Israel set to uncork Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine genie at UN

 

Israel is readying to uncork the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine genie at the United Nations - ending UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Process Torr Wennesland’s efforts to keep the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine Solution (Saudi Solution) from being discussed as a replacement for the failed UN 20 years-old two state solution. 

The Saudi Solution was published on 8 June 2022 in the Saudi Government-controlled Al Arabiya News. Its author - Ali Shihabi - advises Saudi Arabia’s King-designate, Crown Prince and Prime Minister - Mohammed Bin Salman - on the development of Neom - a new $500 billion mega city the size of Israel

The Saudi Solution calls for the merger of Jordan, Gaza and part of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into one territorial entity to be called The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine - having its capital in Amman -not Jerusalem. 

It supersedes the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative - spawned by Saudi Arabia and embraced by the UN -which calls for:

"the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital."

The UN stands to become totally irrelevant if it continues to refuse to discuss the Saudi Solution following Danny Danon - Israel's former ambassador to the United Nations - claiming at the first Abraham Accords Global Leadership Summit - that Saudi Arabia may be one of the next nations to normalize relations with Israel.  

Danon stated:

"We have been in contact with the Saudis for years. I worked personally with them at the United Nations on matters of regional stability and security. It’s just a matter of time before courageous leaders step out of the shadows and full peace is achieved between all the children of Abraham. .. I expect we’ll see an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia this year"

This was good news for those seeking an end to the 100 years-old Jewish/Arab conflict - but bad news for the UN which continues to stubbornly support the two-state solution whilst refusing to even acknowledge the existence of the game-changing Saudi Solution since its publication six months ago.  

It beggars belief that on 30 November the UN General Assembly adopted five resolutions on the questions of Palestine and the Middle East without one speaker uttering the words - "Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine Solution" - whose successful implementation would see the Arab populations in Gaza, part of the West Bank and the wretched UNRWA camps in Lebanon and Syria becoming citizens of that newly-created territorial entity. 

Cheikh Niang (Senegal)- Chair of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People - introduced its annual report containing developments relating to the question of Palestine between 1 September 2021 and 31 August 2022 - which contained not one reference to the Saudi Solution in its 27 pages. 

Israeli Prime Minister designate Bibi Netanyahu has made his intentions crystal-clear:

"I think the big prize is peace with Saudi Arabia, which I intend to achieve if I go back into office… The rise of Israeli power facilitated the Abraham Accords, and the continual nurturing of Israeli power will also nurture a broader peace with Saudi Arabia and nearly all of the rest of the Arab world. I intend to bring the Arab-Israeli conflict to a close."

The 2022 Saudi Solution offers Israel:

• sole sovereignty in Jerusalem, 
• sovereignty in part of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and 
• abandonment of the 74 years-old Arab claim to return to Israel

The UN must respond to the hope of peace offered by the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine genie.  

Please join my Facebook Page: "Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine supporters"  Author’s note: The cartoon - commissioned exclusively for this article - is by Yaakov Kirschen aka "Dry Bones" - one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators - whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.

UN set to pillory Israel whilst condoning PLO & Hamas apartheid

 

The appointment of a new Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 - Francesca Albanese - serves to highlight the anti-Israel bias that dominates the United Nations (UN) to its eternal shame. 

Albanese was appointed Special Rapporteur by the UN Human Rights Council in March 2022 - taking up her role on May 1, 2022. Albanese’s mandate as Special Rapporteur derives from Resolution 1993/2 passed by the UN Committee of Human Rights on February 19, 1993: 

“To investigate Israel's violations of the principles and bases of international law, international humanitarian law and the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of August 12, 1949, in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967;"

Albanese is limited to only investigating Israel - not Hamas or the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). 

Albanese is not a neutral appointment as her announcement makes clear: 

“She has widely published on the legal situation in Israel and the State of Palestine and regularly teaches and lectures on international law and forced displacement at universities in Europe and the Arab region.”

Albanese will therefore not be examining or reporting on apartheid policies being implemented by the PLO and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank - where both the PLO and Hamas currently:

• Keep 27 refugee camps open which house 800000 Palestinian Arabs: 600000 in 8 camps in Gaza administered and policed by Hamas and 200000 in 19 camps in the West Bank administered and policed by the PLO --and
• Take no steps to close and resettle their camp populations within the villages and towns the PLO has controlled in the West Bank since 1995 and Hamas has controlled in Gaza since 2007.

Israel’s attempts to close these camps and resettle their occupants had been denied under UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/39/99 (A-K) passed on December 14, 1984 in which the General Assembly:

• Under article E 1: “Reiterates its demand that Israel desist from the removal and resettlement of Palestine refugees in the Gaza Strip and from the destruction of their shelters”;
• Under article J 1: “Calls upon Israel to abandon its plans and to refrain from the removal, and from any action that may lead to the removal and resettlement, of Palestine refugees in the West Bank and from the destruction of their camps;”

Fast forward to 2022 and the UN still does not show the slightest interest in seeing these camps closed by their host authorities - the PLO in the West Bank since 1995 and Hamas in Gaza since 2007. 

In failing to call for the camps to be closed - the UN is condoning the continuation of those Palestinian Arabs living in Gaza and the West Bank being divided into two different groups living in two very different environments:

• One group: confined to these 27 camps suffering severe overcrowding problems, poor personal safety, high unemployment and poor infrastructure which are breeding grounds for planning and launching terrorist attacks on Israel and
• The other group: living normal lives in Gaza and West Bank towns and villages 

Even their classification as refugees is questionable as they continue to reside in a different part of former Palestine to where they or their families previously lived. 

The UN’s failure to condemn and demand an end to this apartheid being practised in Gaza and the West Bank is disgusting.  

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ continuing silence makes a mockery of everything the UN claims it stands for. 

Albanese will continue to pursue the UN’s anti-Israel agenda whilst 800000 Palestinian Arabs continue to suffer confinement in these degrading and dehumanizing camps. 

Author’s note: The cartoon--commissioned exclusively for this article--is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators--whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades

UN should start focusing on the Jordan-Israel two-state solution

 

United Nations Secretary General – Antonio Guterres – was at it again this week repeating the failed decades-old UN mantra supposed to end the 100 years old Jewish-Arab conflict: 

“I remain committed to supporting Palestinians and Israelis to resolve the conflict and end the occupation in line with relevant United Nations resolutions, international law and bilateral agreements in pursuit of achieving the vision of two States – Israel and an independent, democratic, contiguous, viable and sovereign Palestinian State — living side by side in peace and security within secure and recognized borders, on the basis of the pre-1967 lines, with Jerusalem as the capital of both States.”

The Secretary-General’s “vision of two States” — the creation of a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan for the first time in recorded history – is nothing but a mirage.

This UN backed solution is not based on historic, geographic or demographic foundations — but on a fiction invented in 1964 with the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

Article 24 of the PLO’s founding Charter expressly denied any claims to such an independent state:

“This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or the Himmah Area”

The PLO clearly had no interest in establishing an independent state in any area that had been occupied by another Arab state since 1948 which then included east Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

It was only after the 1967 Six Day War that the concept of an additional Arab State — with Jerusalem as its capital - was dreamt up by the PLO – and promoted at the UN with the formation in 1975 of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People - spewing out a fictitious narrative on the Arab-Jewish conflict.

Even worse — the United Nations seeks to deny the Jewish People’s right to reconstitute their National Home in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) — legally granted to them by article 6 and article 25 of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine - and preserved by article 80 of the United Nations Charter until today.

The Secretary-General looks on without uttering one word in protest at this continuing flagrant breach by the United Nations of its own Charter and international law.

In referring to the “pre-existing 1967 lines” — the Secretary-General glosses over the fact that they are in fact the “the 1949 Armistice Demarcation Lines” — designated in agreements between:

• The Government of Egypt and the Government of Israel dated February 24, 1949
• The Government of the Hashemite Jordan Kingdom and the Government of Israel dated April 3, 1949

Those lines were not set in concrete but were agreed on without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines.

Secretary-General Guterres would do well to start focusing on the realistically-attainable Jordan-Israel two-state solution – so eloquently expressed by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in the New York Times on August 27, 1972:

The Secretary-General should digest what former Israeli Ambassador to the UN Chaim Herzog wrote in the Wall Street Journal on November 26, 1980 [Ed: my underlining]:



The UN’s continuing pursuit of a third-state solution has reached a dead end.

The Jordan-Israel two-state solution requires two sets of negotiators — armed only with pencils and rubbers — to redraw the existing internationally-recognised boundary between Israel and Jordan to enable the allocation of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza between those two States.

Not one Jew or Arab would need to move from his present home. Jordanian citizenship would be restored to West Bank Arab residents — as existed between 1950 and 1988.

The UN’s continuing pursuit of a third-state solution has reached a dead end and should be consigned to the diplomatic graveyard.


Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively for this article — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.

"State of Palestine" set to confront Trump at United Nations

[Published 22 January 2019]

The bizarre Handover ceremony of Egypt’s Chairmanship of the Group of 77 to the “State of Palestine” for 2019 will enable this non-existent and non-member State of the United Nations to play a leading role in the 74 years old farce — “The Question of Palestine and the United Nations” (PUN).

“The State of Palestine” does not meet the criteria for statehood required under the 1933 Montevideo Convention.

The Group of 77 (“the Bloc”) contains 133 of the 193 member states of the United Nations — ensuring the automatic passage of all United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions they propose.

UNGA Resolution A/RES/73/5 - adopted on 16 October 2018 — put this illusory “State of Palestine” center stage for PUN’s 2019 New York season — recognizing it as the Bloc’s public face in all matters brought before UNGA and at meetings of representatives of other major groups.

146 countries voted for this Resolution whilst only three - Israel, the U.S. and Australia - voted against, 15 countries abstained and the remaining 29 states did not vote.

US Deputy UN Ambassador Jonathan Cohen called out the hypocrisy of the vote:

“We cannot support efforts by the Palestinians to enhance their status outside of direct negotiations. The United States does not recognize that there is a Palestinian state…Only U.N. member states should be entitled to speak and act on behalf of major groups of states at the United Nations.”

Australia’s UN Ambassador Gillian Bird asserted:

“Australia’s decision to vote no on this resolution reflects our long-standing position that Palestinian attempts to seek recognition as a state in international fora are deeply unhelpful to efforts towards a two-state solution.”

The Handover Ceremony took place in the presence of UNGA President Ms. Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, UN Secretary General Mr. António Gutteres, Mahmoud Abbas — the self-styled “President of the State of Palestine” (formerly called “the Palestinian Authority” before Abbas unilaterally changed its name in 2013) and Bloc members.

Mr. Gutteres’ 12 minute speech contained this politically-charged statement:

“Palestine and its citizens have first-hand experience of some of the most challenging and dramatic global issues at force”

Regrettably the Secretary General failed to elaborate on where he believed “Palestine” is located, who he considers are its citizens, its capital, the area it controls and its current government.

The Handover Ceremony included a 1 hour concert featuring live performances of Astor Piazzolla’s “Oblivion”, a Brahms sonata for violin and piano, five works by three Egyptian composers extending over 26 minutes and just 4 minutes of “Palestinian folk songs” whose provenance was not mentioned in the program notes.

One Egyptian composition - “Lessa Faker” — aptly describes the path UNGA needs to take to end this blatant “State of Palestine” fakery that flagrantly violates international law.

“Foreign Minister” of the “State of Palestine” Riyad Malki has impertinently predicted:

”...we are confident that [the Bloc] will support the Palestinians when it [sic] time comes for negotiations and the US will find out that it cannot ignore Palestine.”

Malki’s claim is risible.

America has denied the existence of any State of Palestine for the last seven decades. President Trump has closed the PLO diplomatic offices in Washington and ceased America’s annual payments of $360 million to UNRWA. The PLO refuses to entertain any Trump peace proposals designed to end the Arab-Jewish conflict.

President Trump’s response could well see him consigning the “State of Palestine” to diplomatic oblivion to the accompanying strains of Piazzolla’s Oblivion — with the United Nations left lamenting at the wake that it holds for the phantom State.

This is truly Theatre of the Absurd - Multilateralism gone mad.

Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively for this article — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones” - one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades. His cartoons can be viewed at Drybonesblog

False narrative haunts PLO and UN as Trump courts Arab States.

[Published 28 June 2018]

Nabil Abu Rudeineh - spokesman for Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas — has angrily reacted to President Trump’s intensive diplomatic efforts seeking to enlist Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia in advancing Trump’s long-awaited “deal of the century” to end the Arab-Jewish conflict.

Rudeineh fulminated:

“The American delegation should abandon the illusion that creating false facts and falsifying history are going to help it sell those illusions.”

Creating false facts and falsifying history has been the province of the PLO and the United Nations (UN) for decades.

The 1968 PLO Charter declared the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the 1922 Mandate for Palestine and everything subsequently based on them to be null and void.

The United Nations publication “The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem 1917-1988” (“Study”) - published by the Division for Palestinian Rights of the United Nations Secretariat for, and under the guidance of, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People - falsely claimed:

“After investigating various alternatives the United Nations proposed the partitioning of Palestine into two independent States, one Palestinian Arab and the other Jewish…”

The UN proposal—Resolution 181(II) - actually referred to:

“Independent Arab and Jewish States”...

Resolution 181(II) clearly denied the existence of any distinctly identifiable Palestinian people in 1947 — yet the Study falsified this narrative.

The Study also omitted to mention that 78% of Palestine had already become an independent Arab State in 1946 and been renamed the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan.

Creating a separate state for the “Palestinians” - never identified as a separate people by the international community in 1947 — is seen by that same international community in 2018 to be the only solution capable of ending the conflict between Jews and Arabs.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Two peoples — the Jews and the Arabs — already have their own independent States in former Palestine - named Israel and Jordan.

Rudeineh continued:

“Despite the burden of regional issues, there are things that cannot be weighed with gold and humanitarian aid, or solutions that try to cut from a more than 100-year-old historical conflict.”

This is the first time the PLO has ever acknowledged that the Jewish-Arab conflict originated in the events following the Balfour Declaration in 1917 — not the events following the 1948 Arab-Israel War.

UN Secretary-General Guterres helped perpetuate this falsehood when recently referring to the “Israeli/Palestinian conflict”.

There were no “Israelis” or “Palestinians” 95 years ago when the preamble to the Mandate for Palestine declared:

“Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine , or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country; “

British reversal of this policy in 1922 saw Transjordan — today called Jordan — totally closed to Jewish settlement to prevent the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home there. The 1937 Peel Commission counted for nothing.

Forty crucial years in Palestine’s history until 1948 were shredded by the PLO and materially altered by the UN Study in propagating the “Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People”.

Rudeineh’s statements mark a welcome return to reality.

Getting other Arab interlocutors to replace the PLO in negotiations with Israel remains Trump’s crucial starting point to ending the Arab-Jewish conflict.