Sarkozy Succumbs To Mediterranean Mismatch

[Published July 2008]

France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy has had to eat humble pie after his ground-breaking plan to establish the 43 member Mediterranean Union failed to reach an agreed final communiqué because of the opposition to its wording by the Palestinian Authority (PA) - the only non-state member present.

President Sarkozy’s efforts in bringing Israel and 9 members of the Arab League - including Syria - to this inaugural meeting promised to introduce a ray of light for Israeli-Arab co-operation and an end to regional turmoil.

Hopes were high that the parlous - indeed terminal - state of negotiations between Israel and the PA under the Roadmap proposed by America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - the Quartet - might miraculously be brought back to life.

Israel’s Prime Minister Mr Olmert had been remarkably upbeat in claiming - prior to the meeting - that his country had never been closer to a peace deal with the Palestinians.

The images of President Sarkozy, PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Mr Olmert smiling and enjoying a three way bear hug would have encouraged President Sarkozy into believing that he would be able to achieve the diplomatic breakthrough that had eluded the Quartet for the last 5 years.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner however was not taken in by Mr Olmert’s absurd assessment and had sounded a word of warning when he bluntly told European News (12 July):

“Being around the same table with people you have fought is the beginning of something, it is the wind of hope. I’m sorry to say that the talks between the Israelis and Palestinians are not part of this wind of hope”

Little did Mr Kouchner - or President Sarkozy - imagine that the fundamental disagreements between Israel and the PA would be used by the PA to undermine the grand design of President Sarkozy to bring the nations of the Mediterranean and the European Union together in a new spirit of co-operation and joint venture.

The unfriendly wind Mr Kouchner had felt was shortly to blow away any hopes of an agreed summit position when the PA objected to the wording of the summit declaration.

Why the PA thought it necessary to incur the wrath and displeasure of President Sarkozy by importing the Middle-East conflict into the formation of the Mediterranean Union was puzzling. Quibbling over a few words in an otherwise agreed document remained a mystery - until the PA tried to explain the significance - and insidiousness - of its objection.

PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki told reporters according to Xinhua news agency (July 15):

“The Israelis insisted on the inclusion of the words - “state for the Jewish people” - something we are categorically opposed to. It was out of the question for us to accept this wording. We wanted to ensure the final statement was very clear on this point".

The Israeli delegation had a different take on what had happened telling Xinhua that Israel was in “ agreement with everything that has been adopted in the declaration because it was done by consensus”

Mr Kouchner was more forthcoming on what had actually occurred to spoil President Sarkozy’s party.

He told Xinhua that the standstill had been caused by the use of the expressions “nation state, national state, and democratic state”. This had resulted in “ a last minute deadlock between the Israelis and the Palestinians which meant that the final text had to undergo some little changes. The use of the expression “national state” implies difficulties in ensuring the return of refugees to the Jewish State or non-Jewish, Palestinian State.”

How the PA could ever hope to succeed in getting the Mediterranean Union members to unanimously agree to wording in the summit declaration that would support the entry of millions of Arabs into Israel and deny the Jewish people its own State is unbelievable.

These two intransigent demands of the PA have long been the sticking points in ensuring that President Bush’s vision - the creation of a 23rd Arab state between Israel and Jordan - will remain an impossible dream incapable of fulfilment. Now they had been brought to France by the PA to embarrass and undermine President Sarkozy’s vision - the establishment of the Mediterranean Union.

The supine French reaction to these untenable and badly mistimed demands was entirely predictable.

President Sarkozy could have told the PA to take a cold shower or to re-apply for membership of the Mediterranean Union when it had received international recognition as the governing authority of a sovereign and democratic state. Alternatively he could have suggested the PA be given observer status at the Mediterranean Union until statehood was achieved.

Mindful that any such action would have provoked an Arab walkout, President Sarkozy bit his tongue and chose the diplomatic path - sending the hapless Mr Kouchner on an appeasement journey to ease the frustration President Sarkozy must have felt at this upstart non-state thwarting mighty France at the very moment of what was to be one of its greatest achievements.

Mr Kouchner was left to tell Xinhua (July 15) :
“At the last moment we failed , perhaps for half an hour, to advance due to one word”

That one word was “Jewish”.

The Arab campaign to delegitimise the Jewish State was once again exposed as it continued in earnest in Paris at the birthplace of the Mediterranean Union.

One Jewish State on this planet remains an anathema to most of the 22 Islamic Arab States as they continue resisting it and calling for its destruction wherever and whenever the opportunity arises.

Mr Kouchner is fooling no-one as he bends the French knee once again in deference to this racist alliance that has actively opposed the existence of the Jewish State in its ancient homeland since its establishment 60 years ago.

It will take more than half an hour and more than one word before these nations are disavowed of their evil intention.

.

The Pope, Palestine And Papal Politics

[Published July 2008]

Pope Benedict XVI’s appointment of Archbishop Fouad Twal as the new Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem to succeed recently retired Archbishop Michael Sabbah - after 21 years in that position – signals a significant change of course by the Vatican in its relationship with the Jewish State.

Archbishop Twal becomes the second Palestinian Arab to be appointed - after Archbishop Sabbah - as head of the Roman Catholic Church in Jerusalem.

However their Palestinian lineage and political heritage have taken markedly different routes.

Archbishop Sabbah was born in Western Palestine in Nazareth in 1933 - growing up and spending his entire life in that part of Palestine that witnessed the political struggle by the Jews that had begun in 1917 to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Palestine - and culminated in the birth of Israel in 1948 in just 17% of Palestine.

Archbishop Twal was born in Eastern Palestine in Madaba in 1940 - growing up in that part of Palestine in which Jewish rights to settle or constitute their National Home were postponed or withheld - culminating in the Mandatory Power - Great Britain - granting independence in 77% of Palestine in 1946 to the totally Palestinian Arab population living there - today called Jordan.

Archbishop Twal’s appointment must be seen as an attempt by the Pope to heal the serious rift in relationships between Israel and the Vatican that had sunk to their lowest ebb ever by the end of 2007.

In November 2007 a former Holy See envoy to Jerusalem – Monsignor Pietro Sambri – complained that relations with Israel had been better before a historic agreement was signed between the Holy See and Israel in 1993 - recognising the State of Israel 45 years after its establishment. Monsignor Sambri listed a number of complaints – the failure to ease travel restrictions for Catholic clerics, threatened taxes on the Church and the status of expropriated Church property.

His complaints were mild in the face of what was to come when Archbishop Sabbah delivered this Christmas message on 19 December 2007 questioning Israel’s legitimacy to exist as the Jewish State:

“In recent times, there has been some talk about creating “religious” States in this land. But in this land, which is holy for three religions and for two peoples, religious States cannot be established because they would exclude or place in an inferior position the believers of the other religions…[Political leaders] must know that the holiness of this land does not consist in the exclusion of one or the other of the religions, but in the ability of each religion, with all of their difference, to welcome, respect, and love all who inhabit this land.”

The Archbishop was not directing his call to the Palestinian Authority’s Basic Law that declares:

“Islam is the official religion of Palestine”

and calls for 450000 Jews to be thrown out of the West Bank.

He was not sending his message to Jordan whose constitution declares that:

“Islam shall be the religion of the State”

and where Jews are not permitted to live.

The Archbishop was unabashedly espousing the right of return for millions of Palestinian Arabs - overwhelmingly Moslem - and their descendants into the Jewish State - Israel.

This uncompromising demand has been war cry of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Arab League for the last 40 years and has wrecked any prospects by America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - the Quartet - to attempt to create a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan.

The Vatican was silent in face of the Archbishop’s partisan antagonism towards - and criticism of - Israel despite the Vatican’s supposed non-political stance as expressed in Article 11 (2) of the 1993 Agreement:
“The Holy See, while maintaining in every case the right to exercise its moral and spiritual teaching-office, deems it opportune to recall that owing to its own character, it is solemnly committed to remaining a stranger to all merely temporal conflicts, which principle applies specifically to disputed territories and unsettled borders.”

Archbisop Twal’s appointment serves notice that the Vatican is now ready to honour this agreement.

Mending bridges - not tearing them down - has been the hall mark of Archbishop Twal’s career as one of the Vatican’s top diplomatic envoys. It started in 1976 with his appointment as charge d’affaires in Honduras in Central America thence back to the Vatican between 1982-1985 where he was made responsible for 19 speaking African countries in the Secretariat of State. Egypt, Germany, Peru and Tunis were signposts on the roadmap toward his appointment in 2005 as Coadjutor Archbishop of Jerusalem.

Archbishop Twal told http://www.cutodia.org in an interview on 22 June that :

“If you want to touch Jews, Muslims, Christians, Jordanians, Palestinians, Cypriots, Europeans all together ..then you have to consider every comma”

In the same interview he said :

“Perhaps I will disappoint journalists in politics”.

Yet he is still alive to the need to involve Jordan in the peace process telling Vatican Radio on 21 June:

“The majority of our priests, nuns, schools families are in Jordan. We need a link to Jordan…,”

The Pope - who is visiting Australia this week for World Youth Day might not be aware that another Catholic with the name Benedict - Australia’s 16th Prime Minister Joseph Benedict Chifley - once said:

“You don’t try to make love to a woman by kicking her in the shins”

The Pope’s appointee in Jerusalem has signalled the universality of this message. Regular newspaper columns devoted to Patriarchal criticism of Israel will now become mere historical footnotes.

The last Pope to bear Pope Benedict’s name - Benedict XV - enthusiastically endorsed the Jews’ right to reconstitute their national home in what was then Palestine when he told Zionist leader Nahum Sokolov at an audience in 1917 :

“Nineteen hundred years ago Rome destroyed your homeland and when you seek to rebuild it, you seek a path which leads via Rome…Yes this is the will of Divine Providence, this is what the Almighty desires.”

This papal message is hopefully what will now permeate relations between Israel and the Vatican. It has been a long time coming but can only be seen as a positive development in a region where bad news is usually the norm.

Jerusalem's Judgement Day

[Published July 2008]

President Bush’s Road Map to create a new Arab state between Jordan and Israel is in terminal tatters following the bloody events in Jerusalem on 2 July 2008 when an east Jerusalem Arab commandeered a bulldozer and went on a rampage through Jerusalem’s busy streets trying to kill as many people as he could before being killed himself.

Another East Jerusalem Arab had previously murdered 8 Jewish religious seminary students on 5 March as they sat at their desks where tens of thousands of others had done so before them since its establishment in Jerusalem in 1924 under the British Mandate.

The Arab response to President Bush’s Roadmap had embraced the uncompromising demand that millions of Arabs be allowed to emigrate to Israel - a position totally opposed by Israeli negotiators. That demand had been at the centre of Arab proposals to settle the Arab-Israel conflict since 1967 - long before the Roadmap finally saw the light of day in 2003.

President Bush made it clear as long ago as 14 April 2004 that he supported Israel’s rejection of that demand when he wrote to then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon:

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

One may well ask then why the Roadmap negotiations have been allowed to run on since 2004 when this clear rejection of the Arab demand was in the public place. Surely no reasonable prospects of settling this intractable dispute could ever eventuate from the Roadmap negotiations unless this Arab demand was dropped.

Yet despite this clearest signpost leading to a complete dead end in the negotiations, they continued on amid statements of ever growing optimism - fuelled perhaps even by desperation - that continued to be made in inverse proportion to what was being achieved in those negotiations.

The Quartet - America, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia - refused to believe that their combined clout could ever hit a brick wall in bringing President Bush’s vision to reality and finality. They did not count on the continued Arab intransigence they were to encounter.

All unequivocally supported the right of the Jewish people to a Jewish State. How could this support be possibly reconciled with supporting the demand that millions of Arabs be given the right to flood Israel and destroy its Jewish character?

No doubt neither Jews nor Arabs wished to be seen as the ones to have ended the negotiations and have upset an American President who had intervened to try and settle a dispute that had escaped the best efforts of the League of Nations and the United Nations over the last 88 years.

There were some - especially among the Israeli negotiators - who believed and hoped the Arab demand was a lot of hot air and that a combination of compensation and a limited entry of perhaps 100000 Arabs into Israel could satisfy this intransigent and entirely irrational Arab demand and bring about the longed for peace. This proposal had been suggested in negotiations in 2000 but was categorically rejected by the Arabs.

1.4 million Arabs are presently Israeli citizens. 250000 Arabs reside in east Jerusalem and are the holders of Israeli blue Identification cards that allow them access throughout Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Arabs make up 20% of Israel’s population. They have been long viewed with suspicion from time to time as a fifth column waiting to spread havoc when ordered to do so. Whilst their loyalty to their country is frequently called into question they have been able to achieve a standard of living and lifestyle that is the envy of those who live in the Arab States that surround Israel.

A recent poll conducted by the Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government showed that 77% of Israeli Arabs would rather live in Israel than in any other country in the world.

Another poll conducted with 668 adult Israeli Jews for the Knesset Channel shortly after the seminary massacre in March showed that 29% wanted all Israeli Arabs relocated out of Israel into any new Arab state created between Israel and Jordan, 19% said relocation should only apply to settlements in close proximity to any new state, whilst 28% restricted relocation to those whose disloyalty to Israel could be proved. 24% were against any relocation taking place.

Any lingering hopes that any sizable number of Arabs would ever be permitted to legally emigrate to Israel has ended with the last two traumatic events in Jerusalem. No doubt there will be circumstances where some limited emigration is permitted but it will be strictly applied and strenuously enforced.

Israel obviously has enormous problems in trying to prevent terrorist attacks on its citizens by its own Arab population, to appropriately respond to them and is grappling with what it can do to end them.

Any political party in this current climate of suspicion and fear espousing the lawful entry of more Arabs into Israel would be decimated at the polls. Israel’s political parties will unite in resisting the Arab demand and with it kiss goodbye to the Roadmap as the route to achieving peace between Jews and Arabs.

Jerusalem on 2 July 2008 was judgement day for President Bush’s Roadmap - but not in the Christian understanding of the dead being restored to life. Rather the exact opposite happened - the Roadmap was buried that day by the Arabs in the graveyard of lost opportunities ending any hopes of President Bush’s vision ever achieving peace between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem - the city of peace.

Palestinian Parentage Generates Jordanian Jitters

[Published June 2008]

Jordan’s King Abdullah was very edgy this week as he sought to terminate any discussion of the role Jordan will have to ultimately play in ending the standoff caused by the pending demise of President Bush’s Roadmap to create a new Arab state between Israel and Jordan.

Fired up by an unconfirmed report that Republican presumptive nominee John McCain intended to declare the Kingdom of Jordan as the Palestinian State, King Abdullah gave an interview to the Lebanese newspaper As -Safir in which he defiantly proclaimed:

“This country is here to stay. Jordan is Jordan and Palestine is Palestine”

Abdullah’s shorthand attempt to deny that the future of the West Bank has anything to do with Jordan flies in the face of the history, geography and demography of both Jordan and the West Bank and the strong ties that bind these two land masses and their Arab populations.

King Abdullah’s great grandfather - the late King Abdullah I - and also his own father - the late King Hussein - had said exactly the opposite to justify Jordan’s occupation of the West Bank.

King Abdullah I had emphasised the territorial connection between Jordan and the West Bank when addressing a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo on 12 April 1948:

“Palestine and Transjordan (now called Jordan - author) are one, for Palestine is the coastline and Transjordan the hinterland of the same country.”

King Hussein had expressed the familial connections between their respective Arab populations in the Jordanian National Assembly on 2 February 1972:

“There is no family on the East Bank of the River (Jordan) that does not have relatives on the West Bank - no family in the West that does not have branches in the East”

Marwan al Hamoud, member of the Jordanian National Consultative Council and former Minister of Agriculture told the Jordanian political journal Al Rai on 24 September 1980:

“Jordan is just not another Arab State with regard to Palestine, but rather, Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan in terms of territory, national identity, sufferings, hopes and aspirations, both day and night.”

King Abdullah’s attempt to re-write the history book this week was driven by his deep concern to thwart any possible move by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) or any other group such as the Moslem Brotherhood to overthrow the King and assume control in Jordan following the inevitable breakdown and inconclusive end of the Roadmap negotiations.

The PLO had tried to overthrow King Abdullah’s father in 1970 from within Jordan - but was routed and driven out to Lebanon. The thought that another coup might possibly be contemplated from territory less than one hour’s drive away from Abdullah’s palace in Amman has never been far from Hashemite thinking - especially since the Arab League made the PLO the sole spokesman for the Palestinian Arabs in 1974 in place of Jordan.

That singular decision has proved to be a monumental error and has brought nothing but untold misery and suffering for the beleaguered Arab populations of the West Bank and Gaza.

The King is now hanging suspended in mid-air by a thread. There is no realistic outcome to successfully concluding the Roadmap negotiations with the PLO. The PLO demands that it be granted sovereignty in all of the West Bank, that 450000 Jews living there be expelled and that millions of Arabs be allowed to live in Israel are non-negotiable and cannot be possibly accepted by Israel.

Basem Sakkhijha - an analyst with the Jordanian newspaper Al-Dustor - this week summed up the blind alley into which these negotiations have already led:

“The project of Palestinian independence led by the Palestine Liberation Organisation, was marked by failure and has reached a dead end. The only alternative out of this historical conflict is for Jordan to have a role in the future of the West Bank”

Labib Kamhawi - a Jordanian economist and political analyst - was reported this week in the United Arab Emirates National Newspaper as saying that:

“Jordan had never really relinquished its ambition for a serious role in the West Bank”.

Jordan occupied the West Bank between 1948-1967. Its administrative ties with the West Bank have never been totally severed since Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War.
Kamhawi concluded that:

“Jordan cannot turn its back and say “I do not want to be involved.’”

Kamhawi is right. It is only a matter of time before Jordan does become involved. Jordan will have to step into the void left by the collapse of the Roadmap negotiations and bring the West Bank’s Arab population under its jurisdiction and authority. Jordan’s population will demand this action be undertaken to allow family reunion to occur on both sides of the Jordan River. No one - Arab or Jew - will need to leave his existing home or business for this to happen.

Israel and Jordan must redraw and mutually adjust their borders and assume sovereign rule in the West Bank within the agreed areas allocated to each of them. New - and meaningful - negotiations will be relatively easy to conclude when their end objective is not the creation of another Arab state between Israel and Jordan but the division of sovereignty of a postage sized piece of land between the two successor States in former Palestine.

This will continue the process of completing the division of sovereignty in former Palestine - first begun between the Arabs and the Jews in 1920. When concluded, this will leave the issue of sovereignty in just 1% of Palestine - the Gaza Strip - to be finally resolved.

King Abdullah should be proud of the incredible efforts his great grandfather, his father and himself have made to secure 78% of Palestine as a sovereign independent and exclusively Arab State in an area originally proposed by the League of Nations as being part of the site within which the Jewish National Home was to be reconstituted.

Denying Jordan’s parentage and his own patrilineal heritage is the surest way for King Abdullah to increase - not decrease - Jordan’s jitters. He will certainly have to watch his back if he continues to do so.

Petulance And Pandemonium In Petra

[Published June 2008]

Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa must have had a brain explosion during a lunch time speech delivered by Israel’s President Shimon Peres to Nobel Laureates attending a conference in Petra to discuss the global food crisis.

Which particular comment by Peres caused the normally urbane and polished Moussa to grab the microphone and verbally attack Peres is unclear but his reaction was quite breathtaking :

“You are a maestro in talking, but don’t take us for granted because we are not fools … You talk about peace, but we did not hear Israel’s opinion about the Arab peace initiative,”

Surely Moussa is aware of Israel’s opinion about the Arab peace initiative first proposed by Saudi Crown Prince Adullah and endorsed by the Arab League in Beirut on 28 March 2002.

Any prospect of that initiative having any bearing in resolving the Arab - Israel conflict was doomed from the time it was announced since it called for:

“full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.”

When President Bush announced the details of his Roadmap on 30 April 2003 he stated it would:

…"resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and end the occupation that began in 1967, based on the foundations of the Madrid Conference, the principle of land for peace, UNSCRs 242, 338 and 1397, agreements previously reached by the parties, and the initiative of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah – endorsed by the Beirut Arab League Summit – calling for acceptance of Israel as a neighbor living in peace and security, in the context of a comprehensive settlement.”

These were fine sounding words but Israel was in no mood to accommodate President Bush and commit national suicide by agreeing to return to the borders where it had faced extinction at the hands of the armies of many Arab League members on 4 June 1967.

Israel accordingly presented President Bush with 14 reservations to the Road Map’s implementation.

One of those reservations required:

“The removal of references other than 242 and 338 (1397, the Saudi Initiative and the Arab Initiative adopted in Beirut). A settlement based upon the Roadmap will be an autonomous settlement that derives its validity therefrom. The only possible reference should be to Resolutions 242 and 338, and then only as an outline for the conduct of future negotiations on a permanent settlement.”

On 23 May 2003, then Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice made the following statement from the White House:

“The roadmap was presented to the Government of Israel with a request from the President that it respond with contributions to this document to advance true peace. The United States Government received a response from the Government of Israel, explaining its significant concerns about the roadmap. The United States shares the view of the Government of Israel that these are real concerns, and will address them fully and seriously in the implementation of the roadmap to fulfil the President’s vision of June 24, 2002.”

On 25 May 2003, the Israeli Cabinet met and by a majority resolved:

“Based on the 23 May 2003 statement of the United States Government, in which the United States committed to fully and seriously address Israel’s comments to the Roadmap during the implementation phase, the Prime Minister announced on 23 May 2003 that Israel has agreed to accept the steps set out in the Roadmap.
The Government of Israel affirms the Prime Minister’s announcement, and resolves that all of Israel’s comments, as addressed in the Administration’s statement, will be implemented in full during the implementation phase of the Roadmap.”

Israel’s rejection of the Arab peace initiative could not have been more clearly delivered or underscored.

So what was Moussa hoping to achieve by his petulance in Petra? Clearly he is very frustrated as he sees the Roadmap disappearing down the diplomatic drain as the Arabs continue their intransigent demands that Israel return to the 4 June 1967 borders and 450000 Jews pack up and vacate their homes.

Trying to distance the Arab League from any consequences for maintaining those demands must have been uppermost in his mind as he then publicly admonished Peres:

“Stop building settlements. You keep constructing settlements and demolishing Palestinian homes. What peace are you talking about?”

His remarks repeated the tired old mantra castigating the Jews for wanting to live in any part of their biblical heartland whilst serving to detract any attention from the ineffectual role played by the 22 members of the Arab League in realising the objectives of the Road Map in these four key areas:

1. Failing to prevent Gaza and the West Bank being split into two separate territorial units under two different power structures.

2. Failing to persuade either Egypt or Jordan to offer part of their lands to the Palestinian Arabs as an inducement to moderating the Arab League demand for 100% of the West Bank and Gaza

3. Failing to have the border between Gaza and Egypt opened to allow the humanitarian flow of food and medicine into Gaza or to allow Gazans the opportunity to emigrate through Egypt to other Arab States either temporarily or permanently.

4. Pledging no more than a miserly 20% of the total pledges made at the international donors fund set up in Paris to help their own brothers and allowing many pledges to still remain unpaid.

Arab League members no doubt will cheer Moussa for having stood up to the “Zionist aggressors”. Once again rhetoric has overcome reason and an occasion for goodwill, recognition and mutual respect has been turned into a dummy spit by the Arabs’ top diplomat and negotiator.

Moussa’s grandstanding has only lowered - not elevated - his own standing. The Arabs may not be fools - Moussa certainly is.

Bush's Vision Requires A West Bank Subdivision

[Published June 2008]

Subdivision of the West Bank between Jewish and Arab claimants has always been an essential ingredient of President Bush’s 2002 vision to create a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan.

Indeed such a subdivision had been pursued by President Clinton in 2000 before negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) broke down after Yasser Arafat had demanded all of the West Bank and ended up getting nothing at all as a result.

President Bush made his position on this issue abundantly clear on 14 April 2004 when he declared in a letter to Israel’s then Prime Minister - Ariel Sharon:

“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.”

Fifteen years of negotiations with the PLO - begun with the much heralded but totally ineffectual Oslo Accords in 1993 - have proved a complete waste of time in achieving the determination of sovereignty in the West Bank - an area that has had no recognised sovereign authority since 1948 when Great Britain terminated the mandate conferred on it by the League of Nations in 1922.

President Bush’s Roadmap - backed by the United Nations, Russia and the European Union - has failed to make the slightest impression on securing PLO agreement to any part of the West Bank remaining in Jewish hands.

The PLO’s continuing intransigence has forfeited its right to continue to negotiate the future of the West Bank on behalf of the Arabs. Its conditions for statehood are incapable of fulfilment.

Jordan was the last sovereign Arab State to occupy the West Bank, which it did from 1948 to 1967 until it was lost to Israel in the Six Day War in 1967.

Jordan ceded all claims to the West Bank in 1988 in favour of the PLO in the face of extreme pressure by the Arab League to do so. That decision has proved disastrous for the Arab residents of the West Bank and now requires to be urgently reviewed by the Arab League and reversed.

Jordan needs to be brought back as the appropriate partner to negotiate a subdivision of the West Bank with Israel so as to enable its Arab residents to at least be freed of Israeli military control and restrictions on their freedom of movement and assembly.

Randa Habib of Agence France Presse in an article dated June 10 and posted on http://www.canada.com titled “Jordan fears new pressure to merge with West Bank” reports of Jordanian concerns at such a possibility quoting “a senior Jordanian official” as stating:

“The only acceptable scenario for us is the merger of Jordan and all of the West Bank”

In the same breath the same official however is quoted as saying:

"Jordan does not want to be linked to 30 or 50 per cent of a territory which it owned from 1950 - 1967. To get half or less of the West Bank with all the Palestinian population would be suicide.”

Jordan need have no fears on this score. Israel was prepared to cede its claim to 93% of the West Bank in 2000 and reportedly to a slightly lesser area in the failed negotiations on President Bush’s Road Map. The radicalization of the Arab population of the West Bank might well necessitate a staged withdrawal by Israel from the areas it agrees to cede to Jordan in direct negotiations.

Jordan represents the only realistic option for removing Israel’s grip on the West Bank’s Arab population. Failure to grasp the opportunity now presented will be a tragedy and end any prospects of a peaceful settlement of the Jewish-Arab conflict in the foreseeable future.

Jordan cannot go it alone. It will need the backing of the Arab League as well as American and hopefully international support - politically, militarily and financially - to secure Jordan against any attempt to overthrow its monarchy and governing structure by Arab terrorist and radical groups who oppose any concessions or any territory in the West Bank being kept by Israel or the recognition of a Jewish State anywhere in the Middle East.

Additionally the implementation of any agreed subdivision will entail a joint co-operative effort between Israel and Jordan to render the West Bank an “arms free” area where the only weapons there are under the control of the Jordanian and Israeli military and police forces.

No doubt demilitarization of the West Bank - partially or totally - would be on the negotiating agenda.

The existence of a peace treaty signed between Israel and Jordan in 1994 puts Israel and Jordan in a position of equal negotiating strength as sovereign States already living side by side in peace - a critical factor never existing in any previous negotiations over the last 70 years.

Substantive issues such as water, refugees and Jerusalem are already covered under the peace treaty and afford ready made, agreed solutions to what has been considered impossible to achieve under previous negotiations.

Redrawing the boundary between these two sovereign states should be a relatively simple task that can be accomplished in a matter of weeks - well before President Bush leaves the Oval Office in January 2009.

Another Arab State in any part of the West Bank would require the joint consent of Jordan and Israel. Maybe when the current environment turns from confrontational to peaceful and cooperative, the opportunity might then be afforded to complete what President Bush’s vision so earnestly desired and what proposals over the last 70 years have been unable to achieve.

That is for the future. The present demands swift and decisive intervention by Jordan.

Obama Torpedoes The Palestinian State

[Published June 2008]

Presidential Nominee Barack Obama took only 14 words to effectively ‘put paid to’ the idea that a third Palestinian State - in addition to Israel and Jordan - will be created during his term as President if he wins the forthcoming election in November.

Addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington this week Mr Obama declared :

“… any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state”,

Mr Obama had previously made this viewpoint very clear when answering a question put to him at a meeting of 100 members of the Cleveland Jewish Community on 24 February 2008:

“Israel has to remain a Jewish state and what I believe that means is that any negotiated peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians is going to have to involve the Palestinians relinquishing the right of return as it has been understood in the past. And that doesn’t mean that there may not be conversations about compensation issues “

Mr Obama - like President Bush - has now given his unequivocal support to Israel’s rejection of the 40 years old demand by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) - endorsed by the 22 member States of the Arab League - that millions of former Arab residents or their descendants be allowed to emigrate to Israel.

Arabs already comprise 20% of Israel’s existing population. They all are Israeli citizens enjoying the same rights privileges and opportunities open to the Jewish majority other than being required to serve in the armed forces. Israel is understandably reluctant to allow the Arab sector of its population to expand other than by natural growth.

No political party in Israel espousing a contrary view would have any hope of gaining Government. Agreeing to such a proposal would in a very short time destroy the Jewish identity of Israel and its Jewish majority presently living there and replace it with an Arab identity and an Arab majority.

The reason for this long standing Arab demand being maintained is writ large in the Charters of both Hamas and the PLO. It is considered as the political means by which Arab sovereignty can be established for the first time in history in the totality of Palestine - where at present Arab sovereignty exists in 77% - today called Jordan..

For Hamas - the Islamic Resistance Movement - that right of return is non- negotiable and inviolate and will be pursued until the complete destruction of Israel’s identity as a Jewish state is achieved .

Article 11 of the Hamas Charter makes that very clear when stating :

“The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [an inalienable religious endowment - author ] consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that”.

Any attempt therefore by any Arab leader to abandon negotiate away or compromise on this issue would bring swift retribution from Hamas.

Article 1 of the PLO Charter - whilst not as strident or inflammatory in its language - makes it clear that Palestine is an Arab homeland - not Jewish .

“Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.”

No amount of soothing words or diplomatic nuances can bridge the gap that these written words have created for the negotiations that have been ongoing between Israel and the Palestinian Authority with very little success for the last 15 years.

When push comes to shove this claim to Arab ownership of Palestine to the exclusion of the Jews will bring any negotiations crashing down to an ignominious end, since American support for the Arab position is absolutely essential if any kind of pressure is to be put on Israel to moderate its opposition to the demanded right of return.

Israel has long offered to resolve the problem by entering into negotiations for the payment of compensation. Such negotiations however would also need to address compensation claims by Jews expelled from Arab countries since Israel’s creation sixty years ago. It would take a very brave Arab leader to agree to such negotiations. His shelf life would be very short and his use by date would soon expire.

An Israeli proposal in 2000 to allow up to 100000 Arabs to return to Israel was firmly rejected by the Arabs. It is unlikely to be offered again given the radicalisation of the Palestinian Arabs since then..

This issue has been one of the major stumbling blocks to President Bush’s Roadmap failing to even make it to first base despite the backing of the European Union, Russia and the United Nations.

Now - almost at the same time as Mr Obama’s speech to AIPAC - the head of the Palestinian Authority’s negotiating team - Ahmed Qurei - has told PLO activists at a meeting in Ramallah that an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority before the new American President takes office next January would require a “miracle”

No doubt conferences, negotiations, press releases and Presidential statements will continue to flow until a new American President is in control and will continue throughout the next Presidential term of office but nothing tangible can possibly emerge until the Arabs drop their demand for the right of return.

For that to happen would also require a miracle.

The region is replete with miracles that form integral parts of the Jewish, Islamic and Christian faiths.

However any hopes that either or both of these current two miracles-in-waiting will eventuate is sheer folly.