Palestine - Romney Recognizes Reality - Rejects Arab Revanchism

[Published 21 September 2012]


Republican Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney has made a valuable contribution to the public debate in exposing the utter folly of those who continue to still believe in the possibility of the creation of a second Arab state in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan - for the first time ever in recorded history.

Nineteen years of intensive efforts to bring this new Arab state to fruition have seen very little in tangible returns despite the most influential negotiating team ever assembled in history – the United Nations, the European Union, Russia and the United States – having been involved for the last nine years.

After two substantive offers by Israel to cede its claim to more than 90% of the West Bank in 2000/2001 and 2008 in favour of the Palestinian Authority - and after Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005 – the resumption of further negotiations without preconditions remains deadlocked.

If those negotiations are ever resumed - the likelihood of any concluded agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is very remote – unless the Palestinian Authority recognizes Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people and agrees to any newly created state of Palestine being demilitarised.

Mr Romney seems to have concluded that such Israeli demands will never be accepted – asserting:

“… the Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace, and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish. Now why do I say that?

Some might say, well, just let the Palestinians have the West Bank and have security, and set up a separate nation for the Palestinians. And then come a couple of thorny questions. I don’t have a map here to look up geography, but the border between Israel and the West Bank is obviously right there, right next to Tel Aviv, which is the financial capital, the industrial capital of Israel, the center of Israel. It’s, what, the border would be seven miles from Tel Aviv to what would be the West Bank. Nine miles. The challenge is, the other side of the West Bank, the other side of what would be this new Palestinian state would either be Syria at one point or Jordan. And of course, the Iranians would want to do through the West Bank exactly what they did through Lebanon, and what they did into Gaza. Which is the Iranians would want to bring missiles, that armament, into the West Bank and potentially threaten Israel. So Israel, of course, would have to say, “That can’t happen. We’ve got to keep Iranians from bringing weaponry into the West Bank.” Well, that means that, who, the Israelis are going to patrol the border between Jordan, Syria and this new Palestinian nation? Well, the Palestinians would say, “No way. We’re an independent country. You can’t guard our border with other Arab nations.”

And then how about the airport. How about flying into this Palestinian nation? Are we going to allow military aircraft to come in? And weaponry to come in? And if not, who’s going to keep it from coming in? Well, the Israelis. Well, the Palestinians are going to say, “We’re not an independent nation if Israel is able to come in and tell us what to land at our airport.”

These problems — they’re very hard to solve. And I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes. Committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel. And these thorny issues. And I say, there’s just no way. So what you do is you move things along the best way you can, you hope for some degree of stability. But you recognize this is going to remain an unsolved problem. We live with that in China and Taiwan. We have a potentially volatile situation, but we sort of live with it. And we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately somehow, something will happen and resolve it. We don’t go to war to try and resolve it imminently."

Commonsense is the hallmark of Mr Romney’s reasoning – something that is lacking in those that are so blind that they cannot and do not want to see.

Negotiations under the Oslo Accords were founded on – and have foundered on – the Arab failure to reject a series of Arab fictions and falsehoods appearing in the 1964 Charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Chief among them are claims that:

1. Only Arab – not non-Arab - residents of former Palestine are entitled to statehood

2. Palestine within the boundaries it had during the British Mandate is an indivisible territorial unit and an indivisible part of the Arab homeland

3. The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine and everything based on them are null and void

4. The establishment of the State of Israel is illegal, regardless of the passage of time

5. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood.
Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

In endorsing these fictions and falsehoods by themselves failing to recognize the State of Israel for the last 64 years - the Arab world – with the exception of Egypt and Jordan - has ensured that any hope of Oslo leading to the creation of a 22nd Arab state located in former Palestine will ever occur.

Mr Romney still hopes against hope that something will happen to resolve this 130 years old seemingly intractable dispute between Arabs and Jews.

Perhaps the first step in the right direction would be an earnest attempt to try and restore -as far as is now possible - the territorial status quo existing prior to the creation of the PLO Charter in 1964 – when Jordan then occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem - and Egypt occupied Gaza..

That would result in the dispute between Jews and Arabs being realistically seen for what it is – a border dispute between Israel, Jordan and Egypt to resolve the allocation of sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza – the last remaining areas of former Palestine where sovereignty remains undetermined between Arabs and Jews.

Replacing fiction and falsehood with historic, geographic and demographic facts is the ball that Mr Romney needs to pick up and kick downfield - should he become America’s next President.

Come to think of it – President Obama should do exactly the same thing if he is returned to the White House for another four years.

Recognizing reality and rejecting Arab revanchism is certainly the only way to now score a goal.

Palestine - Realities Overtaking Fairy Tales

[Published 8 November 2012]


The idea of reunifying a substantial part of the West Bank with Jordan received a further boost this week - when former head of the PLO Political Department - Farouk Kaddoumi - told the newspaper London-based newspaper Al - Quds Al - Arabi that giving the West Bank back to Jordan would be a “positive move.”

His remarks are the first of their kind to be voiced by a senior PLO figure in decades.

His statement follows hard on the comment recently made by Jordan’s Prince Hassan that the West Bank was part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

It was back in March 1977 that Kaddoumi himself told Newsweek:

“There should be a kind of linkage because Jordanians and Palestinians are considered by the PLO as one people,”

His viewpoint was echoed by another PLO leader - Zuheir Mohsen - who told the Dutch newspaper Trouw in the same month:

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.”

The greatest criticism of the international community since then has been the failure to heed these statements and recognise there is no difference at all between the Arab residents living in the West Bank and the Arab residents living in Jordan. Both reside in an area comprising almost 80% of former Palestine and live within one hours drive of each other. Both were citizens of Jordan and had Jordanian passports from 1950-1988. Both have families that live on both sides of the Jordan River. No country was ever called “Jordan” until 1950.

The attempt to create two separate national identities and two separate peoples - Jordanians and Palestinians - has always been nothing but misleading and deceptive fairy tales.

Even the 1968 PLO Charter itself makes this abundantly clear in its opening two articles which state:

Article 1: 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.

Article 2: Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.

These clear and unambiguous provisions of the PLO Charter were reiterated and confirmed at the 8th Palestinian National Council meeting in February-March 1971 - which declared:

” Jordan is linked to Palestine by a national relationship and a national unity forged by history and culture from the earliest times. The creation of one political entity in Transjordan and another in Palestine would have no basis either in legality or as to the elements universally accepted as fundamental to a political entity. .. In raising the slogan of the liberation of Palestine and presenting the problem of the Palestine revolution, it was not the intention of the Palestine revolution to separate the east of the River from the West, nor did it believe the struggle of the Palestinian people can be separated from the struggle of the masses in Jordan…”

Despite similar statements by many other Arab spokesmen - the Quartet - Russia, America, the European Union and the United Nations - still remain foolishly fixated on creating an independent Arab State between Israel and Jordan in the West Bank and East Jerusalem - thus separating the East Bank of the Jordan River from the West Bank and dividing the Arabs who live on each side of the Jordan River from one another.

Reunification of the West Bank with Jordan - so far as is now possible given the changed circumstances since Jordan’s loss of it to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War - remains the only realistic option available to the Jews and Arabs to advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.

Any such agreement reached on the territorial dimensions of the dispute will not - however - herald an end to the conflict.

Kaddoumi himself made this clear when he added:

“We launched our revolution for all of Palestine, and that’s why we need to be very cautious. We must safeguard our people’s right to return. We must insist on the right of return for all refugees, because this is the minimum that we could accept.”

Whilst the temperature may be lowered once the reunification of the two banks of the Jordan River into an expanded and enlarged Jordan has been achieved - attitudes such as the above espoused by Kaddoumi and likewise by Hamas and the myriad number of terrorist groups who continue to conduct their murderous campaign to eradicate the Jewish State - will not end overnight.

Yet there is hope that even the vexed right of return is slowly being recognised as a right of return to the 80% of former Palestine that will be encompassed within the newly redrawn borders of Jordan - and not to the remaining 20% of former Palestine that will become the established borders of Israel.

PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas caused raised eyebrows when he stated this week that although he is a refugee from the town of Safed - he does not have the right to live there although he likes to visit the town as a tourist.
Abbas continued:

“I am a refugee, but I am living in Ramallah, I believe that West Bank and Gaza is Palestine, and the other parts is Israel.”

How anyone can be classified as a refugee whilst living in any part of one’s country is perhaps a question that Abbas should be asked by one of the intrepid reporters that frequently interview him.

Nevertheless the growing focus on Jordan being part of the solution to the Arab-Jewish conflict is a welcome development that should be encouraged and fostered.

Fairy tales usually have happy endings.

Perhaps an energised and reinvigorated Barack Obama can wave his Presidential wand this time round by facing up to the above realities and help everyone’s dreams come true.

Palestine - Falk's Failed Philosophy Guarantees Continuing Conflict

[Published 1 November 2012]


Professor Richard Falk - United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 - has returned to world headlines with another controversial annual Report.

Falk this time round has encouraged a boycott of United States industry giants Caterpillar Inc., Hewlett Packard and Motorola, Israeli cosmetic firm Ahava, Cemex of Mexico, Veolia Environment of France, G4S of the United Kingdom and Volvo Group of Sweden, among others, and for civil society to join that effort.

His call amounts to a denial of the rights of people to choose who they deal with, where they establish their businesses and who they employ. The successful implementation of Falk’s call will lead to the loss of employment, loss of dignity and inability to provide food and shelter for those put out of work as a result - exacerbating rather than helping to resolve the Jewish-Arab conflict.

Professor Falk said the focus on the business community was partly an expression of frustration over the failure to persuade Israel to comply with its fundamental legal obligations.

Professor Falk’s notion of what Israel’s “fundamental legal obligations” are - can best be gleaned from the following comments made by him during an exchange with me on his personal blog site on 1 August 2012:

"I really do respect your concern with the historical background of the conflict, and how it bears on the merits of various lines of interpretation from the perspective of relative rights and international law. I hold two views, however, that make it seem to me not useful, in fact, the opposite to dwell on these concerns at this stage: first, a long political process ever since the UN was established that has settled the international law questions in favor of Palestinian claims on such matters as settlements, Jerusalem, self-determination, and even refugees, and I find that these outcomes accord with my sense of justice in determining the relations between the two peoples; I believe that Israel has itself generally, although indirectly, acknowledged this conclusion by using its leverage to avoid the intrusion of international law issues in ‘the peace process’ and by defying international law when it cannot avoid its relevance (wall advisory opinion of ICJ; Goldstone Report)

Secondly, I regard the Balfour Declaration and the mandatory system as classic colonial moves that have lost whatever legitimacy that they possessed at the time of their utterance, and prefer to view the competing claims to land and rights on the basis either of the 1948 partition proposal or the 1967 boundaries, although if there was diplomatic parity, I would respect whatever accommodation the parties reached, but without such parity, it seems necessary to invoke the allocation of rights as per settled international law."

Professor Falk’s peremptory dismissal of settled international law between 1919 and 1947 in relation to the former territory of Palestine - part of the former Ottoman Empire for 400 years until its capture by Great Britain in World War 1 - is puzzling.

The Treaty of Versailles, the San Remo Conference, the Treaty of Sevres, the Treaty of Lausanne, the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter are all dismissed as a“classic colonial moves” in what can only be displayed as a breathtaking display of arrogance by Professor Falk.

Indeed his rejectionist views are identicl to the views espoused by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Article 20 of the PLO Covenant:-

"The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void"

Professor Falk - like the PLO - prefers to abandon these internationally sponsored legal building blocks in favour of:

“a long political process ever since the United Nations was established that has settled the international law questions in favour of Palestinian claims on such matters as settlements, Jerusalem, self-determination and even refugees.

With the greatest respect to Professor Falk - international law is not settled by pronouncements of the United Nations but by judgments and advisory opinions delivered by the International Court of Justice operating within the jurisdictional parameters conferred on it by the United Nations Charter.

There have been no binding resolutions by the United Nations in relation to settlements, Jerusalem, self determination or refugees that can be used as a basis for approaching the International Court of Justice to seek their enforcement against Israel.

If there were - Israel’s enemies would most certainly have been queuing up at the International Court seeking orders long ago.

Professor Falk sees as extant the League of Nations unanimous decision to recognise the right of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Palestine without prejudice to the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities living there.

The preservation of that right as enshrined in Article 80 of the 1945 UN Charter is also irrelevant in Professor Falk’s blinkered view.

By some queer quirk of logic Professor Falk wants to take as his starting point in the Jewish-Arab conflict either the “1948 partition proposal” or the “1967 boundaries”.
Neither of Professor Falk’s starting points even exist.

There was a 1947 - not 1948 - partition proposal by the United Nations.

The Arabs regrettably rejected that proposal. The opportunity then afforded by the United Nations to end the Jewish-Arab conflict cannot possibly be replicated 64 years later.

There were no 1967 boundaries - but there were 1967 armistice lines. The difference between the two is critical and cannot be transposed as Professor Falk seeks to do.

Professor Falk’s claim that Israel is defying international law in relation to the wall advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice is equally without substance since that decision is non-binding according to the Court’s own constitution.

One would expect a Professor of Law to be precise and accurate in his choice of language and attention to factual detail. Professor Falk fails on both counts.

Professor Falk is certainly entitled to espouse the views he does.

However, his entitlement to continue in his role as a Special Rapporteur must surely be questioned when he seeks to ignore a whole body of settled international law created before 1948 - whilst continuing to act in this highly sensitive position.

A new appointment to replace Professor Falk should be a priority.

His use-by date has surely been reached.

Palestine - Obama's Befuddled Thinking Sends Peace Hopes Sinking

[Published 26 October 2012]


President Obama has dramatically lowered his support for Israel over the past four years when one considers his latest response to a questionnaire from the American Jewish Committee - compared to the answers he provided before the 2008 elections.

President Obama’s 2012 response is both vague and essentially directionless:

"Last year, I stood before the United Nations General Assembly to address the Palestinian bid for U.N. recognition of statehood.I believe now, as I did then, that the Palestinian people deserve a state of their own. However, I continue to believe that lasting peace will only come from direct negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians themselves and not from unilateral Palestinian actions at the United Nations.That is why I made it clear that there can be no short-cuts to peace, and called on the world to recognize the legitimacy of Israel and its security concerns as a Jewish, democratic state.

We cannot impose peace or any final status details on the Israelis and Palestinians.Ultimately, it is up to the two parties to take action. Final status issues can only be resolved by the Israelis and Palestinians themselves. What we can do is state frankly what is widely known: that a lasting peace will involve two sovereign, independent states.And I am convinced that the majority of Israelis and Palestinians would rather look to the future than be trapped in the past. However, my Administration has made it clear that Israelis cannot be expected to negotiate with a partner that refuses to recognize its right to exist.That’s why it’s imperative that Hamas abides by the Quartet conditions to renounce violence, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and abide by past agreements."

His response was far more direct four years ago - indicating the parameters of the two-state solution he then envisaged should be the outcome of negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization through it’s agreed negotiating entity - the Palestinian Authority (PA).

"The United States cannot dictate the terms of a final status agreement. We should support the parties as they negotiate these difficult issues, but they will have to reach agreements that they can live with. In general terms, Israel clearly must emerge in a final status agreement with secure borders. Jerusalem will remain Israel’s capital, and no one should want or expect it to be re-divided. As for refugees, the Palestinians will need to reinterpret the notion of a right of return in such a way that will preserve Israel as a Jewish state, while Israel would likely contribute to international compensation for the refugees.

But these details are for the parties to decide. While negotiations are ongoing, both sides should take steps to improve conditions on the ground, so that people believe they have a stake in the process."

The following differences between Obama 2008 and Obama 2012 are starkly evident:

1. President Obama would find it virtually impossible to criticize the PA acquiring “a state of its own” by demanding as a necessary condition that all 500000 Jews living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem be expelled from their homes and businesses.

2. The Palestinian Arabs deserved right to a state is timeless - no matter how many offers made by Israel are rejected by the PA. With that kind of Presidential mind set - Arab rejectionism of such a state - first proposed in 1937 and rejected on many occasions since then - is bound to continue without fear of any political consequences from America.

3. Whilst direct negotiations still remain the pathway to create any such Palestinian State - the President is apparently prepared to allow those negotiations to continue to be stalled indefintely without any express policy being proposed by him as a possible circuit breaker. Such Presidential inertia can only encourage the PA to prolong the resumption of negotiations until its demands to return to the negotiating table are first agreed on by Israel.

4. Whilst President Obama states that he has called on the world to recognise the legitimacy of Israel and its security concerns as a Jewish democratic State - he makes no similar direct call on the Palestinian Arabs.

5. Gone are the 2008 pronouncements on secure borders, Jerusalem, and refugees - positions agreed on in an exchange of letters in 2004 between Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and President George W Bush. President Obama’s abandonment of his predecessor’s commitments will only embolden the PA to maintain its rejectionist stance on each of these issues.

Ironically the President’s stated policy positions will please many Jewish voters who want to see an end to the two-state solution and futher expansion of Jewish settlement in the West Bank - where sovereignty still remains unallocated.

It will equally please many Arab voters who are girding up to push the idea of just one state west of the Jordan River where they believe the Arabs living there would eventually become the majority population.

But most Jewish and Arab voters would sense that continuing to state what he says is “widely known” - that lasting peace will involve two sovereign independent states - is at best a pipe dream and far removed from the reality that has seen this objective still unachieved after nineteen years of fruitless negotiations.

President Obama’s latest response to the American Jewish Committee certainly guarantees the two-state solution is not going to happen if he is re-elected for a second term.

It also ensures that Israel will be left to hang out to dry by America as calls to divide Jerusalem are increased, territorial adjustments to the 1967 armistice lines in the quest to ensure Israel’s national security are ignored and calls for the unconditional right of return of millions of Palestinian Arabs and their descendants into Israel are stepped up.

As Israel continues to be delegitimised and denigrated as the national homeland of the Jewish people in pursuit of these Arab objectives - a second term President Obama will maintain a studied silence.

If a week is a long time in politics - the next four years will prove to be an eternity for any prospects for peace if President Obama makes it to the White House again and the present status quo is allowed to continue.

Palestine - A Match Made In Heaven

[Published 12 September 2012]

Yasser Arafat and Yitzchak Rabin were reportedly overheard having the following spirited conversation in heaven recently - frankly reflecting on the mistakes they both had made in trying to reach the “Peace of the Brave” for which they and the last surviving member of the trio - Shimon Peres—had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

Yitzchak:

I always thought that the way to peace between the Jews and the Arabs involved re-subdividing Palestine into two States with Jewish Israel sovereign in about 20% of Palestine and Arab Jordan sovereign in about 80% of Palestine.

Shimon persuaded me to pursue a different path by accepting Oslo.

In hindsight this was a terrible error of judgment by me and cost me my life, the lives of thousands of Jews and Arabs and the maiming, wounding and emotional scarring of our respective populations.

Yasser:

Look Yitzchak, I know you weren’t happy with Oslo. I felt it in that famous handshake at the White House. I was aware of your comment in The Australian newspaper on May 27, 1985:

“One tiny State between Israel and Jordan will solve nothing. It will be a time bomb.”

Oslo would have created just such a State.

Yitzchak:

I think my then prediction is more relevant today than ever - considering the collapse of Oslo, 9/11, your 2001 refusal of Barak’s offer, the second Intifada, the failed Roadmap, the 2006 Lebanon War, the 2008 Abbas rejection of Olmert’s offer, the 10000 rockets fired into civilian population centres in Israel from Gaza since 2007, Operation Cast Lead in 2008, what’s happening now in Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Jordan, Gaza, the West Bank and Iran’s nuclear threat to wipe out Israel.

The Quartet members are making a big mistake pursuing the two-state solution.

They supposedly respect my memory but not my opinions. They know I also said when making my prediction:

“the Palestinians should have a sovereign State which includes most of the Palestinians. It should be Jordan with a considerable part of the West Bank and Gaza. East of the Jordan River there is enough room to settle the Palestinian refugees.”

Yasser:

On June 25, 1987 I myself told the New York Review of Books that before the Second World War:

“Jordan was an emirate, completely part of Palestine.”

I know my history as well as you, my dear partner in peace. We both agreed that Jordan was part of Palestine - part of the problem and part of the solution…..

Yitzchak:

We really should have built on this common agreement when we finally decided to talk about peace.

Yasser:

I also told Der Spiegel in 1986:

“Jordanians and Palestinians are indeed one people. No one can divide us. We have the same fate.”

Yitzchak:

Even Jordan recognised the historic and demographic reality of what you were saying. As early as Spring 1982 Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan was quoted in the Foreign Affairs Review as endorsing the words of a leading Jordanian social scientist:

“the Jordanians and Palestinians are now one people, and no political loyalty, however strong, will separate them permanently.”

Yasser:

Farouk Kadoumi, the Head of the Political Department of the PLO, told Newsweek on 14 March 1977:

“Jordanians and Palestinians are considered by the PLO as one people.”

Farouk stood by my wife Suha during my dying days in hospital in France. Now there is more concern about whether I was poisoned than there is about the failed peace process.

Yitzchak:

So why did you insist on separate Palestinian and Jordanian delegations at the Madrid Conference in 1991 instead of a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation?

Yasser:

Come on Yitzchak. You know there had been a power struggle between King Hussein and myself for control of Jordan. Could I ever forget or forgive how my followers and I were driven out of Jordan in September 1970 and the slaughter that was inflicted on us at that time? Do you think it was fun being shunted to Lebanon and thence to Tunisia?

Yitzchak:

But surely you could have resolved your dispute by retaining King Hussein as Jordan’s monarch and appointing yourself as Jordan’s Prime Minister. By burying your differences you could have ended up as Prime Minister of 80% of Palestine instead of President of nothing.

Yasser:

That’s all water under the bridge. Now that I have been removed from the scene is there perhaps something we can do to influence those left behind down there to
re-subdivide Palestine along the lines you suggested 27 years ago?

Yitzchak:

Well I know Shimon is just as aware as you and I are of Jordan’s role in bringing peace to the region. Shimon told the Jewish Telegraph on April 19, 1991:

“It is not obstinacy to regard the populations of Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza as having greater similarities than differences. The Jordan River is not deep enough to turn into a knife blade serving to cut one piece of territory into three slices. Most of Jordan’s population are Palestinians: the residents of the West Bank are Jordanian citizens and Jordan has distributed tens of thousands of passports to residents in the Gaza Strip. Jordan is therefore an existing State. It has an army. There is therefore no need to set up another State, another army.”

Yasser:

Shimon might now be President—but he is not the Israeli Government.

Israel’s Prime Minister - Bibi Netanyahu - needs to endorse Shimon’s view and make it Israeli policy

Yitzchak:

Bibi’s view is very similar to Shimon’s. Bibi told the United Nations on 11 December 1984:

“Clearly, in Eastern and Western Palestine, there are only two peoples, the Arabs and the Jews. Just as clearly, there are only two states in that area, Jordan and Israel. The Arab State of Jordan…does not allow a single Jew to live there…It also contains 4/5 of the territory originally allocated by this body’s predecessor, the League of Nations, for the Jewish National Home. The other State, Israel… contains less than 1/5 of the territory originally allocated to the Jews under the Mandate‚Ķ. It cannot be said, therefore, that the Arabs of Palestine are lacking a state of their own. The demand for a second Palestinian Arab State in Western Palestine, and a 22nd Arab State in the world, is merely the latest attempt to push Israel back into the hopelessly vulnerable armistice lines of 1949."

Bibi eventually changed direction under extreme pressure from President Obama by proposing a demilitarized third state in former Palestine on 14 June 2009. That idea has gone down like a lead balloon.

He and Shimon need to resume enunciating their long held shared vision once again.

Shimon also needs to remind his Presidential confreres what Ariel Sharon - in an induced coma since 2006 - told Time on April 17, 1989:

“Jordan is Palestine! The capital of Palestine is Amman. If Palestinian Arabs want to find their political expression, they will have to do it in Amman.”

Ariel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza and the building of a security fence in the West Bank has effectively divided former Palestine into Jewish and Arab sections - forming the basis for calling an international conference to re-subdivide Palestine along the lines I first suggested in 1985.

Yasser:

That’s all fine, but what about my beloved Jerusalem? Can I ever hope that my mortal remains will be reburied there?

Yitzchak:

Yes. It is possible. East Jerusalem was part of Jordan between 1948-1967 and would have been so today had King Hussein kept out of the Six Day War. The Holy Places are specifically to be dealt with in the Peace Treaty I signed with King Hussein in 1994.

We can’t solve all the problems from here. Those on earth are charged with negotiating the final outcomes. Now is a propitious time for them to attempt to do so.

Yasser:

How can we get the Quartet to abandon its plans to continue pursuing the impossible? Visions have a habit of turning into the worst nightmares.

Yitzchak:

The Quartet should heed the above things we said whilst on earth, but which we unfortunately failed to try to put into practice. This will be the finest tribute they can pay to our memories and will merit the Nobel Prize that we were in truth prematurely awarded. This will be the real peace of the brave. Pressure must be put on Jordan to
re-subdivide Palestine, the same kind of pressure that is being put on Israel to accept the badly flawed and thoroughly discredited Road Map. Then perhaps the peace we all desire will be attainable.

Yasser:

Shalom Yitzchak

Yitzchak:

Salaam Yasser.

It is hard to believe that I first published this conversation in 2004. Everything said then still remains true today in this updated version.

Re-subdivide Palestine into two states - one Jewish - one Arab. Two people need two states - not three.

Hopefully another update will not be necessary in 2020

Palestine - Narrowing The Great Divide

[Published 7 September 2012]


The political rift between Hamas and Fatah arising from their struggle to control the minds and the hearts of the Palestinian Arabs has continued unabated and unresolved for the last six years.

Gaza and the West Bank have become two separate and distinct political fiefdoms that have materially contributed to making the attainment of the “two-state” solution envisaged in the Oslo Accords and the Bush Road Map impossible to achieve.

The divide is so wide that the areas themselves have been dubbed “Hamastan” and “Fatahland” - signifying the utter hopelessness of reconciliation between two very polarized forces.

Political commentators Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff have succinctly summed up the position in their recent article - “Palestinian unity can wait - discord still growing between Hamas and Fatah”-

“Both entities – the West Bank (Fatahland) and the Gaza Strip (Hamastan) - continue their bizarre dance: endless negotiations on the need for unity with zero actions or results, and a reality that only proves how wide the internal Palestinian divide is.”

The results of a recent survey indicate that there is also deep division between the “1948 Arabs” - those who did not flee the 1948 War between the Jews and six invading Arab armies - and those Arabs who did - identified as the “1967 Arabs.”

The survey was undertaken by Professor Shifra Sagy, director of the Conflict Management and Resolution Program at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev - with funding from the German research foundation DFG.

The study came at the initiative of some of Professor Sagy’s Palestinian students. It was co-directed with her postdoctoral student Dr. Adi Mana, and PhD students Anan Srour and Serene Madjali.

The survey was taken among 1104 Israeli Arabs and 948 West Bank Arabs - who were all personally interviewed.

Views were expressed by each group on the following matters - and commented on by Professor Sagy:

1. Loyalty to the land:

“We asked Arabs of ’48 about their narrative, which is that they were loyal to their land when they didn’t desert it and stayed. The ’67 people look at the same issue, and they say the ’48 Arabs stayed on their land because they gave up and succumbed to the occupation without any resistance,”

2. The relative well-being of the 1948 Arabs as compared to the 1967 Arabs

“The ‘48 Arabs say this is our right as citizens of Israel, but in the West Bank, the popular narrative is that this relative affluence is because Israel co-opted them into being loyal,”

3. On marrying each other

60 percent of Israeli Arabs surveyed said they would not want their daughter to marry a West Bank Arab, while 41% of West Bankers had the same attitude to their daughter marrying an Arab with Israeli citizenship.

Prof. Sagy concludes that:

“Both groups think of themselves as Palestinians, but narratives are different regarding very crucial issues. What it reveals here is that over the past 60 years, this has really become two distinctly different groups.”

One does not have to look very far to ascertain the reasons - which can be put down to the following:

1. the unification of the West Bank with Jordan and the granting of Jordanian nationality to the West Bank Arabs between 1950-1967 - with Jordanian citizenship continuing to be enjoyed until 1988,

2. the West Bank Arabs being under Israeli occupation between 1967-1993 and

3. the grant of civil administrative autonomy to the Palestinian Authority bringing 95% of the West Bank Arab population under its control since 1993

Researcher Anan Srour commented:

“Perhaps there are some radicals who see this survey and will think it’s too controversial. We heard this occasionally in comments from the participants, in both directions. Some said that it’s really an issue, that we are two groups.”

Professor Sagy further noted:

“It is possible that the ’48 Arabs’ status as a small minority, at times threatened, both within Israeli society and the Arab world, has strengthened their group cohesion and their need to protect their unique collective narrative. Despite feeling that their common connection and identity with the ’67 Arabs is very important and significant, that connection could come at a heavy price, according to respondents, by bringing into doubt their connection to Israeli society. It is possible that it is for this reason that they distance themselves from the ’67 Arabs more than the ’67 Arabs do, and stress their unique potential as a “bridge” between the two nations,”

Gazan Arabs were not included in the survey because it was deemed too risky an undertaking. One suspects that their viewpoint would be very different to each of the two groups surveyed.

Indeed it would be very interesting if the same survey was conducted among Palestinian Arabs living in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon - where their experiences have been entirely different to those of the three Arab populations in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

The results of this research herald the need for both Hamas and the PLO to give up their declared political aim of wiping Israel off the face of the map - the only thread they have had to unite Palestinian Arabs since the formation of the PLO in 1964.

Are we indeed witnessing the genesis of a people movement not marching in step with the declared political aims of either Hamas or the PLO - as evidenced by the easing of entry restrictions enabling 120000 West Bank Arabs to visit Israel during the holy month of Ramadan?

Israel’s decision last month elicited the following comment from Daoud Kuttab:

“Naturally, Palestinians were delighted to be able to pray in Jerusalem’s Aqsa Mosque and visit relatives and friends in Jerusalem and inside the Green Line. Many had not been in Jerusalem for decades. Parents took their children (some teenagers) to see a Jerusalem they had never seen. Many flooded West Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and other locations.

Palestinians shopped (the Malha mall is said to have sold goods worth 2 million shekels in one weekend). They hit the beaches and stores, enjoying a rare occasion to get out of the closed area of the West Bank.”

Denied any vote for six years - the West Bank Arabs had voted with their feet - indicating to their political masters that the time had come to narrow the divide between the 1948 Arabs and the 1967 Arabs - not by trying to eliminate the State of Israel but co-existing peacefully with it.

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

[Published 2 September 2012]


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At that fateful moment in time:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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