Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Oslo Accords

Showing posts with label Oslo Accords. Show all posts

Sunday, December 25, 2022

12/25 Links: Melanie Phillips: Happy inclusive holidays!; Israel should terminate the Oslo Accords; Israeli mayor attends funeral of terrorist who wounded 3 policemen

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Happy inclusive holidays!

What a minefield this whole identity thing is. Thank goodness Chanukah doesn’t present this problem, eh?

For many diaspora Jews, Chanukah is regarded as Christmas-lite with gifts, diet-destroying delicacies and a lighted menorah in place of a glittering tree.

And there can hardly be much danger of offending anyone with a card displaying a chanukiah, dreidel or doughnut, or standard anodyne message such as “Festival of lights”, “Love, light, latkes” or “Peace, love and miracles”.

Hold on a minute. Chanukah is not actually a festival of peace and love. It celebrates instead the victory of the Maccabees who went to war against both the Seleucid Greeks and the Hellenists, Jews who were themselves drawn to the pagan ways of their Greek overlords.

The Maccabees were not apostles of peace. They were more like resistance commandos, fierce and uncompromising warriors who fought their Greek oppressors.

Moreover, they also committed violent atrocities against the Hellenised Jews who had absorbed Greek universalism and as a result had taken aim at circumcision, Shabbat observance and Torah study.

The Maccabees regarded those overly-assimilated Jews as traitors to Judaism and dealt with them accordingly.

In the saccharine world of much Chanukah observance, the Maccabees are commonly presented as heroes fighting and defeating the tyrannical Greeks. This was undoubtedly true.

But other commentators equally plausibly describe them as zealots, violent religious extremists who forced Jews to conform to a strict interpretation of Judaism and expelled non-Jews from the land. To the Hellenised Jews, they were religious nuts.

Ring any bells? Today, many diaspora Jews (and liberal Israelis) are hyper-ventilating over the likely inclusion in the new Israeli government of three men whose agenda has distinct echoes of the Maccabees.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the putative security minister, called in his younger days for the expulsion of the Arabs from Israel (although he says he has changed his views). Bezalel Smotrich, tipped as a finance minister, has said his ultimate aim is an Israeli theocracy.

And Avi Maoz, who is set to run an office of “Jewish identity”, has taken explicit aim at the “Hellenising Jews” of the Israeli left and progressive denominations whom he terms “the real darkness”.

Celebrating the Maccabees might therefore be seen as celebrating Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and Maoz.

Well that’s the end of Chanukah cards, then.

PMW: Jesus the Palestinian terrorist and his 72 dark-eyed virgins

One of the many ways in which the Palestinian Authority distorts history in order to invent a centuries-old Palestinian identity, is to turn Jesus the Judean (Jew), who promoted peace on earth, into a Palestinian terrorist who was murdered by the Israelis, thus becoming the first Palestinian “Martyr,” who is now reveling in heaven with Allah, in the arms of 72 dark-eyed virgins.

While the language the PA uses to describe Jesus as a terrorist and as someone enjoying his virgins is less direct, the meaning is the same.

When referring to Palestinian terrorists, the PA calls them “self-sacrificing fighters,” or “fidai”. So, when the PA and its officials use the same terms to describe Jesus, they are in fact saying he is a terrorist.

As Palestinian Media Watch has shown, here, here, here, here, and here, among other places, the definition of Jesus as a terrorist enjoying his virgins is not a fringe idea, but rather one expressed by the highest order in the PA.

Jesus the “Palestinian” terrorist murdered by the Jews

When PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh sought to declare Jesus a terrorist, and link him to Palestinian terror, he referred to him as a “Palestinian self-sacrificing fighter” who, similar to the PA descriptions of suicide bombers, “paid for his mission with his life” and whose birth takes place “at the same time as the anniversary of the outbreak of the Palestinian revolution” – i.e the anniversary of the first Fatah terror attack:
“The birthday of our lord Jesus, peace be upon him - the first Palestinian self-sacrificing fighter from whom we learned Martyrdom-death, and who paid for his mission with his life - takes place at the same time as the anniversary of the outbreak of the Palestinian revolution (i.e., the anniversary of “the Launch” of Fatah, counted from its first terror attack against Israel), for which thousands of Martyrs have paid with their lives so that we will live and remain, and so that our children will dream of a better future.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 28, 2020]

Muwaffaq Matar, a member of the Revolutionary Council of PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party and regular columnist for the official PA daily similarly adopted Jesus as a Palestinian and compared him to terrorists calling him a “self-sacrificing fighter”:

Hamas says he was a "mujahid" was trying to stop Jews from prayer. The PA calls him a "soccer player" who was "assassinated." (UPDATE)

The messages about a Palestinian killed last night being sent to the West and for internal consumption are quite different.

Under the Oslo Accords, Jews should have free access to Joseph's Tomb in Shechem (Nablus), but because the PA refuses to follow the agreement, every few weeks scores of Jews visit the tomb in the middle of the night - so as to minimize any impact on area residents - and they are protected by IDF soldiers from the Palestinians who want to stop them from praying.

Make no mistake: the Palestinian opposition to Jews visiting Nablus is pure Jew-hatred. The religious Jews are not coming to build a settlement or to evict Arabs from their homes - they just want to pray and then to go home.

Overnight, Israeli forces protecting the worshipers came under heavy gunfire from the antisemites who hate the idea of Jews visiting a holy spot that existed way before anyone ever heard of "Palestinians." They fired back, injuring several of the militants. One, Ahmed Atef Daraghmeh, died.

Keep in mind that this happened the middle of the night. The only reason anyone would be outside the tomb at the time was to confront and try to block the Jews from worshipping.

Now, as is so often the case, the messages that the Palestinians send to the world are completely different than the ones they tell themselves.

Palestinian prime minister Mohamed Shtayyeh sent a formal complaint to FIFA, demanding that they condemn Israel's "assassination" of Daraghmeh - because he was a member of the Thaqafi Tulkarm football team. Shtayyeh is telling the West that Daraghmeh was an innocent person who was deliberately targeted and murdered by Israel.

At the exact same time, Hamas media is referring to Daraghmeh as a "mujahid martyr":

The Islamic Resistance Movement " Hamas " celebrated the masses of our Palestinian people and our Arab and Islamic nation, its fighter martyr, Ahmed Atef Mustafa Daraghmeh (23 years), from Tubas, who rose at dawn today in an armed clash while confronting the occupation forces' incursion into the eastern region of Nablus.

In a statement today, Thursday, the movement confirmed that the martyrdom of the Mujahid Daraghmeh in the field of pride and honor while he was defending our people sends a message to the brutal enemy that he will not pass safely and our people are alert and ready to respond to the call of the homeland, and that the settlers who brag about storming Nablus with the protection of the occupation forces will find In their faces only bullets.

Daraghmeh lived in Tubas, some 20 kilometers away - meaning that he specifically traveled there just to try to stop Jews from worshiping at their holy site. And as such, he is now a hero.

But good luck seeing any Palestinian or Arab media mention that in English.

UPDATE: Video of this innocent soccer player taking out and shooting his gun. Not for long. (h/t Adin Haykin)

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Let's list the lies in Abbas' UN speech (part 3)

Continuing on listing Mahmoud Abbas' lies at the UN on Friday.

Since its inception, Israel has committed brutal crimes against our people, when it destroyed 529 Palestinian villages, expelled their residents from them during and after the 1948 war, and expelled 950,000 Palestinians, more than half of the Palestinian people at the time, from their homes, according to the records of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). and committed more than fifty massacres since 1948 to this day, which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of children, women, the elderly and innocent people, and everyone remembers the massacre of children in the war on Gaza last year, which killed 67 children.

Every single one of these numbers is a lie.

Some of the supposed villages listed in one database had zero population - and zero area - in 1948, but somehow magically they have "refugee" descendants!

Most historians (Morris, Khalidi) estimate far fewer depopulated villages and towns.

Most Palestinian Arabs were not expelled in 1948, they left on their own out of fear.

UNRWA doesn't claim 950,000 refugees - it said there were 725,000. Even that is an exaggeration.

50 massacres by Israel? Only 15 rate mention in Wikipedia, where anyone can post anything.

Tens of thousands of children, women, the elderly and innocent Palestinians killed by Israel? That is absurd. You can do the math here.

Even the claim of 67 children killed in Gaza in 2021 is a lie (the UN says fewer), but nearly all were killed when Israel aimed at legitimate targets of war.

We do not accept that we remain the only party that adheres to the agreements we signed with Israel in 1993, agreements that no longer exist on the ground, due to Israel's continued violation of them.

The Palestinians certinly do not adhere to the most basic parts of the Oslo process, starting with the initial 1993 letter signed by Arafat claiming to end all support for terror. I recently listed many violations by the Palestinians of Oslo agreements. I haven't seen the Palestinian list of Israeli violations so I cannot easily show how that is a likely lie.

Therefore, I present today to this UN organization, the title of international legitimacy in this world, with a formal request to implement General Assembly resolution 181, which formed the basis for the two-state solution in 1947, as well as resolution 194 calling for the right of return of Palestine refugees.

The entire Arab world unanimously rejected both of those resolutions. Israel accepted both of them (194 with reservations on which specific refugees could be returned.) Now, Abbas says he wants to implement them, seven decades later?

This is a joke.

UNGA 194 did not call for the "right of return." It quite specifically did not use the language of rights. Israel allowed many to return and offered to allow many more - and this was rejected.

The "right of return" is a myth that is meant to destroy the Jewish state. And that is exactly what Abbas is demanding now. Isn't it strange that a purported national leader demands that his people go to his enemy that he considers an apartheid state? Either he knows the apartheid libel is a lie or he doesn't cre much about his own people's welfare.

Perhaps I need to remind you that Israel's commitment to implement these two resolutions was a condition for the acceptance of its membership in your esteemed international organization.

This is yet another Palestinian lie. There is no conditional language in the resolution accepting Israel as a UN member state.

All glory to the righteous martyrs of the Palestinian people who enlightened the path of freedom and independence with their pure blood.

Unlike the rest of the speech, this is not s lie.

This statement, and his subsequent language honoring prisoners, is explicit support for terrorism and terrorists.

And no one at the UN or the media called him out on this.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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Read all about it here!

As he does every year, Mahmoud Abbas gave an anti-Israel speech to the UN. And as with every other one on record, it was filled with lies.

Here are some of them, based on the official speech (he sometimes ad libs outside the speech, often betraying more antisemitism...)

I speak to you on behalf of more than fourteen million Palestinian people, whose parents and grandparents lived through the tragedy of the “Nakba” seventy-four years ago, and they are still living the effects of this “Nakba”, which is a disgrace to humanity, especially those who conspired, planned and carried out this heinous crime.

The "Nakba" came about because Arabs did not accept the concept of a Jewish state in any boundaries. They chose to fight. They lost. No one "planned" to expel Arabs. It was a war started by the Arabs, not a "heinous crime" started by Jews.

Notice that his definition of "Palestinian" is anyone who lived in Palestine in 1947-48. Meaning, anyone who lived there for centuries beforehand and who left is not a Palestinian. Abbas is admitting that the concept of "Palestinian people" is less than a century old.

More than five million Palestinians have been suffering under the Israeli military occupation for fifty-four years.

There were less than a million Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza after the Six Day War.

It has become clear, ladies and gentlemen, that Israel, which disavows the resolutions of international legitimacy, has decided not to be our partner in the peace process. Israel is the one that destroyed the Oslo Accords it signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization. It is the one that, with its current policy, has premeditated and determined to destroy the two-state solution, which proves with conclusive evidence that they do not believe in peace, but in the policy of imposing a fait accompli by brute force and aggression, and therefore there is no longer an Israeli partner with whom to talk.

Oslo died with the second intifada, orchestrated by the leaders of the PLO that had pledged to stop all terror. Israel kept on trying for peace for years afterwards and the PLO - first Arafat, then Abbas - kept saying no. This is historical revisionism.

It thus ends the contractual relationship with us, and makes the relationship between the State of Palestine and Israel a relationship between an occupying state and an occupied people, and nothing else. We will not deal with Israel except on this basis, and we demand the international community to deal with it on this basis as well. This is Israel’s choice, not ours.

The Palestinian Authority, which Abbas unilaterally declared to be the "State of Palestine," was created by the Oslo Accords. If he says that they don't have any legal force, he is the president of - nothing.

Abbas wants the benefits of Oslo but none of the responsibilities.

Israel is carrying out a frantic campaign to confiscate our lands and spread its colonial settlements and plunder our resources, as if this land was empty and had no owners, just as it did in 1948.

Palestinians have been saying this for decades. Yet the percentage of land Israel has legalized for settlements is virtually the same as it was 25 years ago.

Oh, and in 1948, the percentage of land privately owned by Arabs was about 20%. The rest was owned by the ruling country.

Parts 2 and 3 will be posted in the coming hours.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

A short list of Palestinian violations of signed agreements with Israel

The Palestinian prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh opened his weekly cabinet meeting with his usual litany of complaints against Israel.

Wafa reports:

On the occasion of the 29th anniversary of the Oslo Accord, the Prime Minister said that Israel had left nothing of the agreement, and had canceled most of its provisions, disregarding them... It continued its financial deductions in violation of the agreement, and stopped the release of the fourth batch of prisoners, which was supposed to include Karim Younis and other brothers, and sick prisoners, in violation of the agreement.

He stressed that Israel has violated, and even canceled most of the terms of the agreements signed with us, and this matter calls us to stop a lot with him and review it.

Palestinians have made these accusations of Israel violating Oslo many times. (The "fourth batch of prisoners" was part of 2014 negotiations, and nothing to do with the Oslo accords.)

In reality, it is the Palestinians are the ones who are violating signed agreements with Israel every day.

Here is a short and very incomplete list of violations:

Annex 1 of the 1995 Interim Agreement says about Jewish holy sites in Nablus (Joseph's Tomb) and Jericho:

While the protection of these sites, as well as of persons visiting them, will be under the responsibility of the Palestinian Police, a JMU shall function in the vicinity of, and on the access routes to, each such site, as directed by the relevant DCO.

The functions of each such JMU shall be as follows:

to ensure free, unimpeded and secure access to the relevant Jewish holy site; and
to ensure the peaceful use of such site, to prevent any potential instances of disorder and to respond to any incident.

The Palestinian police do not protect Joseph's Tomb and there is no free access to it by Jews - last week, Jews were almost lynched trying to access it. Terrorists routinely attack any Jews they can who visit the site and the Palestinian police are nowhere to be found.

The Oslo II agreement says:

Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.

But the Palestinians have declared the "State of Palestine" and signed international agreements under that name, which was completely unilateral.

The PLO undertakes that, within two months of the date of the inauguration of the Council, the Palestinian National Council will convene and formally approve the necessary changes in regard to the Palestinian Covenant, as undertaken in the letters signed by the Chairman of the PLO and addressed to the Prime Minister of Israel, dated September 9, 1993 and May 4, 1994.

This never happened. There has never been a version of the Palestinian National Covenant published that removed the parts that declare the establishment of Israel to be null and void, for example. The PLO pretended to amend it but never did.

Relations between Israel and the [Palestinian National] Council

Israel and the Council shall seek to foster mutual understanding and tolerance and shall accordingly abstain from incitement, including hostile propaganda, against each other and, without derogating from the principle of freedom of expression, shall take legal measures to prevent such incitement by any organizations, groups or individuals within their jurisdiction.

There is daily incitement to violence in official Palestinian media, let alone other media.

Israel and the Council will ensure that their respective educational systems contribute to the peace between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples and to peace in the entire region, and will refrain from the introduction of any motifs that could adversely affect the process of reconciliation.

Palestinian schools still teach that Israel doesn't exist in any borders and they do not teach peace with Israel in any context.

The 1995 Joint Declaration of the Washington Summit stated that the PLO would oppose the Arab boycott of Israel. While BDS pretends to be separate from the Arab boycott, it is in fact a continuation of the same, and the PLO has attempted to enforce boycotts against Israeli products both demostically and internationally.

The Wye River Memorandum (1998) says:

1. Outlawing and Combating Terrorist Organizations

The Palestinian side will make known its policy of zero tolerance for terror and violence against both sides.

Yet the Palestinian Police aren't even attempting to enforce security in Jenin, Nablus and other places where organized armed groups from Islamic Jihad and other terror organizations have effectively taken over.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades - part of Fatah - has free reign to walk around publicly with weapons anywhere it wants to. It is not an illegal organization.

2. Prohibiting Illegal Weapons

The Palestinian side will ensure an effective legal framework is in place to criminalize, in conformity with the prior agreements, any importation, manufacturing or unlicensed sale, acquisition or possession of firearms, ammunition or weapons in areas under Palestinian jurisdiction.
In addition, the Palestinian side will establish and vigorously and continuously implement a systematic program for the collection and appropriate handling of all such illegal items in accordance with the prior agreements.

There are illegal weapons all over the West Bank (let alone Gaza,) publicly brandished. They aren't being confiscated and the police aren't even trying.

3. Preventing Incitement

Drawing on relevant international practice and pursuant to Article XXII (1) of the Interim Agreement and the Note for the Record, the Palestinian side will issue a decree prohibiting all forms of incitement to violence or terror, and establishing mechanisms for acting systematically against all expressions or threats of violence or terror. This decree will be comparable to the existing Israeli legislation which deals with the same subject.

Not only is there no law against incitement, but there is incitement to violence in official Palestinian media and statements from Palestinian officials.

2. Forensic Cooperation

There will be an exchange of forensic expertise, training, and other assistance.

As we saw during the Shireen Abu Akleh investigation, the PA had no intention of sharing forensics information.

4. Human Rights and the Rule of Law

Pursuant to Article XI (1) of Annex I of the Interim Agreement, and without derogating from the above, the Palestinian Police will exercise powers and responsibilities to implement this Memorandum with due regard to internationally accepted norms of human rights and the rule of law, and will be guided by the need to protect the public, respect human dignity, and avoid harassment.

The Palestinian police are clearly not adhering to this. Nizar Banat is only one example.

When the Palestinian leaders attempt to claim that Israel is violating signed agreements, they are trying to misdirect attention from their own egregious and explicit violations of those same agreements.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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Read all about it here!

It really looks like USAID is trying to give Area C land to Palestinians

Last month I reported that the advisory panel for USAID, the American aid agency that funnels millions of dollars to Palestinian organizations, has recommended that the US should build institutions in Area C, ostensibly to promote Israeli-Palestinian cooperation.

However, these institutions would almost certainly not be available to Jews who already live in Area C, meaning that they would be effectively a way for USAID to take land away from under Israeli control and give it to Palestinians.

One of the more outrageous proposals mentioned was to build an entire university in Area C for Palestinian use.

Now, Israel's Channel 14 is reporting that Joe Biden supports the idea.

From the Arabic Ultrapal news site:

Israeli Channel 14 said, on Wednesday, that US President Joe Biden gave oral approval to a request submitted by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to establish a Palestinian university in an area classified as C according to the Oslo Accords.

She added, that a senior official in (USAID) confirmed to her the news, and that the agency recently held a closed meeting to discuss this file after Biden's approval, and an informal tour is expected in the coming weeks to choose the land that will be allocated to the university buildings.

She noted that USAID officials presented the idea to Biden during his recent visit to Jerusalem.

As I wrote, USAID programs are supposed to be officially joint Israeli-Palestinian initiatives, but if Palestinians are meant to reap the benefits, why not place them where the Palestinians mostly live?

The MEPPA funding program behind these ideas has two goals: economic development of the Palestinian private sector and "person to person" peacebuilding programs. Building a Palestinian high tech university on Israeli-controlled lands is not either of these - it is a land grab. Even if some of the instructors are Israelis.

I don't know if the USAID officials were taking advantage of Biden's possible confusion, or if Biden understands that this is a direct challenge to Israel's rights.

No one is asking why Jenin is a no-go zone for Palestinian police

During the entire Shireen Abu Akleh snow job by the media, there was one larger question that has barely been asked:

Where are the Palestinian police?

We see lots of videos of terrorists in full military gear and with assault weapons walking the streets of Jenin. But Jenin is in Area A, which is supposed to be under full Palestinian security control. No one is supposed to be brandishing weapons outside the Palestinian police, under signed agreements with Israel. (And those signed agreements are international law.)

Israeli security forces only go into Jenin because the Palestinian Authority security forces aren't doing their basic jobs.

Back in December, this was already becoming apparent:

Asked if the PA was losing control of the situation in Jenin, the officer, a resident of Burqin village, replied, “That’s true; they are losing control not only here in Jenin, but in all of the West Bank.”

And in April:

The [Jenin] camp now, however, is virtually off limits to PA forces, who neglected to police it in the years following the end of the Second Intifada.
The vacuum that was left was filled by young, impoverished and unemployed youth, who joined armed gangs, initially to commit crimes, including the smuggling of arms and drug trafficking.

The West has paid millions to bolster the Palestinian security forces since Oslo. In fact, the United States Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority (USSC) was established in 2005 for exactly that reason:

Mission
The USSC coordinates with the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority to enhance security cooperation; leads coalition efforts in advising the Palestinian Authority on security sector reform; and recommends opportunities for nations and international organizations to contribute to the development of a self-sustaining Palestinian security sector.

Goal
The Palestinian Security Sector is able to effectively coordinate with the Government of Israel and international community, has accountable institutions capable of independently sustaining the security apparatus, while providing a safe and secure environment in the West Bank.

It has had 17 years, and Jenin is just as lawless as it was during the second intifada. This is why there were no Palestinian police securing the scene where Shireen Abu Akleh was shot, and this is why there is essentially no real evidence from the scene itself.

Lots of people angrily say that Israel has no business being in Jenin, and the IDF incursions there stoke tension. That is looking at it backwards. The Palestinian Authority has abdicated their role to provide security for all of Area A, and have let Jenin and other areas turn in into terrorism hotbeds.

It seems like the PA happily allows the US and EU to take over some responsibility for governance and has little interest in taking the role it is supposed to take. It has been nearly 30 years since Oslo - more than enough time for a government to mature enough to take control of its people - but the PA is still acting like it doesn't want to govern at all. So we have lawless areas in the West Bank, and no one is to blame but the Palestinian Authority.

If the PA had adhered to their signed agreements under international law, Shireen Abu Akleh would be alive today.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Is shooting religious Jewish worshipers at Joseph's Tomb just "anti-Zionism," too?

From Times of Israel:

Palestinian gunmen opened fire during clashes with IDF troops guarding worshipers at a Jewish shrine in West Bank early Thursday, lightly wounding three Israelis.

The clashes erupted as hundreds of Jewish worshipers under military escort arrived to pray at Joseph’s Tomb on the outskirts of Nablus. According to the Israel Defense Forces, armed Palestinians directed “massive gunfire” at the compound.

Here is video from the attackers' side:

And here's what it looked like inside the compound:

The comments on the video praises the people shooting at religious Jews, and takes pride in the "cowardice" of Jewish worshipers taking cover from bullets and firebombs.

Islamic Jihad is taking credit for the attack, couching it in religious terms as they praise their "blessed fire."

And yet the one phrase one hardly hears when the media talks about Palestinians is "antisemitism." No matter how blatant the attacks are against Jews, no matter how much Palestinians cheer attacking recognizable Jews, no matter how explicit their Jew-hating rhetoric is on their own media - Western reporters stay far away from mentioning what is obvious to all.

These attacks aren't against "Zionists." They aren't targeting "Israelis." They are targeting Jews. Everyone knows this. Yet no one wants to say it out loud.

The "pro-Palestinian" crowd that claims to be against antisemitism will be silent about this. So called "experts" on antisemitism like Marc Lamont Hill and Linda Sarsour and Peter Beinart will not say a word of condemnation. "Human rights" organizations will likewise stay silent because Palestinian Jew-hatred contradicts their carefully constructed narrative of Jewish culpability for all problems in the region.

Meanwhile, Palestinians themselves openly celebrate the blatant attack on a Jewish holy site and the people who want to pray there.

Jews should be allowed to freely worship in their holy spaces. Under the Oslo accords, Jews visiting Joseph's Tomb should be protected by Palestinians, not attacked by them.

The insistence that Palestinians only hate "Zionists" or "settlers" is, to put it simply, a lie. It is a lie that the Arab world made up a century ago and one that the West has embraced, because hate is so distasteful. Accusing people of hate for no reason is seen as Islamophobic or Arabophobic; much better to pretend that it is a political issue and that the bigots are really just fighting for their rights. This, in turn, encourages the modern antisemites to increase their efforts to ethnically cleanse the region of Jews, knowing that the West is fully embracing their narrative.

The Western world's refusal to face the truth doesn't make things more peaceful. On the contrary, it prolongs the conflict.

Call this incident what it is: a Palestinian attack on Jews because they are Jews.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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“Unilateral West Bank land grab”

Alan Solow, a member of the Executive Committee of Israel Policy Forum and former Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, wrote a blog in Times of Israel arguing that Israel should not extend sovereignty on parts of Judea and Samaria for this reason:

No solution should be imposed on anyone or by anyone in the Israeli-Palestinian arena.

While American Jewish consensus around Israel policy has not always been easy to attain, this sentiment has stood for decades as the one universally accepted principle undergirding the quest for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – that it must be reached through bilateral negotiations between the parties. This precept allowed Jewish leadership to strongly urge American administrations of both parties not to attempt to implement their own vision of how to resolve longstanding differences between the two sides. Despite expressions of expected or preferred outcomes over the years, every President has endorsed this concept. This principle also allowed American Jewish leadership to credibly oppose unilateral attempts by the Palestinian Authority to declare a state or to otherwise take action without consent to change the status of disputed territories.

There is a fatal flaw in this logic: Palestinians have been acting unilaterally for decades.

They have called themselves the State of Palestine. They have joined numerous international conventions without any desire to actually enforce their words.

They have built illegally in Area C, with support from the European Union, creating facts on the ground and literally engaging in a “land grab.”

And, perhaps most importantly, they have taken the de facto veto power that the international community has given them, using exactly this logic, to make peace far more distant than it appeared to be in 2000. They’ve said “no” to every offer, not to negotiate but to wait for others to pressure Israel to give up more concessions without compromising their own intransigent, extremist positions.

Solow makes it sound like this status quo can go on forever:

The fact is that nobody is credibly threatening Israel’s control over major settlement blocs in the West Bank which are generally recognized as likely becoming Israeli territory as part of a final status agreement. Israel’s continued control of these Jewish population centers is, as a practical matter, uncontested. The only reason to acquiesce to Israel taking them unilaterally now is to abandon the position that solutions are to be negotiated, not imposed.

It can go on for a few years, but the situation is not frozen in amber. Palestinians will continue to build; they will continue to attempt to gain political legitimacy at Israel’s expense, they will continue to grow in population, they will continue to occasionally explode in violence.

Israel cannot play forever by these rules where Palestinians can do what they want and Israel has its hands tied by adhering to an artificial moral standard. Continuing to wait for Palestinians to come to the table means that Palestinians can continue to act with impunity.

Extending sovereignty is not a land grab. It is the beginning of a disengagement. It is finally choosing borders. It is solving the demographic problem. It is staking a legal claim. It is sending a message that Palestinian intransigence will not be rewarded anymore. It is recognition that the world has changed since Oslo and Israel cannot be tied to an agreement that the Palestinians have abrogated since at least 2001.

Solow shouldn’t be warning Israel against doing what it must. He should be explaining to American Jewry why Israel must do it. And it is a serious failure in American Jewish leadership that he, and other leaders, cannot even figure this out for themselves.

It's the peace, stupid

One of the biggest complaints by the anti-Israel crowd against the Trump plan is the supposed "bantustans" of Palestinian territory only connected by roads, bridges or tunnels. This is said to be intolerable for a sovereign nation

Yet if you look at Wikipedia, you can see that there are literally hundreds of examples where the territory or territories of one state is fully or functionally within the territory of another, known as enclaves, exclaves, or variants of those. The largest example in the world (which is really a semi-enclave) is Alaska, only accessible to the rest of the US via land through Canada.

We mentioned one example in passing, that of the border between the Netherlands and Belgium at Baarle-Hertog:

This is the possibly the most complicated one but there are a huge number of others. Up until 2015, the border between India and Bangladesh had not only over a hundred enclaves but enclaves within enclaves (and one parcel of land that was a piece of India within Bangladesh, within India, within Bangladesh.)

There are even some small Canadian land parcels that are only accessible through the United States.

If there are hundreds of examples of such arrangements working perfectly well, then why is there such an uproar over a pathway to peace that would do the same for Palestine?

The answer is in the question. The Israel-haters have no desire for peace.

It is no coincidence that the Trump plan is named "peace to prosperity." Unlike every single previous plan, this is the first one that is focused on peace, not land.

If there is real peace, then no one would care about the enclaves of Palestinian lands in Israel and Israeli lands within Palestine (i.e., "settlements.")

The ideal, which the plan envisions, is that Israel and Palestine would be like Belgium and the Netherlands - two partners in peace. Any Arab can visit the Temple Mount, any Jew can visit the synagogues in Jericho and Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, without the need of heavily armed security protecting the visitors.

When there is real peace, the borders are not important.

This is the fundamental reason why Israel supports the plan and the Palestinians are so dead-set against it. Only Israel has ever desired real peace, just as Israel has thirsted for real peace with Jordan and Egypt and the rest of the Arab world.

The "pro-Palestinian" activists, although many belong to groups with "peace" in their names, do not want peace with Israel. They want Israel to be destroyed one way or another, and they - as well as Palestinian leaders - look at an independent Palestine as a weapon to end Israel, not as a goal in itself.

If Palestinians wanted a state, they would have had one in 2000, 2001 and 2008. If they wanted peace, they could have a state tomorrow.

It has been 26 years since Oslo, but in all that time no Palestinian school - not one - has taught students that they should thirst for peace with Israel. On the contrary, Israel is always the enemy and it must one day be reclaimed as "Palestine."

For some reason, the world thinks that the existence of two states would automatically bring peace. Everyone has it backwards. It is peace that would bring two states, because Israel would happily give the responsibility of governance to a Palestinian state that was friendly, where the borders are as open as those between EU states.

The Trump plan is a true peace plan - a vision of how peace and prosperity can bring about a political solution. The reason it is unrealistic is because Palestinians are taught hate from birth.

And that is the real obstacle to peace.

The world seems to have forgotten that peace is the goal.

(h/t Ian)

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Norway falsely says that evicting TIPH from Hebron may violate Oslo

From Reuters:

OSLO (Reuters) - Israel’s decision to eject observers in Hebron may be a breach of the implementation of the Oslo accords, the Norwegian foreign minister said on Tuesday.

“The one-sided Israeli decision can mean that the implementation of an important part of the Oslo accords is discontinued,” Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide said in a statement to Reuters.

while Oslo II does call for the re-establishment of TIPH (after the first one was created in the wake of the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre) the mandate for the current TIPH, #3, is not from Oslo but from a separate 1997 agreement between Israel and the PLO.

The last paragraph of that agreement says:

The TIPH may commence its operation immediately upon the approval of its modalities of operation by the two sides, and shall continue to function for a period of three months renewable for an additional period of three months unless otherwise agreed between the two sides. With the consent of the two sides, the TIPH may extend the period or change the scope of its operation, as agreed.

So Israel (and the PLO) always had the right to not renew the agreement.

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Everything you need to know about the Israeli-Arab conflict you can learn from Joseph's Tomb

Overnight, Joseph's Tomb in Shechem (Nablus) was set on fire by a mob of Arabs.

Whether or not it is historically the real tomb of Joseph, it is certainly a major Jewish shrine.

It is the most important Jewish holy place under Palestinian rule. There are some important synagogues and sites but none associated with a Biblical figure that I am aware of.

Under every agreement between Jews and Arabs, holy places were to be protected and free access allowed. Lists of holy sites for all religions were compiled by the UN. But Jewish holy sites under Arab rule have never been protected by Arabs; Jordan destroyed dozens of synagogues and did not allow Jews to enter the Old City. Not Israelis - Jews.

Joseph's Tomb is the exception that proves the rule. It is the only Jewish shrine that Israeli Jews have been allowed to access under Arab rule, but that access was severely restricted - only once a month, in the middle of the night, with the IDF protecting the worshipers from Arabs that riot every single time.

If the world community had its way and Israel would withdraw to the Green Line, the situation at other Jewish holy sites like Rachel's Tomb and the Tomb of the Patriarchs would be like that has been at Joseph's Tomb at best. Access would be very limited, accompanied by riots at the very idea of Jews entering "Muslim holy sites."

Yes, by a massive coincidence, every Jewish holy site is also an Muslim holy site. It just so happens that Mohammed chose the Western wall of the Jewish Temple to tether his flying donkey, thereby superseding Jewish rights. The Cave of the Patriarchs was converted to the Ibrahimi Mosque. Rachel's Tomb very recently became a venerable old Muslim mosque called the Bilal Bin Rabbah mosque. Samuel's Tomb is also claimed by Muslims as their own.

Joseph's Tomb is no different. While Muslims generally associated it with the biblical Joseph, more recently mny have claimed that it is the tomb of an altogether different person, a sheikh coincidentally named Yusuf.

Yet if it was really a Muslim holy site, why are Muslims setting it on fire?

A similar situation happened several months ago, when Muslims set fire on the southern wall of the Temple Mount, in an attempt to draw Israeli forces there. Besides that, they have used the Al Aqsa Mosque as a weapons depot, they practice soccer and volleyball and parkour on the supposedly sacred grounds (I've never seen them do that at the Kaaba in Mecca.)

If these sites were really holy, they would be venerated, not desecrated.

Either they are not really holy sites, or the idea of burning a Jewish holy place is far more important than the holiness they supposedly have for Muslims.

The overnight fire has, as of this writing, received next to no international coverage. Suspected arson of Muslim and Christian holy sites by Jews is reported widely and is used as evidence that all Jews or "settlers" are bigots, but this fire that was openly set by a crowd of dozens of men will not be used to demonize all Arabs - even though the number of Arabs who support free Jewish access to their holy sites is far lower than the corresponding number of Jews supporting Muslim access to their own holy places. Equal rights to Jews is simply not a remote possibility for Palestinians.

Lately, the State Department has been talking about the importance of maintaining the "status quo" at religious sites. Yet no one has ever heard anyone accuse Arabs of violating the status quo. Burning a religious site and heavily damaging it is a very serious violation of the status quo. While I expect that the State Department will perfunctorily condemn this act, it will not use that magic phrase when discussing this incident.

From early accounts of the fire, the PA put it out and is not suspected of setting it. However, clearly there was little protection of the building. Nevertheless, when mainstream media report this incident on page 17, they will take pains to say that this was only an angry crowd of youths, but not representative of Palestinians in general. Jews who are suspected of violent acts, on the other hand, are generalized to all Israelis or- more often- "settlers" even if they don't live across the Green Line.

Moreover, Arabs love to claim that Jews routinely desecrate holy places by merely walking around. Will any media accurately report this as a desecration?

Similarly, Arabs say that they are convinced that Jews want to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque, even though they could do it whenever they want. But this is not the first time that Joseph's Tomb has been set on fire in reality. The psychological projection is perfect, but no one reports it.

Finally, there will be inevitably calls from supposedly liberal Westerners and left-wing Israelis to ban Jews from Joseph's Tomb altogether, just as they are now calling on Jews to stop visiting the Temple Mount. The thinking is that if Muslims act so extremely as to set fires or stab people using their bogus claims on their bogus holy sites as their excuses, then it is better to remove the excuse. In these cases, freedom of religion for Jews can always be vetoed by Arab violence and threats.

Joseph's Tomb teaches a lot about the conflict. It is too bad that most people refuse to learn.

No one seems to complain when Egypt acts like Israel

From Ma'an:

Egypt plans to impose a 500-meter buffer zone along its border with the Gaza Strip, a senior Egyptian military official said Sunday.

Egyptian residents living in Saladin, al-Barahmeh, Canada, Brazil, al-Sarsouriya and other neighborhoods close to the Gaza border have received eviction notices.

Homeowners who received eviction orders demonstrated against the decision and burned tires in protest.

Army bulldozers have also uprooted trees in the border area.

The army has demolished 13 homes in the al-Sarsouriya neighborhood where tunnel entrances were found.

An Egyptian military official told Ma'an that most cross-border tunnels with entrances in fields or open areas had been destroyed in a security campaign to stop smuggling. He said it was more difficult to locate tunnels that opened into houses.

This was the same kind of clearing operation that Israel was doing on its side of the Gaza border - and which was permitted by Oslo - when Rachel Corrie was killed.

The article continues:

Egypt's army spokesman Ahmad Mohammad said that forces have destroyed 343 smuggling tunnels. He said the Egyptian military has also prohibited fishing near the border to prevent smuggling via the sea.

Hamas said Friday that two Palestinian fishermen were wounded and five others arrested by the Egyptian navy off the coast of the Gaza Strip.

"Some Egyptian navy ships fired in the direction of Palestinian fishing boats near the Egyptian border off the coast of Rafah at dawn on Friday," the Hamas government's press agency reported.

"Two fishermen were wounded and five others arrested," said Hamas.

They were both taken to the hospital in Rafah, medical sources said, adding that their lives were not in danger.

Hamas described the incident as an "unjustified act," and called for those "detained to be freed."

Isn't it amazing that when Israel defends itself from Hamas terror and smuggling of weapons, it is violating the human rights of 1.6 million Gazans - but when Egypt does the exact same thing, it is simply defending itself? Indeed, Egypt goes beyond what Israel does (by not allowing people and goods to cross into Gaza via the official crossings) and there is near total silence from the so-called "pro-Palestinian" activists.

Peter Beinart's nonsensical NYT op-ed

Peter Beinart in the New York Times has another incredibly misleading article about - well, you know what its about.

TO believe in a democratic Jewish state today is to be caught between the jaws of a pincer.

On the one hand, the Israeli government is erasing the “green line” that separates Israel proper from the West Bank. In 1980, roughly 12,000 Jews lived in the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem). Today, government subsidies have helped swell that number to more than 300,000. Indeed, many Israeli maps and textbooks no longer show the green line at all.

In 2010, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called the settlement of Ariel, which stretches deep into the West Bank, “the heart of our country.” Through its pro-settler policies, Israel is forging one political entity between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — an entity of dubious democratic legitimacy, given that millions of West Bank Palestinians are barred from citizenship and the right to vote in the state that controls their lives.

For Beinart's thesis to be correct, you must believe that the Palestinian Authority and the PLO has no political legitimacy, or power.

Yet it is recognized as a full state by 129 nations; its citizens vote (at least in theory) to elect their leaders, it has autonomy, a territory that all accept as controlled by its own security forces, a court system, an Olympic team, and its own passports. According to at least one distinguished legal scholar, it is considered a full state under international law. The World Bank is putting out reports about how ready the territories are for statehood. The entire Oslo process - that Israel still supports - was designed to give full self-determination to Palestinian Arabs in the territories, and (more recently) statehood. For Beinart to turn around and state that all of these don't exist, and that for some reason the territories are (as he tries to coin the term) "nondemocratic Israel," is nonsense. Israel has no intention of integrating Ramallah or Jericho into Israel. And as recently as January, Israel tried to hold negotiations with the PLO, and the other side refused.

Beinart, in his attempt to sound an alarm for Israeli democracy, chooses quite deliberately to ignore everything that happened to the Palestinian Arabs since 1994.

It is Palestinian Arab intransigence, not Israeli settlements, that has stopped a Palestinian Arab state. Beinart's willingness to blame only one side shows that he is not being as evenhanded and "pro-Israel" as he tirelessly claims to be.

But, you might counter, what about Area C? Israel does indeed control all aspects of the lives of Arabs who live there, and while they vote in PA elections, they do not have much say in their own political affairs. Doesn't Israel's presence there endanger Israeli democracy?

The number of Palestinian Arabs in Area C is about 150,000 (about 2.5% of all Palestinian Arabs.) Which means that the percentage of people living under Israeli sovereignty who do not have political rights is, today, about 1.9%.

By way of contrast, the percentage of people living in US territories who are not represented in Congress and who cannot vote in presidential elections - those in Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands and elsewhere - is about 1.3%.

So is Israel's control of Area C a danger to Israeli democracy? Not unless you think that US territories endanger US democracy too. The idea is ridiculous. It is an issue, it is not a death-blow to democracy.

To go further, if Israel would decide to annex Area C, wouldn't that solve all the problems? No demographic issue, giving the Arabs there full citizenship - and Beinart's argument is down the drain.

Somehow, I don't think that Beinart would support that solution, or even a modified version of that solution. Because he has bought into the Palestinian Arab narrative that the artificially constructed 1949 armistice lines - which were not considered international borders before 1967 and were always meant to be modified in a final peace agreement between Israel and the Arab world - are somehow special, and that no peace can possibly result from a change in those lines that would include, say, Ariel. (He sort of says that he agrees that some of the border settlements would end up in Israel, and then tells those "settlers" to throw the more "ideological" settlers under the bus. Yay for Jewish unity!)

But there is no proof that this is true. Is is simply an assertion on the part of Palestinian Arabs, who repeat it over and over again so much that people like Peter Beinart believe it. And, whether they realize it or not, "pro-Israel Jews" like Beinart - by writing op-eds that accept this false premise - end up increasing Palestinian intransigence.

They are not helping peace at all.

What does Beinart think about the Clinton parameters, or the Olmert offer? They were clearly sufficient to demolish all of his arguments about a threat to Israeli democracy. Yet instead of slamming the PLO for its rejection of those peace plans, he continues insistence on the 1967 lines. Beinart buys into the Palestinian Arab narrative. Instead of telling them that they should compromise and bring a lasting peace, he is telling them implicitly that they should buckle down and wait for American Jews like himself to pressure Israel to accept all of their demands.

The eventual border between Israel and a Palestinian Arab state must be negotiated. Moving it a bit to the east does not endanger Israeli democracy nor does it endanger Palestinian statehood. It doesn't even endanger Palestinian Arab contiguity, as any glance at a map would prove. This is self-evident, but repeated Palestinian Arab assertions that it is not "acceptable" are swallowed whole by a lot of otherwise smart people who believe they are pro-Israel.

I'm sorry, but this is not a pro-Israel argument, and op-eds like this do not bring peace any closer. Quite the contrary.

(h/t Avi for some ideas)