Islamic Jihad eases way for Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine

 

The decapitation of Islamic Jihad’s senior leadership in Gaza should help facilitate negotiations to successfully implement the creation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine and end 100 years of conflict between Jews and Arabs.

The current conflict between Israel and Islamic Jihad was initiated when 100 rockets and mortars were fired into Israel from Gaza by Islamic Jihad following the death of a senior Islamic Jihad figure – Khader Adnan - after an 87 day hunger strike in an Israeli jail.

A targeted counter-response by Israel killed three Islamic Jihad commanders. A further 1000 missiles fired into Israel saw another three Islamic Jihad leaders eliminated by Israel.

A fragile ceasefire now exists.

Hamas stayed out of this current conflict – but has threatened to enter the fray if Israelis hold a Flag March through Jerusalem on 19 May to commemorate the reunification of Jerusalem following the 1967 Six Day War.

Israel and Islamic Jihad last clashed in August 2022 – when Hamas also did not become involved.

The Saudi-based Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution published on 8 June 2022 – and subsequently amended – provides:

“The proposal for this expanded kingdom includes Jordan with its current borders, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank (areas inhabited by Palestinians that border Jordan, which means that they are not divided into islands). Hence the Israeli arguments about the need to preserve the Jordan Valley and other areas will become weak since these lands will then be under the control of a Jordanian government that has the credibility of keeping the peace with Israel. And the usual Israeli claim that it has no "peace partner" will also end."

Neither the PLO nor Hamas shall govern the new entity - whose capital will be located in Amman – not Jerusalem – which will become the capital of Israel only.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it very clear that Israel alone will be seeking complete security control over all territory west of the Jordan River in any peace agreement:

“...West of the Jordan River ... Israel and Israel alone controls security. We control the airspace, we control the ground security, underground security in case they want to do tunnels... We’re not going to commit suicide for a favourable op-ed in the New York Times”

Islamic Jihad has demonstrated once again how it and other similar terrorist groups can freely exist in Gaza – smuggling in weapons from Iran through Sudan and Sinai and target Israel without any attempt being made by Hamas to stop them.

The Hashemites could hardly be expected to fare any better.

Jordanian Member of Parliament Imad al-Adwan’s arrest on April 22 - while carrying 12 rifles and 194 pistols in his car - at an Israeli-controlled border crossing - will strengthen Netanyahu’s demand for total security control of all territory west of the Jordan River – including the Arab population of the newly-created Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine living there.

The failure of:

• Jordan’s King Abdullah
• PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas
• Hamas Leader Ismael Haniyeh
• Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and
• Benjamin Netanyahu

to reject the Saudi Plan since its publication 11 months ago – could see Israel’s security concerns being agreed to - allowing the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine to become a reality.

Expediting negotiations to implement the Saudi Plan will reduce increasing tension in Gaza and Judea and Samaria (West Bank) that could trigger a major humanitarian disaster.

Netanyahu’s decision to delay demolishing an illegal Bedouin encampment – Khan al-Ahmar – indicates Israel’s willingness to end – not perpetuate - conflict.

It would be a tragedy if this game-changing Saudi-based solution was consigned to the garbage bin of history before negotiations to successfully implement it have been fully exhausted.

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-Hamas day of infamy mars Trump-Israel day of celebration

[Published 9 December 2018]

December 6, 2018 marks the day the United Nations General Assembly (“UNGA”) infamously sold its soul to evil by failing to agree on whether a resolution condemning Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza required a two-thirds — or simple — majority vote.

December 6, 2018 also happened to be the first anniversary of President Trump’s announcement of America’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the intended relocation of America’s Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

December 6, 2018 was also the fourth day of the eight-day Jewish festival of Hanukkah marking the rededication during the second century B.C. of the Second Temple in Jerusalem following the Jews uprising against their Greek-Syrian oppressors.

America had submitted draft Resolution A/73/L.42 (“L. 42”) to the UNGA on 29 November 2018:

1. Condemning Hamas for repeatedly firing rockets into Israel and for inciting violence, thereby putting civilians at risk;

2. Demanding that Hamas and other militant actors, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, cease all provocative actions and violent activity, including by using airborne incendiary devices;

3. Condemning the use of resources by Hamas in Gaza to construct military infrastructure, including tunnels to infiltrate Israel and equipment to launch rockets into civilian areas, when such resources could be used to address the critical needs of the civilian population;

The UN’s Press Release sums up what occurred when the draft resolution came to a vote on 6 December:

“The representative of Kuwait, speaking on behalf of the Arab Group, said the situation in the Middle East is directly linked to international peace and security. He condemned Israeli policies that violate international humanitarian law and the Charter of the United Nations and requested a vote to apply the two-thirds majority rule for the adoption of draft “L.42”.

The representative of the United States said a simple majority is required for adoption of the resolution. She called for fairness in the United Nations and said action on the draft was about “doing what is right”. “The General Assembly has never uttered a word in any resolution about Hamas,” she said. The decision to adopt the text by a two-thirds majority is based on a desire to have the resolution fail. She urged all States to vote against the motion."

The Assembly then voted to apply the two-thirds majority requirement for the adoption of L.42 - which was passed by 75 in favour, 72 against, with 26 abstentions.

Those favouring a two-thirds majority vote included 44 out of 56 Islamic States - whilst one (Albania) voted against, 5 abstained and 6 did not vote.

Non-Islamic States supporting the Islamic States-bloc included:

Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Japan, Nicaragua, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, Venezuela, and Vietnam.

All 21 member States of the European Union supported America’s simple majority stance.

Others backing America included:

Australia, Bosnia, Canada, Colombia, Estonia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Malawi, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, South Korea, Singapore, Slovakia, Ukraine and Uruguay.

L 42 was then passed by the UNGA by 87 votes for, 57 against and 33 abstentions — but was declared lost because it had not secured the required two-thirds majority.

The Islamic States had won a three-vote procedural victory - setting a precedent that is bound to be attempted again.

Hamas and other militant groups remain free to engage in heinous conduct found worthy of UN condemnation by a majority of UN member States.

The foundational basis of the UN Charter - maintaining international peace and security (Clause 1.1) - has been flagrantly circumvented by the UNGA failing to agree on how to run its own meetings.

The UNGA has become a complete joke and totally irrelevant.

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

Palestine - No Elections No Solution

[Published 18 November 2013]


The PLO negotiating team - headed by perennial negotiator Saeb Erekat - resigned this week in the middle of a nine month period set aside for intense and secret negotiations with Israel to achieve the creation of a second Arab state - in addition to Jordan - in former Mandatory Palestine.

PLO Chairman, head of Fatah, unconstitutional self-styled President of the defunct Palestinian Authority and unelected President of the “State of Palestine” - Mahmoud Abbas - was quick to point out on Egyptian TV:

“Either we can convince it to return, and we’re trying with them, or we form a new delegation.”.

Either way - it will be a waste of time.

The “two state solution” posited by these currently stalled negotiations is doomed to failure.

Ramzy Baroud - a Palestinian-American journalist, author and editor who taught Mass Communication at Australia’s Curtin University of Technology, and is Editor-in-Chief of the Palestine Chronicle - explains the futility of further negotiations with the PLO in his article “Why a winning Palestinian narrative is hard to find”:

“In an initially pointless exercise that lasted nearly an hour, I flipped between two Palestinian television channels, al-Aqsa TV of Hamas in Gaza and Palestine TV of Fatah in the West Bank. While both purported to represent Palestine and the Palestinians, each seemed to represent some other place and some other people. It was all very disappointing.

Hamas’ world is fixated on their hate of Fatah and other factional personal business. Fatah TV is stuck between several worlds of archaic language of phony revolutions, factional rivalry and unmatched self-adoration. The two narratives are growingly alien and will unlikely ever move beyond their immediate sense of self-gratification and utter absurdity.”

These irreconcilable differences between Fatah - the dominant faction in the PLO - and Hamas - not a member of the PLO - have remained unresolved since 2007.

In the absence of any unified representation for the Palestinian Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza - how can any agreement between Israel and the PLO ever bring about a final end to the Arab-Jewish conflict that has raged unresolved for the last 130 years?

Mahmoud Al-Zahar, a Hamas official based in Gaza, told his movement’s daily newspaper - Al-Resalah - in August this year that Hamas should act to isolate Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and strip him of any representative capacity over his decision to negotiate with Israel.

“The PA has dealt the final blow to reconciliation talks, and Hamas will never accept the negotiation track and its result.”

CBN News confirmed Hamas’s stance on 30 September in its article “Hamas: No Agreement That Includes Israel’s Right to Exist”:

“We will not recognize any agreements at the expense of our land, rights and religious sites,” Asharq al-Awsat quoted Hamas officials on Sunday. “Palestine—the whole of Palestine from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river [i.e., Israel]—is the property Palestinian people and our nation, and no usurper has any right to a speck of dust of its territory.”

A spokesman for the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the so-called military wing of Hamas, promised to be “at the heart of the new intifada.”

And Islamic Jihad member Ahmed al-Mudallal said, “Resistance in Palestine is the spearhead in the confrontation with the Zionist project, which targets Jerusalem, al-Aksa [mosque on the Temple Mount] and the whole of Palestine.”

Hamas vowed never to accept any agreement that includes recognition of Israel’s right to exist.

“Negotiations and security coordination with the Zionist enemy form a cover for the continuation of the occupation’s crimes against our territory, our people and our religious sites,” the statement continued.

“We call upon all Palestinian forces and factions to reject the path of these wasteful negotiations, which have proved their failure to achieve our people’s dreams and only brought them more waste, loss and division in the face of the occupation’s crimes and plans.”

Hamas called on the Palestinian Authority’s Fatah faction “to end negotiations and security coordination with the enemy and to return to resistance, national reconciliation and Palestinian unity.”

Fatah responded by saying it “will remain committed to Palestinian unity and will continue to work for the unity of the people, territory and the Palestinian leadership, which is represented by the Palestine Liberation Organization,” Asharq al-Awsat reported.”

US Secretary of State - John Kerry - showed once again how little he understands about the Jewish-Arab conflict he is spending so much time trying to resolve - telling TV audiences in Israel and the West Bank:

“The alternative to getting back to the talks is the potential of chaos. I mean, does Israel want a third intifada?"

Kerry obviously fails to appreciate that it is Hamas and its backers that will instigate a third intifada - especially if Israel and the PLO look like miraculously agreeing on anything.

Kerry should be focusing on the common denominator that has virtually guaranteed the failure of negotiations during the last seven years - the refusal of both Hamas and the PLO to allow the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank to hold fair and transparent triennial elections to determine who should represent them in final status negotiations with Israel.

Elections will end the culture of political impotency which has proved an impenetrable barrier to the Palestinian Arabs claimed right to self determination.

Without such elections - no final and binding agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs is possible.

Palestine In Tatters - Obama's Obsolescent Opinion Hardly Matters

[Published 15 March 2012]


The much vaunted reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah has become yet another missed opportunity and non-event following revelations by the Palestinian Central Elections Commission (CEC) chief electoral officer - Hisham Kuhail - that the May 4 date set for presidential and parliamentary elections in the West Bank and Gaza will not eventuate.

There has been no parliamentary poll in Gaza since 2006 - and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has continued in the role of President illegally after the expiration of his term in 2009.

In an interview with The National - Mr Kuhail said the commission cannot stage the elections primarily because Hamas will not allow it to make the necessary preparations in Gaza - such as updating the voting registry and installing voting centres. The West Bank voter register was updated last August.

Mr Kuhail reportedly said his team was denied permission to do this in Gaza during a meeting there last month with aides to Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza - Ismail Haniyeh

Mr Kuhail said the problem could only be resolved by real reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah.

Under Palestinian law - Palestinian Authority President - Mahmoud Abbas - must issue a decree instructing the CEC to begin preparing for the elections. This process takes 90 days.

Mr Kuhail said:

“But to this moment, that has not happened, The earliest feasible date to organize an election would be after June”

A Hamas-Fatah agreement signed in Cairo last year was supposed to have led to an interim government that would govern both Gaza and the West Bank until elections took place. This has yet to materialise.

Islamic Jihad’s Secretary-General - Ramadan Abdullah Shallah - has lamented on the continuing differences of opinion between Hamas and Fatah that have prevented the implementation of any deal:

“Each side has its defense and pretexts, but the loser is our people because its interests are being ignored ... “

Regrettably those interests have been ignored for the last 75 years since the Peel Committee first recommended the partition of Palestine into an Arab State and a Jewish State.

Meanwhile American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - speaking in New York after a meeting of the impotent Quartet - America, Russia, The European Union and the United Nations - could only repeat the following tired mantra repeatedly invoked by President Obama:

“President Obama and I have been consistent in our belief that the Palestinian people – like their Arab neighbors, Israelis, and all people – deserve dignity, liberty and the right to decide their own futures. They deserve a viable,independent Palestine,alongside a secure Israel.”

Clearly the idea of creating such a new Arab state between Israel and Jordan for the first time in recorded history - and the threats any such state would pose to Israel’s security - has become passé.

This solution - which may have looked attractive when recycled in 1993 with the signing of the Oslo Accords - has been fatally impacted by events in the region and in Iran during the past twelve months - not to mention the 200 rockets fired from Gaza into Israeli civilian population centres this past week.

Even if Hamas and Fatah were to miraculously embrace in a genuine show of fraternal respect - how could Israel be expected to deal with any Government in which Hamas is a member - when Haniyeh openly declared on 14 December last:

“Today, we say, in a clear and unambiguous fashion: The armed resistance and armed struggle are our strategic choice and our path to liberate the Palestinian land, from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River, and to drive the usurping invaders out of the blessed land of Palestine.”

This battle cry is overshadowed by Fatah and the PLO’s more strident demand - that Jordan be included in the Palestinian Arab State it seeks to create.

Time waits for no man - and in the case of the Palestinian Arabs they have spurned many opportunities to gain for themselves - in the West Bank and Gaza - a second independent and exclusively Arab state in former Palestine - in addition to Jordan - in

(i) 1947
(ii) Between 1948-1967
(iii) 2000
(iv) 2008

President Obama needs to fully comprehend what well known Israeli dove Yossi Alpher recently wrote:

“The Israeli-Palestinian peace process, as we have known it since the 1993 signing of the Oslo accords, essentially died more than three years ago with the demise of the final status talks between then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas”

Continuing to pretend there is any life left in the Oslo Accords and President Bush’s 2002 Roadmap is the height of folly and recklessness. Believing it can ever be implemented is with respect - gross stupidity.

Maybe President Obama might find it easier to adopt a new mantra based on the following remark recently made by an apparently intelligent 18-year-old girl from Ramallah - who told the person interviewing her for a scholarship to a college in America:

“... the [Jewish] “settlers” [in the West Bank] are really refugees. They, too, are returning to their ancestral homelands. It wouldn’t be fair to tell them to leave.”>

Maybe there is a message for President Obama in these few well chosen words - stop engaging in fiction - come back into the real world - and face the following facts:

1. The Jewish-Arab conflict over Palestine has been ongoing for 130 years - long before there were “Israelis”, Palestinians”, “Transjordanians” and “Jordanians”.

2. Jews have their sovereign State in 17% of former Palestine - now called Israel.

3. Arabs have their sovereign state in 77% of former Palestine.- now called Jordan

4. Just 6% of former Palestine - the West Bank and Gaza - remains to be allocated between Jews and Arabs - who both are claiming sovereignty in these areas.

5. Attempts between Israel and the PLO to resolve sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza have irretrievably broken down.

6. New Arab negotiating partners are now needed to replace the PLO and sit down with Israel to try and resolve the allocation of sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza.

7. Those Arab partners should be Jordan and Egypt - the only two Arab States to have signed peace treaties with Israel and the last Arab occupiers of Gaza and the West Bank between 1948-1967.

Facing up to these realities is necessary - if President Obama and America is to become relevant in advancing the resolution of this long-running conflict.

President Obama does not have the luxury of time - because even this window of opportunity - which has remained open since 6 June 1967 - is fast being slammed in his face.

Palestine - Abbas Attempts The Turkey Trot

[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.

Abbas Tears Up The Roadmap

[Published May 2008]

President Bush’s Road Map was publicly shredded by PLO Chairman and Palestinian Authority President - Mahmoud Abbas - in Ramallah this week. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was there when it happened.

Ms Rice was making all the right noises and uttering the usual buzzwords and trite phrases designed to impress everyone with the supposed progress of the negotiations. “Trilaterals”, “bilaterals” ,"quantitative metrics”, “ the first really serious discussions on all of the core issues that have taken place between the parties for almost seven years” - were just a few choice terms that she managed to drop when answering questions from the assembled press corps.

However her optimism dissipated as President Abbas dropped the following bombshell at the joint media conference held with the Secretary of State:

“On this occasion we reiterate the need to stress that Gaza and the West Bank are one unified entity. And, therefore, we call up on Hamas to withdraw back from its coup and to accept immediately — and we are ready for that, to accept the calling for immediate Presidential and legislative elections and, therefore, we repeat our — what we mentioned earlier, that we are ready to go for early Presidential and legislative elections.

President Abbas with these few carefully crafted words made it absolutely clear that:

1. Any new State must be established on the whole of the West Bank and Gaza

2. Any talk of dividing the West Bank between Israel and the Palestinian Authority or separating the West Bank from Gaza would not be acceptable

3. Hamas - a declared terrorist organization - would be permitted - after ending its coup - to take part in new elections which could lead to it ending up in control of the new State . This would allow it to then engage in - and continue to implement - its declared policy of trying to destroy Israel using an army and State apparatus set up, trained and financed with American and international aid.

Abbas in making his outrageous remarks was repudiating a cardinal tenet of President Bush’s Road Map which states:

“A two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only be achieved through an end to violence and terrorism, when the Palestinian people have a leadership acting decisively against terror and willing and able to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty,”

Israel - in accepting the Road Map - had its own ideas of what ending violence and terrorism meant and expressed it as follows in one of the 14 reservations it stipulated when accepting the Road Map:

“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.”

Abbas’s failure to dismantle Hamas and the other terror organisations prior to his ouster from Gaza has been the real obstacle to any new State ever having the remotest chance of being created. Whilst these terrorist organisations remain unexpurgated from Palestinian society any negotiations continue to be futile and offer no chance of success.

The Hamas coup in Gaza last year transformed President Abbas into a political eunuch. Yet he still managed to retain the confidence of the international community to progress President Bush’s Road Map to fruition. US$7.4 billion pledged to him in Paris at an international donors’ conference last year indicated the extent to which the international community was prepared to back Abbas.

Many of those donors are now also calling for Israel to negotiate with Hamas - having taken note of the meetings held by former US President Jimmy Carter with Hamas and the ostensible legitimacy that afforded to the terror organization.

In making his most recent comments President Abbas may have just finally tipped the scales enough to lose the support of President Bush and many others who saw him as the light at the end of the tunnel.

President Bush’s Road Map required the elimination - not the legitimisation - of terrorism if there was to be any successful outcome. Embracing terrorists rather than fighting them is the very antithesis of the Road Map provisions.

President Abbas’s remarks have effectively consigned the Road Map to the waste paper basket and ensured the end of any hope of a new Arab State being created between Israel and Jordan.

Ms Rice stood by silently as President Abbas rammed his message home. Hopefully she delivered a stern rebuke to President Abbas in the confines of their private discussions. However the damage has been done and President Abbas will now find it exceedingly difficult to retract his comments. He certainly has indicated he is prepared to embrace - not dismantle - Hamas if the coup is ended in Gaza.

The Executive Council of the PLO was quick to endorse the Abbas remarks just one day later.

To the eternal shame of the press corps gathered there, not one question was put to either Ms Rice or President Abbas as to the impact his ground breaking statement would have on the current negotiations. The reporters present were too busy trotting out the tired old questions on roadblocks and settlements to even comprehend the enormity of President Abbas’s remarks.

President Abbas in those few words once again demonstrated the inability of the Arabs to understand that negotiations mean compromise - not intransigence. The body blow he delivered to the successful implementation of the Road Map is lethal.

Certainly his remarks were the last thing Ms Rice - and President Bush - would have wanted to hear.