jordan has enjoyed a signed peace treaty with Israel since 1994. Jordan is therefore uniquely placed to negotiate the future sovereignty of the West Bank with Israel by agreeing to a new internationally recognized border that will be mutually respected and observed by both Israel and Jordan.

The sooner King Abdullah steps up to the plate - the easier he will sleep at night.

Palestine - Abbas Accelerates Into The Abyss

2010-08-13T17:00:00.000-07:00

[Published August 2009]

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has signed his own death warrant as the preferred Arab partner to negotiate the allocation of sovereignty in the West Bank between Arabs and Jews.

His demise follows his failure - after being re-elected as Chairman of Fatah in Bethlehem this week - to propose or procure any changes to the constitution of that terrorist organization at its first convention held in the last 20 years.

The constitution of Fatah presently calls for the destruction of Israel and contains the following unambiguous clauses that make this objective clear and unequivocal.

Article 12: Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.

Article 13: Establishing an independent democratic state with complete sovereignty on all Palestinian lands, and Jerusalem as its capital city ...

Article 22: Opposing any political solution offered as an alternative to demolishing the Zionist occupation in Palestine …

The constitution has remained unchanged since 1964 - at a time when the West Bank was occupied by Jordan and Gaza was occupied by Egypt.

Any suggestion, therefore, that Fatah’s constitution is restricted and directed in its application only to the liberation of the West Bank and Gaza from Israel is disingenuous.

Abbas reportedly succeeded in achieving consensus over a political strategy at the convention to continue pursuing negotiations with Israel to achieve the Palestinian Authority’s demand for independence and freedom in a sovereign state in all of the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital, as well as the right for millions of Arabs to emigrate to Israel. The right of resistance was reserved as a legitimate option in case such negotiations fail.

Since intensive negotiations to achieve such a result have abysmally failed over the last six years under the auspices of the Quartet - America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations- the expectation of such an outcome ever eventuating is totally unrealistic.

Fatah ideology - as expressed in the constitution - is incompatible with - and is the very antithesis of - the creation of a new Arab state in only the West Bank and Gaza.

Fatah’s stated aim is the total destruction of Israel and nothing less.

Fatah is :

“an independent national revolutionary movement representing the revolutionary vanguard of the Palestinian people” (Article 11).

Clearly it is thus empowered to act independently of any decisions made by the Palestinian Authority or anyone else with whom it cares to disagree.

Abbas has placed himself in a position of total conflict negotiating for the “two state solution” as President of the Palestinian Authority whilst simultaneously chairing Fatah which still unconditionally calls for a “one state solution” under its clearly worded constitution..

On 9 September 1993 the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) - which also happens to now be headed by Abbas - was required to give the following commitment to Israel before the Oslo Accords were signed:

“In view of the promise of a new era and the signing of the Declaration of Principles and based on Palestinian acceptance of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, he PLO affirms that those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel’s right to exist, and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter are now inoperative and no longer valid. Consequently,the PLO undertakes to submit to the Palestinian National Council for formal approval the necessary changes in regard to the Palestinian Covenant”

Whilst there is considerable doubt as to whether the clauses mentioned were subsequently changed in the PLO Covenant, nevertheless Israel declared that it was satisfied such changes had been effected and proceeded to negotiate with the newly constituted Palestinian Authority on the basis of the above commitment.

No such commitment however was sought from Fatah nor was any commitment given by Fatah to similarly delete the offending clauses from its own separate constitution either in 1993 or in 2009 when the opportunity arose to do so at this week‘s convention.

Israel accordingly needs to view the past week’s events in Bethlehem with grave apprehension.

It is clear that any negotiations with the Palestinian Authority will not in any way be binding - either on Hamas or Fatah.

Both Hamas and Fatah remain independent terrorist groups that will be free to thumb their noses at any concluded agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Israel and resort to any form of action they consider necessary to bring about the destruction of Israel.

Doubtless Abbas hopes that this continuation of the common hatred of the common enemy will help to repair the relationship between Hamas and Fatah, facilitate ending the power struggle between them, reunify the West Bank and Gaza into one territorial unit enabling them to reconcile their differences and establish a government of national unity.

Israel should now make it abundantly clear that Abbas cannot be regarded as a bona fide negotiating partner unless Fatah makes the same commitment to Israel that the PLO did in 1993 and takes immediate action to omit the offending articles from its constitution that call for the destruction of Israel.

Not only Israel should be making such a demand.

President Obama needs to make it clear to Abbas that America is not prepared to deal with him whilst Israel’s demand goes unanswered - or at the least whilst he continues to act as both President of the Palestinian Authority and as Chairman and a member of Fatah.

Obama Must Focus On Jordan And Egypt

2010-08-13T16:45:00.000-07:00

[Published August 2009]

President Obama has already invested much personal time and considerable diplomatic resources in unsuccessfully pursuing former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton’s failed attempts to create an additional Arab State in the West Bank and Gaza - some 6% of former Palestine.

In doing so President Obama has completely ignored the fact that another Arab State - today called Jordan - was established in 77% of former Palestine 63 years ago.

President Obama needs to question why another Arab State in the West Bank and Gaza should be created now when it was not established between 1948-1967 during which time Jordan and Egypt respectively occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Not one single Jew then lived in those areas since they had all been driven out and dispossessed by the invading Jordanian and Egyptian armies.

Arab voices and indeed those of the world community through the United Nations remained silent during that 19 years window of lost opportunity. Talk of a separate Arab ethnic or national identity between Arabs living on either side of the Jordan River was never raised or seriously discussed with good reason - there was not and never has been any difference.

To expect that such an additional Arab state can possibly emerge in 2009 when 500000 Jews now live in the West Bank is nothing more than an illusion.

President Obama now needs to focus on the role Jordan and Egypt can play in resolving the issue of sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza - the only area of former Palestine where territorial sovereignty still remains unallocated between Jews and Arabs.

Jordan owes an enormous debt of thanks to America for facilitating Jordan’s creation as a sovereign independent Arab nation in 1946 and its subsequent admission to the United Nations.

America’s then President - Harry Truman - acquiesced in Great Britain’s action in unilaterally granting Jordan [then called Trans-Jordan] its independence on 22 March 1946 in breach of Article 27 of the Mandate for Palestine which provided:

“The Mandatory [Great Britain] shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of the Government of any foreign power.”

Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson in a confidential memorandum to President Truman on 15 July 1946 had advised that Zionist leaders desired that the United States take the position that Great Britain had acted:

“illegally and unilaterally in granting independence to Trans-Jordan. They urge that the United States refuse to recognise Trans-Jordan as an independent country and oppose the admission of Trans-Jordan into the United Nations. They insist that Great Britain, in recognizing the independence of Trans-Jordan has violated the terms of the Palestine Mandate received from the League of Nations; that it has violated certain obligations contained in the American-British Convention relating to Palestine of December 1924 and that it failed to observe certain stipulations in the Charter of the United Nations.”

[www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/un/large/documents/index.php?documentdate=1946-07-15&documentid=1&studycollectionid=UN&pagenumber=1]

After examining these claims Mr Acheson advised President Truman :

“that in the absence of precedents, and in view of the possibility of various interpretations being placed on the language used in the Mandate, in the American- British Convention and other pertinent documents, the Zionists can produce plausible arguments in favour of their position.”

However without producing any justification for the following statement whatsoever Mr Acheson then continued:

“The Department is of the opinion, however, that the position of the British from the legal point of view is the more sound.”

Since there are always two sides to any legal dispute that can only be eventually resolved by Court process - the State Department was on safe ground in propounding the view it took at that point of time.

However Mr Acheson then continued:

“The Department also feels that in making its decision, the Government of the United States should consider the factual and international political aspects of the problem, not solely those of a legal nature”

One of those aspects considered by Mr Acheson and advised to President Truman was that:

“Great Britain has gone so far in setting up and recognizing an independent Kingdom of Trans-Jordan that it is not now possible for it to change its policy in this respect. Great Britain, therefore, apparently has no choice other than to support the application of Trans-Jordan for admission into the United Nations. If the United States should oppose the admission of Trans-Jordan, a rift would take place between Great Britain and the United States in the Middle East with a resultant weakening in the position of the Western powers and a decline of Western influence in that area. Such a development would be extremely unfortunate in the present world situation.”

Mr Acheson concluded that in view of the above consideration (and others looked at by him)

“ and of the over-riding political necessity of maintaining the peace and stability of the Middle East, it is recommended that the delegate of the United States be instructed to vote for the admission of Trans-Jordan to the United Nations”

Peace and stability in the Middle East was shattered just two years later when Trans-Jordan’s British trained armed forces invaded the remaining 23% of Palestine not already under its sovereign control occupying about one quarter - comprising the West Bank and the old city of Jerusalem - for 19 years until lost to Israel in the Six Day War in June 1967.

President Obama needs to appreciate that Jews had - and still have - the right to return and settle in the West Bank after 1967 under the provisions of the Mandate for Palestine and the United Nations Charter. He needs to respect these clearly defined legal rights.

America needs to call up its favour in recognizing Jordan’s birth 63 years ago and insist it now play a direct role in determining the allocation of territorial sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza in direct trilateral negotiations between Jordan, Israel and Egypt.

It is never too late to repay that debt and the time is fast approaching for President Obama to call on Jordan to make this commitment.

Palestine - Jumpy Jordan Generates Gerrymander

2010-08-13T16:21:00.000-07:00

[Published July 2009]

Jordan - 77% of former Palestine - moved this week to start revoking the citizenship of 70% of its population who originated from the remaining 23% of former Palestine - today called Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

In doing so Jordan’s Interior Minister Nayef Al-Kadi stressed

"We insist that Jordan is not Palestine, just as Palestine is not Jordan,”

The speciousness of Mr Al-Kadi’s argument is exposed on the official website of Jordan’s late King Hussein - who died in 1999 - in which the late King stated:

“The majority of Jordan’s [then] population of 4.4 million people are Arabs descended from various tribes that have migrated to the area over the years from all directions.”

Arab spokesmen from both sides of the Jordan River have asserted for decades that there is no cultural religious or ethnic difference between Arabs living on either side of the Jordan River.

King Hussein himself stated in his book Uneasy Lies The Head [1962 p.118]:

“Palestine and Jordan were both under the British Mandate, but as my grandfather pointed out in his memoirs they were hardly separate countries. Transjordan being to the east of the Jordan River, it formed in a sense, the interior of Palestine”

Abu Iyad told the Near East Report on 8 January 1990:

“You cannot make distinctions between a Jordanian and a Palestinian. It is true that we encourage unity between Arab peoples but the relation between Jordan and Palestine in particular is clearly distinctive; all those who tried in the past and are still trying to create divisions between the Jordanian and Palestinian people have failed. We indeed constitute one people”

Yasser Arafat told Der Spiegel [No.29/1986]:

"Indeed Palestinians and Jordanians are one people. No one can divide us.”

The Crown Prince of Jordan wrote in Foreign Affairs in 1982:

“Small as Jordan is, our country is politically, socially, economically, militarily and historically inseparable from the Palestinian issue.”

Jordan’s latest decision to revoke the citizenship of its majority population was stated by Mr Al-Kadi to have been made at the request of the PLO and the Arab world to consolidate the status of the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people - heaping one fiction on another as the PLO is locked in a deadly struggle for power against Hamas that sees no prospect of being resolved.

Those Jordanians who have their citizenship revoked will suffer serious financial hardship and loss of rights guaranteed by Articles 5 -23 of the Jordanian Constitution.

Article 20 of the Constitution provides:

“Elementary education shall be compulsory for Jordanians and free of charge in Government schools“.

Under the Jordanian Nationality Law 1954 a Jordanian woman marrying a non-Jordanian man can neither pass on her nationality to her children nor grant them residency permits. Such children do not have access to many rights, including enrolement in the school system, social entitlements, or political rights.

If this provision were to be enforced against the children of those parents now being stripped of their citizenship one could confidently predict a lot of unrest and civil disturbance as a result.

Jordan appears to be taking a calculated gamble in this current citizenship stripping exercise in an attempt to completely distance itself from becoming involved in the allocation of sovereignty of the West Bank - which it occupied between 1948-1967 until it was lost to Israel in the Six Day War.

Jordan’s current action is designed to sustain the fiction that there is a national differentiation between Arabs living west of the Jordan River and those living east of the Jordan River. This fiction has been the single greatest obstacle to ending the 130 years old conflict between Jews and Arabs in former Palestine. It has led to futile negotiations over the last 72 years to create a new Arab state in the West Bank and Gaza between Jordan and Israel where no such state has ever existed before in recorded history.

Attempts by President Obama to create favourable conditions for reviving the stalled and inconclusive peace talks between Israel and yet another fictitious entity - the Palestinian Authority - nee the PLO - to create such a new fictitious state have so far proved unsuccessful. In the unlikely event that these negotiations were to be resumed they would not result in any final status agreement being concluded since the parties remain too far apart in their negotiating positions without any real prospects of the yawing gap between them being bridged.

Only Jordan can break the deadlock in the West Bank by once again occupying and annexing the heavily populated Arab areas within the West Bank and incorporating such areas within the territorial boundaries of Jordan. The extent of such annexation needs to be resolved in direct face to face negotiations with Israel which would require the international boundary between those two existing sovereign states to be redrawn.

Two countries at peace with each other since 1994 have a far better chance of allocating sovereignty in the West Bank between them than the current failed strategy of trying to implant a new state between them that has been - and will continue to prove to be - an abysmal failure.

Proceeding with the Jordanian option will preclude any of its citizens losing their current citizenship and will restore the status quo existing before this hasty and ill considered decision was taken.

It will reaffirm the vision of Jordan as seen by the late King Hussein in an address given by him to the nation in Amman on 31 July 1998 in which he stated that Jordanian citizens of Palestinian origin

“ all have the full rights of citizenship and all its obligations, the same as any other citizen irrespective of his origin. They are an integral part of the Jordanian state to which they belong, on whose soil they live, and in whose life and various activities they participate.”

King Abdullah appears to be an honourable man who respects and reveres the memory of his late father. It would be a pity if he were to succumb to political pressure from the PLO and the Arab League and depart from these noble principles laid down by the late King Hussein.

The attempt to strip any current citizen of his citizenship rights in Jordan should be universally condemned and steps need to be taken by King Abdullah to have such decision immediately annulled.

Palestine - Negate The Debate On The Jewish State

2010-08-10T17:59:00.000-07:00

[Published July 2009]

Any prospect of creating a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan took another nosedive this past week with an extraordinary outburst by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak saying he could not accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish State.

In an interview with Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot on 10 July President Mubarak said Israel’s request for Palestinian recognition of a Jewish state is unacceptable.

“Don’t you have Arab citizens in Israel?” Mubarak asks. “You want to turn Israel into a Jewish state only? That is very bad. I’m telling you. It’s a serious mistake which will harm you. A Jewish state will become the target of all terrorists. An open state, on the other hand, is a different matter. Look at us in Egypt: We have Muslims, Christians, Copts and Jews,”

President Mubarak was being blatantly misleading in suggesting that the term “Jewish State” meant a state where only Jews and no one else can reside. 20% of Israel’s 7 million population is Muslim Arab and there are over 100000 Christian Arabs living in Israel. Any suggestion that either group will lose its citizenship is nonsensical.

What the President conveniently forgot to mention was that 90% of Egypt’s 80 million population is Muslim Arab, that only 9% is Coptic Christian which group is massively discriminated against and that there are no more than 500 Jews living in Egypt.

Like so many issues in the Middle East words - and the meaning to be ascribed to them - are very important. None is more important at the present time than Israel itself defining what the words “Jewish State” means.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had made it clear on 14 June that any negotiations with the Palestinian Authority would fail unless the Authority was prepared to recognize Israel as the Jewish State when he stated unequivocally:

“As we look toward the horizon, we must be firmly connected to reality, to the truth. And the simple truth is that the root of the conflict was, and remains, the refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own, in their historic homeland.

The Palestinian leadership must arise and say: “Enough of this conflict. We recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in this land, and we are prepared to live beside you in true peace.” I am yearning for that moment, for when Palestinian leaders say those words to our people and to their people, then a path will be opened to resolving all the problems between our peoples, no matter how complex they may be.

Therefore, a fundamental prerequisite for ending the conflict is a public, binding and unequivocal Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.”

US President Barack Obama had welcomed Mr Netanyahu’s speech, calling it an important step forward. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs affirmed the following day that :

“The president is committed to two states, a Jewish State of Israel and an independent Palestine, in the historic homeland of both peoples,”

On 12 July Prime Minister Netanyahu again reiterated his position at a ceremony in Jerusalem commemorating 105 years since the death of Theodor Herzl:

“The key to peace lies in explicit and unequivocal recognition of Israel as the Jewish state on the part of the Palestinians.”

The term “Jewish State” should be defined by Israel so that there is no doubt as to its meaning by anyone choosing to use those words.

No better definition exists than that given by David Ben Gurion to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine at Lake Success New York on the 7 July 1947:

“What is the meaning of a Jewish State? As I told you before, a Jewish State does not mean one has to be a Jew. It means merely a State-where the Jews are in the majority, otherwise all the citizens have the same status. If the State were called by the name “Palestine,” - I said if - then all would be Palestinian citizens If the State would be given, another name - I think it would be given another name - because Palestine is neither a Jewish nor an Arab name. As far as the Arabs are concerned, and we have the evidence of the Arab historian, Hitti, that there was no such a thing as “Palestine” at all: Palestine is not an Arab name. Palestine is also not a Jewish name. When the Greeks were our enemies, in order not to annoy the Jews, they gave different names to the streets. So, maybe the name of Palestine will be changed. But whatever the name of the country, every citizen of the country will be a citizen. This is what we mean. This is what we have to mean. We cannot conceive that in a State where we are not in a minority, where we have the main responsibilities as the majority of the country, there should be the slightest discrimination between a Jew and a non-Jew.”

Whilst Ben Gurion’s utopian ideal has not yet been fully realised in relation to the “slightest discrimination between a Jew and a non-Jew” his vision is steadily being advanced in the face of the constant draining of Israel’s financial resources spent on armaments to fight innumerable wars and to ensure it remains in a state of preparedness to defend all its citizens - both Jews and Arabs- in the face of refusal by all 21 members of the Arab League to recognize Israel as the Jewish State.

Many members of the Arab League have abbreviated their official State names. Egypt is officially designated as “The Arab Republic of Egypt”, Syria as “The Syrian Arab Republic”, Jordan as “The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” and Libya as “The Great Socialist Peoples Libyan Arab Jamahiriya”

Israel’s Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948 merely proclaimed :

“the establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine, to be called ISRAEL”

Perhaps it is time for Israel to formally adopt Ben Gurion’s definition, to officially designate itself as “The Jewish State of Israel” and to get the two Arab countries with whom it has signed peace treaties - Egypt and Jordan - to acknowledge that fact.

As we commemorate Neil Armstrong’s setting foot on the moon on 20 July 1969 we might well use his first words on that momentous occasion to describe what the official adoption of such a name change by Israel might possibly herald:

“That’s one small step for man: one giant leap for mankind”

Palestine - G8 Novate The Great Debate

2010-07-25T00:32:00.000-07:00

[Published July 2009]

The creation of a new Arab State between Jordan and Israel -the so called “two state solution” - is by no means an assured certainty - despite the confident predictions emanating from such influential sources as President Obama and the Quartet over recent weeks that it remains the only viable solution to resolving the 120 years old conflict between Jews and Arabs over the territory once called Palestine.

The latest meeting of the G8 world leaders concluded in L’Aquila Italy on 10 July 2009 appears to have taken a far more cautious approach - refusing to back itself into a corner by endorsing the two state solution as the only viable option to resolve the conflict.

The G8 Summit annually brings together the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In addition, the European Union participates and is represented by the president of the European Council and the President of the European Commission.

The Chairman’s Summary presented by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at the conclusion of the three day meeting included the following statement:

“Looking forward to a comprehensive peace between Israel and all its neighbours, the Leaders reiterated their full support to the two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and urged the parties to rapidly resume direct negotiations. They also called on them to fulfil their obligations under the Roadmap. G8 Leaders remained engaged to fully support the Palestinian Authority including, once a peace agreement reached, through the launching of an ambitious and comprehensive plan that would develop infrastructure and foster economic activities in the future Palestinian State”

This statement is silent on how the G8 sees a comprehensive peace between Israel and all its neighbours being achieved and the G8 was apparently loath to indicate how it could expect that to ever eventuate.

It is noteworthy that whilst the G8 fully supported the two state solution it specifically refrained from endorsing it as the only viable solution - which puts the majority of the G8 leaders distinctly at odds with the pronouncements of President Obama and the Quartet.

Since America, and Russia comprise two of the four members of the Quartet and two of the 8 members of the G8, the failure of the G8 to collectively toe the American and Quartet line indicates considerable doubt by the remaining members of the G8 in the two state solution ever coming to fruition.

The statement also calls for the rapid resumption of direct negotiations. However the senior negotiator for the Palestinian Authority- Saeb Erekat - has angrily denounced the conditions laid down by Israel’s Prime Minister - Benjamin Netanyahu - for the creation of this new Arab state - especially its demilitarization- with the following dismissive declaration:

“Netanyahu will have to wait 1000 years for someone to agree to talk to him”

Interestingly the G8 have also called on the parties to fulfil their obligations under the Roadmap first proposed by President Bush in 2003. These obligations still remain unfulfilled in any substantive detail - despite six years of the most intense international diplomacy to procure compliance.

Indeed one of the complexities to be resolved at the present time is the status of the Roadmap itself and whether Israel and the Palestinian Authority still regard themselves as obliged to negotiate solely on the basis of the proposals laid out by President Bush.

Whilst Israel has indicated its acceptance to enter negotiations based solely on the Roadmap, the Palestinian Authority has been calling for negotiations based on the Arab League Initiative as well.

Until the ground rules are definitively established it is difficult to see how any negotiations can ever commence.

The pledge by the G8 of full support for the Palestinian Authority might give its President - - Mahmoud Abbas - some traction in seeking popular support for his Fatah administration to represent the Palestinian Arabs. It will not and cannot disguise the huge gap in the positions of Hamas and Fatah as they compete for undivided political control of the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza.

The G8 statement remains silent on the ability of the Palestinian Authority to enter into a final and binding peace treaty with Israel that would be capable of being honoured or enforced in the face of Hamas opposition to any such treaty - especially whilst the West Bank and Gaza remain divided as separate territorial units under respective Hamas and Fatah control.

The carrot dangled at the end of the statement promising an ambitious and comprehensive plan for the development of infrastructure and economic activities in the future Palestinian State “once a peace agreement has been reached” - amounts to a sober realisation that the billions of dollars that have been recklessly poured into the bottomless coffers of the Palestinian Authority for years by the G8 members - without any substantial improvement in infrastructure or economic activities - will not be repeated by them until a peace agreement has been signed..

The G8 communique amounts to nothing more than a motherhood statement with one notable exception - it does not endorse the two state solution as the only solution to the conflict. Given the difficulties in negotiating such a solution after seventy two years of international efforts trying to do so, this assessment represents a welcome acceptance of reality and lays the way open for alternative solutions to be proposed or adopted by the G8 leaders as the two state solution continues its slide to its inevitable denouement.

Palesine - Freeze Settlements Or Freeze Negotiations?

2010-07-25T00:16:00.000-07:00

[Published July 2009]

The demand by President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Israel freeze all settlement activity in the West Bank including “natural growth” has now been endorsed at a meeting of the Quartet - America, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations - held at Trieste on 26 June 2009.

However that was not the only demand made by the Quartet - although reading the myriad media reports of that meeting one could be excused for imagining it was the sole subject of discussion.

The communique issued by the Quartet contained the following notable demand:

“Noting the detrimental effect of Palestinian divisions and underscoring its desire for these divisions to be overcome, the Quartet called on all Palestinians to commit themselves to non- violence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations. Restoring Palestinian unity based on Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) commitments would be an important factor in this process. while facilitating reconstruction of Gaza and the organization of elections. The Quartet expressed support on this basis, for the ongoing mediation efforts of Egypt and the Arab League for Palestinian reconciliation behind President Abbas and appealed to all States in the region to play a constructive role in supporting the reconciliation process”

Clearly the Quartet itself has come to the conclusion that the Palestinian Authority under President Abbas is a toothless tiger incapable of negotiating and concluding any form of binding peace treaty with Israel whilst Fatah and Hamas remain engaged in their deadly and divisive power struggle.

Any suggestion that Israel should freeze settlement activity in these circumstances of complete Palestinian chaos and disunity seems premature to say the least.

The Quartet is talking pie in the sky if it believes Hamas will reconcile behind President Abbas. Hamas regards itself as the legitimately elected Government of the Palestinians. Hamas will not abandon that position in favour of anyone - especially President Abbas - who illegitimately clings to the office of President after his term of office expired in January.

Under the Palestinian Authority constitution, if the office of the president is considered vacant, the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council - Abdel Aziz Dweik - serves as interim President for 60 days until new elections are held.

Hamas legislator Salem Salemeh made Hamas’ view abundantly clear on 25 June when he stated:

“Dweik is the real president of the Palestinians after Abbas’ term in office expired in January”

[Al-Manar TV 25 June 2009]

His statement followed an attempt by Dweik to hold a press conference inside the Palestinian Legislative Chamber on 24 June that was prevented by Fatah legislators on the grounds that only Abbas had the authority to call such a meeting.

In this politically charged and uncertain environment there is simply no credible negotiating partner to sit down with Israel to implement the obligations under the Road Map.

The prospects of further negotiations at this point in time having any possible chance of success have been highlighted by the Quartet’s own statement that :

“these negotiations must result in the end of all claims.”

Neither Hamas nor Fatah will ever be able to abandon their claim for millions of Arabs and their descendants to emigrate to Israel. It is written into their respective constitutions and forms the very essence of their continued functioning and existence . To concede that right in negotiations would be political suicide and impossible to abandon by either Fatah or Hamas with any certainty that such claim would not be prosecuted at a later time in changed circumstances.

The Quartet continues to persist with the simplistic notion affirmed in its statement that :

“the only viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one that ends the occupation began in 1967 and fulfils the aspirations of both parties for independent homelands through two states for two peoples, Israel and an independent, contiguous and viable State of Palestine, living side by side in peace and security”

This solution was first proposed in 1937, again in 1947 and could have been achieved at any time between 1948-1967 after Jews living in the West Bank and Gaza were driven out by the invading Arab armies of Jordan and Egypt.

Tried again in 1993, 2000 and now under the Road Map since 2003 - the Quartet have backed themselves into a corner in again persisting with the claim that this is “the only viable solution.”.

There are other alternative solutions to “ending the occupation” of West Bank and Gazan Arabs that remain unexplored and unaddressed which do not have to involve the creation of a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan.

The Quartet’s stubborn insistence on its solution being the only viable solution indicates the bankruptcy of its thinking. It exposes the Quartet’s inability to adjust to the current political void in the Palestinian leadership that has totally destroyed any prospects of the Quartet’s solution even remotely occurring whilst the reconciliation process urged by the Quartet remains unfulfilled.

To expect any other outcome in negotiations whilst the West Bank and Gaza remain split into separate Fatah and Hamas fiefdoms is naïve in the extreme.

In these circumstances any demand to freeze Israeli settlements is misdirected and mistimed.

Freezing the resumption of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority until Hamas and Fatah sort out their differences makes far more sense.

To freeze settlements - in an attempt to induce the political eunuch that the Palestinian Authority presently represents to enter into meaningless and ineffectual negotiations - would be a grave error of judgment on Israel’s part.

There is no point in Israel negotiating with the Palestinian Authority at this point of time given the Palestinian Authority’s lack of legitimacy to enter into any binding commitments that it would ever have the power to enforce.

Freezing the resumption of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority until Hamas and Fatah sort out their differences is an imperative to defrosting any attempt by the Quartet to see its solution realised - as remote and distant as that prospect exists after six years of wasted effort so far.

The sooner the Quartet starts to face this reality, the sooner it may gain some credibility in its attempt to bring an end to the 120 years old conflict between Jews and Arabs over the territory once called Palestine.

Palestine - Obama And Netanyahu On Journey To Nowhere

2010-07-24T21:40:00.000-07:00

[Published June 2009]

President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu appear on the surface to have found common ground in agreeing on the need to end the 120 years old conflict between Arabs and Jews by creating a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan.

However any basis for optimism on this score following their major speeches within ten days of each other is sorely misplaced.

Their apparent unanimity of purpose must be compared to the euphoria greeting similar expeditions undertaken by former President Clinton and Prime Minister Barak in 2000-2001 and President Bush with Prime Ministers Sharon and Olmert between 2003-2008 in concert with the Palestinian Authority - an artificial entity created by the Oslo Accords in 1993.

Both sets of negotiations went nowhere and got nowhere. Those negotiations occurred for the most part under far more favourable political conditions than now exist.

The current power struggle for control of the Palestinian Authority between Hamas and Fatah,the division of power in Gaza and the West Bank between these two foes and their seeming inability to bury their differences represent major obstacles to the successful conclusion of any negotiating process between the Palestinian Authority and Israel and its subsequent maintenance and enforcement.

Even if Hamas and Fatah were to suddenly overcome their differences tomorrow Israel would not want to deal with a unified West Bank/Gaza government in which Hamas was a member.

Mr. Netanyahu’s conditions for agreeing to the creation of this additional Arab state require that it

(i) be demilitarized ,
(ii) have to accept Jerusalem remaining the united capital of Israel
(iii) have to agree to Israel having defensible borders
(iv) have to recognise Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people
(v) have to settle the problem of the Palestinian refugees outside the borders of Israel.
(vi) have no control over air space or sea lanes

It didn’t take long for senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat to express his disbelief at this shopping list when he declared:

“Netanyahu will have to wait 1000 years for someone to agree to talk to him”

There was anger in the Arab world that Netanyahu should be publicly laying down his conditions in advance in an attempt to define the parameters of any future negotiations.

Yet the Arabs had publicly laid down their conditions for the acceptance of such a state in 1967 and haven’t changed or varied their negotiating position since then in demanding that

(i) such state be established on the entire area of land lost by Jordan and Egypt to Israel in 1967
(ii) Jerusalem be its capitol
(iii) millions of Arabs and their descendants be permitted to migrate to Israel.

Refusing to accept anything less has been the root cause of the breakdown of the previous two negotiating processes.

With the parties even further apart in their demands now in the face of Mr Netanyahu’s stated position - President Obama risks the real danger of failing to get the parties to the negotiating table at all.

In attempting to coax the Palestinian Authority to the negotiating table Obama tersely told Israel:

“The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.”

No attempt was made by President Obama to explain the basis for his making this statement.

He surely could not be ignorant of the provisions of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine 1922 which gave recognition to the right of close settlement by Jews in the West Bank This internationally sanctioned legal right did not die with the League of Nations but was expressly preserved by Article 80 of the United Nations Charter and remains as legitimate today as when it was first promulgated in 1922 .

Indeed the right to settle in the West Bank was exercised by Jews prior to 1948 and was only then abruptly halted after those Jews still living there were driven out following Jordan’s occupation of the West Bank during the War of Independence. Jewish settlement in the West Bank was not resumed until Jordan lost the West Bank to Israel in the Six Day War in 1967.

United Nations records attest to the critical importance of Article 80.

On 8 May 1947, Rabbi Abba Silver representing the Jewish Agency addressed the First (Political) Committee of the United Nations and he had this to say about Article 80:

“The Mandate [for Palestine], in its preamble, recognises “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” and “the grounds for reconstituting” - I call your attention to the word “reconstituting” -“their national home in that country”.

These international commitments of a quarter of a century ago, which flowed from the recognition of historic rights and present needs, and upon which so much has already been built in Palestine by the Jewish people, cannot now be erased. You cannot turn back the hands of the clock of history.

Certainly, the United Nations, guided by the great principle proclaimed in its Charter, “to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained”, can never sanction the violation of treaties and of international law.

With this situation and similar situations in mind, a specific provision, you will recall, was written into the chapter of the Charter of the United Nations which deals with territories which might become trusteeship territories, and which is therefore especially applicable to territories now under mandate. This is Article 80 of the Charter…”

In evidence given to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine on 7 July 1947, David Ben Gurion as a representative of the Jewish Agency said of Article 80:

“This is the special Article of the Charter which applies to Palestine. It was introduced only because of Palestine.”

President Obama’s claim denying the legitimacy of the settlements therefore flies in the face of the Mandate and the United Nations Charter. He needs to justify his stance with a statement far more explanatory and detailed than his one line throwaway.

American Presidents never seem to learn from the failure of their predecessors. President Obama appears hell bent on joining them in pursing their failed goal of creating a new Arab state between Jordan and Israel.

That has proved for past Presidents - and will continue to prove for President Obama- to be simply unachievable.

Palestine - Twelve Billion Reasons To Change Direction

2010-07-24T20:50:00.000-07:00

[Published June 2009]

International donors have now started to renege on US$12 billion dollars in pledges made by them in Paris in December 2007 and at Sharm El Sheikh in March this year. Their decision threatens to send the Palestinian Authority into financial meltdown and political oblivion.

The following circumstances have contributed to this situation:

1. The Palestinian Authority continues to reject any form of rapprochement with Hamas leaving the Arab civilian populations of the West Bank and Gaza under separate Arab administrations and political control.

2. Negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel have failed to procure the creation of a new Arab State between Jordan and Israel with little chance of those negotiations being reconvened. Offers made by Israel to bring this solution to fruition have been rebuffed by the Palestinian Authority which continues to maintain the same unchanged demands made by the Arab League for the last 42 years.

3. The global financial crisis has caused international donors to reconsider whether their dollars should now be directed to more worthy international projects that have a reasonable prospect of eventuating rather than run the risk of ending up in a bottomless pit pursuing a solution that so far has failed to get to first base despite the most intense international diplomacy ever seen to try and make it happen.

Donor resistance to meeting pledges publicly surfaced when the Chairman of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee On Assistance For The Palestinians [AHLC]- Norway’s Foreign Minister Jonas Store - made an impassioned plea to donors attending last week’s meeting of the AHLC in Oslo on 8 and 9 June to not default in meeting their commitments.

The AHLC was established in 1993 following the signing of the Oslo Accords. Donor members have since then poured tens of billions of dollars into the West Bank and Gaza with very few benefits that can be readily ascertained. Much of the money has reportedly ended up in Swiss bank accounts instead of being used for the benefit of West Bank and Gaza’s Arab populations.

Donors attending the Oslo meeting last week had good reason for putting away their chequebooks when Mr Store told them:

“The mission of the AHLC can only be effective if it works in concert with a dedicated effort to forward the political process. And consequently - when the political process stalls, the majority of donors lack the necessary motivation to maintain their contributions.

Certainly tipping more money into the pool in the face of the current stalled political process appears be a most imprudent and reckless investment.

Mr Store further confirmed that

“an increasing number of donors are not living up to their pledges,”

that the

“Palestinian Authority is heading towards fundamental financial crisis” and “is hanging on by a thread.”

Mr Store urged donors to meet their pledges to prevent the demise of the Palestinan Authority saying:

“The international donor community’s support to the Palestinian Territory is in essence political, not humanitarian. Our aim is to help facilitate the creation of a two-state solution where Israeli occupation is replaced by a free and sovereign Palestinian State, living side by side with Israel in peace and security. Without this clearly defined political horizon, donor commitment at the current level can hardly be sustained. Again I believe that continued lack of a political horizon can help explain why a growing number of donors are becoming lukewarm”

The AHLC’s defined political horizon has clearly failed to eventuate.

Many donors might well regard their donations as being humanitarian in nature to provide financial relief and assistance to the civilian population rather than political. Many could take the view that their donations should not now be used to prop up the Palestinian Authority in its struggle with Hamas for control of the West Bank and Gaza streets. Mr Store’s remarks could well have offended many donors and given them additional reason to stop meeting their pledges.

Mr Store told the donors:

“Sooner rather than later, the West Bank and Gaza must be reunified as indivisible parts of one territory, under one Authority … Because absent a modicum of Palestinian political and territorial unity, it will be exceedingly difficult to negotiate, let alone implement, a final-status agreement that stands a chance of ending the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.”

In doing so Mr Store effectively exposed the weakness of President Obama’s efforts in Cairo the previous week urging Israel and the Palestinian Authority to sit down and resume negotiations. The chances of getting an agreed agenda mutually acceptable to both parties is not going to happen.

Until the Palestinian Authority and Hamas resolve their differences and come up with a unified platform that recognizes the Jewish State of Israel, the prospects of getting Israel to positively respond to President Obama’s plea will prove to be a total waste of time and effort.

The AHLC needs to urgently review its two state political horizon because the reality of that ever occurring is now further away than ever. It cannot expect donors to maintain their financial commitments in the face of the total chaos and conflict that the divisions between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority presently pose.

Perhaps Mr Store should be quietly whispering to Jordan whether it could make good use of the $12 billion dollars by replacing the Palestinian Authority and entering into negotiations with Israel to allocate sovereignty in the West Bank between Jordan and Israel.

Such a political horizon could result not only in the international donors being ready to meet their existing obligations but could well trigger an even greater financial response in the recognition that this way forward represents the most realistically attainable political solution which benefits not only Jews and Arabs but the donor countries themselves.

If the non-payment of pledges leads to the demise of the Palestinian Authority and the return of Jordan to the West Bank after previously having occupied it between 1948-1967 then perhaps such non-payments will signal the most effective international response available in helping to end the conflict between Jews and Arabs.

In a region where honouring obligations is rare the international donors would certainly be justified in deciding to end their relationship with the Palestinian Authority which has singularly failed to achieve the objective for which it was created in the euphoria of the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.

Biting the hand that feeds you ultimately has its consequences - as the Palestinian Authority is now starting to see.

Palestine - Some Home Truths And Missed Opportunities

2010-07-24T20:25:00.000-07:00

[Published June 2009]

Jews and Arabs are destined to become engaged in many years of further fighting, trauma and suffering unless President Obama does a complete backflip by adopting a different stance to that he expressed in his long awaited speech at Cairo University on 4 June 2009.

The President has jumped head first into a bottomless hole in unequivocally proposing to his Cairo audience that the two state solution - the creation of a new Arab state between Israel and Jordan - remains the “only resolution” to end the 130 years conflict between Jews and Arabs in relation to the territory once known as Palestine.

President Obama has conveniently chosen to ignore that 94% of former Palestine has already been divided into two states - the Jewish State of Israel (17%) and the Arab State of Jordan (77%) - with both of those States being parties to a peace treaty executed by them in 1994.

Sovereignty in the remaining 6% of former Palestine - the West Bank and Gaza - still remains unallocated between Jews and Arabs.

The idea that sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza be divided other than between Jordan and Israel (and possibly Egypt) has resulted in a journey to nowhere for the last 62 years. President Obama has now joined former American Presidents Carter, Clinton and Bush in embroiling himself in brokering a solution that has no possible chance of succeeding.

This has not been for want of trying by the international community or President Obama’s presidential predecessors.

Missed opportunities by the Arabs to create a separate independent sovereign Arab state in the West Bank and Gaza have been squandered on at least six notable occasions in the past 62 years:

1. When offered by the United Nations in 1947
2. During the 19 years between 1948-1967 that Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt occupied Gaza - where not one Jew or Jewish town or village was located following the expulsion of all Jews living there as a consequence of the 1948 War of Independence
3. Between 1967-1988 when the Arabs refused to deal with or negotiate with Israel on the future of the West Bank and Gaza
4. Following the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1993
5. In 2000 at Camp David in negotiations brokered by President Clinton between PLO leader Yasser Arafat and Israel’s then Prime Minister Ehud Barak
6. During negotiations conducted under President Bush’s Roadmap between 2003-2007 and under the Annapolis process between 2007-2008.

The failure to create a new Arab state between Jordan and Israel has been the result of the following intransigent and uncompromising Arab demands:

1. Their inability to accept the existence of a Jewish State in any part of former Palestine
2. Their refusal to receive anything less than 100% of the West Bank and Gaza
3. Their unwillingness to abandon their demand that millions of Arabs and their descendants be allowed to return and live in what is now Israel.

What magic formula President Obama intends to use to remove these barriers to achieving his two state solution was not articulated by him in Cairo.

Until he does so he is merely posturing and grandstanding, saying what the Arabs want to hear but remaining silent on what the Arabs need to do to make the President’s two state solution have any chance of getting off the ground.

President Obama’s approach to Jews living in the West Bank was hasty and ill considered as he told his applauding audience in Cairo:

“The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. (Applause.) This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop. (Applause.)”

The Jews possess the entitlement in international law to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in the West Bank under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine - an international trust that has been preserved under Article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

Anyone suggesting therefore that Jews do not have the inalienable right to live in the West Bank and reconstitute their National Home in areas designated by the Mandate where international sovereignty is yet to be determined is sliding on very thin ice. President Obama’s call to Israel to halt what has been conferred on the Jews by international law needs to be firmly resisted.

Whether that right should be exercised at this particular moment is a different issue. Denying that such a right exists does not help one iota in ending the conflict. In fact it exacerbates and fuels Arab intransigence in seeking sovereignty in every square centimetre of the West Bank and Gaza to the total exclusion of any Jewish claims.

President Obama failed to mention United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 337 and President Bush’s letter dated 14 April 2004 to Israel’s then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. These documents make it clear that Israel cannot be expected to return to the fragile armistice lines that existed in 1967.

Security remains the overriding concern for Israel as it seeks to protect its citizens from armed organizations and States that refuse and will never concede that Jews are entitled to have a state in their biblical ancestral and internationally recognised homeland.

Israel will not be returning to the 1967 armistice lines now or in the future. Until the Arabs accept this reality President Obama’s speech in Cairo will become just the latest in a long list of required reading by diplomats and university students enrolled in international relations courses trying to fathom out why it has been impossible to determine sovereignty in an area of land the size of Delaware for the last 62 years.

Well may they all shake their heads in disbelief.

Contrary to President Obama’s prescription the only solution that now has any chance of working is the division of sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza between Israel, Jordan and Egypt determined in direct trilateral negotiations between those three states.

The sooner President Obama focuses his thoughts on this solution the sooner we might see an American President who will succeed where others before him have so ignominiously failed.

Palestine - Jordan Jittery But Not To Worry

2010-07-24T20:07:00.000-07:00

[Published May 2009]

King Abdullah of Jordan has obviously got a bad attack of the jitters as Israeli politicians now focus their attention on Jordan returning to re-occupy the heavily Arab populated areas of the West Bank - as Jordan had previously done so successfully between 1948-1967.

The hysteria emanating from Jordan at such a suggestion indicates that Israel’s politicians have touched a raw nerve that Jordan has long tried to gloss over - the fact that Jordan comprises 77% of former Palestine and has a pivotal role to play in the West Bank if there is ever to be any hope of peace between Arabs and Jews.

Sixteen years of negotiations since 1993 aimed at creating a new Arab state between Israel and Jordan in the West Bank have proved a total failure. Yet the delusion that such a State could ever be created continues to be perpetuated by a very carefully scripted and media managed performance by King Abdullah that has apparently seduced President Obama into believing he will be able to succeed where others before him have ignominiously failed.

President Obama will be in for a rude shock and end up in the same state of disbelief and disillusionment that befell his predecessors Presidents Carter, Clinton and Bush

Jordan’s Foreign Minister was concerned enough at the debate in the Knesset this week to summons Israel’s Ambassador and issue him with a strong protest:

“on a motion on a so-called two states for two peoples on the two banks of the Jordan River”

His concern might be well justified if he were reacting to the following statement made by Lebanese writer Farid Salman on OTV on 6 May 2009 as reported by Middle East Media Research Institute:

“Jordan is an invention. Transjordan, which was an emirate, and later became the Hashemite Kingdom, is part of Palestine. Britain created it in order to crown one of the sons of Hussein,from the Arabian Peninsula, over part of Greater Syria - over Palestine. This continues to be the perpetual reason… Without removing it, the Palestinian issue will not be resolved. It’s impossible.”

Farid Salman’s statement contains within it the call for the overthrow and removal of King Abdullah and an end to Hashemite rule.

President Jimmy Carter was moved to point out as long ago as 11 October 1982 in Time that Jordan as a nation was

“a contrivance arbitrarily devised by a few strokes of the pen.”

Again one could argue that Carter would not have been sorry to see Jordan’s Hashemite rulers disappear and the country be renamed Palestine.

However the current furor in Jordan over this week’s debate in the Knesset is an over reaction by a nervous Hashemite regime that sees the sword of Damocles hanging over the Hashemites every time someone mentions the origins and history of Jordan.

Jordan’s response has been topped by a remarkable outburst by Israel’s President Shimon Peres who has called the idea of two states for two peoples a

“baseless hallucination”

(Haartez 27 May)
The proposal that Jordan step in to fill the void left by the collapse of the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is sound and represents the only alternative option now open to be pursued in trying to end the conflict between Jews and Arabs that has continued for the last 120 years.

There have been countless statements made by Arab leaders attesting to the fact that Jordan forms part of Palestine and that there is no distinction between a Palestinian and a Jordanian.

Abu Iyad was able to tell the Near East Report on 8 January 1990:

“When the Palestinian State and unity is established the Jordanian will be a Palestinian and the Palestinian a Jordanian”

Even Yasser Arafat was moved to admit in Der Spiegel in 1986:

“Indeed Palestinians and Jordanians are one people. No one can divide us”

It is clearly in Israel’s national interest that Jordan’s entry into the West Bank not result in the Hashemite regime being replaced by a rogue leadership. Jordan would have to be given security guarantees by Israel to prevent any such eventuality happening, which given the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan would surely be forthcoming.

A massive injection of international funds flowing to Jordan to enable the rehabilitation of the West Bank and advance the interests of the Arabs living there would revitalise the area and offer hope for real peace and co-operation between Jews and Arabs who would continue to live where they are without having to move or sell up.

The creation of Jordan may have been an invention or a contrivance but it exists as fact today and has survived to become the homeland of the Arabs of former Palestine. Extending its borders to embrace the heavily populated Arab areas of the West Bank is the master key to separating Jews and Arabs and removing the barriers and roadblocks that currently impede normal communication and contact between the Arab residents of the West Bank. Extending Jordanian citizenship will give them the right of self determination they have long sought to obtain.

The creation of the Palestinian Authority was another invention or contrivance that proved to be a total failure and now needs to be consigned to the dustbin of history. Jordan is a success story and the Hashemites are entitled to take full credit for what has been achieved since independence was granted in 1946.

The creation of a new Arab state between Jordan and Israel in the West Bank would be another invention or contrivance with no basis to support it historically, geographically or demographically. Rather than advance the cause of peace it would represent a threat to the continued existence of both Israel and Jordan.

King Abdullah might not relish being thrown into the spotlight. However he better get used to it.

Jordan’s role in resolving the conflict won’t go away.

Palestine - Pope Abandons Morality For Politics

2010-07-14T05:07:00.000-07:00

[Published May 2009]

Pope Benedict has given Jews and Catholics throughout the world every reason to believe that if you can’t trust the Pope to keep an agreement then who can you trust?

The Pope on two separate occasions during his visit to the Holyland this week has seen fit to plunge into the world of Middle East politics using the long established tradition of saying one thing to the Jews and something very different to the Arabs.

On his arrival in Israel he declared:

“I plead with all those responsible to explore every possible avenue in the search for a just resolution of the outstanding difficulties, so that both peoples may live in peace in a homeland of their own, within secure and internationally recognized borders.”

His Jewish hosts would have welcomed the Pope’s use of the term “homeland” with no definite opinion being expressed by His Holiness on another State needing to be created between Israel and Jordan.

The Jews would have been happy to hear the borders had to be both secure and internationally recognized. This would support Israel’s stance in previous negotiations that any new Arab State between Israel and Jordan could not be established in 100% of the West Bank. You could even say the Pope was seen to be endorsing United Nations Resolution 242 which prescribes the very same formula.

Speaking in the presence of PLO Chief and extant President of the Palestinian Authority - Mahmoud Abbas - the Pope had changed his tune just two days later:
“Mr President, the Holy See supports the right of your people to a sovereign Palestinian homeland in the land of your forefathers, secure and at peace with its neighbors, within internationally recognized borders,”

Gone were the secure borders. The homeland was to be sovereign, secure and at peace with its neighbours. No mention was made of who those neighbours might be,

The Arabs could be excused for interpreting this pronouncement as the Papal endorsement of the destruction of Israel and its replacement with one Palestinian state secure and at peace with its neighbours Jordan and Egypt.

One can only wonder what made the Pope make two such utterly contradictory statements in the space of forty eight hours.

“Popespeak” had reached new heights in totally confusing what the Pope intended to convey. If his words of wisdom were meant to be ambiguous and evasive the Pope certainly achieved his objective. Contradictory statements like these however don’t advance the peace process but only heighten and encourage the maintenance of different political stances adopted by the conflicting parties.

The real disappointment in the Pope’s remarks however came from the Pope’s cardinal breach of Clause 11(2) of the Agreement signed between Israel and the Holy See in 1993 which states:
“The Holy See while maintaining in every case the right to exercise its moral and spiritual teaching-office, deems it opportune to recall that owing to its own character, it is solemnly committed to remaining a stranger to all merely temporal conflicts, which principle applies specifically to disputed territories and unsettled borders.”

There is no ambiguity in these clear and precise words.

The inexcusable breach of these terms by the Pope in both of his addresses signifies the ease with which agreements can be abandoned - even by one recognized as occupying a position among the most moral held by any human being.

The Pope had properly told both his Arab and Jewish hosts that his visit was intended as a pilgrimage. He may well have been able to inspire them had he stuck firmly to that agenda and not plunged headlong into a minefield that continues to claim as victims the most powerful politicians on this planet.

His attempt to play the base political game and emulate the long line of politicians who have traced the same path in the Middle East speaking with forked tongues was a disaster.

Any claim by the Pope to become an independent interlocutor of moral authority disappeared with his intemperate statements breaching the Vatican’s own well defined guidelines.

The prospects of achieving any sort of peace agreement between the Jews and Arabs has now become more distant than ever.

The Pope’s constant host at his side throughout the visit was the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem - Archbishop Fouad Twal, Perhaps some clarity and meaning to the Pope’s thinking can be gauged by a statement made by Archbishop Twal to Vatican Radio on 21 June 2008:
“The majority of our priests, nuns, schools, families are in Jordan. We need to see a link to Jordan…”

Jordan indeed remains the key to solving the long running conflict between Jews and Arabs - be they Moslem or Christian

Until Jordan becomes fully engaged in any negotiations on the allocation of future sovereignty in the West Bank no possible prospects of meaningful progress can emerge.

Papal intrusion into politics is most unwise especially where the Pope in this case has made a specific commitment to remain detached from the current conflict.

In breaching rather than observing that commitment the Pope has failed the most basic of tests that human beings are asked to respect and observe - sticking to an agreement. His failure to do so is a matter of great regret.