Palestine - Trojan Horse Exposes Duplicitous Doublecross

[Published 16 January 2013]


Any doubt that the Oslo Accords and the Bush Road Map are dead and buried has been put to final rest by John V Whitbeck - an international lawyer who has served as an advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel.

Writing in the Cyprus Mail on 13 January Whitbeck reveals that the Palestinian Authority “has been absorbed and replaced by the State of Palestine” in a decree issued by Mahmoud Abbas on 3 January and signed by him acting in his capacities as president of the State of Palestine and chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Whitbeck’s confirmation of the demise of the Palestinian Authority signals the definite end to any further negotiations under the Oslo Accords and the Road Map being conducted between Israel and the Palestinian Authority - the designated parties to both agreements.

To make sure the message was fully understood - Whitbeck states unequivocally:

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

The sordid truth and fraudulent intentions of the PLO in this long running duplicitous doublecross over the last 20 years have now been well and truly exposed by Whitbeck for all to see.

The Palestinian Authority never intended to negotiate in good faith to bring about the two-state solution prescribed by the Oslo Accords and the Bush Road map. It was a Trojan horse fronting for the PLO whose objective was to procure recognition of a Palestinian State without giving up or compromising any of the PLO’s claims and demands.

This latest loss of the opportunity offered by the Oslo Accords and the Bush Road Map to realise the two-state solution matches the two opportunities thrown away by the PLO in 2000/1 and 2008

Three strikes - and the PLO has been definitely outed.

The reaction of the international community will be followed with interest.

Whitbeck continues:

“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 Organisation and president of the Palestinian National 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… There is no further need for a Palestinian leader to be three-headed or three-hatted.”

But two hatted and two-faced Abbas must remain - because as Whitbeck explains:

“While the Palestine Liberation Organisation will continue to represent all Palestinians everywhere, those Palestinians who live in the State of Palestine (whose territory is defined by the November 29 General Assembly Resolution as “the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967”) or who, living elsewhere, will be the proud holders of new State of Palestine passports will now also be represented by the State of Palestine.”

The fact that Hamas is not a member of the PLO and that its constituency running into millions is engaged in an internecine struggle with the PLO seems to have escaped Whitbeck’s notice.

Whitbeck must have been reading the wrong wire services to draw the following conclusions:

“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 characterise 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.”

He obviously has missed the many articles critical of Abbas being forced to tip toe through the minefield that his unilateral actions have created.

More repercussions are yet to come as a disappointed international community comes to appreciate how this Trojan horse has pulled the wool over their collective eyes.

Certainly passive acceptance - instead of furious rejection - of Israel’s demands that any Palestinian Arab State be demilitarised and that Israel be recognised as the Jewish State - would have helped the two-state solution possibly come to fruition.

The reasons for such furious rejection by the Trojan horse have now been revealed.

The Trojan Horse fooled everyone. The negotiations were only a cover to grab what the PLO could get on the way to claiming their ultimate prize - the elimination of the state of Israel.

Whitbeck repeats the mantra of self delusion expressed by the PLO leadership:

“The State of Palestine now exists on the soil of Palestine - albeit still, in varying degrees and circumstances, under belligerent occupation by the State of Israel.”

The soil of Palestine includes the soil of Israel and the soil of Jordan.

Whitbeck was circumspect in not bringing up that darker side of the PLO Covenant which regards Israel, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza as one indivisible territorial unit.

The Trojan horse is clearly biding its time to take over Jordan.

In what must amount to one of the greatest tongue in cheek pronouncements ever issued over the course of the 130 years old conflict between Arabs and Jews - Whitbeck concludes:

“The members of the international community must now show their determination not simply in words but also in deeds and actions. In a world which professes to take human rights and international law, including the UN Charter, seriously, the perpetual belligerent occupation of one state by another state is inconceivable. The fact that the Israeli occupation of Palestine has been permitted to endure, expand and entrench itself for more than 45 years represents an appalling black mark against mankind. This occupation must now end.”

The democratic world does not like wiping egg off its collective face - and neither does Israel.

With the Palestinian Authority now defunct - the only two possibilities for negotiations now remaining are those between:

1. Israel, Jordan and Egypt - to allocate sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza between them in accordance with the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter or
2. Israel and all the Arab states - to negotiate an end to the Arab-Jewish conflict in accordance with Security Council Resolution 242.

You can lead a Trojan horse to water but you can’t make it drink - or think.

Palestine - Jordan Part Of The Problem - Part Of The Solution

[Published 2 September 2012]


A new strategy to resolve the 130 years old Jewish-Arab conflict is urgently needed with the growing recognition that the “two-state solution” proposed by the Oslo Accords and the Bush Roadmap for the last 20 years is dead and buried .

Dr. Carlo Strenger has recently expressed this view in an article entitled “Requiem for a two- state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”.

Dr Strenger is Chair of the Clinical Graduate Program of the Department of Psychology at Tel Aviv University. He serves on the Permanent Monitoring Panel on Terrorism of the World Federation of Scientists, the Seminar of Existential Psychoanalysis in Zurich, and the Scientific Board of the Sigmund Freud Foundation, Vienna in addition to maintaining a part-time practice in existential psychoanalysis.

He is - and has been - a constant critic of the policies of Israel’s Government and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Dr Strenger’s summation of the current position is succinctly stated:

“I came to the conclusion that the two-state solution was dead at the end of 2011, when Abbas’ bid for recognition of Palestine by the UN failed. Ever since I published this assessment, friends and readers have asked what I suggest as an alternative. Some thought that I had finally moved to the extreme left’s endorsement of the one-state solution; others thought that I had moved to the right.

Neither is the case. There are moments when reality flies into your face, and in which you realize that your political program is no longer viable, even though you do not endorse any of the alternatives. I do not derive much comfort from being in good company: The remainders of Israel’s left pay lip service to the two-state solution, knowing that there is no longer a way to implement it.

My conversations with European diplomats and politicians generate the impression that the same holds true for Western Europe. For lack of an alternative to the two-state solution, European governments have not endorsed any alternative conception, but they are beginning to realize that the two-state solution won’t happen.”

Dr Strenger further confesses that he too “does not have any coherent strategy to propose.”

There is however a coherent strategy or alternative conception that can be pursued outside the options mentioned in his article - which Dr Strenger and Western Europe have failed to consider - focusing on Jordan - 78% of former Palestine.

Jordan’s entry into the Six Day War on 5 June 1967 against Israel’s warning to refrain from doing so - resulted in Jordan’s loss of control over the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Israel.

The War broke out when Israel responded to the Egyptian military build-up by launching a surprise attack on Egypt’s air force, destroying most of it on the ground within a matter of hours.

That same morning, Israel had sent a message to Jordan’s leader King Hussein via the US State Department, the UN and the British Foreign Office, saying that, despite the outbreak of war, it would not attack the West Bank if Jordan maintained quiet on that front.

Jordan ignored Israel’s appeal to avoid any such conflict - and launched the following attacks on Israel before Israel acted militarily against Jordan or moved into the West Bank

1. Civilian suburbs of Tel-Aviv were shelled by artillery;
2. Israel’s largest military airfield, Ramat David, was shelled;
3. Jordanian warplanes attacked the central Israeli towns of Netanya and Kfar Sava;
4. Thousands of mortar shells rained down on West Jerusalem hitting civilian locations indiscriminately, including the Hadassah Hospital and the Mount Zion Church;
5. Israel’s parliament building (the Knesset) and the Prime Minister’s office, each in Israeli-controlled West Jerusalem, were targeted;

20 Israelis died in these attacks; 1000 were wounded. 900 buildings in West Jerusalem were damaged.

“Jerusalem is totally engulfed in war…” reported the British Consul-General that morning.

At that fateful moment in time:

1. Jordan had continuously occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem from 1948 - 1967.
2. Not one Jew had lived in the West Bank or East Jerusalem for those 19 years
3. The West Bank and East Jerusalem had been incorporated as part of Transjordan following a conference of hand picked Palestinian Arab leaders held on 1 December 1948 in Jericho.
4. Transjordan had officially changed its name to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on 25 April 1949
5. On 24 April 1950 the Jordan House of Deputies and House of Notables, in a joint session, adopted a resolution declaring:

“complete unity between the two sides of the Jordan and their union in one state…at whose head reigns King Abdullah Ibn al Hussain, on a basis of constitutional representative government and equality of the rights and duties of all citizens.”

6. West Bank Arabs had become Jordanian citizens and held Jordanian passports
7. Not one call to establish an independent Palestinian Arab state in every square centimetre of the West Bank with its capitol in Jerusalem had been made during those 19 years.
8. The Palestine Liberation Organization had only been in existence for three years but article 24 of its constitution clearly stated that the organization:

“does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the Western Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan …”

Jordan must now be pressured to fill the Arab void following the burial of Oslo, the Roadmap and the Palestinian Authority with it - because Jordan’s decision in 1967 to join the Six Day War against Israel and its consequent loss of the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Israel created the problem that still persists unresolved to this day.

Jordan cannot be allowed to simply bow out of resolving a problem which it helped create by either

1. refusing point blank to come to the negotiating table with Israel or
2. by claiming to have washed its hands of the problem in 1988 when foregoing any territorial claims in areas it had ruled for 19 years between 1948-1967.

There is a beautifully expressive Yiddish word - tachless - which the Everyday Yiddish-English-Yiddish dictionary defines as:

“substance, worth, basics, ’brass tacks’ “

It is time to talk tachless with Jordan and let it know in no uncertain terms that it is part of the problem in the West Bank and East Jerusalem - and must now be part of the solution.