UN, EU, Jordan & USA keep mum on Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine

 

The United Nations (UN), European Union (EU) Jordan and America (USA) continue to keep mum by refusing to comment on the Saudi Arabian proposal to unify Jordan, Gaza and part of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into one territorial entity to be named "The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine"  

The detailed Saudi proposal was set out in an article published on 8 June written by Ali Shihabi – a confidante of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman - designated to be Saudi Arabia's next King.

The Saudi plan directly challenges UN, EU, Jordan and US positions argued for decades that the only solution to ending the conflict between Arabs and Jews is the creation for the first time in history of a 23rd Arab State between Israel and Jordan.  

Despite their unrelenting and determined efforts to bring this solution to fruition since its adoption by the EU at the Venice Summit on 13 June 1980 – that goal has proved incapable of being achieved. 

On 31 July 1988 Jordan's King Hussein hopped on the EU bandwagon and:

• Terminated Jordanian citizenship enjoyed by all West Bank Arab residents for the previous 38 years. 
• Renounced all Jordanian claims to the West Bank annexed by Jordan between 1950 and 1967

• Dissolved the Jordanian parliament (half of whose members were West Bank representatives), 
• Ceased salary payments to 21,000 West Bank civil servants, and 
• Ordered that West Bank Palestinian passports be converted to two-year travel documents. 

Jordan left the fate of the West Bank and its abandoned Jordanian-citizen population in the hands of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). 

The PLO subsequently rejected offers of a separate state proposed by the: 

• 1993 Oslo Accords
• 2003 Bush Roadmap 
• 2020 Trump Plan and 
• Israel in July 2000, September 2008 and June 2009

The EU and Jordan push for this separate-state solution between Israel and Jordan was made as recently as 2 June 2022:

"[The EU and Jordan] reiterated that the only path to a just, lasting and comprehensive resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the two-state solution that ends occupation and leads to the establishment, of an independent contiguous, sovereign and viable Palestinian State, on the lines of 4 June 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital, living side by side with the State of Israel in peace, in accordance with international law and UN Security Council resolutions"

Their failure to address the Saudi initiative - made 6 days later - could see the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution being renamed the State of Palestine solution – with the Hashemites possibly losing their custodianship of the Islamic Holy sites in Jerusalem. 

President Biden has followed the EU and Jordan - Deputy Ambassador Richard Mills telling the UN Security Council on 27 June 2022 – without mentioning the Saudi proposal: 

"The current U.S. administration continues to affirm its strong support for a two-state solution, which remains the best way to ensure Israel's future as a democratic and Jewish state alongside a sovereign, viable Palestinian state." 

The UN and its agencies repeat this failed mantra ad nauseum.

Not one of these four major players has yet uttered one word specifically addressing Shihabi's plan to unify Jordan, Gaza and part of the West Bank – which Shihabi justifies on one indisputable fact: 

"Jordanians and Palestinians are as similar as any people can be. They are Sunni Arabs from the same neighbourhood. Merging them will not create any long-term ethnic or sectarian fault lines." 

No groups were defined and identified as:

• "Jordanians": Before 1950.
• "Palestinians": Until 1964.

Two States – Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine - not three states – is the Saudi key that can finally bring peace to the Middle East.

USA and EU embroiled in Hamas and PFLP plans to destroy Israel

[Published 6 February 2019]

Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs has issued a 79 page report exposing a network of members of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) embedded in Pro-Palestinian non-Government organisations (NGOs) based outside Israel that openly operate in the USA and European Union (EU).

The Report — “Terrorists in suits” — is a must-read - detailing:

“How terrorists came to hold key positions in NGOs promoting the Boycott Divestment and Sanction (BDS) campaign against the State of Israel; and how, through these NGOs, they exploit Western governmental funding, philanthropic foundations, financial platforms and civil society to advance their goal of dismantling the State of Israel.”

The PFLP was designated a terrorist organization by Israel in 1986, the USA (1997) and the European Union (2002) — as was Hamas by Israel (1989), the USA (1997) and the European Union (2014).

Both Hamas and PFLP Charters openly seek the elimination of the State of Israel and use NGOs to influence public opinion against Israel in furtherance of this heinous objective.

The Report names and shames the following NGO’s, identifies their areas of operation, their ties to Hamas and the PFLP and outs Hamas and PFLP members — many of them convicted terrorists — who are or have been actively involved in these organisations’ campaigns aimed at denigrating and delegitimising Israel:

1. The Palestinian BDS National Committee
2. Samidoun
3. Addameer
4. Al-Haq
5. Defense For Children International — Palestine
6. The European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine
7. Palestinian Center For Human Rights
8. The Palestinian Return Centre
9. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign
10.Friends of Al-Aqsa
11.American Muslims For Palestine
12.Hamas Operatives active in NGOs in the UK: Muhammad Sawalha and Zaher Birawi

A look at just one organisation — Al-Haq —headquartered in Ramallah and operating in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), the Netherlands, France, and Northern Europe - indicates the modus operandi that similarly exist in the others.

Al-Haq (established in 1979):

1. Has Governmental Sponsors: European Union, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Ireland

2. Received Grants from Governmental Sources, 2014-2018: Over $3 million

3. Published with a group of French NGOs a report in March 2017 entitled “The Dangerous Liaisons of French Banks with the Israeli Colonization”.

4. Leads the legal effort to delegitimize Israel at the International Criminal Court in The Hague

5. Shawan Jabarin, General Director of Al-Haq since 2006, served as a senior PFLP official in the past and at least until recently maintained close ties with PFLP operatives in Judea and Samaria. Jabarin was tried and convicted for his military activity in the PFLP and has served multiple prison sentences.

Jabarin was described in a 2007 Israeli Supreme Court case by the presiding judge as:

“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Some of his time is spent in conducting a human rights organization, and some as an operative in an organization which has no qualms regarding murder and attempted murder, which have no relation whatsoever to rights. Quite the opposite, they reject the most basic right of all, without which there are no other rights, that is, the right to life.”

6. Three other PFLP members arrested by Israel are also identified as working or having worked for Al-Haq: Ziyad Hmeidan, Zahi Jaradat and Majed Abbadi.

European and American funding of these organisations should be banned, their offices in the USA and EU closed - and those identified as Hamas and PFLP members deported.

Terrorists in suits denigrating and delegitimising Israel in slick racist and ongoing deceptive public relations campaigns of lies and half-truths - can be just as dangerous as terrorists armed to the teeth.

The EU and America must stop being played for suckers by these Jew-hating organisations.

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 - Mapping The Truth Erases A Long-running Fiction

[Published 12 January 2015]


The US State Department Bureau of Consular Affairs has featured a map on its website - which both rejects and corrects the misleading use of the terms “1967 boundaries” and “1967 borders” — which have never existed in relation to any territorial subdivision between Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

The map makes clear:

1. There was a 1950 armistice line that separated Israel from the Gaza Strip
2. There was a 1949 armistice line that separated Israel from the West Bank.

The use of dishonest and untruthful verbiage such as “boundaries” and “borders” has been a major factor in causing what now appears to have led to an irretrievable breakdown in negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) designed to create a second Arab State in former Palestine — in addition to Jordan.

Absent from this State Department map is there any mention of these aberrant terms.

Instead the map seeks to present an honest and accurate position of the current territorial relationship that exists between Israel, the West Bank (“Judea and Samaria”) and Gaza.

PLO propaganda — aided by sloppy media journalism — have been the drivers in introducing these false and misleading terms into the political diplomatic lexicon.

This campaign of deception and media indolence can at least be traced back to October 2007 — when USA Today under a headline — “Abbas wants return to pre-1967
borders” — reported PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas telling Palestine TV:

“We have 6,205 square kilometers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. We want it as it is.”

There were four “small” problems confronting Abbas — that he was not prepared to recognise - nor USA Today to question or challenge:

1. There had never been any pre-1967 borders—only the 1949 and 1950 armistice lines.

2. Those armistice lines had been agreed between Jordan, Israel and Egypt — long before the PLO came into existence in 1964.

3. The PLO in 2007 at best still only “had” about 40% of the West Bank it had obtained under the 1993 Oslo Accords. Israel “had” the other 60% - also granted under the Oslo Accords.

4. The Jews had a better legal claim to “have” at least that part of the West Bank they had lived in prior to 1949 — before being driven out by six invading armies - as well as those areas defined as State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes as stipulated by article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

Undeterred by these roadblocks - Abbas continued making these misleading demands - with Islam On Line reporting the following statement by Abbas on 9 December 2009 under the headline — “Abbas Names 1967 Borders as Precondition for Talks”:

“We will renew negotiations if the settlements are completely halted and the 1967 borders recognized as the borders of the Palestinian state,”

The New York Times obligingly gave credence to Abbas’s claims on 19 May 2011 with a story under a banner headline “Obama sees ‘67 borders as starting point for peace talks” followed by this misleading report accompanied by a supposedly accurate map showing the “Green Line Pre-1967 border”:

“A day before the arrival in Washington of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Obama declared that the prevailing borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war — adjusted to some degree to account for Israeli settlements in the West Bank — should be the basis of a deal. While the 1967 borders have long been viewed as the foundation for a peace agreement, Mr. Obama’s formula of land swaps to compensate for disputed territory created a new benchmark for a diplomatic solution.”

Suitably emboldened with the New York Times unquestionably uttering the same nonsense as he was — Abbas sent a letter to the UN Secretary General dated 23 September 2011 applying for membership of the the UN.

Abbas—signing as “President of the State of Palestine [a non-existent legal entity—ed.], Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization”- brazenly repeated his earlier claims — this time seeking to implicate most of the international community in his fantasy.

“Furthermore, the vast majority of the international community has stood in support of our inalienable rights as a people, including to statehood, by according bilateral recognition to the State of Palestine on the basis of the 4 June 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and the number of such recognitions continues to rise with each passing day.”

Abbas was at it again in 2012—as BBC News reported him saying:

“Palestine for me is the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital. This is Palestine,”

With Abbas last week choosing the path of the United Nations and the International Criminal Court in preference to resuming negotiations with Israel — he surely has succumbed to his own propaganda and sown the seeds for his own fall from grace.

He has shown himself unwilling to be bound by the procedures laid out in the Oslo Accords, the Bush Roadmap and Security Council Resolution 242 — the internationally laid down parameters under which an end to the Jewish-Arab conflict was to be negotiated and resolved.

An opportunity could now be opening for negotiations between Israel, Egypt and Jordan - the parties to those 1949 and 1950 armistice lines — to try and transform them into lasting and permanent borders.

A little bit of intellectual honesty can go a long way.

Evacuation or Expulsion?

[Published August 2005]


Amidst the turmoil enveloping Israel as the proposed disengagement date approaches, one question remains unanswered: are the Jewish communities living in Gaza and Northern Samaria being expelled or evacuated?

This is not a semantic question only, but has a vital bearing on the future of the sovereignty of those areas from which Israel proposes to disengage.

"Evacuation" indicates a temporary uprooting with the intention of returning when the emergency giving rise to the evacuation has subsided.

Thus large population centres were evacuated during the terrible tsunami earlier this year or Londoners were evacuated during the wartime blitz by the Germans in World War 2.

No one ever suggested they would not be allowed to return to their homes after the crisis had ended.

"Expulsion" on the other hand indicates something far more permanent. A child expelled from a school has no chance of returning to that school. A diplomat expelled from a country will never be accepted back in that country.

Strangely, the language used by Israel's Government speaks of "evacuation", while the language used by the Opposition to disengagement speaks of "expulsion".

Ariel Sharon needs to urgently explain whether Israel still maintains its claim to sovereignty in those areas from which it is currently removing Jewish communities or whether its disengagement amounts to a ceding of all claims of sovereignty to those areas which it is leaving.

Based on the use of the word "evacuation", it would appear that Israel is not ceding its claims, which are well grounded in international law arising from the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

Israel can certainly cede those claims, but to my knowledge Ariel Sharon has not mentioned this "c" word.

One can envisage an Israeli return to Gaza and Northern Samaria, should the Palestinians carry out their threats to continue the armed struggle all the way to Jerusalem. Israel's response could be disastrous for the Palestinians and wipe out whatever political or territorial gains they may make as a result of Israel's initial withdrawal.

If these circumstances arose would Sharon then be able to claim sovereignty or was the initial disengagement a ceding of all claims to any parts of the areas from which withdrawal took place?

Sharon could do well to clarify what this forthcoming disengagement means, because it could have an important bearing on the Road Map so earnestly espoused by the USA, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.

By continuing to use the word "evacuation" to describe its actions, Israel seems to be making it very clear that if the Palestinians don't embark on the Road Map and instead continue to use violence and incitement to achieve their goal of an independent State, the removal of the Jewish communities will be only temporary, Israel will return in force and claim sovereignty of such parts of the areas vacated as it deems in its national interest.

Sharon continues to play his cards close to the chest.

Israelis, and indeed the whole world, should be taken into Sharon's confidence on this very vital issue.