UN action on Trump Peace Plan can deter Iran-Israel conflict

 

The United Nations Security Council needs to urgently adopt former US President Donald Trump’s 2020 Peace Plan to end the Jewish-Arab conflict and call on Israel, Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) to commence negotiations under Trump’s Plan to deter conflict between Iran and Israel.

Trump’s Plan (see maps following) – already endorsed by Israel - provides for:

• The creation of a future demilitarised State of Palestine in about 60% of Judea and Samaria (West Bank), Gaza, and parts of Israel and  

• The extension of Israeli sovereignty in the remaining 40% of Judea and Samaria (West Bank)

The territory involved is small - comprising the remaining  5% of former Palestine in which sovereignty remains unallocated between Arabs and Jews – approximating America’s third-smallest State  – Delaware.

Israel (17%) and Jordan (78%) currently exercise sovereignty in the other 95%.

The PLO has rejected Trump’s very detailed and comprehensive proposals. 

The UN continues to pursue a nebulous two-democratic-states solution based on Security Council Resolution 2334  -  achieving no progress since its adoption in 2016.

Emboldened by the Security Council’s failure to successfully implement Resolution 2334 and the antagonistic attitude towards Israel and the Jewish People expressed in a growing number of General Assembly resolutions – 17 in 2020 compared to 7 for  the rest of the world - Iran continues to demonise and threaten the elimination of Israel as Iran expands its nuclear weapons program. 

Iranian Armed Forces spokesman - Brig.-Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi - recently told the Iranian Students News Agency:

“We will not back off from the annihilation of Israel, even one millimetre. We want to destroy Zionism in the world”

Rather than:

• condemning Iran’s threats to destroy another UN member state and 
•  defending Israel’s right to exist in secure and recognised boundaries as stipulated in UN Security Council Resolution 242 

The General Assembly has been engaging in its own demonisation of the Jewish People – recycling a Security Council Press Statement dated September 17, 2015 (Press Statement ) which only referred to the Temple Mount by its Arabic name “Haram al-Sharif” and not its Hebrew name  “Har HaBayit”.

General Assembly Resolution A/76/L.16 (Resolution) - passed on December 1 – repeated this highly-offensive canard:

“Recalling the Security Council press statement on Jerusalem of September 17, 2015, in which the Council called, inter alia, for the exercise of restraint, refraining from provocative actions and rhetoric and upholding unchanged the historic status quo at the Haram al-Sharif – in word and in practice, as well as for full respect for international law, including international human rights law and international humanitarian law, as may be applicable in Jerusalem”

The Press Statement and Resolution both failed to acknowledge the special role of Jordan – not Israel - as custodian of all the Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem  - recognized in the 1994 Jordan-Israel  Washington Declaration and Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty.

If the Security Council and General Assembly can both brazenly ignore these two highly-significant binding international commitments whilst simultaneously denying the Jewish People’s connection with Judaism’s holiest religious site in Jerusalem – what message does this send to Israel, Jordan and Iran? 

Israel’s President Herzog has provided Israel’s response:

“Israel will welcome a comprehensive, diplomatic solution which permanently solves the Iranian nuclear threat.”

“In the case of a failure to achieve such a solution, Israel is keeping all options on the table and it must be said that if the international community does not take a vigorous stance on this issue — Israel will do so. Israel will protect itself”

 Overt UN bias against Israel and the Jewish People should not preclude the UN from embracing Trump’s Plan to end the 100 years-old Jewish-Arab conflict and avert conflict between Iran and Israel.

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.

Israel Teeters On Cusp Of Security Suicide

[Published 15 March 2015]


Economic issues have been identified as the top issue in the forthcoming Israeli elections to be held on 17 March - with security issues trailing far behind.

The polls are confidently predicting a four seat difference in favour of the Zionist Camp over the current Likud-led Government and the possibility of a new Zionist Camp Government being formed.

Zvi Zhariyha pointed out on 15 January:

“In Israel’s proportional representation system, in which parties are awarded seats in parliament based on the proportion of the vote that they receive, the ranking of the candidates on the slate becomes all-important as seats are filled from the top of the list. Top spots on the Labor list went to MKs with a social-justice and economic agenda, including former journalist Shelly Yacimovich, and Stav Shaffir and Itzik Shmuli, who were both prominent in the 2011 social justice protest movement.

Yacimovich finished first in the party vote, which will place her in the third spot on the slate, behind Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni, the leader of Hatnuah, which is running on a joint ticket with Labor. Shaffir finished just behind Yacimovich, granting her the fourth slot .."

"
Two of these top four Zionist Camp candidates have expressed viewpoints that are distinctly anti-Zionist.

Prime Minister—in-waiting - Isaac Herzog — according to respected analyst Sarah Honig — has voiced opposition to the term “Jewish State”:

“The Jewish state expression is entirely mistaken,” he says recurrently (and we have a recording to prove it: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9nHlX19roA) “because it creates the impression of a nationality that enjoys excessive privileges.”

Were US Secretary of State John Kerry somehow able to get Israel and the PLO to the negotiating table again — then this long standing Israeli demand — supported by President Obama - and the Congress since 2004 — would ostensibly fall by the wayside under a Government led by Herzog.

Sarah Honig further points out:

"Stav Shaffir, for example, refused to share a podium with the Likud’s Yoav Kish because he is a reserve fighter pilot. She also thinks that “Hatikva is a racist national anthem.”

It’s not our say-so. Journalist Asher Schechter wrote a book on the 2011 demonstrations in which Shaffir was a key mover (Rothschild — the Chronicle of Protest, published by Kibbutz Hameuhad/Sifriat Hapoalim). On page 96 Schechter describes Shaffir’s vehement opposition to singing Hatikva. She was so emotional about it that “she burst into tears and yelled out that Hatikva is racist.”

Another Zionist Camp likely member of the Knesset—Merav Micaheli - told Galei Zahal

“women should not at all send their kids to the army when there is a continuous occupation for over 40 years. The regime in Israel doesn’t make the effort to solve this in other ways, so it’s necessary to stop being prepared to send children to the army.”

Sarah Honig has identified two other candidates likely to pop up as Zionist Camp representatives in any Zionist Camp Government:

Zoher Bahalul (who declares: “our Palestinian identity is stronger than the Israeli”) or the ultra-leftist Prof. Yossi Yonah (who confessed: “Zionism doesn’t express what I am”).

Veteran Ha’aretz journalist — Gideon Levy — has also delivered a withering attack on the Zionist Camp:

“This camp knows only how to trick and mislead, in the best of its tradition.”

Economic issues also topped security issues by a country mile in the 2013 Israeli election — yet Netanyahu still emerged as Prime Minister.

With 14% of the voters still undecided - they could re-elect Netanyahu again - figuring out that improvements in economic and social justice conditions aren’t worth a shekel if you are not alive to enjoy their undeniable benefits.