Trump writes off West Bank and Gaza as separate country

[Published 4 September 2019]

The US State Department web site has removed the West Bank and Gaza (“disputed territories”) from its list of “Countries and Areas” — signalling that it no longer regards these disputed territories as potentially comprising a separate country — in addition to Israel, Jordan and Egypt.

This is the clearest indication yet that President Trump’s soon to be released deal of the century will abandon the “two-state solution” — the creation of another Arab State in the disputed territories for the first time ever in recorded history — propagated by President Obama and his former Secretary of State John Kerry.

The US State Department web site under Kerry had included the “Palestinian Territories” in the “List of Countries and Other Areas” between 2009 and 2017.

Kerry had declared as he prepared to vacate the State Department on 28 December 2016:

“Throughout his Administration, President Obama has been deeply committed to Israel and its security, and that commitment has guided his pursuit of peace in the Middle East. This is an issue which, all of you know, I have worked on intensively during my time as Secretary of State for one simple reason: because the two-state solution is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. It is the only way to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state, living in peace and security with its neighbors. It is the only way to ensure a future of freedom and dignity for the Palestinian people. And it is an important way of advancing United States interests in the region.”

Kerry frankly admitted that America’s decision to abstain on United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 on 23 December 2016:

“was about preserving the two-state solution. That’s what we were standing up for: Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state, living side by side in peace and security with its neighbors. That’s what we are trying to preserve for our sake and for theirs.”

Kerry was consumed by his own ignorance and arrogance when proclaiming:

“Today, there are a number — there are a similar number of Jews and Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. They have a choice. They can choose to live together in one state, or they can separate into two states. But here is a fundamental reality: if the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic — it cannot be both — and it won’t ever really be at peace. Moreover, the Palestinians will never fully realize their vast potential in a homeland of their own with a one-state solution.”

It obviously did not dawn on Kerry that there was another alternative to his “one state or two states” mantra:

The division of the West Bank and Gaza between Israel, Jordan and Egypt in direct face to face negotiations to complete the allocation of sovereignty in former Palestine between Arabs and Jews first contemplated by the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the San Remo Conference and the Treaty of Sevres in 1920, and the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.

Obama and Kerry’s treacherous act of abstaining on Resolution 2334 was swiftly repudiated by the House passing H-Res 11 by 342 votes to 80 on 5 January 2017.

The PLO has committed political hara-kiri since — refusing to negotiate with Israel on Trump’s yet-to-be-released peace plan — vacating the field to other Arab states including Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to fill the negotiating void.

The State Department’s recently re-designed website sends a clear message to Arab states wanting to end the Jewish-Arab conflict to come to the negotiating table.

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

Will President Trump say “West Bank” or “Judea and Samaria”?

[14 November 2018]

President Trump - having rejected a barrage of criticism since describing himself as a “nationalist” - faces a further torrent of invective should he choose to say “Judea and Samaria” rather than “West Bank” in his soon to-be-released peace proposals.

Arab propaganda has used “West Bank” since 1949 to obliterate any Jewish connection to one of the two remaining pieces of land under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine where sovereignty still remains undetermined between Jews and Arabs.

Even worse — the United Nations and US State Department have continued using this deceptive and misleading terminology since 1967.

The media and political commentators have sought to relegate the historical-geographical term “Judea and Samaria” to some ancient biblical anachronism that fell into disuse centuries ago — yet that term appears in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica and the UN 1947 Partition Plan resolution.

Incontrovertible Jewish claims to this hotly-disputed territory – about the size of Delaware – were eloquently summarised in the Forward on 12 July 1991:

“As for “Judea” and “Samaria”, they are indeed ancient names, but the notion that they had become “archaic” prior to 1967 is totally false for both English and Hebrew. Indeed, unlike their Moslem counterparts, not only Jewish, but Christian geographers too, from Roman times onward, always considered the mountainous regions north and south of Jerusalem to be discrete entities, since this is how the Old and New Testaments speak of them because of the separate Judean and Israelite kingdoms that existed there. As late as many 18th-, 19th- and early 20th-century atlases, it is possible to find accurate maps of Palestine with the major Arab towns and villages appearing beside the words “Judea” and “Samaria” in large print.

The Hebrew terms, yehuda and shomron have had a slightly more complex history — rather, shomron has had, since yehuda, “Judah” which was originally the name of the tribe that occupied the southern hill country of the Land of Israel, has been in uninterrupted use as a geographical term since the Book of Deuteronomy. We find it and it alone in the Mishnah and the Talmud; in the account of the famous 12th-century Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela; in Kaftor u-Ferach, a 16th-century halakhic geography of Palestine composed by the Italian Rabbi Ishtori Haparhi; in all the 19t- and 20th-century literature of Zionist settlement in Palestine; and in thousands of other Hebrew sources from every period of Jewish history as well.

The case of “shomron”, “Samaria”, is somewhat different. The oldest Hebrew name for the mountains north of Jerusalem is not shomron but efrayim, after the tribe whose territory it was. Shomron was originally a site in Efrayim that, in the reign of King Omri, became the capital of the northern Kingdom of Israel, which eventually began to bear its name. Thus, in the Hebrew Bible we find shomron, efrayim, and yisra’el used interchangeably, while in rabbinic literature they are joined by a fourth term: eretz ha-kutim, “the Land of the Cuthites”—a reference to the Samaritans, a population originally transferred from the Babylonian region of Kutu to take the place of the “ten lost” tribes of Israel deported by the Assyrians in 721 B.C.E.

Subsequently, all four of these terms were used by Jewish sources, although the last two dropped out in the Middle Ages; it was not however, until the conquest of the area in 1967 that “Shomron” was finally recognized instead of “Efrayim”.

President Trump should use “Judea and Samaria” to end 70 years of fraudulent Arab propaganda — aided and abetted by the United Nations, the US State Department and the President’s oft designated“fake media".

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

United Nations Fabricated Arab Narrative Deceives Academics

[Published 3 May 2017]

The United Nations publication “The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem 1917-1988” (“Study”) has deliberately misrepresented the actual wording of General Assembly Resolution 181 passed on 29 November 1947 - deceiving many academics who have disseminated the Study’s false message.

The Study has been 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.

The offending statement in the Study misleadingly declares:

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

The actual wording of Resolution 181 stated:

“Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem, set forth in Part III of this Plan, shall come into existence in Palestine…."

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

The Study’s claim that Resolution 181 called for an "independent Palestinian Arab State” was not accidental but deliberately done to deceive and mislead.

Resolution 181 had denied the existence of any distinctly identifiable Palestinian people in 1947.

The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine had also only spoken of the “existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” in 1922.

“Palestinians” were first defined in the 1964 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Charter to mean Arab citizens normally resident in Palestine in 1947 and their descendants. Jewish and non-Arab Christian residents were excluded under this racist and apartheid definition.

The PLO also claimed that Palestine was the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people - even though Resolution 181 clearly did not.

That the Study deliberately changed the actual wording of Resolution 181 to advance these fictitious PLO claims — or perhaps others unknown - for spurious reasons - is scandalous.

This false rendition of Resolution 181 has been repeated verbatim in many books including:

1. Handbook of Ethnic Conflict: International Perspectives - Dan Landis and Rosita D Albert

2. Youth Citizenship and the Politics of Belonging - Madeleine Arnot and Sharlene Swartz

3. Bridges Over Troubled Waters - Dahlia Moore and Salem Aweiss

Richard Cummings PhD propagated this false statement during a lecture to the Arab Society of Princeton University on 21 February 2002.

This falsehood again appears in “Shaping Foreign Policy in Times of Crisis: The Role of International Law and the State Department Legal Adviser written by Michael Scharf and Paul Williams.

Their book grew out of a series of meetings with all ten of the living former U.S. State Department legal advisers from the Carter administration to that of George W. Bush.

Both authors are law professors and formerly served in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the US Department of State.

That two such eminent lawyers apparently accepted this official United Nations document as being unerringly accurate speaks volumes for those who have been similarly deceived because they didn’t take the time to verify what they were disseminating.

Many other academics have swallowed this duplicitous Study hook line and sinker to form hostile anti-Israel views - especially regarding Israel’s claims in Judea and Samaria - geographical place names actually used in Resolution 181 and for 3000 years continuously until the Arabs renamed those areas the “West Bank” in 1950.

The Roman Empire used the same ploy in 135 AD — changing the name of its conquered province from “Syria Judaea” to “Syria Palestina”.

Change the name - change the game.

Correcting this fabricated United Nations Arab narrative is urgently required.

Palestine - Obama's Ignorance Becomes His Nemesis

[Published 14 January 2016]


President Obama enters his final year as President having given up on trying to resolve the Jewish-Arab conflict - following in the footsteps of so many other American Presidents whose similarly-shared lofty and noble aspirations ended in abject failure.

In Obama’s case his inability to fully comprehend Jewish history and the connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel was the catalyst for his inevitable failure - as tellingly illustrated in his landmark speech in Cairo on 4 June 2009:

“Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed – more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction – or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews – is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.”

Israel’s current Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Dore Gold - has now revealed how Israel’s then leadership viewed Obama’s above remarks in this frank exchange published in Frontline on 6 January:

“When the president goes to Cairo for the speech, and you heard him speak, what did you think?

Well, everybody that was in my entourage focused on the whole notion that the state of Israel rose as a response to the Holocaust. That was something that was unacceptable.

Why?

Because Israel has an eternity to it that goes far back before the 20th century, the 19th century, and even earlier. All we have to do is know that there was a Jewish majority in Jerusalem already at the time of the American Civil War. All we have to know is that we had a civilization here that was destroyed by the Romans. You can now find the catapult, the Ballista, used to fight the Jewish resistance at the time of the 1st century, 70 A.D. Our history is all over this city and all over the country. Therefore, an explanation that sees us as a bunch of Europeans who are looking for a refuge from the Nazis is a partial and not terribly accurate understanding of the soul of this country.

Does it surprise you that the president of the United States would make that error?

It surprised me that they have a speechwriter who would be allowed to write that kind of document, because I think Sen. Obama was presented with the four dimensions of Israel, but someone decided to take this partial approach in a presidential speech, and it didn’t earn him confidence with the people of Israel. …”

Blaming Obama’s ignorance on a speechwriter is being very charitable to President Obama and his administration including the State Department and his equally failed Secretary of State - John Kerry - who all must accept collective responsibility for Obama‘s further statement:

“The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.”

Questioning the legitimacy of the right of the Jewish people to live anywhere in their ancient biblical and historical homeland - sanctioned by both the League of Nations and United Nations - was catastrophic.

Question the political wisdom - but not its legitimacy.

Obama got it wrong from the start and nothing was going to save him from failure in the end.

Syria and Islamic State: America Capitulates - UN Security Council Procrastinates

[Published 18 November 2015]


President Obama has finally abandoned his 2011 policy calling for Syria’s President Assad to step aside and allow the future of Syria to be determined by its people - opening the way to a UN-led process on the political future of Syria being undertaken without first removing Assad.

Russia’s Foreign Minister— Sergey Lavrov — had criticised Obama’s stance as recently as 2 June 2015:

“The U.S.‘s “obsession” with [Syria’s President] Assad isn’t helping in the common fight against the threat from Islamic State…

“People put the fate of one person whom they hate above the fight against terrorism. Islamic State can go “very far” unless stopped, and air strikes alone “are not going to do the trick”

“If people continue to acquiesce with what is going on and continue to acquiesce with those who categorically refuse to start the political process until Bashar Assad disappears, then I’m not very optimistic for the future of this region…”

Marie Harf - a U.S. State Department spokeswoman responded:

“We’re certainly not going to coordinate with a brutal dictator who’s massacred so many of his own citizens. That’s just an absurd proposition. That’s certainly not going to happen.”

Less than five months later that “absurd proposition” has come to fruition.

The International Syria Support Group (ISSG) meeting in Vienna on 14 November — attended by US Secretary of State John Kerry — agreed:

“on the need to convene Syrian government and opposition representatives in formal negotiations under UN auspices, as soon as possible, with a target date of January 1.”

Lavrov elaborated at a joint press conference with Kerry beside him:

“We have reiterated that Syrian future will be decided by Syrian people alone. This regards also the destiny of Mr. Assad and any other politician in this country.”

Lavrov stated that UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura would get the opposition and government together by 1 January for political negotiations — and continued:

“The Government of the Syrian Arab Republic has already informed Mr. de Mistura on the composition of their delegation. And today, Mr. de Mistura has the task to find the composition of the Syrian opposition delegation, which should be representative and reflect the whole spectrum of political forces.”

It will be nothing short of a miracle if Mr De Mistura can pull this rabbit out of the hat by 1 January. Nevertheless it does at last signify an international will and consensus on the way forward to ending a conflict that has claimed 300000 lives and created a flood of 7 million externally and internally displaced refugees during the last four years.

The ISSG further reiterated that the Islamic State, Nusra and other terrorist groups as designated by the UN Security Council, and further, as agreed by the ISSG participants and endorsed by the UN Security Council, must be defeated.

Jordan was appointed to develop a commonly agreed list of terrorist organisations by 1 January.

This foot-dragging takes the heat off any unified military action to target the Islamic State following the recent Russian airliner explosion and the Paris atrocities this week.

Nevertheless Lavrov was predicting that following his meetings with some unnamed ISSG members:

“I have a feeling that there was a growing understanding that there is a terrible need for efficient, comprehensive, international coalition to fight ISIS and other terrorists, as President Putin has said. And there are no prerequisites in this regard”

.
Any international coalition to fight the Islamic State can only be achieved through a UN Security Council Resolution.

Since the five Permanent Members of the Security Council are also members of the ISSG — such a Resolution cannot come quickly enough.

Palestine - Abbas Unilaterally Resurrects Palestinian Authority

[Published 23 April 2014]


Easter 2014 will be remembered as the time when PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas tried to resurrect the Palestinian Authority (PA) that he himself had declared dead and buried on 3 January 2013.

Adopting US Secretary of State Kerry’s terminology - “Poof - that was the day that signalled the end of the Oslo Accords”

The demise of the PA had been announced by John Whitbeck - an international lawyer who served as a legal advisor to the Palestinian team negotiating with Israel - in an article published on 10 January 2013 in Al Jazeera English and also the Huffington Post:

“On January 3 Mahmoud Abbas, acting in his capacities as President of the State of Palestine and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, signed “Decree No. 1 for the year 2013.” While he did so with minimal ceremony or fanfare, and while the change formalized by this decree should surprise no one after the UN General Assembly’s overwhelming vote on November 29 to upgrade Palestine’s status at the United Nations to “observer state,” this change is potentially historic.

By this decree, the Palestinian Authority, created for a five-year interim period pursuant to the Oslo Declaration of Principles signed on the White House lawn in September 1993, has been absorbed and replaced by the State of Palestine, proclaimed in November 1988, recognized diplomatically by 131 of the 193 UN member states and supported in the recent General Assembly vote by an additional 28 states which have not yet formally recognized it diplomatically.

After citing the November 29 General Assembly Resolution, Article 1 of the decree states: “Official documents, seals, signs and letterheads of the Palestinian National Authority official and national institutions shall be amended by replacing the name ‘Palestinian National Authority’ whenever it appears by the name ‘State of Palestine’ and by adopting the emblem of the State of Palestine.” Concluding Article 4 states: “All competent authorities, each in their respective area, shall implement this Decree starting from its date.”

Did none of the thousands of US State Department and Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs minions read Whitbeck’s article and realise its significance?

Surely those who did should have been concerned at Whitbeck’s further following comments:

“Perhaps due, at least in part, to the low-key manner in which this change has been effected, it has attracted remarkably little attention from the international media or reaction from other governments, even the Israeli and American governments. This is not necessarily disappointing, since passive acceptance is clearly preferable to furious rejection.

The relatively few and brief media reports of the change have tended to characterize it as “symbolic.” It could—and should—be much more than that. If the Palestinian leadership plays its cards wisely, it could—and should—represent a turning point toward a better future.

In his correspondence, Yasser Arafat used to list all three of his titles under his signature—President of the State of Palestine, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and President of the Palestinian Authority (in that order of precedence). It is both legally and politically noteworthy that, in signing this decree, Mahmoud Abbas has listed only the first two titles.

The Trojan horse called the “Palestinian Authority” in accordance with the Oslo interim agreements and the “Palestinian National Authority” by Palestinians has served its purpose by introducing the institutions of the State of Palestine on the soil of Palestine and has now ceased to exist.”

Abbas had dissolved the Palestinian Authority with the stroke of a pen - creating a situation where further negotiations under the Oslo Accords and the Bush Roadmap were nugatory.

America and Israel - at their peril - apparently preferred to negotiate with ghosts and turn a blind eye to this extremely significant development.

Now 15 months down the track - with negotiations begun in July 2013 now on their last legs - news that Abbas is contemplating dismantling the PA for a second time has brought forth the following response from State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki:

“Of course [the PA disbanding] will have serious consequences. Obviously this is not in the interest of the Palestinian people,and all that has been achieved will be lost.”

“The US has made tremendous efforts to build Palestinian institutions in the PA, and so has the international community, The move will seriously harm the US-PA relationship, including in terms of financial aid.”

Ignoring Abbas’s 2013 decree has certainly cost the US dearly - about US $500 million in financial aid reportedly paid to an organization over the last 15 months that had ceased to exist.

Has America ever suffered a more blatant financial scam of such massive proportions?

Suddenly the State Department is now also concerned about “the interest of the Palestinian people” after having connived to allow Abbas to lead them down a negotiating blind alley with no possible light at the end of the tunnel following the PA demise.

Israel also needs to explain its role in perpetuating the fiction of the PA’s existence for the last nine months

Kerry’s desperate efforts to keep these Mickey Mouse negotiations alive has been exposed by Abbas’s last ditch threat to dismantle the non-existent PA.

Kerry needs to answer how any signed agreement could ever be achieved with a party whose existence Abbas can turn on and off like a tap.

Abbas’s pathetic bluff and bluster should for once be exposed and rejected by America and Israel.

Palestine - Jordan Gets Jittery Again

[Published 2 March 2014]


Jordan has become increasingly jittery after US Secretary of State John Kerry’s framework agreement for peace missed meeting the second deadline for its release on 21 February - having initially been promised by the end of January.

Now US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro has let slip at a meeting of the Jewish Agency Board of Governors in Jerusalem on 24 February that the US hopes to present the framework agreement before the end of April.

The idea behind the framework agreement had been posited by a Senior State Department Official during a teleconference on 2 January:

“As you will have seen from the press, and indeed President Obama has spoken about the idea of establishing a framework for negotiations, that’s what we’re trying to achieve here – agreement on a framework that would serve as guidelines for the permanent status negotiations and that would address all of the core issues.

We are not coming in with an American plan that would be imposed on the parties, but rather we want to have a detailed consultation with them about these ideas that have been generated as a result of the negotiations between the parties themselves, and see whether they can serve as gap bridges which could lead to this agreement on the framework for permanent status negotiations.

I want to stress, as we always do but it never seems quite to convince doubters, particularly, I think, in the region, that this is not an effort to achieve an interim agreement. It is an effort to provide agreed guidelines for a permanent status agreement, that is to say a full and final peace treaty between the parties. And that purpose here is, in effect, if you like, to – for the Secretary to climb with the two leaders to the top of the hill and be able to share with them the view of what’s on the other side, what peace will look like in terms of all of the core issues that have to be resolved between them. And once they have a shared vision of what that will look like, then it will become easier to finalize the details, and there will be a lot of details in the actual permanent status agreement itself.”

Shapiro admitted Kerry had run into a lot of trouble climbing that hill whilst attempting to persuade Israel and the PLO to agree on the framework’s terms:

“It would involve both sides being willing to negotiate on the basis of a framework that contains things in it that are uncomfortable for them [and about which] they may have reservations,”

The framework, he said, “is very detailed.” At this point in the process, “everyone fights over every word as they should because the stakes are very high”

King Abdullah II of Jordan is nervous at the possible outcome and could now be positioning himself to take part in these negotiations - from which he had always previously sought to distance himself.

Former Jordanian Prime Minister - Marouf al-Bahit - told Al-Hayyat, a London based Arabic- language news source - on 3 January:

“Jordan needs to be present and involved in all future negotiations,”

Al- Bahit - currently the deputy head of the King’s Council - an advisory board closest to King Abdullah - continued:

“It is unthinkable that Jordan should sit on the side, as an observer. Jordan should join the negotiating table immediately - since it is bound to be the one paying the price of the Israeli and American positions.”

Al-Bahit’s position did not represent the prevailing opinion in Amman - according to the article. One senior official - who spoke on condition of anonymity - reportedly told Al-Hayyat:

“Jordan would welcome the decisions sealed by the negotiating process - “without any need whatsoever to sit at the negotiating table.” Amman did stress, however, that it would get involved if - and only if - the talks directly harmed their interests, specifically Jordan’s borders.”

Abdullah cannot ignore - just seven weeks later - that the further delay in releasing the framework agreement could possibly lead to the total breakdown in negotiations between Israel and the PLO - which could directly harm Jordan’s national interests.

Abdullah is now in the identical position he found himself on 11 October 2006 - when he told the Khaleej Times:

“I really think that by the first half of 2007 we might wake up to reality and realise that the two-state solution is no longer attainable. I think we are really running out of time . Physically on the ground and geographically, I think there is less and less of a West Bank and Jerusalem to talk about.”

Abdullah then warned:

“We want to go back to the 1967 borders. We are talking about that today. Are we going to talk about that tomorrow though? This is the danger.”

Abdullah recognised then that compromise would inevitably involve Israel retaining part of the West Bank - notwithstanding the PLO demanding it all.

With a negotiated two-state solution likely to fall by the wayside despite Kerry’s desperate efforts to keep it alive - Abdullah is clearly aware that with less of the West Bank to talk about in 2014 than in 2006 - the PLO might attempt to overthrow Abdullah - as it unsuccessfully tried to do in 1970 with Abdullah’s father - King Hussein .

Whilst Abdullah warned this week that “Jordan is Jordan and Palestine is Palestine” - the PLO Charter - and history - ominously state otherwise.

Jordan needs a seat at that negotiating table - immediately.

Palestine - Kerry Oblivious To Demise Of Palestinian Authority

[Published 23 February 2014]


US Secretary of State John Kerry and the US State Department continue to cling to the illusion that the Palestinian Authority still exists—despite PLO insistence that it does not following this Decree on 3 January 2013:

Decree No. 1 for the year 2013
On the use of the name of the State of Palestine and its emblem on letterheads, seals and related official documents
President of the State of Palestine
Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization
Based on the Statute of the Palestine Liberation Organization
And after reviewing the Fundamental Law of 2003, as amended
Based on the Resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations No. GA 11317, deciding to upgrade the status of Palestine to the status of observer state in the United Nations Organization.
Based on the recommendations of the Palestinian Committee in charge of the steps to be taken in this regard, and based on the powers vested in us, and in conformity with the public interest,
We decided the following:

Article (1)

Official documents, seals, signs and letterheads of the Palestinian National Authority official and national institutions shall be amended by replacing the name ‘Palestinian National Authority’ whenever it appears by the name ‘State of Palestine’ and by adopting the emblem of the State of Palestine. The relevant authorities shall be in charge of monitoring the implementation of this Decree, taking into account the requirements of use.

Article (2)

Official documents, seals, signs and letterheads in the embassies of the State of Palestine and its missions abroad shall be amended by keeping the name ‘State of Palestine’ and emblem only and the name of ‘mission’ afterwards. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs shall be in charge of implementing these amendments. Dealing with States who do not recognize the State of Palestine shall also be taken into consideration.

Article (3)

No amendment shall be made to the name and emblem in official documents, seals, letterheads and signs of the institutions of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Article (4)

All competent authorities, each in their respective area, shall implement the provisions of this Decree starting from its date. This Decree shall be notified to those it may concern and shall be published in the Official Gazette.

Mahmoud Abbas
President of the State of Palestine
Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization
—Translated from Maan News.

Kerry and the State Department’s inability to appreciate this major change in PLO policy became very apparent following Kerry’s visit to Paris last week to meet “President of the State of Palestine” and “Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO” - Mahmoud Abbas.

The State Department web site described Kerry’s visit in these terms:

“In Paris, Secretary Kerry will meet with Palestinian Authority President Abbas to discuss the ongoing negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis.”

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in Abu Dhabi - where Kerry was meeting United Arab Emirate officials:

“Secretary Kerry will meet with Palestinian Authority President Abbas in Paris, France on Wednesday to discuss the ongoing negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis,”

Lebanon’s Daily Star—obviously embarrassed to report such Kerry and State Department nonsense - went so far as to deliberately hide Psaki’s reference to the Palestinian Authority:

“State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki confirmed the meeting, saying they would “discuss the ongoing negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis”

Wily long time PLO negotiator - Saeb Erekat - was however prepared to let Kerry wander along his path of blissful ignorance with these amazing remarks reported in Xinhua:

“A Palestinian official warned on Monday that the failure of the current Palestinian-Israeli peace talks will lead to the collapse of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).

“The failure of negotiations means that things will go back to zero point,” chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erikat told the official Voice of Palestine radio.

“This may lead Israel to reoccupy the Palestinian territories and thus the PNA will collapse,” he said, adding that the PNA will approach the international organizations including the International Criminal Court (ICC) to sue the state of Israel if the talks do not succeed.

It is the first time a Palestinian official warns of a possible collapse of the PNA if the US-backed negotiations fail.”

Marie Harf—Deputy State Department Spokesman—in her daily press briefing on 19 February—still thought Kerry was meeting with the Palestinian Authority Chairman—the party to negotiations with Israel under the Oslo Accords and the Bush Roadmap:

“Today, Secretary Kerry is in Paris, where he has had meetings with French Foreign Minister Fabius and Jordanian Foreign Minister Judeh. Later tonight, he’s scheduled to meet with Palestinian Authority President Abbas.”

Kerry’s Public Schedule maintained the fiction for 20 February:

“2:00 p.m. LOCAL Secretary Kerry meets with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, in Paris, France.”

Photographs on the State Department website - recording photo-ops with “Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas”—clearly indicate that Kerry is unaware that:

1. The Palestinian Authority no longer exists

2. The State of Palestine exists on the soil of Palestine

3. The Palestinian Arabs are no longer stateless or homeless

4. Negotiations under Oslo and the Roadmap have become meaningless

Kerry and the State Department will have a lot of explaining to do if his framework agreement fails to take these crucial PLO changes into account.

“Kerry cops caning” would make an excellent headline.

Palestine - Backtracking Begins As Democracy Dies

[Published 22 February 2013]


Arab attempts to undermine and trash the Bush Roadmap and end any hopes of a negotiated peace between Israel and the PLO were flagged with some remarkable comments made by James Zogby in his article published this week headlined “Putting the Blame on Palestine’s Democratic Deficit”

James Zogby’s opinions need to be taken seriously - because what he says has clout - given the powerful position he holds.

Dr. Zogby is founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), a Washington, D.C.-based organization which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American community

In his article Dr Zogby makes this amazing claim:

"The rather bizarre notion that the Palestinians must first build a “practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty” before they can have a state was first articulated by George W. Bush in June of 2002. Back then, with Israeli-Palestinian tensions at a high point, the world waited for two months while Bush was framing his approach to restoring peace-making efforts. A speech had been written by State Department Middle East experts, but at the last minute the White House inserted its “democracy first” demand which, instead of restarting the peace process, proved to be the “nail in its coffin.”

Dr Zogby then discloses who managed to get the “democratic demand” slipped into the President’s speech at the last moment - effectively guaranteeing that the peace process would eventually be scuttled - as has now become so apparent in 2013.

"State Department officials who had worked on the initial drafts of the speech were floored by the Bush insertions, which we later learned had come directly from the President after he had read a treatise on democracy by Natan Sharansky. Sharansky, the famed Soviet refusenik, had left the Soviet Union for Israel in 1986."

A Jewish Zionist - Natan Sharansky - had been able to influence an American President to take a decision that had floored the experts at the State Department.

How accurate are Dr Zogby’s revelations and the inferences he wants readers to draw?

Firstly Sharansky had not merely “left the Soviet Union for Israel in 1986”

Wikipedia tells his story in more detail:

"Sharansky was denied an exit visa to Israel in 1973. The reason given for denial of the visa was that he had been given access, at some point in his career, to information vital to Soviet national security and could not now be allowed to leave. After that Sharansky became a human rights activist and spokesperson for the Moscow Helsinki Group. Sharansky was one of the founders of the Refusenik movement in Moscow.

In 1977 Sharansky was arrested on charges of spying for the United States and treason and sentenced to 13 years of forced labor in Perm 35, a Siberian labor camp (Gulag)."

How did Sharansky leave the Soviet Union for Israel in 1986?

"As a result of an international campaign led by his wife, Avital Sharansky (including assistance from East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel, New York Congressman Benjamin Gilman and Rabbi Ronald Greenwald) Sharansky and three low-level Western spies (Czech citizen Jaroslav Javorský and West German citizens Wolf-Georg Frohn and Dietrich Nistroy) were exchanged for Czech spies Karl Koecher and Hana Koecher held in the USA, Soviet spy Yevgeni Zemlyakov, Polish spy Jerzy Kaczmarek and East German spy Detlef Scharfenorth (the latter three held in West Germany) in 1986 on Glienicke Bridge. Sharansky was released in February 1986"

Sharansky was indeed well qualified to write a treatise on the virtues of democracy as opposed to totalitarian regimes.

But President Bush as head of the world’s leading democracy needed no treatise on democracy to make his democracy demand an essential plank of his peace plan.

Do Dr Zogby’s claims have any relevance apart from telling us the State Department spat the proverbial dummy and had a hissy fit of somewhat monumental proportions because the President did not like what they had drafted?

Consider what President Bush actually said on 24 June 2002:

“I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts. If the Palestinian people meet these goals, they will be able to reach agreement with Israel and Egypt and Jordan on security and other arrangements for independence.”

The President’s statement was the basis for the actual text of the Roadmap presented nine months later on 30 April 2003 to Palestinian and Israeli mediators by Quartet mediators - the United Nations, European Union, United States and Russia.

The other members of the Quartet were well aware that the text they all approved contained this statement:

“A settlement, negotiated between the parties, will result in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbours.”

Clearly an international consensus had emerged on what was essential to end the long running Arab-Jewish conflict.

Whilst Israel had expressed 14 reservations in accepting the Roadmap - the PLO accepted it without amendment as PLO leader made clear on 30 April 2003:

“Israel is attempting to alter the road map as we know it by entering into complicated negotiations and imposing its own interpretation.We will not negotiate the road map. The road map must be implemented.”

Dr Zogby seeks to blame Israel’s settlement policies for the lack of democratic reforms in the areas of the West Bank under full Arab administrative control.

It is time to end the blame game whilst perennially claiming victimhood status.

It is time to face up to the reality that only the fundamentals of a democratic state - free and fair elections, freedom of expression and the media - can lead to a negotiated end to this long running conflict.

The sooner elections are held to end the seven year drought since the last election was held - the sooner the hope of peace will become a flickering light at the end of a very dark tunnel.

Dr Zogby has done the Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza a grave disservice by dashing the hope of democracy ever coming to change their lives - as it changed the lives of Sharansky and the million Soviet Jews who eventually made it to Israel.

Jew haters and Israel bashers must be salivating at Dr Zogby’s “disclosures”.

Such is the manner by which the Arab narrative has been created out of nothing - to a story that soon assumes a momentum of its own.