Israel, Trump and United Nations should boycott Abbas and PLO

[Published 11 March 2018]


Israel’s Prime Minister – Benjamin Netanyahu – has used his address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – to savage the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) policy that rewards Palestinian murderers of Israelis and other innocent civilians with lifetime payments.

Netanyahu’s PLO-onslaught in front of 18000 people attending the annual AIPAC Conference in Washington was unequivocal and unrelenting:

“But to get peace, to get peace President Abbas has to embrace peace and to stop supporting terror. Raise your hands high if you agree with me that President Abbas should stop paying terrorists who murder Jews. You know how much he pays? He pays about $350 million dollars a year to terrorists and their families, each year. That’s about a little less than 10% of the total Palestinian budget. That’s an incredible number. He pays Hakim Awad. Hakim Awad is the terrorist who murdered this beautiful family of Ehud and Ruth Fogel and their three children, including a 3 month-old baby girl, Hadas. So he pays Hakim Awad, this murderer, and over the lifetime of this killer, he will be receiving two million dollars.”

Hakim Awad - aged 18 – and his 19 years old cousin and accomplice Amjad Awad - each received five consecutive life sentences for murdering the five sleeping Fogel family members in March 2011.

Netanyahu’s attack on Abbas comes at a particularly sensitive time politically as:

1. President Trump mulls over the final details of his “ultimate deal” to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict

2. PLO chief – Mahmoud Abbas – has already signaled he will not enter into negotiations with Israel mediated by Trump

3. Abbas has called on the United Nations to convene an international peace conference by mid-2018 to accept the non-existent “State of Palestine” as a full UN member

4. The US Senate is currently considering the Taylor Force Act – overwhelmingly passed by the House in December 2017 - suspending US financial assistance to the PLO, and any successor or affiliated organizations until these payments are terminated. Taylor Force – a US citizen – was murdered on 8 March 2016 by a Palestinian Arab during a stabbing spree in Tel Aviv that also injured ten other people.

5. Israel’s Knesset has passed the first reading of a bill requiring such blood-money presently being paid to 35000 Palestinian families to be deducted from the US$2.1 billion in taxes and tariffs Israel presently collects for the PLO.

6. Abbas - 83 and in poor health – faces challengers to his leadership

Palestinian prisoners serving 20-30 year sentences for these murderous attacks reportedly receive a monthly US$3400 stipend for life.Those receiving a three-to-five-year sentence get a monthly wage of US$570. Palestinian prisoners who are married, have children, live in Jerusalem, or hold Israeli citizenship receive additional payments.

Trump called on Abbas to abandon this immoral and heinous policy during a joint press conference in Bethlehem in May 2017:

“Peace can never take root in an environment where violence is tolerated, funded and even rewarded”

Just one month later Jared Kushner - Trump’s son-in-law and chief Middle East adviser - and Trump’s international negotiator Jason Greenblatt – met with Abbas in Ramallah.

According to reports in Arabic media, the Americans then allegedly watered down Trump’s demands – only wanting these payments stopped to some 600 prisoners serving life sentences in Israeli prisons.

Abbas defiantly rejected that proposal.

Abbas seems to believe he can publicly humiliate Trump and escape the consequences.

Monetary retaliation is a totally inadequate response to the indiscriminate murder of innocent civilians.

Israel, Trump and the United Nations should boycott Abbas and the PLO by terminating all diplomatic contact until their vile and repulsive “murder for money” policy is ended.

Netanyahu needs Trump answer on Bush-Congress Commitments to Israel

[Published 1 February 2017]


Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will be meeting America’s President Trump on 15 February under very different circumstances to those when Netanyahu met President Obama on 20 May 2011.

President Obama had delivered a wide-ranging address on the Middle East just the day before when he dropped the following bombshell on his view of how negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority should proceed:

“The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their full potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.‚”

Before boarding his plane for Washington Netanyahu said he:

“expects to hear a reaffirmation from President Obama of American commitments made to Israel in 2004 which were overwhelmingly supported by both Houses of Congress.‚”

Those 2004 commitments to Israel had been made by President Bush in a letter to Israel’s then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dated 14 April 2004 (“the Bush Commitments‚”).

Obama never obliged Netanyahu by reaffirming those Bush Commitments.

Neither did Netanyahu press Obama to do so - though he had opportunities during

1.Remarks by Obama and Netanyahu After their Bilateral Meeting
2.An address by Netanyahu to AIPAC on 23 May 2011
3.An emotion-charged speech Netanyahu gave to a joint sitting of the Congress on 24 May 2011

Netanyahu’s failure to mention the Bush Commitments in his Congress speech was a grievous error of judgment — since those commitments to Israel had been endorsed in:

1. the House - 407 votes to 9 - and
2. the Senate - 95 votes to 3.

Such commitments had been given to support Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza and part of the West Bank - marking real progress in realizing Bush’s Roadmap — and included the following:

“In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.

Bush’s “mutually agreed changes‚” differed markedly from Obama’s “mutually agreed swaps‚” — which required Israel to swap some of its sovereign territory to gain sovereignty over any territory in the West Bank.

Under the Bush Commitments no such land swaps were required.

Obama had repudiated his predecessor’s commitments to Israel with this sneaky turn of phrase - adding insult to injury by demeaning Congress for its enthusiastic and overwhelming endorsement of the Bush Commitments.

In his AIPAC address — Netanyahu made mention of Israel’s:

“terrific Ambassador to the United States, a man who knows a few things about the U.S.-Israel alliance, Michael Oren‚”

Michael Oren — now a Knesset member - made the following call on 5 January 2015:

“The time has come to revive Bush’s letter to Sharon and to act in accordance with it”

As Netanyahu readies for his ground-breaking meeting with Trump he needs to heed Oren’s call and get a definitive answer this time from both Trump and the Congress.

America’s reputation and integrity as a trustworthy ally that honours its commitments is at stake.

Lightning can indeed strike twice in the White House and on Capitol Hill.

Palestine - Obama Continues To Fudge On America's Commitment To Israel

[Published 23 May 2011]


President Obama in an address to the AIPAC Policy Conference on 22 May has failed to redress the enormous damage done by him to America’s integrity and reputation during his speech three days earlier at the State Department.

Addressing the State Department Obama then stated:

“We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.. “

This statement amounted to the repudiation of an American written commitment given by President George Bush (the Bush Letter) to Israel’s then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on 14 April 2004 which stated:

“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 is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.”

America’s commitment in the Bush Letter was clear and unambiguous.

1. America would support Israel’s refusal to withdraw from 100% of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem - as the Arabs had been demanding since 1967
2. The amount of such land to be retained by Israel would be determined by mutually agreed changes that reflected the realities existing at the time negotiations were completed

No mention was made that those mutually agreed changes would require Israel to make land swaps of Israeli sovereign territory in exchange for land retained by Israel in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

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 was subsequently approved by the US Senate and House of Representatives on 23 June and 24 June 2004.

Obama’s apparent attempt to abrogate this American commitment in his statement on 19 May resulted in trenchant criticism from Israel and many members of the American Congress forcing him to clarify his position on 22 May.

In doing so President Obama did not climb out of the diplomatic hole he had dug for himself and America three days earlier - but only managed to slide further down it taking America’s integrity and reputation even lower with him.

President Obama told the AIPAC delegates and many Congressmen present and keen to hear his explanation:

“And it was my reference to the 1967 lines—with mutually agreed swaps—that received the lion’s share of the attention, including just now. And since my position has been misrepresented several times, let me reaffirm what “1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps” means. By definition,it means that the parties themselves—Israelis and Palestinians—will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967. That’s what mutually agreed- upon swaps means. It is a well-known formula to all who have worked on this issue for a generation. It allows the parties themselves to account for the changes that have taken place over the last 44 years. It allows the parties themselves to take account of those changes, including the new demographic realities on the ground, and the needs of both sides. The ultimate goal is two states for two people: Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people and the State of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people—each state in joined self-determination, mutual recognition, and peace”

With the greatest respect the President is talking utter nonsense.

“Agreed upon swaps” surely means an agreed exchange of something for something else.

President Obama clearly was breaching the Bush Letter in stating that his Government’s belief:

”now was that Israeli sovereign territory would have to be swapped for territory retained by Israel in the West Bank or East Jerusalem.

President Obama’s belief in 2011 is totally irrelevant. President Obama is committed in 2011 to supporting whatever decision Israel makes on how much of the West Bank and East Jerusalem it will ultimately withdraw from - nothing more nothing less.

To continue to support the concept of

“mutually agreed swaps”

only makes matters even worse so far as restoring America’s integrity and reputation is concerned.

It is clear President Obama does not like the terms of the Bush Letter. But he - and America - are bound by it if America’s integrity and reputation is to be maintained.

Obama’s explanation smacks of a pathetic attempt to try and retrospectively substitute the words:

“mutually agreed changes” in the Bush Letter with the words “mutually agreed exchanges”.

Surely Congress will react with even greater fury at President Obama’s latest remarks to try and massage the meaning of the Bush Letter to give it a meaning that was never intended.

Israel made a historic - and highly controversial - political decision to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza as a condition of obtaining the Bush Letter. Israel paid dearly for that decision when tens of thousands of its civilian population were subsequently murdered, wounded or traumatized following that disengagement.

It is inconceivable that America should seek in any way to diminish or circumvent the commitments it made under the Bush Letter.

Words have meaning and in this case their meaning brooks only one interpretation.

Obama’s attempt to subvert their meaning must be resisted until he recants and states without qualification or ambiguity that he - as America’s President - and America still stands by what President Bush signed and its Congress ratified.

Palestine - Some Home Truths And Missed Opportunities

[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.

Obama Torpedoes The Palestinian State

[Published June 2008]

Presidential Nominee Barack Obama took only 14 words to effectively ‘put paid to’ the idea that a third Palestinian State - in addition to Israel and Jordan - will be created during his term as President if he wins the forthcoming election in November.

Addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington this week Mr Obama declared :

“… any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state”,

Mr Obama had previously made this viewpoint very clear when answering a question put to him at a meeting of 100 members of the Cleveland Jewish Community on 24 February 2008:

“Israel has to remain a Jewish state and what I believe that means is that any negotiated peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians is going to have to involve the Palestinians relinquishing the right of return as it has been understood in the past. And that doesn’t mean that there may not be conversations about compensation issues “

Mr Obama - like President Bush - has now given his unequivocal support to Israel’s rejection of the 40 years old demand by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) - endorsed by the 22 member States of the Arab League - that millions of former Arab residents or their descendants be allowed to emigrate to Israel.

Arabs already comprise 20% of Israel’s existing population. They all are Israeli citizens enjoying the same rights privileges and opportunities open to the Jewish majority other than being required to serve in the armed forces. Israel is understandably reluctant to allow the Arab sector of its population to expand other than by natural growth.

No political party in Israel espousing a contrary view would have any hope of gaining Government. Agreeing to such a proposal would in a very short time destroy the Jewish identity of Israel and its Jewish majority presently living there and replace it with an Arab identity and an Arab majority.

The reason for this long standing Arab demand being maintained is writ large in the Charters of both Hamas and the PLO. It is considered as the political means by which Arab sovereignty can be established for the first time in history in the totality of Palestine - where at present Arab sovereignty exists in 77% - today called Jordan..

For Hamas - the Islamic Resistance Movement - that right of return is non- negotiable and inviolate and will be pursued until the complete destruction of Israel’s identity as a Jewish state is achieved .

Article 11 of the Hamas Charter makes that very clear when stating :

“The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [an inalienable religious endowment - author ] consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that”.

Any attempt therefore by any Arab leader to abandon negotiate away or compromise on this issue would bring swift retribution from Hamas.

Article 1 of the PLO Charter - whilst not as strident or inflammatory in its language - makes it clear that Palestine is an Arab homeland - not Jewish .

“Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.”

No amount of soothing words or diplomatic nuances can bridge the gap that these written words have created for the negotiations that have been ongoing between Israel and the Palestinian Authority with very little success for the last 15 years.

When push comes to shove this claim to Arab ownership of Palestine to the exclusion of the Jews will bring any negotiations crashing down to an ignominious end, since American support for the Arab position is absolutely essential if any kind of pressure is to be put on Israel to moderate its opposition to the demanded right of return.

Israel has long offered to resolve the problem by entering into negotiations for the payment of compensation. Such negotiations however would also need to address compensation claims by Jews expelled from Arab countries since Israel’s creation sixty years ago. It would take a very brave Arab leader to agree to such negotiations. His shelf life would be very short and his use by date would soon expire.

An Israeli proposal in 2000 to allow up to 100000 Arabs to return to Israel was firmly rejected by the Arabs. It is unlikely to be offered again given the radicalisation of the Palestinian Arabs since then..

This issue has been one of the major stumbling blocks to President Bush’s Roadmap failing to even make it to first base despite the backing of the European Union, Russia and the United Nations.

Now - almost at the same time as Mr Obama’s speech to AIPAC - the head of the Palestinian Authority’s negotiating team - Ahmed Qurei - has told PLO activists at a meeting in Ramallah that an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority before the new American President takes office next January would require a “miracle”

No doubt conferences, negotiations, press releases and Presidential statements will continue to flow until a new American President is in control and will continue throughout the next Presidential term of office but nothing tangible can possibly emerge until the Arabs drop their demand for the right of return.

For that to happen would also require a miracle.

The region is replete with miracles that form integral parts of the Jewish, Islamic and Christian faiths.

However any hopes that either or both of these current two miracles-in-waiting will eventuate is sheer folly.