Trump moves to end 3000 years wait by the Jewish People

[Published 11 February 2020]

President Trump’s deal of the century (Deal) to end the 100 years old conflict between Arabs and Jews in former Palestine has seemingly hit a brick wall — following a meeting of Foreign Ministers of the 22 member countries of the Arab League on 1 February.

Their communique declared:

“The Arab League rejects the deal as it does not satisfy the minimum rights and ambitions of the Palestinians and violates international law and United Nations resolutions,”

Those minimum rights and ambitions have been spelled out for the last 46 years by their sole recognized spokesman — the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): the creation of an independent Arab State for the first time in recorded history on all the land lost by Jordan and Egypt to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War and having its capital in East Jerusalem.

Trump apparently thought he had broken through the Arab League’s long-standing support for these non-negotiable demands as three Arab ambassadors from Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates stood beside him with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when releasing his Deal on January 28.

The optics were good — but that vision was lost just four days later.

Trump appeared to have miscalculated the strength of Arab League opposition to his Deal. However that rejection has given Trump the opportunity to immediately proceed to complete that part of the Deal promised to Israel — the extension of Israeli sovereignty in parts of Judea and Samaria (West Bank).

That possibility had first been raised by US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman — on June 8, 2019 when he indicated Israel had a right to annex at least some, but “unlikely all” of the West Bank.

Friedman then added:

“We really don’t have a view until we understand how much, on what terms, why does it make sense, why is it good for Israel, why is it good for the region, why does it not create more problems than it solves. These are all things that we’d want to understand, and I don’t want to prejudge.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cleared the way for Friedman’s scenario to happen on November 18, 2019:

“The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law”

Pompeo stressed that this decision was:

“based on the unique facts, history, and circumstances presented by the establishment of civilian settlements in the West Bank.”

Pompeo however added a warning caveat:

”…we are not addressing or prejudging the ultimate status of the West Bank.This is for the Israelis and the Palestinians to negotiate.”

Outright rejection by the PLO and the Arab League of Trump’s Deal has removed Pompeo’s caveat

Friedman — not unsurprisingly tweeted on February 9:

”.. the application of Israeli law to the territory which the Plan provides to be part of Israel is subject to the completion of a mapping process by a joint Israeli-American committee.”

The PLO and the Arab League had committed political suicide in rebuffing Trump – ensuring that part of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) will soon come under Israeli sovereignty whilst the Arabs correspondingly miss out. Another golden opportunity to end the Jewish-Arab conflict has been lost by continuing Arab intransigency.

Trump’s strategy will see new boundaries being determined for Israel incorporating part of the Jewish People’s biblical, historic and ancestral heartland in Judea and Samaria.

The area will be small in size but massively significant for the psyche of the Jewish People — who have been waiting for this day to arrive for 3,000 years.

President Trump is bringing that very long wait to an end.

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

Gantz faces moment of truth after meeting Trump

[Published 28 January 2020]

Blue and White Party leader, Benny Gantz could well see his dream of becoming Israel’s next Prime Minister implode on 2 March after meeting with President Trump at the White House this coming week.

It will all depend on Gantz’s reaction to Trump’s long-awaited and eagerly-anticipated Deal of the Century outlining Trump’s plan for resolving the future of Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) and Gaza (collectively the “disputed territories ”).

Trump’s deal represents his personal effort to end the 100 years long-running and unresolved conflict between Arabs and Jews in former Palestine. Trump follows in the footsteps of many other American Presidents whose well-intentioned proposals ended up in the garbage bin of history.

Trump’s plan will be different to previous Presidents’ proposals in that it will offer Israel the immediate opportunity to extend sovereignty now — with the approval of the Trump administration — in some designated parts of the disputed territories. This appears to be clear having regard to the following pronouncement by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on 18 November 2019:

“The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law.”

PLO leader – Mahmoud Abbas has made it abundantly clear that he will reject any Trump proposal that does not result in the Arabs securing sovereignty in every square metre of the disputed territories or an area equivalent thereto with land swaps. This long-stated demand will not be shredded or be open to negotiations.

Gantz, on the other hand, has a real dilemma. His arch rival — Netanyahu — will accept Trump’s proposal to extend Israel’s sovereignty in any part of the disputed territories — but will Gantz?

Netanyahu has caused consternation in the Gantz camp — having already declared that a Likud-led Government would apply Israeli law to the Jordan Valley and every Israeli settlement in Judea and Samaria “without exception.”

Gantz’s response has been more confusing — stating he would extend Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley “in coordination with the international community.” In practical terms this would be most unlikely to ever occur.

Gantz has so far remained silent on whether he would extend Israeli sovereignty to any Trump-designated Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria.

The pressure will well and truly be on Gantz the moment he finally emerges from the White House with Netanyahu and Trump to face a White House press conference to discuss the details of Trump’s deal.

Netanyahu will have no choice but to accept Trump’s plan with thanks and a great deal of appreciation — even though it might not be totally acceptable to the Right wing parties supporting him.

Gantz cannot accept the terms of the Trump plan since he will alienate those Left wing parties who favour Israel relinquishing all or most of the disputed territories. If he wants to have any hope of becoming Israel’s next Prime Minister — Gantz will need to clearly differentiate his policies from Netanyahu on the disputed territories.

The optics of Gantz rejecting Trump’s specific proposals in front of the world’s media will not make a pretty picture. Trying to graciously accept Trump’s proposals — subject to negotiations between Israel and the PLO or the international community — will stand starkly against Netanyahu grabbing the baton and running with Trump’s proposals to take advantage of an opportunity to resolve the future of a major part of Judea and Samaria for the first time in the last 100 years — some might even say 3000 years.

The battle lines for the March Israeli election will be played out in the White House.

Netanyahu could be pulling off another election win.

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.

Israel's next election must focus on Judea and Samaria – not Bibi

[Published 8 January 2020]

Israel’s next election due on March 2, 2020 must focus on the future of Judea and Samaria – not the future of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Bibi).

A window of opportunity has been granted to allow Israel to extend its sovereignty into Judea and Samaria following US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement on November 19, 2019:

“Turning now to Israel, the Trump administration is reversing the Obama administration’s approach towards Israeli settlements.

US public statements on settlement activities in the West Bank have been inconsistent over decades. In 1978, the Carter administration categorically concluded that Israel’s establishment of civilian settlements was inconsistent with international law. However, in 1981, President Reagan disagreed with that conclusion and stated that he didn’t believe that the settlements were inherently illegal.

Subsequent administrations recognized that unrestrained settlement activity could be an obstacle to peace, but they wisely and prudently recognized that dwelling on legal positions didn’t advance peace. However, in December 2016, at the very end of the previous administration, Secretary Kerry changed decades of this careful, bipartisan approach by publicly reaffirming the supposed illegality of settlements.

After carefully studying all sides of the legal debate, this administration agrees with President Reagan. The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law.”

The United Nations General Assembly will object to any such unilateral extension of Israel’s sovereignty. However it will unequivocally delineate the minimum area in Judea and Samaria which Israel will be claiming in any future negotiations with Arab interlocutors to end the 100 years old Arab-Jewish conflict.

For these outcomes to occur — all political parties contesting Israel’s next election need to bring before the electorate their respective parties detailed proposals on the extension of Israeli sovereignty into:

1. the whole,

2. part or

3.none

of Judea and Samaria — accompanied by a map designating the areas in which Israeli sovereignty will be extended if they form part of Israel’s next Government.

For far too long Israelis have been at loggerheads with each other as to the extension of Israeli sovereignty into Judea and Samaria. The opportunity to resolve this political logjam during Donald Trump’s Presidency must not be lost.

Should another election deadlock occur for the third time in twelve months — the proposals presented by the respective parties for Judea and Samaria can be the basis for negotiations to form a Government of National Unity.

There will be critics who claim that Israel should not reveal its cards before negotiations actually begin with Arab interlocutors — that by doing so Israel will stymie itself from demanding more of Judea and Samaria.

All proposals should therefore include a rider that the area proposed is the minimum area of Judea and Samaria willing to be accepted in future negotiations and may be increased should changed circumstances to those now prevailing exist when negotiations are undertaken.

Political parties not prepared to inform voters of their proposals can expect to be given the thumbs down by the Israeli electorate. Those who are open and frank in presenting their proposals should find themselves rewarded by the electorate.

Politicians need to resist the temptation to focus their major attention on targeting Bibi — Israel’s longest serving Prime Minister — from becoming Israel’s next Prime Minister as he personally grapples with three indictments laid against him by Attorney General Mandelblit.

Israel’s national interest must incontrovertibly prevail.

Crunch time for Judea and Samaria has arrived — 100 years after reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in Palestine was first proposed internationally at the 1920 San Remo Conference.

Realising that 100 year old dream should be Israel’s paramount objective.


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.

Israel, Jordan and Egypt must hop on Trump bandwagon to peace

[Published 21 November 2019]

President Trump has now delivered the missing piece in his plan to end the 100 years old Jewish-Arab conflict - providing the incentive necessary for Israel’s warring political parties to bury their hatchets and form a new Israeli Government within the next 21 days.

This unique opportunity for peace trumps the domestic differences that have prevented Israel’s political parties forming that new Government following the elections in April and September 2019.

Trump has been progressively signposting his roadmap for the last two years:

1. Moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

2. Declaring Jerusalem as the capital of Israel

3. Closing down the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Offices in Washington

4. Withdrawing American funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)

5. Giving a substantial aid package to Jordan

6. Recognising Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights

7. Having Bahrain host the “Peace to Prosperity” workshop to discuss the economic part of Trump’s “deal of the century”

8. Flagging Israel’s right to retain at least some - but “unlikely all” - of the West Bank

Now Trump has made the end goal of his “deal of the century” very clear with the following statement issued by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo:

“Turning now to Israel, the Trump administration is reversing the Obama administration’s approach towards Israeli settlements.

US public statements on settlement activities in the West Bank have been inconsistent over decades. In 1978, the Carter administration categorically concluded that Israel’s establishment of civilian settlements was inconsistent with international law. However, in 1981, President Reagan disagreed with that conclusion and stated that he didn’t believe that the settlements were inherently illegal.

Subsequent administrations recognized that unrestrained settlement activity could be an obstacle to peace, but they wisely and prudently recognized that dwelling on legal positions didn’t advance peace. However, in December 2016, at the very end of the previous administration, Secretary Kerry changed decades of this careful, bipartisan approach by publicly reaffirming the supposed illegality of settlements.

After carefully studying all sides of the legal debate, this administration agrees with President Reagan. The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law.”

The right of Jews to live in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) for the purposes of reconstituting the Jewish National Home there has been enshrined in international law under article 6 of the 1922 Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the 1945 United Nations Charter.

The United Nations, the European Union and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation have denied the legitimacy of these Jewish claims — emboldening the Arabs to claim 100% of these territories. Pompeo’s statement has quashed the Arabs’ claims.

One roadblock still remaining requires Trump to identify the Arab interlocutors prepared to stand up and negotiate with Israel on Trump’s plan.

Pompeo has given the PLO one last opportunity to join the negotiations with Israel.

“The United States encourages the Israelis and the Palestinians to resolve the status of Israeli settlements in the West Bank in any final status negotiations.”

The PLO had already unequivocally refused to negotiate on Trump’s plan and will continue to do so.

Trump should focus on Jordan and Egypt — the last two Arab States to have occupied Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza respectively between 1948 and 1967 — to fill the void.

Israel needs a new Government within the next 21 days or face another expensive and debilitating election in March 2020 — just as Trump is bidding for re-election — when he might consider it inopportune to release his plan.

Israel, Jordan and Egypt must hop on the Trump bandwagon now.

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

European Union bites off more than it can chew in Judea and Samaria

[Published 19 November 2019]

France has set in train a diplomatic and politically-motivated semantic assault on Israel that could ultimately see the European Union biting off more than it can chew.

A press release noted that the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg on 12 November had found in favour of France’s determined effort to protect unwitting French consumers being possibly misled when they buy cheese, wine or other produce sold by Jews originating in Judea and Samaria:

“… the Grand Chamber of the Court ruled that foodstuffs originating in territories occupied by the State of Israel must bear the indication of their territory of origin, accompanied, where those foodstuffs come from a locality or a group of localities constituting an Israeli settlement within that territory, by the indication of that provenance.”

This decision lays down stringent labelling requirements for Jewish producers in Judea and Samaria to ensure their products were kosher enough to be sold into the European Union.

The sham that this would prevent consumers from believing such products were “Made in Israel” took on a far more sinister political resonance as the press release continued:

“as regards the issue whether the indication ‘Israeli settlement’ is mandatory, the Court first of all underlined that the settlements established in some of the territories occupied by the State of Israel are characterised by the fact that they give concrete expression to a policy of population transfer conducted by that State outside its territory, in violation of the rules of general international humanitarian law. The Court then held that the omission of that indication, with the result that only the territory of origin is indicated, might mislead consumers. Consumers have no way of knowing, in the absence of any information capable of enlightening them in that respect, that a foodstuff comes from a locality or a set of localities constituting a settlement established in one of those territories in breach of the rules of international humanitarian law. The Court noted that, under Regulation No 1169/2011, the provision of information to consumers must enable them to make informed choices, with regard not only to health, economic, environmental and social considerations, but also to ethical considerations and considerations relating to the observance of international law. The Court underlined in that respect that such considerations could influence consumers’ purchasing decisions”.

All this pompous gobbledygook being required for labelling the source of products made in territory disputed between Jews and Arabs for the last 100 years is deeply disturbing.

There is no appeal from this decision.

The European Union could be in a real political bind as a result.

The labelling requirements introduced by the European Union in 2011 and interpreted in 2015 has led it down this disastrous path promising only ridicule and contempt.

To be consistent and not be subjected to charges that it is deliberately targeting Jews and inciting Jew-hatred – the European Union needs to insist on similar stringent labelling requirements being immediately applied on goods originating from more than 150 disputed territories around the world.

Alternatively - the European Union could get itself out of this embarrassing labelling war and PR disaster by simply requiring goods originating from Israeli settlements to state “Product of Judea” or “Product of Samaria”

Judea and Samaria - the historic and geographic terms used for the disputed territories for the last 3000 years - were re-labelled the “The West Bank” by Jordan in 1950 - and enthusiastically embraced by the European Union.

The chickens from Judea and Samaria have come home to roost.

Truth in labelling by the feckless European Union is long overdue.

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

Trump set to reject UN and PLO on Jews legal rights in West Bank

[Published 15 May 2019]

President Trump is set to reject the United Nations (UN) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) claim that Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) is illegal in international law.

The UN and PLO have for decades denied the legal rights vested in the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) pursuant to article 6 of the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine — preserved until today under article 80 of the UN Charter.

Some 400,000 Jews now live in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Trump is going to recognize that those areas “will remain in Israeli hands under a permanent accord,” according to a report on Israel’s Channel 12.

To that end, the report said, “the Americans will not oppose Israeli steps relating to the settlements.” Specifically, while the US will not explicitly back the formal “extension of Israeli sovereignty” to the settlements, or their “annexation",the report said, it will not object to the “extension of Israeli law” to the settlements.

Trump’s decision — if correctly reported — will send the UN and the PLO into dual tailspins of their own making.

Acting in breach of its own Charter has reduced the UN to an organization held hostage by the 134 anti-Israel nations comprising the G77 that have long sponsored this canard of Jewish illegality.

The PLO’s claim since its formation in 1964 that the Mandate for Palestine was “null and void” ignored the fact that all 51 member states of the League of Nations had unanimously conferred those rights on the Jewish people in recognition of "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country”

Trump’s decision would not go as far as the promise made by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the run up to last month’s Israeli election:

“I am going to apply Israeli sovereignty, but I don’t distinguish between settlement blocs and isolated settlements. From my perspective, each of those settlement points is Israeli. We have responsibility [for them] as the government of Israel. I don’t uproot any, and I won’t transfer them to the sovereignty of the Palestinians. I take care of them all.”

Trump’s decision would not resolve the issue of Jewish and Arab sovereignty in specifically designated areas of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) which would still remain to be resolved in direct negotiations.

However Trump would be clearly signaling that the PLO claim to establish a second UN-backed Palestinian Arab State in every square meter of Judea and Samaria (West Bank)
— in addition to Jordan — is dead in the water.

Seven weeks ago at a White House ceremony with Netanyahu present - Trump signed a proclamation declaring it “appropriate to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights” and that “the United States recognizes that the Golan Heights are part of the State of Israel.”

Trump’s reported position on Judea and Samaria (West Bank) is a natural progression in his plan to end the 100 years old Jewish-Arab conflict.

The decades of denial by the UN and PLO of any legal rights vested in the Jews to live in - and claim sovereignty over - any part of the 22% of the territory of former Palestine allocated to them for that purpose by the Mandate — will be ended by President Trump.

Trump would be finally restoring the League of Nations decision on Palestine to its preeminent position in international law.

Excising the greatest obstacle to resolving the Jewish-Arab conflict would be one of Trump’s greatest political achievements.

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

PLO rejects Trump lifeline on negotiations with Israel

[Published 14 June 2018]

President Trump — still mulling over the release of his ultimate peace deal to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict - has seen the swift rejection of the call by Jason D. Greenblatt — Trump’s Special Representative for International Negotiations - to have Dr Saeb Erekat replaced as chief negotiator for the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in future negotiations with Israel.

Greenblatt raised America’s objection to Erekat in stark and uncompromising terms — alleging Erekat:

1. failed to contribute to an atmosphere conducive to peace

2. used rhetoric and made claims that were in many respects simply inaccurate

3. had baselessly claimed that Trump’s decision to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem was part of a U.S. attempt to force an Israeli-written agreement on the Palestinians.

4. had failed to acknowledge a significant escalation of rockets fired by Hamas and other militant groups into Israel, which clearly represented the danger that Hamas and these groups present.

Greenblatt asserted that the Palestinian leadership need not shackle themselves to Hamas’ failure — in fact, this should be the Palestinian Authority’s opportunity to do the right thing for the people they lead.

Greenblatt called on Erekat and the Palestinian Authority to reject Hamas’ violence and lies and work with America to bring relief to Gaza where America believed real progress could be made that would lay the foundation for a more hopeful future.

Greenblatt’s reference to the “Palestinian Authority” was strange indeed - since it had been disbanded by written decree issued by PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on 3 January 2013.

Greenblatt stressed it was time to stop indulging in overwrought rhetoric and give the Palestinian people something beyond words. Palestinian leadership must create better lives, not sacrifice those lives for Hamas’ grim agenda of terror.

Greenblatt claimed he had heard many Palestinian voices over the past 16 months and many did not agree with Erekat or his approach. Yet, the sad thing is that most would only meet and speak honestly and openly in private because they are afraid to speak publicly.

Greenblatt summed up:

“Dr. Erekat — we have heard your voice for decades and it has not achieved anything close to Palestinian aspirations or anything close to a comprehensive peace agreement. Other Palestinian perspectives might help us finally achieve a comprehensive peace agreement where Palestinian and Israeli lives can be better.

The time for leadership and responsibility is now. The time for meeting after meeting of government officials repeating the same talking points is over. The Palestinian people want real action, and they need honest, realistic and decisive solutions.

The notion that Israel is going away — or that Jerusalem is not its capital — is a mirage. The notion that the United States is not the critical interlocutor for the peace process is a mirage.”

In a stinging, vitriolic reply Erekat immediately responded:

“In dozens of meetings we had with Mr. Greenblatt he refused to discuss substance: no borders, no settlements, and no two-state solution. Today, his role is nothing less than peddling Israeli policies to a skeptical international community, and then becomes upset when he’s reminded of this.”

Erekat will remain in his decades-long position unless pulmonary fibrosis prevents him physically discharging his current role. Erekat’s replacement would undoubtedly continue the same failed tactics adopted by Erekat.

Erekat’s predictable response should be seen as yet one more reason justifying Trump’s emerging strategy to replace the PLO with Jordan, Egypt and possibly Saudi Arabia in negotiations with Israel on the future of Gaza, Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and East Jerusalem.

Rejecting Trump’s proffered lifeline ensures the PLO will play no part in future negotiations on Trump’s ultimate deal.

Mattis-Bolton accord can sway Trump to dump PLO for Jordan

[Published 2 April 2018]

President Trump’s possible call for Jordan to replace the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as Israel’s negotiating partner under Trump’s soon-to-be-released “ultimate deal” will be considerably strengthened if Trump’s newly-appointed National Security Adviser - John Bolton - and Secretary of Defense - James “Mad Dog” Mattis - concur on such a move.

Bolton has supported this strategy since 2009– telling Eric Shawn on 21 January 2018:

“I hope at some point the Administration recognizes and perhaps it is already quietly – that the two-state solution isn’t going anywhere. If anything I would say to King Abdullah of Jordan – “Be prepared to reassert Jordanian sovereignty over part of the West Bank – negotiate with Israel”. I think that’s a far better outcome than the continued pursuit of a mythical – I believe – unattainable viable Palestinian state”

Mattis has favoured the Obama-Kerry strategy – pointing out to the Aspen Security Forum in July 2013:

“We have got to find a way to make the two-state solution that Democrat and Republican administrations have supported, we’ve got to get there. And the chances for it, as the king of Jordan has pointed out, are starting to ebb because of the settlements and where they’re at, are going to make it impossible to maintain the two-state option.”

Mattis further reasoned:

“I paid a military security price every day as the commander of CentCom because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel and that moderates all the moderate Arabs who want to be with us, because they can’t come out publicly in support of people who don’t show respect for the Arab Palestinians. So he [Secretary of State John Kerry] is right on target with what he’s doing. And I just hope the protagonists want peace and a two-state solution as much as he does.”

Kerry however failed miserably – being unable to get the PLO back to the negotiating table after a PLO walk-out in April 2014 following nine months of unsuccessful negotiations on proposals specifically formulated by Kerry to resolve the long-running conflict.

Today:

1. Moderate Arabs – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Oman - have come out publicly - joining Jordan and Egypt in meeting with Israel in the White House – without PLO participation - to discuss Gaza’s deteriorating situation.

2. The PLO refuses to resume negotiations with Israel on the two-state solution: creating a second Arab State – in addition to Jordan – in the territory covered by the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.

3. The PLO will no longer accept America as sole mediator and is demanding an international conference be convened by mid-2018

The media have castigated Trump for appointing Bolton – typified by highly-credentialled columnist George Will claiming:

“Bolton will soon be the second-most dangerous American.”

Yet Will himself had written in the Washington Post on 17 April 1987:

“May 14 will be the 30th Anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, June 6 will be the 20th anniversary of the Six Day War. The West Bank has been held by Israel longer than it had been held by Jordan, the 1967 aggressor, which ever since has presented itself as the aggrieved party. Today, as every day since 1948, the key to peace is direct negotiations between Jordan and Israel, not a committee”

Mattis’s jocular remarks on meeting Bolton at the Pentagon - caught in an off-microphone exchange – signals Mattis could have already changed his thinking:

"I heard you're actually the devil incarnate and I wanted to meet you"

A Mattis-Bolton accord on Jordan replacing the PLO in future negotiations with Israel will undoubtedly reinforce Trump’s preparedness to make this long-overdue call.

Palestine - Rhiannon Propaganda Pamphlet Threatens Greens Political Integrity

[Published 26 May 2016]


Australian Greens Leader Senator Richard Di Natale needs to immediately shred a misleading and deceptive pro-Palestinian pamphlet authorised and printed by Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon.

The pamphlet contains two statements purportedly made by Israel’s Moshe Dayan in 1969 and Ariel Sharon in 1973.

Dayan is quoted as saying:

“We came to a region of land that was inhabited by Arabs and we set up a Jewish State… Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages”

Dayan actually said:

“We came to a region that was inhabited by Arabs, and we set up a Jewish state. In many places, we purchased the land from Arabs and set up Jewish villages where there had once been Arab villages.”

Dayan’s statement refutes the canard repeated in Palestinian text books and media that

“the Zionist gangs stole Palestine”

Why Rhiannon deleted Dayan’s highly significant remarks remains unexplained.

The authenticity of Sharon’s supposed statement is shrouded in uncertainty.

Michael Shaik writing in the Greens Left Weekly claimed the statement was made by a British journalist boasting at Israel’s National Press Club.

Max Blumenthal writes it was made in a private chat with Winston Churchill’s grandson in 1973.

On 18 July 2002 George Hishmeh - an Arab-American journalist based in Washington elucidated:

"Winston S. Churchill III, grandson of the famed British prime minister, recalled last October [11 October 2001—Ed] at the National Press Club here a telling encounter he had had in 1973 with the hawkish Ariel Sharon, now the Israeli prime minister, about Zionist objectives. “What is to become of the Palestinians?” Churchill asked. “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich of them,” Sharon said. Churchill responded, “What?” “Yes, we’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years’ time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.”

Hishmeh identified as his source — Geoffrey Aronson:

“who is recognized in the US as the preeminent American expert on the Israeli settlement movement, loves to relate this significant exchange as he did in an interview with The [Lebanon—Ed] Daily Star on two different occasions.”

Churchill recounting a 1973 private discussion in such precise detail at the Washington National Press Club twenty eight years later — is highly suspect.

Churchill never made any mention of this conversation with Sharon in his published speech at the Press Club — although he could have recalled the conversation as an aside or in some discussion with Aronson or others afterwards.

Churchill’s bombshell revelation seems to have gone unnoticed as this contemporaneous report indicates. No other reports have been found.

I have been unable to listen to or download a copy of a tape that apparently exists and could possibly shed some light on what Churchill said.

Please help me retrieve it if you can.

Whether that tape surfaces or not — a question mark must hang over the accuracy of Sharon’s previously unpublished 1973 private remarks — only disclosed by Churchill in 2001

Sharon and Churchill are not alive to confirm or deny what was said — yet the terms of this private conversation are quoted with unerring accuracy and entrenched as gospel in Rhiannon’s pamphlet.

Rhiannon’s continuing use of Sharon’s “statement” — compounded by her excluding part of Dayan’s statement - raises questions as to the propriety of the Greens using this pamphlet to garner votes in the upcoming July Federal elections.

Shredding these pamphlets has become an urgent priority.

The Greens political integrity requires its support for the Palestinian Arabs be based on solid grounds — not shaky foundations.

PLO aim to destroy Israel and Jordan gets boost in Australia

[Published 1 August 2017]


The Resolution of the New South Wales (NSW) Labor Party Conference urging the next elected Australian Labor Government to recognise “Palestine” (Resolution) has boosted the political objectives of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) whose Charter calls for the destruction of Israel and Jordan.

Prior to the Resolution being passed its prime mover and shaker – Bob Carr – former Australian Foreign Minister, NSW Premier, Chairman of Labor Friends of Israel turned Patron of Labor Friends of Palestine - tweeted:

"No "conditions" to recognition of Palestine. No ifs or buts. Recognition to save two state solution being buried in settlements.
10:58 AM - Jul 29, 2017"

Carr’s “no ifs or buts” echoed similar demands passed by the Arab Heads of State (including the PLO) at Khartoum on 1 September 1967 following the Six Day War:

“no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it, and insistence on the rights of the Palestinian people in their own country”

No “conditions” for Carr maybe – but a few headaches for the Federal Australian Labor Party if it is stupid enough to swallow Carr’s poison pill.

I. The Resolution does not identify the location of “Palestine”.
Negotiations between Israel and the PLO extending over the last 23 years have failed to come up with an answer.

Recognizing a phantom State is an exercise in futility.

The fact that 136 other member States of the United Nations have gone down this same road has only encouraged the PLO to adopt increasingly more intransigent and rejectionist positions opposing the peaceful resolution of a conflict which has raged for 100 years.

Australia should not get sucked into this mindless vortex.

II. When the Khartoum Conference was held - Article 24 of the PLO Charter then declared:

“This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or the Himmah Area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.”

An independent Arab State had already been established in 78% of former Palestine in 1946 and called “the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan” (renamed “Jordan” in 1950).

A second Arab State in former Palestine had been proposed in the 1947 UN Partition Plan and rejected by the Arabs. It could have been created at any time between 1948 and 1967 with the stroke of an Arab League pen.

What possible justification is there for the Australian Labor Party unconditionally recognising such a second Arab State in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan - when the proponent of that State – the PLO – was not even claiming sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza in 1967?

III. Carr claims recognition is needed to save the two-state solution being buried in settlements.
There already is an existing two-state solution in 95% of former Palestine – Jewish Israel and Arab Jordan – underpinned by their 1994 peace treaty.

A PLO-governed State located in the remaining 5% between Israel and Jordan represents a threat to both Jordan and Israel - since the PLO considers Palestine with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate to be an indivisible territorial unit.

No Jewish settlements remain in Gaza following Israel’s disengagement in 2005.

Jewish settlements built on no more than 5% of the territory of the West Bank are legally sanctioned by article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

“Buried in settlements” is vintage Carr-overkill.

Hopefully sanity will prevail in the Federal Labor Party.

Two peoples – Jews and Arabs - need two States – not three.

Palestine: Netanyahu sends clear message to Trump, Putin, May and UN

[Published 16 March 2017]


Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has had a busy week meeting with UK Foreign Minister Boris Johnson in Jerusalem, President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and then back to Jerusalem for a five hour meeting with President Trump’s Special Representative for International Negotiations — Jason Greenblatt.

The framework for these meetings was set by Netanyahu — who told Johnson:

“It’s evident that we agree on most things, but not on all things. And one of the things, I think the source of it when you analyze a problem, get to its roots and reason that we haven’t had peace for a hundred years is not the settlements, but the persistent refusal to recognize a nation-state for the Jewish people in any boundary. I think if you want to solve a problem, go to the core of the problem, and that is something I look forward to discussing with you further.”

Netanyahu’s claim is substantiated by the following facts:

1.Settlements were not the problem when the first two-state solution was proposed by article 25 of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1922.

That solution - which envisaged allocating the Arabs 78% of Mandatory Palestine [Transjordan] and the Jews the remaining 22% - was rejected by the Arabs but accepted by the Jews.

Iran - one of the 51 States then unanimously endorsing the Jewish people’s legal right to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Palestine — now seeks to destroy the Jewish State in 2017.

2. Settlements were not the problem in 1937 when the Peel Commission recommended partition of the territory of the Mandate into one Jewish State and one Arab State —again rejected by the Arabs but accepted by the Jews.

3. Transjordan remained part of the Mandate for Palestine until Great Britain granted it independence on 22 March 1946. 78% of the Mandate territory was thus irrevocably transformed into an exclusive Arabs-only State contrary to article 5 of the Mandate.

4. The United Nations recommendation to partition the remaining 22 % of the Mandate territory into one Arab State and one Jewish State in November 1947 was again rejected by the Arabs and accepted by the Jews — culminating in Western Palestine being invaded in May 1948 by six Arab armies and the forcible eviction of all Jews living in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

5. Settlements were not the problem between 1948 and 1967 when another Arab State could have been created with the stroke of an Arab League pen in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza whilst not one Jew lived there.

6. Offers by Israel in 2000/2001 and 2008 to another Arab State being created in Gaza and the West Bank were rejected by the Arabs.

7. In December 2016 UN Security Council Resolution 2334 declared that the Jewish Quarter and Kotel in East Jerusalem, the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb near Bethlehem were “occupied Palestinian territory”.

UK and Russia shamefully failed to veto this Resolution.

8. Gaza is ruled by Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organization governs Areas A and B of the West Bank. Both have held onto power without holding elections since 2006. Both refuse to recognize a Jewish nation-state in any boundaries.

Johnson told Netanyahu:
“I first visited [Israel] when I was — as I never tire of telling you — when I was 18.”

Netanyahu should never tire of telling world leaders that the 100 years old Jewish-Arab conflict will not be resolved until the Arabs recognise the right of the Jewish people to their own independent State.

Trump-Netanyahu Meeting Set To Expose Obama’s Collusion On Resolution 2334

[Published 10 February 2017]


One of the intriguing aspects of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to the White House on 15 February will be the evidence he produces to President Trump to establish former President Obama’s collusion in promoting Security Council Resolution 2334.

America abstained from voting on Resolution 2334 – but the language used in that Resolution was inimical to the national interests of Israel and the Jewish people by declaring that:

1. the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, had no legal validity and constituted a flagrant violation under international law

2. Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem

This language identifies as “Palestinian territory”:

(i) the centuries old Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem,
(ii) the site of the First and Second Temples,
(iii) the Western Wall,
(iv) the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery,
(v) Rachel’s Tomb,
(vi) the Machpelah, and
(vii) Judea and Samaria

Resolution 2334 seeks to erase the legal rights vested in the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in these areas under the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.

Such language gives credence to the PLO claim that the Mandate — a critical building block in the 100 years old Arab-Jewish conflict — is null and void.

Resolution 2334 contravenes article 80 of the United Nations Charter - exceeding the Security Council’s powers and condemning the hypocrisy of the Security Council which sanctimoniously professes to be concerned about “legal validity” and “international law”

The Egyptian newspaper Al-Youm Al-Sabea was the first to allege American collusion in promoting Resolution 2334 - claiming to have a transcript of a meeting in December — prior to the passage of Resolution 2334 - between Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, US Secretary of State John Kerry, and US National Security Advisor Susan Rice in which Kerry said the US was prepared to cooperate with the Palestinians at the Security Council.

White House National Security Council spokesman Ned Price claimed no such tripartite meeting took place and that the ‘transcript’ was a total fabrication — although he admitted Erekat had met with Kerry and Rice separately.

Netanyahu issued a Press Release on 28 December 2016 declaring:

“We have it on absolutely incontestable evidence that the United States organized, advanced and brought this resolution to the United Nations Security Council. We’ll share that information with the incoming administration. Some of it is sensitive, it’s all true. You saw some of it in the protocol released in an Egyptian paper. There’s plenty more; it’s the tip of the iceberg.”

Netanyahu’s claim that some of the information is sensitive suggests that there has been an interception of emails or other classified American documents emanating from Obama or Kerry’s offices.

America’s cybersecurity record has been appalling - as the hacking of the Democrats web site and Hillary Clinton’s emails and private server has shown.

Netanyahu’s description of the transcript held by the Egyptian newspaper as “the tip of the iceberg” suggests Israel holds a Wiki-style treasure trove of incriminating documents.

Sensational claims of Israel-hacking will doubtless fuel the media.

There appears to be no evidence that this material has yet been given to the Trump Administration. If it had — some leak would surely have emerged by now.

Netanyahu’s visit to the White House presents the perfect opportunity to personally hand his evidence to President Trump - enabling him to decide whether to disclose such evidence publicly or not.

Netanyahu’s moment exposing Obama’s betrayal of Israel is fast approaching.

[Author’s Note: The Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry was asked to confirm or deny some of the facts in this article but no response was received]

Palestine: Correcting canards concerning Israel and vested Jewish legal rights

[Published 28 December 2016]


Australia’s former Foreign Minister and former head of Labor Friends of Israel — Bob Carr - has entered the debate concerning Security Council Resolution 2334 passed on 23 December with his article in the Sydney Morning Herald “The Genius of the UN’s Resolution on Israeli settlements” (December 27)

His contribution is riddled with the following errors that cannot be allowed to stand unanswered and uncorrected and need to be rectified.

I. He states that Levi Eshkol’s chief legal advisor Theodor Meron advised the Prime Minister in 1967 that the Geneva Convention says no nation may settle its own population on land it wins in war.

What Mr Carr omits to tell readers is that Mr Meron changed his opinion on the applicability of the Geneva Convention in 1968 when he co-signed the following advice to Israel’s then Ambassador to the United States — Yitzchak Rabin:

“to tell the Americans that there are unique aspects to the status of the territories and to our status in the territories. Before the Six-Day War, the Gaza Strip wasn’t Egyptian territory, and the West Bank, too, was territory that had been occupied and annexed by Jordan without international recognition. Given this ambiguous, indeterminate territorial situation, the question of the convention’s applicability is complex and unclear prior to a peace agreement that includes setting secure and recognized borders.”

2. Carr claims Meron is alive today, an eminent international jurist. He says he was right then and is right now.

No evidence is supplied by Carr to substantiate that claim — which is obviously rebutted by Meron’s revised 1968 opinion to Rabin. Why did Carr fail to mention Meron’s 1968 epiphany?

3. Carr claims all settlements in the West Bank are illegal.

Wrong — all those settlements are legal under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter—territory-specific legislation dating back to 1922 that is still valid today.

4. Carr claims that Israel has been spreading settlements as fast as possible to render it impossible to achieve a two-state solution.

Wrong — the settlements cover only 5% of the West Bank territory. Israel made offers to cede its claims to 90% of the West Bank in 2000/1 and 95% in 2008.

There has been no settlement because the Arabs want 100%.

5. Carr claims Israeli Governments have gifted settlers the best land.

Wrong — the land given to settlers for which they pay has been land that has mainly remained unsettled and undeveloped for the last 3000 years. It comprises State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes as prescribed under Article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine.

6. Carr claims that if the Palestinian Arabs throw up a granny flat without approval in Area C it is promptly demolished by army bulldozers.

Wrong — the granny flats are being thrown up by the European Union without approval to create facts on the ground. Yes — they are being demolished as happens to any illegal structures built anywhere in the World.

The European Union has no legal right to charge in without authorisation.

7. Carr asks - If Israel is really open to giving the land back in a peace deal why allow settlements in the first place?

Because the Arabs refused to negotiate with Israel between 1967 and 1993 and Israel was legally entitled to settle there.

Israel did the same in Gaza and unilaterally disengaged from every square inch of land there as well as a part of the West Bank in 2005 to advance the two-state solution.

8. Carr relies on Obama’s envoy and former Ambassador Martin Indyk to confirm settlements destroyed the deal.

Yet between 1948 and 1967 there were no settlements - after all the Jews living in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza had been driven out by the invading Transjordanian and Egyptian armies. The Arabs could have had their state at any time during those 20 years with the stroke of an Arab League pen in precisely the same area they now claim for themselves.

They could have had an even greater area had they not rejected the 1947 UN Partition Plan

Carr finally twigs when he states that historically the aged and corrupt Palestinian leadership has to bear some responsibility and that they’ve let their people down.

Too many offers have gone begging and will not return again given the horrendous events being played out in the Middle East right now.

9. Carr claims the Palestinians are offering a demilitarised state — a Palestine without an army and Western peacekeepers within their borders. It is hard to imagine more explicit security guarantees.

Mr Carr provides no source for this very important information — which is new to me.

10. Carr claims the 83% Arab population of the West Bank is being ruled by a racial and religious minority of 17%.

Wrong — 95% of the Arab population live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are completely ruled by the PLO. Only 5% of the Arabs live in Area C under Israeli rule.

Bob Carr — like the United Nations Security Council - relying on these and similar incorrect and unsubstantiated facts — are in a state of complete denial about Jewish rights to settle in the West Bank and the legality of Jewish settlements.

Both should take the time to better acquaint themselves with fact — not fiction - if they ever want to be believed.

Palestine - Trump Triumph Requires Direct Negotiations Between Jordan And Israel

[Published 24 November 2016]


President-elect Donald Trump has used his greatest media critic - the New York Times - to reiterate his determination to broker a deal to end the 100 years old Jewish-Arab conflict - suggesting his son-in law Jared Kushner might be just the person to advance Trump’s declared mission.

Trump’s legendary deal-making prowess sets him apart from all preceding American presidents — from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama - Democrats and Republicans - liberals and conservatives alike — who have tried to end this intractable conflict and earn themselves an honoured place in the annals of history.

Instead - their legacy of failure remains a silent reminder that Presidential power and prestige is of little value in moving Jews and Arabs to achieve a historic reconciliation.

Kushner possesses the firepower to advance Trump’s agenda following this ground-breaking message from Trump’s advisor Jason Greenblatt - co-chairman of the Trump campaign’s Israel Advisory Committee:

“It is certainly not Mr. Trump’s view that settlement activities should be condemned and that it is an obstacle for peace, because it is not an obstacle for peace.”

Trump’s position runs counter to the view expressed by the international community that Jews have no legal right to live in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) - an area comprising some 4% of the former territory of Palestine - a claim that remains untested in any court of law.

Such conclusion ignores the rights vested in the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Judea and Samaria under article 6 of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

To call the international community’s position “a travesty of justice” is an understatement.

The harm such flawed viewpoint has caused in prolonging this long-running conflict is inestimable.

Kushner will also be fortified by the following commitment made by President Bush to Israel in his letter dated 14 April 2004 - overwhelmingly endorsed at the time by the Congress by 502 votes to 12:

“In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.”

Israel’s current negotiating partner - the Palestine Liberation Organisation - has consistently refused to accept the inevitability of any territorial subdivision of Judea and Samaria since the Bush-Congress pronouncement. There appears to be no chance of any change of heart by the PLO to please a Trump administration.

Trump will therefore need to find another Arab interlocutor to replace the PLO to negotiate with Israel on the allocation of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. Sovereignty there has remained unresolved since Brexit 1948 - the year Great Britain pulled out of Palestine and left the United Nations to deal with the consequences of the invasion of Western Palestine the very next day by the armies of six neighbouring Arab States.

Jordan was the last Arab State to occupy Judea and Samaria between 1948 and 1967.

Jordan and Israel - at peace since 1994 - both enjoy longstanding American financial and diplomatic support - which can be leveraged by a deal-driven Trump to induce Jordan joining Israel as its negotiating partner on the territorial carve up of Judea and Samaria.

Without this diplomatic breakthrough Trump’s dream of pulling off the deal of the century will remain just a dream.

Trump Advisor Castigates Clinton Betrayal Of Israel

[Published 10 August 2016]


Donald Trump’s trusted co-advisor on Israel — David Friedman — has castigated Hillary Clinton for her role as Secretary of State in perpetrating one of President Obama’s worst foreign policy failures - trashing the letter from President Bush to Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dated 14 April 2004 - its terms having been overwhelmingly endorsed by Congress 502 votes to 12.

Friedman - rumoured to be Trump’s Ambassador to Israel if Trump becomes America’s next President — was recently asked this question in a wide ranging interview:

Hillary Clinton has just about everyone suggesting she is the most qualified person ever to be president. Where did she go wrong with the Middle East — if she did?

Friedman replied:

I don’t think she has made a right decision. I think she said some helpful things when she was the senator from New York when she had a Jewish constituency. As soon as she became secretary of state, the first thing she did was to embrace a unilateral settlement freeze. I think it completely poisoned the environment. I’m not aware of anything she did that is particularly good. I can name off the top of my head things that were nasty, like ripping up the letter from George Bush to Ariel Sharon, which I think was the only thing Israel got from evacuating Gaza.

The Bush letter had acknowledged the risks Israel was taking in unilaterally disengaging from Gaza and part of the West Bank. In return Bush gave Israel written assurances that in final status negotiations with the Palestinian Authority America would support Israel:

1. not returning to the 1949 armistice lines

2. demanding recognition as the Jewish state

3. refusing Palestinian Arab “refugees” being resettled in Israel

In ripping up these assurances Obama had undermined Israel’s security concerns and negotiating positions as agreed with Obama’s immediate predecessor.

Israel’s unilateral disengagement was duly completed in 2005 - with 8000 Israeli civilians leaving their homes and businesses established during the previous 35 years - whilst Israel’s military also completely withdrew.

By any analysis that disengagement has been disastrous - bringing Israel and Gaza no peace - only ongoing and continuing conflict resulting from:

1. Thousands of rockets and projectiles being fired indiscriminately into Israeli population centres from Gaza

2. Terrorist incursions into Israel and

3. The construction of tunnels from Gaza into Israel’s sovereign territory to serve as entry points for future terrorist assaults on Israel by Gaza’s myriad array of terrorist groups

.
To be fair to Clinton - her role in framing Obama’s policy repudiating the Bush Congress-endorsed assurances remains unclarified and unexplained.

Clinton was confirmed as Secretary of State by the full Senate voting 94-2 on 21 January 2009 — having been a Senator since 3 January 2001.

On 24 June 2004 she was part of the Senate majority that voted 95 -3 to endorse the Bush letter.

The fact that Clinton was Secretary of State when the Bush letter was torn up does not necessarily implicate her as the architect of - or personally having agreed to - that appalling decision.

Statements made by Clinton on 17 June 2009 and 25 November 2009 point to her as the lead Obama official charged with implementing Obama’s policy - finally declared by Obama on 19 May 2011. Clinton remained Secretary of State until 1 February 2013.

Critically for Clinton — she now needs to fully explain her role in Obama’s gross act of betrayal of one of America’s staunchest long-standing allies.

Does Clinton avow:

1. Obama’s policy of ripping up the Bush letter in 2011? or

2. Her vote in the Senate endorsing the Bush letter in 2004?

Clinton needs to come clean before voting day.

Trump Targets Obama And Clinton Betrayal Of Israel

[Published 30 April 2016]


Donald Trump’s foreign policy speech has created expectations that he will match Marco Rubio’s pledge to stand by the commitments made by President Bush to Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Bush’s letter dated 14 April 2004.

Rubio made his unequivocal pledge on 3 December 2015 at the Republican Jewish Coalition Presidential Forum during his unsuccessful race to secure the Republican Party’s endorsement as its Presidential nominee:

“I will revive the common-sense understandings reached in the 2004 Bush-Sharon letter and build on them to help ensure Israel has defensible borders”

President Obama and his then former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did everything in their power to wriggle out of those Bush commitments — despite their having been overwhelmingly endorsed by the Senate 95-3 on 23 June 2004 and by the House of Representatives 407-9 on 24 June 2004.

Trump clearly had Obama and Clinton’s betrayal of Israel in his sights — when stating:

”... your friends need to know that you will stick by the agreements that you have with them. You’ve made that agreement, you have to stand by it and the world will be a better place.”

The Bush-Congress endorsed commitments made in that 2004 letter undoubtedly represent such an agreement.

President Bush’s letter acknowledged the risks Israel’s proposed unilateral disengagement from Gaza represented - and assured Israel that America:

1. Would do its utmost to prevent any attempt by anyone to impose any other plan other than the Roadmap envisioned by President Bush on 24 June 2002.

2. Would maintain its steadfast commitment to Israel’s security, including secure, defensible borders,

3. Was strongly committed to Israel’s well-being as a Jewish state.

4. Understood that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement would need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.

5. Accepted as part of a final peace settlement that Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338.

6. Acknowledged that in light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it would be unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations would be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, that all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution had reached the same conclusion

Sharon’s successor - Ehud Olmert - had neither forgotten nor overlooked the critical significance of Bush’s commitments when agreeing to resume negotiations with the Palestinian Authority - telling an international audience of world leaders at Annapolis on 27 November 2007:

“The negotiations will be based on previous agreements between us, U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the road map and the April 14, 2004 letter of President Bush to the Prime Minister of Israel.”

Gaza by then had become a de facto terrorist State with Hamas firmly entrenched as Gaza’s governing authority.

Israel had since its disengagement been subjected to a sustained barrage of thousands of rockets and mortars fired indiscriminately into Israeli population centres from Gaza by a bewildering variety of terrorist groups and sub-groups who would have had no chance of operating so freely from Gaza if the Israeli Army had remained there.

President Obama’s attempt to disavow Bush’s commitments was first orchestrated by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - as this report on 6 June 2009 disclosed:

“Since coming to office in January, President Barack Obama has repeatedly called on Israel to halt all settlement activity in Palestinian areas, a demand rejected by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israelis say they received commitments from the previous US administration of President George W. Bush permitting some growth in existing settlements.
They say the US position was laid out in a 2004 letter from Bush to then Israeli premier Ariel Sharon.”

Clinton rejected that claim, saying any such US stance was informal and

“did not become part of the official position of the United States government.”

Clinton — doubling again as Obama’s attack dog — made Obama’s intentions clearer on 25 November 2009:

“We believe that through good-faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.”

Bush’s letter never mentioned “agreed swaps” — signalling trouble for Israel if Obama himself were to confirm Clinton’s latest statement.

Eighteen months later Israel’s worst fears were realised when Obama declared on 19 May 2011:

“The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

Michael Oren — Israel’s Ambassador to Washington between 2009 and 2013 — called for Bush’s commitments to be resuscitated on 15 January 2015:

”... it’s time to revive the Bush-Sharon letter and act according to it.”

Others are making similar demands.

Trump is responding with his clearly articulated message.

Keep agreements made with your allies — don’t ditch them. Loyalty will always trump expediency.

Obama and Clinton’s shameful betrayal of Israel in this sordid affair seems set to be targeted by Trump.

Palestine - Rubio Challenges Clinton Support For Israel

[Published 6 March 2016]


Marco Rubio has directly challenged Hillary Clinton — and every other Presidential candidate — to honour the commitments given by President Bush to Israel on 14 April 2004.

Speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition Presidential Forum Rubio said:

“I will revive the common-sense understandings reached in the 2004 Bush-Sharon letter and build on them to help ensure Israel has defensible borders,”

President Bush’s letter — overwhelmingly endorsed by the Congress — supported Israel’s proposed unilateral disengagement from Gaza - stating:

“As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.”

Israel’s Prime Minister - Ehud Olmert - who succeeded Sharon - had neither forgotten nor overlooked the critical significance of Bush’s commitments when agreeing to resume negotiations with the Palestinian Authority before an international audience of world leaders at Annapolis on 27 November 2007:

“The negotiations will be based on previous agreements between us, U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the road map and the April 14, 2004 letter of President Bush to the Prime Minister of Israel.”

It didn’t take too long thereafter for these Presidential commitments to be downplayed by Bush himself and his advisors.

In an editorial - published on 14 May 2008 - former Jerusalem Post editor - David Horovitz - revealed Bush’s shameful efforts to minimize the letter’s significance - following Bush’s meeting with a group of Israeli journalists at the White House:

“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, however, has been known to minimize the significance of this four-year-old letter. Just last week, for instance, she told reporters that the 2004 letter “talked about realities at that time. And there are realities for both sides….”

... Bush’s National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley has also given briefings to the effect that Israel had tried to overstate the importance of a rather vague letter…

“Bush did not at first realize that I was referring to the 2004 letter. Hadley, who was also in the Oval Office, had to prompt him. “Okay, the letters,” the president then said, remembering.”

Bush was clearly reneging on his unequivocal commitments to Israel just six months after Olmert sought to rely on them.

Israel by then had already paid a high price - Gaza having become a de facto terrorist State with Hamas firmly entrenched as Gaza’s governing authority. Israel had been subjected to a sustained barrage of thousands of rockets and mortars fired indiscriminately into Israeli population centres from Gaza by a bewildering variety of terrorist groups and sub-groups who would have had no chance of operating so freely from Gaza if the Israeli Army had remained there.

President Obama has also disgracefully attempted to subvert his predecessor’s commitments for the last seven years - aided and abetted by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who reportedly laid the groundwork on 6 June 2009:

“Since coming to office in January, President Barack Obama has repeatedly called on Israel to halt all settlement activity in Palestinian areas, a demand rejected by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israelis say they received commitments from the previous US administration of President George W. Bush permitting some growth in existing settlements.

They say the US position was laid out in a 2004 letter from Bush to then Israeli premier Ariel Sharon.

Clinton rejected that claim, saying any such US stance was informal and “did not become part of the official position of the United States government.”

Clinton — doubling as Obama’s attack dog — made Obama’s sinister intentions clearer on 25 November 2009:

“We believe that through good-faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.”

Clinton’s blatant disregard of Bush’s commitments - which had never mentioned “agreed swaps” - signaled trouble for Israel if Obama indeed confirmed Clinton’s statements.

Eighteen months later Israel’s worst fears were realised when Obama declared on 19 May 2011:

“The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

Michael Oren — former Israeli Ambassador to Washington between 2009 and 2013 — has called for Bush’s commitments to be resuscitated:

.. it’s time to revive the Bush-Sharon letter and act according to it.”

Rubio has to his credit so reacted.

Motherhood-statements supporting Israel by the remaining candidates vying to become America’s next President pale into insignificance compared to Rubio’s coming out and pledging to honour Bush’s Congress-endorsed commitments to Israel.

Clinton - and for that matter Sanders, Trump, Cruz and Kasich - must do likewise - or allow America’s reputation as a trustworthy and reliable ally to be forever trashed.

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.

BDS - Sinister Hoax With Genocidal Intent

[Published 18 June 2015]


The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS) instituted in 2005 by “Palestinian civil Society” against Israel and its civil society continues to attract people from all around the world—including Jews and Israeli Arabs - who support the campaign without realising its genocidal objective.

The BDS manifesto makes clear that its punitive measures are to be pursued until Israel ends:

“its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands”

These are code words effectively calling for Israel’s destruction since:

1. According to the PLO: "Israel is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab home land, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation."

2. According to Hamas: "Israel is an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection, no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it."

Those who have:

1. boycotted theatre performances by Israeli groups in Barcelona,
2. stripped supermarket shelves of Israeli food products in London,
3. marched in South Africa to protest Woolworths stocking Israeli made goods or
4. protested outside Max Brenner outlets in Sydney

are actually supporting a racist campaign that calls for the total elimination of the Jewish State.

However the European Union (EU) — mindful of the Jew-hatred endemic in the BDS campaign - yet anxious to appease its Arab trading partners and burgeoning Arab populations within its member countries — has targeted only the West Bank — presently working to enact measures requiring Israel to label products coming from Jewish settlements there - following guidelines established on 18 July 2013.

These EU policy initiatives are ostensibly based on the 1980 Venice Declaration — which stressed that:

1. Israel needed to end its territorial occupation of the West Bank
2. Israeli settlements constituted a serious obstacle to the peace process in the Middle East.
3. Jewish settlements established there - as well as modifications in population and property — were illegal under international law.

The EU position on the illegality of those Jewish settlements has now been totally discredited following the recent decision by Norway’s largest pension fund — KPL - to sell its shareholdings in Heidelberg Cement AG and Cemex SAB de SV - whose two Israeli subsidiaries are currently operating quarries established after 1967 in Area C of the West Bank.

Under the 1995 Oslo Accords Israel has sole civil and security control in Area C — comprising 60% of the West Bank where no more than 4% of the West Bank’s Arab population currently lives.

KPL first sought advice on the legal situation pertaining in the West Bank from the Oslo-based International Law and Policy Institute (ILPI) - an independent institute focusing on good governance, peace and conflict, and international law.

The advice completely refutes the EU’s long held position.

Senior ILPI Partner Gro Nyusten — former Norwegian Foreign Affairs staffer, former Associate Professor of International Humanitarian Law/the Law on Armed Conflict at the University of Oslo, from 2008 Associate Professor at the Defence Staff University College in Oslo and former chair of the Council on Ethics of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global — advised KPL that:

1. international law does not provide “unambiguous answers”

2. it was “highly probable” that the operation under Israeli licence of the subject quarries was inconsistent with the requirements of the law of belligerent occupation

3. a case on quarrying activities in Area C went all the way to the Israeli Supreme Court - but was rejected because the court concluded that it raised issues that could only be resolved through political channels and not through the court

4. Occupation law did not prohibit Israel from making use of real property - but Israel’s role was restricted to that of a caretaker that must restore such property to the “occupied power” once the conflict has ended. Significantly Ms Nyusten failed to identify that the “occupied power” was Jordan - whose annexation of the West Bank in 1950 was declared illegal by every country except Great Britain and Pakistan.

5. The issue of whether Israel was entitled to open new quarries which did not exist before 1967 — was “controversial”.

6. The 1995 Oslo Accords (Oslo II) “presume” the ultimate transfer of Area C from Israeli to Palestinian control through so-called final status negotiations. Ms Nyusten however did not point to any provision in the Oslo Accords that supports this “presumption”.

Ms Nyusten’s legal opinion also failed to consider two territory-specific provisions in international law sanctioning the right of Jews to live in the West Bank for the purposes of reconstituting the Jewish National Home there — article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

In the end KPL — faced with no definitive international law to justify its decision to disinvest - concluded:

“that the ethical arguments carry the heaviest weight in this case”.

Ethics are not law.

EU decisions supposedly based on judicially determined principles of international law were exposed as myths that can no longer be legally or politically sustained.

The BDS hoax is set to swallow many more well-intended people into its Jew-hating vortex.

The EU could suffer a similar fate with the introduction of its labelling policies — no longer being able to rely on non-existent international law to camouflage that decision — whilst opening itself to the charge it is supporting a genocidal campaign designed to dismantle the Jewish State.

Common sense will hopefully prevail.

Palestine - Kerry Destined For Political Scrapheap

[Published 13 November 2013]


US Secretary of State - John Kerry - has again succeeded in muddying the waters with the following headline-grabbing sentence uttered by him after meeting PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem this week:

“Let me emphasise that the position of the United States is that we consider now, and have always considered, the settlements to be illegitimate”

Abbas would have been squirming at Kerry’s use of the word “illegitimate” - rather than the word “illegal” - the term used by Abbas to deny Jews their claimed legal right to live in the West Bank.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - on the other hand - would have been shaking his head in disbelief at Kerry’s claim that the United States has “always” considered the settlements to be illegitimate.

The word “illegitimate” has several meanings in most dictionaries including -“illegal, unlawful, forbidden by law” - or alternatively - “incorrect, contrary to logic, unsound”.

Only Kerry himself can explain which meaning he intended to convey.

Jewish settlement in the West Bank is not illegal, unlawful or forbidden by law - having been legally sanctioned and expressly enshrined in international law under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter

The PLO in 1964 considered the Balfour Declaration, Mandate for Palestine and everything based on them to be “fraud”. In 1968 the PLO deemed these documents to be “null and void”.

Kerry in my view was not flagging America’s opinion on these Jewish and PLO claims.

He was emphasising that Israel’s settlements policy in the West Bank was incorrect, contrary to logic, unsound - notwithstanding any claimed legal entitlement to so act.

Israel obviously does not agree with Kerry’s viewpoint - and continues to build and plan new houses in the West Bank in the belief these programs should not provide any justified excuse for Abbas to abandon the current negotiations.

A unilateral ten month building freeze by Israel in 2010-2011 brought no end to the conflict. Another similar freeze now could reasonably be expected to have very little impact - if any - in achieving a successful breakthrough.

The parties reportedly still remain apart on many substantive and sensitive issues far more serious than building houses over the next six months within heavily populated and decades-long established Jewish cities, villages and towns.

More alarming than trying to interpret Kerry’s ambiguous use of the word “illegitimate”- is his unambiguous claim that America has “always” considered the settlements to be illegitimate.

Kerry’s predecessor Hillary Clinton would be the first to disagree with Kerry - telling Christiane Armanpour on ABC in February 2011:

“I think it is absolutely clear to say, number one, that it’s been American policy for many years that settlements were illegitimate and it is the continuing goal and highest priority of the Obama administration to keep working toward a two-state solution with both Israelis and Palestinians",

“Many years” is clearly not “always”.

History also incontrovertibly denies Kerry’s claim.

President Woodrow Wilson said on 3 March 1919:

“I am persuaded that the Allied nations, with the fullest concurrence of our own Government and people, are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundation of a Jewish Commonwealth.”

On 30 June 1922 - both Houses of Congress of the United States - then not a member of the League of Nations - unanimously endorsed the following joint resolution - which was signed by President Warren Harding on 21 September 1922:

“Favoring the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people:

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled - That the United States of America favors the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which should prejudice the civil and religious rights of Christian and all other non-Jewish communities in Palestine, and that the holy places and religious buildings and sites in Palestine shall be adequately protected.”

The first Report of the High Commissioner on the Administration of Palestine (1920-1925) acknowledged America’s invaluable support for reconstituting the Jewish National Home in Palestine:

“The [Balfour] Declaration was endorsed at the time by several of the Allied Governments; it was reaffirmed by the Conference of the Principal Allied Powers at San Remo in 1920; it was subsequently endorsed by unanimous resolutions of both Houses of the Congress of the United States; it was embodied in the Mandate for Palestine approved by the League of Nations in 1922; it was declared, in a formal statement of policy issued by the Colonial Secretary in the same year, ‘not to be susceptible of change’. ... The policy was fixed and internationally guaranteed”

Jewish settlement in the West Bank between 1927 -1948 was never declared “illegitimate” or “illegal” by America.

President Bush acknowledged in his 14 April 2004 letter to Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that it would be unrealistic to expect that all Jewish settlements built in the West Bank after 1967 would have to be uprooted.

Historical amnesia - Kerry-style - has been - and apparently still is - a potent factor in failed American attempts to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict.

Such ignorance has clouded the thinking of many former well-intentioned Secretaries of State - who became ticking time bombs destined to end up on the political scrap heap because they tried to undo what was internationally guaranteed in former Palestine ninety years ago.

Kerry seems destined to join his failed predecessors.