UN will rue burying debate on Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine

The United Nations Security Council has lost any authority to broker an end to the Jewish-Arab conflict - after its July 26th Quarterly Open Debate: "The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question" proceeded for 5 hours without any speaker making reference to a new solution emanating from Saudi Arabia to resolve the 100 years-old conflict.  

That Saudi solution – the merger of Jordan, Gaza and part of the West Bank into one separate territorial entity to be called "The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine"- had been published on 8 June in Al Arabiya News.

The article was written by Ali Shihabi – a confidante of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman – Saudi Arabia's next King and driving force behind NEOM – a $500 billion megacity of the future to be erected in Saudi Arabia on an expanse of land the size of Israel. 

The Security Council's silence in commenting on this Saudi solution ever since its publication has been arrogant and breathtaking. 

This solution offers an alternative to the solution unsuccessfully pressed by the UN for the last 29 years: The creation of a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan. 

The Security Council had an obligation to notify UN member States of the emergence of this new solution since its last Quarterly Debate and encourage the members to consider its pros and cons as a replacement for the UN plan that was clearly dead in the water. 

The Security Council and its vast bureaucracy could certainly not claim ignorance of this Saudi proposal. 

I myself had written to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres representative Stephane Dujarric on June 30th enclosing a copy of the Al Arabiya article - inviting the Secretary-General to comment on the solution for inclusion in an article I was writing. No reply was received - so my article was published on July 4

A reminder letter sent to Dujarric on July 19 for a comment to use in future articles met the same fate.  

The roll call of those speaking at the Security Council debate without mentioning the Saudi solution is mind-boggling:

• Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and UN Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory (oPt): Lynn Hastings 
• The observer for the State of Palestine 
• Representatives of Israel, United States, China, Algeria Cuba, Malaysia, South Africa, Lebanon, Japan, Ireland, United Kingdom, France, Russian Federation, Albania ,Ghana, Gabon, Kenya, India, Norway, Mexico, Brazil, Iran, Morocco, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, Türkiye, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Azerbaijan (speaking for the Non-Aligned Movement), Argentina, Republic of Korea.
• A representative of the European Union, in its capacity as observer 
• The Permanent Observers for the Holy See, the League of Arab States and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
• The Vice Chair of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People

Representatives of the State of Palestine, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia – the parties most affected by the proposed Saudi solution - can be excused for not discussing the Saudi Plan - as they had been engaging in secret back-channel negotiations almost from the day the Saudi Plan was made public.  

By the time this Security Council debate was held, significant agreement had already been reached on acceptable starting points for those negotiations to continue. 

This debate marks one of the lowest points in United Nations history – one when it abdicated its obligation to prevent conflict and acted instead to ensure its perpetuation.

The Security Council's attempt to bury the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution rather than encourage its serious consideration - will fail. 

The Security Council has sown the seeds for its own demise.

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.

Palestine - Pope Forfeits Spiritual And Moral Authority

[Published 20 May 2015]


Pope Francis has suffered a serious blow to his spiritual and moral authority following the Vatican’s recognition of the “State of Palestine” in a new treaty announced on 13 May.

The Vatican’s latest slippery slide into political and legal chaos represents a clear breach of clause 11(2) of the 1993 Fundamental Agreement Between The Holy See And The State Of Israel which provides:

“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.”

Vatican officials openly admitted that this new treaty did not constitute the Holy See’s first breach of the Fundamental Agreement - Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi pointing out:

“We have recognized the State of Palestine ever since it was given recognition by the United Nations and it is already listed as the State of Palestine in our official yearbook,”

This latest challenge to the Pope’s spiritual and moral authority - first transgressed by his predecessor Pope Benedict - arises from the fact that the United Nations recognition of the State of Palestine on 29 November 2012 affirmed:

..."the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to independence in their State of Palestine on the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967…"

600,000 Jews presently live in this designated territory.

PLO Chairman - Mahmoud Abbas - warmly welcomed by Pope Francis this week as a potential “angel of peace” - has insisted upon their total displacement and removal as a condition of any peace agreement.

Abbas made his racist views very clear in Cairo on 28 July 2010 when he told Wafa - the official Palestinian news agency:

“I’m willing to agree to a third party that would supervise the agreement, such as Nato forces, but I would not agree to having Jews among the Nato forces, or that there will live among us even a single Israeli on Palestinian land.”

Abbas - Israel’s putative “partner for peace ” - leads an Organisation that claims the entire territory of former Palestine as another exclusive Arab fiefdom - denying the Jews any political rights in their biblical, ancestral and internationally sanctioned homeland.

Abbas’s continuing refusal to recognise Israel as the nation State of the Jewish people has been a major roadblock to the successful conclusion of negotiations between Israel and the PLO.

Pope Francis - like his predecessor Pope Benedict - is apparently prepared to ignore that Abbas and the PLO remain sworn enemies of the Jewish people - pursuing the total elimination of the Jewish State by armed struggle as documented in the 1968 PLO Charter.

The Pope has strayed from the eternal message of the Psalms - the key to the spirituality of the Old Testament and an essential and permanent part of Christian prayer.

Psalm 28 in the New Jerusalem Bible declares:

"Do not drag me away with the wicked, with evil-doers, who talk to their partners of peace with treachery in their hearts.

Repay them as their deeds deserve, as befits their treacherous actions; as befits their handiwork repay them, let their deserts fall back on themselves.

They do not comprehend the deeds of Yahweh, the work of his hands. May he pull them down and not rebuild them!"

Pope Francis - like Pope Benedict - has joined the evil-doers to the chagrin of the Jewish people.

Pope Benedict’s dessert - the birth of Islamic State in 2014 - has seen the willful killing, forced conversion and wholesale destruction of ancient Christian communities in Iraq and Syria.

Pope Francis’s dessert remains unrevealed.

Palestine - Violating Vatican Vows

[Published 27 December 2012]


Diplomatic relations between Israel and the Vatican are set to considerably cool following the Pope granting a private audience to Mahmoud Abbas on 17 December.

Their meeting came at a time of growing political crisis engendered by the passage of the UN General Assembly resolution on 29 November that reaffirmed

“the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to independence in their State of Palestine on the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967;"

The Pope seemingly overlooked any discussion of the implications of this integral part of the resolution that also recognised the State of Palestine as a non-member observer state in the General Assembly - a view confirmed by the following communique issued by the Vatican

“The cordial discussions made reference to the recent Resolution approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations by which Palestine was recognised as a Non-member Observer State of the aforementioned Organisation. It is hoped that this initiative will encourage the commitment of the international community to finding a fair and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which may be reached only by resuming the negotiations between the Parties, in good faith and according due respect to the rights of both.”

The Pope was apparently unaware that the only matter left to be negotiated between the parties as a result of “this initiative ” was the timing of the eviction of 600000 Jews currently living in this ” State of Palestine” as defined by the General Assembly.

Abbas had made this racist view very clear on 28 July 2010 when Wafa - the official Palestinian news agency - reported the following remark by Abbas in Cairo:

“I’m willing to agree to a third party that would supervise the agreement, such as Nato forces, but I would not agree to having Jews among the Nato forces, or that there will live among us even a single Israeli on Palestinian land.”

Could the Pope have failed to understand that the Resolution also left no room for negotiating the boundaries of this “State of Palestine” - that the General Assembly had preemptively determined that it should comprise 100% of the territory won from Jordan by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War?

Would cordial discussions have occurred had the Pope taken the opportunity to urge Abbas to recognise Israel as the Jewish National Home and offer Palestinian citizenship to those Jews who did not want to leave their current homes?

Resumption of negotiations by “the Parties in good faith and according due respect to the rights of both” in such circumstances is a pure pipe dream.

The Abbas audience was a papal faux pas for several reasons.

Firstly - the Pope should not have blessed the audience with overt political significance by accepting from Abbas the gift of a mosaic of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem bearing the inscription that it was presented to him by “the President of the State of Palestine” - a farcical nomenclature that had only been sanctioned that very day by the Chief of Protocol at the UN - Yeocheol Yoon.

Secondly - the Pope was clearly violating clause 11(2) of the 1993 Fundamental Agreement Between The Holy See And The State Of Israel which provides:

“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.”

Remaining a stranger to this temporal conflict would have allowed the Pope to escape any criticism as a result of this inappropriate audience.

Thirdly - Article 2.2 of the Fundamental Agreement further avers:

“The Holy See takes this occasion to reiterate its condemnation of hatred, persecution and all other manifestations of antisemitism directed against the Jewish people and individual Jews anywhere, at any time and by anyone”

Failing to condemn the “President of the State of Palestine” during the audience for his known manifestations of anti-semitism makes a mockery of the Fundamental Agreement.

Fourthly - The Pope’s political foray no doubt inspired his own appointed nominee as the top Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land - the Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal - to also make a political statement in his annual pre-Christmas homily.

Archbishop Twal told his followers at his headquarters in Jerusalem’s Old City that this year’s festivities were doubly joyful, celebrating:

“the birth of Christ our Lord and the birth of the state of Palestine. The path (to statehood) remains long, and will require a united effort,”

Archbishop Twal - who was born in Jordan - had told Vatican Radio on 21 June 2008:

“The majority of our priests, nuns, schools families are in Jordan. We need a link to Jordan…,”

That link will certainly not come from the State of Palestine designated by the UN General Assembly - since its realisation is simply not going to eventuate.

Archbishop Twal also told www.custodia.org in an interview on 22 June 2008:

“If you want to touch Jews, Muslims, Christians, Jordanians, Palestinians, Cypriots, Europeans all together ..then you have to consider every comma”

The Archbishop would have done well to have remembered this sage advice before uttering his Christmas Eve message - understanding that what he said would not touch at least 600000 Jews - but cause them immeasurable hurt.

Indeed those who are playing charades with the newly crowned President of the State of Palestine are engaging in a world of make believe - where the words and commas in the Mandate for Palestine, the Montevideo Convention, Article 80 of the United Nations Charter, Security Council Resolution 242, the Oslo Accords and the Bush Roadmap - are apparently no longer worth the paper they are written on.

One can now add the Fundamental Agreement between the Holy See and the State of Israel to these discarded international agreements.

This does not bode well for any possible peaceful resolution of the long running conflict between Jews and Arabs.

The last Pope to bear Pope Benedict’s name - Benedict XV - enthusiastically endorsed the Jews’ right to reconstitute their national home in what was then Palestine when he told Zionist leader Nahum Sokolov at an audience in 1917 :

“Nineteen hundred years ago Rome destroyed your homeland and when you seek to rebuild it, you seek a path which leads via Rome…Yes this is the will of Divine Providence, this is what the Almighty desires.”

Violating Vatican vows this time round is certainly not going to entice Israel to beat a path to Rome as it continues to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient, biblical and internationally sanctioned homeland.

Palestine - Pope Abandons Morality For Politics

[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.