Showing posts with label Palestinian Authority. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Palestinian Authority. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 27, 2023



Yesterday, Saudi diplomat Nayef al-Sudairi arrived in Ramallah as the Saudi envoy to the Palestinian Authority.

He did all the things skittish Palestinians want to see as they get increasingly nervous about a Saudi-Israel normalization deal that leaves them behind.

The position is called "ambassador" implying that Palestine is a real country.

Al-Sudairi visited Yasir Arafat's grave and placed a wreath on his tomb. He also visited the Yasir Arafat Museum.

He told Abbas at the official ceremony "God willing, this visit will be the beginning of strengthening more relations in all fields.” 

He tweeted, "From the beloved state of #Palestine #Land_of_Canaan, the most beautiful greetings, coupled with the love of my Lord #the_Custodian_of_the_Two_Holy_Mosques and His Highness Sir #the_Crown_Prince."

But all of this pomp and ceremony is geared towards what Palestinians love the most: symbolism. They crave relevance and respect and often confuse those with actual gains. 

For over a decade now, Palestinians have done nothing to advance peace or to make the lives of their people any better, but they celebrate anything that gives them apparent legitimacy. The official Wafa news agency is filled with press releases of Abbas sending or receiving congratulatory messages with real countries. 

The Saudis have turned into world class politicians. They have skillfully managed relations with both China and the US, and they are doing the same between Iran and Israel. They are working hard to include Israel into their vision of an integrated Middle East that they lead. Their US ambassador Princess Reema bint Bandar Al Saud described their vision last July:
Her country envisions Israel belonging to an “integrated Middle East”. 

In line with Saudi Vision 2030, the diplomat said that Riyadh desires a “thriving Israel” and a “thriving Palestine”, adding that “Vision 2030 talks about a unified, integrated, thriving Middle East, and last I checked Israel was there…we want a thriving Red Sea economy”.

Princess Reema stressed that Saudi Arabia’s focus is on integration, not normalisation, with Israel. “We don’t say normalisation, we talk about an integrated Middle East, unified [as] a bloc like Europe, where we all have sovereign rights and sovereign states, but we have a shared and common interest,” asserted the Saudi ambassador.

“So that’s not normalisation. Normalisation is you’re sitting there, and I’m sitting here, and we kind of coexist, but separately. Integration means our people collaborate, our businesses collaborate, and our youth thrive.”
The Saudis are smartly offering intangibles to Israel, the US and Palestinians to gain in exchange real physical benefits - a civilian nuclear program that could become the basis of a military nuclear program if Iran builds a nuclear weapon, a mutual defense pact with the US, and access to top-level military and intelligence technology. 

The pretense of embracing Palestinian nationhood is mostly lip service so the Palestinians don't try to blow up normalization with Israel. Normalization with Israel is a carrot to get the US to provide the green light for the arms and civilian nuclear program (which also requires Israel's approval.) Acting warmly with China and Iran gives incentive for the US and Israel to not want to be left behind. And ultimately, Saudi Arabia wants a Middle East where it is the leader and major beneficiary of all commercial, political and even religious decisions. 

Israel has to think long and hard about the costs and benefits of normalization. It shouldn't only look at the intangibles, because many of the tangible benefits of peace are already there. Israel is already meeting with Saudis, it is probably already sharing intelligence with Saudis, it is probably already trading with Saudis via the UAE. Saudi Arabia won't veto the proposed rail line that would speed up trade with Europe via Haifa if a full peace deal is not signed. 

In may ways, Israel's vision of the Middle East dovetails with Saudi Arabia's. It just shouldn't be seduced by symbolism, the way the Saudis are doing with the Palestinians. 





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Wednesday, September 20, 2023



From Xinhua:
At least 1,100 Palestinian kidney patients are facing an interruption of life-saving treatment due to a lack of medicines and medical equipment in the coastal enclave, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said on Wednesday.

They include 38 children who are in danger of being denied access to dialysis sessions, Ashraf Abu Mahdi, director of the pharmacy department in the Health Ministry, said in a press conference held in Gaza.

"Patients with kidney failure are forced to live in difficult health conditions as medical supplies will be used up soon," Abu Mahdi added.

Abu Mahdi indicated that stores run by the ministry in Gaza are short of related medical supplies, and the hospitals in Gaza provide 13,000 dialysis sessions for patients per month.

He accused Israel of "banning the transport and shipment of medical supplies to the hospitals of the coastal enclave, putting the lives of thousands of kidney patients at risk."
Israel has never blocked the supplies of medicines or consumable medical supplies to Gaza. Any previous shortages were blamed on the Palestinian Authority, not Israel. 

And interestingly, when Gaza health authorities first raised this alarm on Saturday, they didn't blame Israel either:
The Director of the Hospital Pharmacy Department at the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, Alaa Helles, appealed to all concerned authorities “to assume their responsibilities to save the lives of kidney failure patients due to the acute shortage of the necessary medical supplies needed for dialysis sessions, which poses a threat to the lives of 1,100 kidney failure patients, including 38 children.”

Helles called on the relevant authorities to “take urgent action to provide medical consumables for the needs of kidney failure patients, which means continuing service to them and preserving their lives.”
Not a word about Israel, just "authorities." Which is not a word used to refer to Israel. 

This is not adding up.

Perhaps a hint to what is really going on can be seen in this June article at ReliefWeb:

In response to the difficult health situation and a looming dialysis services halt in Gaza, Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) has provided the hospitals of Palestine’s Ministry of Health (MOH) in Gaza with a total of 12 dialysis machines and accessories, as well as life-saving medicines and medical consumables for the patients with kidney failure.

Dr. Akram Nassar, head of QRCS’s office in Gaza, said the project of “providing dialysis departments with equipment and medicines in Gaza” was part of QRCS’s unwavering support to the health sector of Gaza. Its aim is to ensure continuing dialysis services, as well as mitigate the impact of depleted medical equipment and supplies for 1,022 patients with kidney failure.

Since 2018, QRCS has been working extensively on dialysis services in Gaza, with three projects to procure 33 dialysis machines, medications, and consumables to MOH hospitals, totaling approximately QR 4.2 million in value.

We learned this week that Qatar was reducing its aid to Gaza. Could it be that they also stopped paying for these dialysis supplies and Gaza has no one else to pay for them?

Given that it appears that Hamas is trying to pressure Israel to pressure Qatar in turn to resume payments, this sounds like it is another means by Hamas - which runs the Gaza health ministry - to make Israel look like the reason for the shortages - and, as we see, the world media won't fact-check any accusations against Israel. 


 



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Monday, September 04, 2023



It's happening again:

A delegation of top American officials is slated to travel to Riyadh this week to meet with Saudi counterparts in order to discuss a potential normalization agreement between the Gulf kingdom and Israel, a US official and a Palestinian official told The Times of Israel on Sunday.

The visit by White House Middle East czar Brett McGurk and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf will come just over a month after US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan visited Saudi Arabia with the same objective, pointing to Washington’s continued determination to broker an elusive deal. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also visited Riyadh on the same mission in June.

McGurk and Leaf’s visit will overlap with that of a Palestinian delegation led by Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee secretary-general Hussein al-Sheikh, who will be in Riyadh to discuss what Ramallah is hoping to obtain from a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal, the two officials said.
So the US is speaking to Saudi Arabia about conditions on Israel to accept a normalization deal.

The US is speaking to Palestinians about conditions on Israel to accept a normalization deal.

The Palestinians are speaking to the Saudis about conditions on Israel to accept a normalization deal.

Everyone is speaking to each other - about Israel, but not to Israel. 

Are there backchannels from Israel to Saudi Arabia? Probably. Is the Israeli government in charge of these backchannels? 

We have no idea. 

But we do know that the Biden administration and the Palestinians are not keen to negotiate with Netanyahu, so my guess is that some Israeli peacenik organization is leading the backchannel negotiations with the intent to manipulate the Israeli government, not to appease it, about what strings would be attached to the deal.

Maybe I'm being a bit too sensitive after reading the Gidi Grinstein book I reviewed on Sunday and how a backchannel was used by the Israeli Left, the US and Palestinians to collude to bring down Netanyahu in his first term, but the impression I am getting is that a purpose of these negotiations may include finding a way to make the current coalition government fall, something that would being a sigh of relief to the Americans, the Palestinians and not a small number of Israelis. 

Holding these meetings in Saudi Arabia is a convenient way to exclude Israeli officials who cannot officially travel to the kingdom. But all other negotiations between Israel and its erstwhile peace partners took place in neutral territory - Europe or the US. 

Excluding Israel from these talks seems to be a way to marginalize the Jewish state and put it on its back foot when the offer is revealed - a deal that, it appears, will be all but imposed on Israel rather than one that Israel has a say in. If Israel refuses an offer backed by the US, Saudis and tacitly Palestinians it will look like an intransigent player who only pretends to want peace. If Israel accepts a bad deal, the government probably will fall. 

It feels like deja vu.,

Most Israelis and Zionists would love to see Saudi normalization, myself included. Every new revelation makes me wonder if the price would be too high - especially when the major benefits of peace are already effectively there



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Wednesday, August 30, 2023




After the clashed between Palestinain Authority and terrorist forces in Tulkarm this morning, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades - which are associate with Fatah - issued what appears to be an unprecedented, direct challenge to their supposed leader, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the PA who is the head of the Fatah party.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of the Fatah movement, ...said in a statement published on its Telegram channel: 

"Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades calls on the leaders of the Fatah movement and the brigades in the regions, cities and villages to announce clearly and explicitly their rejection of the treacherous practices against our heroes, to reactivate all military groups, and to hold accountable those involved in betraying the commandments of our martyrs and prisoners.

"We have always called on the authority to stop the arresting and pursuing the resistance fighters, and we affirmed our clear commitment not to deviate from the compass and not to pay attention to the treacherous acts of some of the leaders of the authority, and we called for reform. 

"Any project that shackles the resistance is treachery. Our project is confrontation with the occupation in a long-term manner until it is defeated."

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades issued a decision in its statement that it prevents the entry of the authority and its devices into the Tulkarm camp, "and that the answer will be bullets, and the entry of the devices will be dealt with as we deal with the occupation." 

They are effectively annexing the Tulkarm camp from the Palestinian Authority and barring entry of the PA security forces.

That is a direct and real challenge to the PA - from Fatah itself. 

Your move, Abbas. 



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This morning, the Palestinian Authority clashed with terror groups in Tulkarm, leaving one person dead.

The specifics are disputed depending on whether one is reading  PA-affiliated or terror-affiliated media.


The Political Commissioner General and the official spokesperson for the security establishment, Major General Talal Dweikat, said today, Wednesday, that the security services removed dangerous materials and barriers from inside the Tulkarem camp.

Dweikat added, in a telephone conversation with WAFA, that the Palestinian security forces had received several complaints from institutions and individuals in Tulkarm governorate, about the presence of dangerous materials and barriers in front of children's schools and on the roads inside the Tulkarm camp. Accordingly, the security services moved and removed them, to prevent any risks that might arise. about its existence.

He pointed out that after the security force finished its mission, some armed youths opened fire in front of the governorate building, which necessitated the intervention of the security forces to take the necessary measures and measures to control the security situation and prevent any manifestations that threaten civil peace in Tulkarm governorate.

"Dangerous materials" appears to be a euphemism for explosives - IEDs that terrorists bury in the road, that are meant to slow down Israeli forces when they conduct arrests and raids. We already know that these IEDs are a danger to children - even the UN reluctantly admits this. (Update: Other media confirm explosives near schools.)

 It appears that the PA, perhaps for the first time and ahead of the beginning of the school year, decided that IEDs and iron barriers in front of schools is already a step too far when it puts children at risk. 

And the terrorists were not happy about their hard work of risking the lives of their neighbors to be able to possibly damage an Israeli vehicle being removed, so they naturally started shooting at the PA forces.

Hamas media says that the PA used bulldozers to remove the barricades. 

One person died - the accounts differ as of this writing but it appears that the gunmen killed an innocent bystander while shooting at the PA forces. Terror media says the PA killed the man. 

.This video shows some of the tear gas, and apparently one older man - a father of a "martyr" so he may have been one of the protesters - was injured.

Will "human rights groups" side with the terrorists in this case? The PA did what Israel does - employed bulldozers and shot tear gas to quell a violent demonstration, and possibly used live fire. NGOs usually adopt the narrative that the PA is almost as bloodthirsty as the IDF.

On the other hand it is hard for them to say that the PA should allow IEDs and barricades to be placed in the middle of public areas and near schools. Amnesty and HRW have never, to my knowledge, berated the local armed groups for putting their own people at risk, and they are loathe to start a new complicating narrative that might indirectly exonerate the IDF for its own similar raids. 

So chances are that they will remain silent, and the dead Palestinian bystander will not be mentioned at all. 




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Monday, August 14, 2023


For years, I have been following the career of Ghassan Daghlas, a man who has been paid by the Palestinian Authority to make up lies about alleged crimes of Israelis in Judea and Samaria.

Over at least the last dozen years, Daghlas has been quoted hundreds of times in the media as he spun lurid tales of Jews attacking Arabs, virtually always without even a photo to back up his stories

Just two months ago, Daghlas claimed that there were 310 separate instances of Jews attacking Palestinians in the territories - in a single day.   Even though these lies are so translarent, he is still quoted as a reliable official by Western media, even a recently as August 4 by AP.

All his years of deceit have now paid off. 


I cannot find any evidence that Daghlas has a shred of experience going any sort of governing or as a manager. Every biography I can find only mentions his role as a monitor of "settlers" in the northern west Bank, nothing else. 

It is clear that Abbas wanted to tighten his grip on local governments as well, after already taking over the executive, legislative and judicial systems of the Palestinian Authority, not to mention heading the PLO that the PA reports to.

Daghlas, an incompetent administrator, will do whatever Mahmoud Abbas tells him to do. 

Naturally, Daghlas says his top priority is "confronting the attacks of settlers and the occupation army." Not developing the economy, or uprooting corruption, or social programs for the needy - but continuing his career of blaming everything on the Jews. 






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Wednesday, August 02, 2023

This week, it was announced that a fourth generator for the Gaza power plant was going online thanks to the help of Qatar, which is providing the fuel for the facility for the first month. 

The head of the Public Relations and Media Department of the Qatari Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza said that Palestinian Authority prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, delivered a "strongly worded" letter to the State of Qatar in which he expressed the PA's dissatisfaction with Qatar. Shtayyeh was said to complain that this move makes the PA look irrelevant in Gaza since they were bypassed in all decision making.

Shtayyeh's response to the reports was that "the news is incorrect." But that is not the same as denying that he wrote a letter of complaint.

Who is telling the truth? The Qatari committee has little reason to issue a press release for a fake letter. It would make a lot of sense that the PA would complain about being marginalized.

Which means that the PA would rather Gazans have electricity shortages than lose face.

Which is also consistent with how they have always acted.





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Monday, July 31, 2023



From Naharnet on Sunday:

Clashes renewed Sunday in the Ain al-Helweh Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon between the secular Fatah Movement and hardline Islamist groups.

TV networks said the fighting resumed after a senior Fatah commander was killed in an ambush.

An Islamist had been killed and six people including children had been injured in overnight clashes in the camp.

Key Sidon highways were closed to traffic on Sunday as stray bullets and shells landed in various areas of the major southern Lebanese city.

Clashes between rival groups are common in Ain al-Helweh, which is home to more than 54,000 registered Palestinian refugees who have been joined in recent years by thousands of Palestinians fleeing the conflict in Syria.

By long-standing convention, the Lebanese Army does not enter Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, leaving the factions themselves to handle security.

That has created lawless areas in many camps, and Ain al-Helweh has gained notoriety as a refuge for extremists and fugitives.

The Palestinian Authority and its sycophants claim that they would take care of law and order, but Israel's raids of Palestinian areas makes the PA security forces look weak and they lose respect of the populace, which is what cause many armed militias to arrive on the scene to fill the vacuum. If only Israel would leave Area A alone, the claim goes, the Palestinian Authority would be able to enforce law and order.

Ain el-Hilweh is a social experiment that proves this thesis false.

Lebanese troops do not enter. All security is provided by Palestinians. This is the situation that Palestinians want to see in PA-controlled areas - no outsiders, and security provided exclusively by Palestinians.

The result? They cannot govern themselves effectively. They cannot live in peace with each other. They regularly endanger their own people. Two UNRWA schools were damaged and children have been injured in the fighting;UNRWA is suspending all services and operations so the people will suffer even more.

This is how Palestinians treat each other without any outside interference. 

And they cannot use the excuse of being in dire straits - which they are - because that should make a people want to work together even more, not use deadly force on each other. 

If you want to see what a Palestinian state would look like, look at Ain el-Hilweh.  





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Tuesday, July 25, 2023




The official spokesman for Mahmoud Abbas, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, said today that the "assassination" of "three young men"  by the IDF near the gate of Mount Gerizim in Nablus is a "war crime", and it is a continuation of the policy of "collective punishment" to which our Palestinian people are subjected.

The "victims" were terrorists who opened fire on the Israeli troops and were killed in response. 

The "young men" were 32, 33 and 43 years old.

While the Palestinian Authority in English says that they were innocent victims of Israeli aggression, Hamas says it is proud of "this group of the al-Qassam Brigades' mujahideen, who set out with all their faith and certainty to confront this criminal enemy."

There is no universe where soldiers killing those who fire at them first are war criminals - except in Palestinian fantasy land. 

Unfortunately, fantasies are often treated as reality when people want them to be true.





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Sunday, July 23, 2023

During May and June, Palestinian high school students were studying hard to pass their matriculation exams. When families receive positive results, as they did last week, there are huge celebrations throughout the territories.

The study material for the matriculation exams comes from the Palestinian Authority. And according to the IMAPCT-SE NGO, they were filled with anti-Israel propaganda.


Study materials and questions on the matriculation exams administered by the Palestinian Authority incite to violence, glorify murderous terrorism and promote anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel, a report found. 

The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) released a review of Palestinian matriculation exams for June 2023 in Arabic, Islamic Education, geography, and history. 

The report's findings offer an ominous insight into an education system where school books are filled with dubious claims, outright falsifications and incitement to violence, both in the name of Palestinian nationalism and Islamist jihadism. 

In one example included in the report, a geography exam includes a “map of Palestine” that ignores the existence of Israel and charts the entire territory as being Palestine.

Throughout the books, Jewish people's historic links to Jerusalem are dismissed as “baseless claims,” “fairy tales,” “myths,” “illusions,” and “distorted narratives.”

Further troubling examples include an Islamic Education exam describing violent jihad as “the apex of Islam.” The chapter of the textbook on which students are tested also teaches that jihad is “one of the gates to achieving martyrdom,” describing the martyrs as "knights," while a poem in an Arabic language exam describes a Palestinian returning to his homeland with a “weapon in [his] hand.”
There is no new report on the IMPACT-SE website, so it sounds like the exam materials are pretty much the same as they were in 2019 when they looked at them.

I just did a quick look at a Palestinian Authority website that publishes these educational materials, and came across this worksheet on Zionism for the current year.

It teaches Palestinian students that:

The basic rule of the Jewish state is settlement.
Settlement means replacing one people with another people.
The Zionist settlements are distinguished from other settlements because it is based on the destruction of Palestinian society.
The Zionist philosophy is based on racism and the negation of the other.
The relationship of the Jews with other peoples is based on hostility and conflict.

This is official, state-sanctioned antisemitism. 

Islamic Jihad published a new picture of one of the students who passed the exam, but unfortunately was not alive to enjoy it.







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

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Monday, July 17, 2023



Early Monday morning, the Palestinian Authority arrested some major Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Brigades figures from the Jenin area. 

Also arrested were two students with ties to Hamas. 

This comes on the heels of their arresting several last week, and a number of others during Israel's last incursion into Jenin.

Two of those arrested on July 5 embarked on a hunger strike to protest their arrests. 

An Islamic Jihad spokesman condemned the arrests, saying, "The authority today must unleash the sons of the resistance and the Palestinian masses, to overthrow the policies of the Zionist enemy and confront them." 

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades also issued a statement, saying, "We resolutely and categorically reject the arrests carried out by the security services after midnight."

While the PA is publicly taking a strong pro-terror line, it appears to be cooperating with Israeli security as it had in the past, despite denials. 

It is unclear is this is because the PA is finally recognizing that if it allows other militias to operate freely, then it has lost what little influence it has, or if there is serious pressure being given to it from Israel, the US or Gulf countries.

The PA must also be thinking about the day after Mahmoud Abbas is gone. If they do not show some strength now, then Fatah infighting will certainly not determine the next West Bank leader - it will belong to Hamas or Islamic Jihad.




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Wednesday, July 12, 2023



The Palestinian Authority has been trying to walk a tightrope between publicly supporting terror to its people and quietly doing a small part to retake police control over the parts of the West Bank that have become fully subjugated to terror groups.

The local terror groups complained loudly after Israel's Jenin operation last week that the PA had reportedly intercepted terrorists en route to the camp to fight Israeli forces. 

Abbas was humiliated when one of his senior Fatah officials, Mahmoud Aloul, was expelled from Jenin while attending a funeral for some of the terrorists killed during the operation. 

Today, the PA arrested a member of Fatah's Al Aqsa Brigades, a 17 year old who was transporting bombs in his car in Nablus.

The "Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades - Youth for Revenge and Liberation" group called on the PA to release their member, stating, "We direct our words to the security personnel and whoever may be concerned, that what was seized is an honorable weapon, and it is on its way to our soldiers in the camp."

And they warned the PA, "Do not deviate from the proper direction, and do not be a helping hand for those who want to kill us and want to arrest us. Do not be like our enemies, we are one people, do not sow the fuse of sedition."

The statement concluded, "We still speak the language of dialogue, and we do not want to start to use methods that we do not want to reach."

Sources said that the PA police seized five homemade explosives, along with wires, a battery and switch for detonation inside the vehicle driven by a child.

Protesters against the arrest closed Al-Quds Street, adjacent to Balata refugee camp, with burning rubber tires.

At this point it is unclear how much of the PA's arrest spree is due to pressure from Israel, or pressure from the US and Arab countries, and how much is just because it does not want to lose what power it has left in the face of the proliferation of terror groups in the West Bank.



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Monday, July 10, 2023

On Sunday, I saw a tweeter quoting a 2019 Hanan Ashrawi tweet:


This is a ridiculous theory, so I responded:

Somehow, between 1921 and 1948, under full British control, Zionists managed to build a prosperous economy and effective governance.  

Palestinians have had since 1994 with more autonomy than Jews had.  And yet they blame Israel for their failures. 
As usual when I strike a nerve, I got a lot of angry responses , nearly all of which are the usual mindless anti-Israel drivel. But a few people made one reasonable point.

So I answered that point and elaborated on my initial tweet.

The only reasonable response to this has been that the Zionists had large amounts of capital from the Jewish diaspora.

This is true - and it proves my point. Jews didn't depend on anyone else to build their nation. They funded it themselves, they drained the swamps themselves, they built their government themselves, they built cities from scratch themselves, they built an economy themselves. They had no foreign aid, no NGOs giving advice, and the British didn't allow them to do a great deal.

Now let's look at Palestinians since 1994. 

They've received tens of billions of dollars - from the EU, from the Arab world, from the US. They have more NGOs advising them than anyone else on Earth does. They have an automatic UN majority for political support. They got the world to recognize their "state" before it exists. 

And yet they haven't built squat. Three decades later they are dysfunctional, corrupt, divided, and immature. All those billions were wasted instead of invested. Instead of working to build, they are spending all their political capital to fight Israel in international fora. 

The most honest Palestinian government comes from the Hamas terrorists. At least they don't pretend - they want Palestine to be a stage towards a pan-Islamic ummah. The PA tells the world it wants peace but it admires and financially supports terrorism. 

Neither Hamas nor the PA have shown the slightest interest in building a real independent nation - only the trappings of one. Neither have shown any interest in making the lives of their people better. Their goals are the same: blame everything on Israel and work to destroy it. 

Everyone knows all of this. But it is a convenient fiction for the West to pretend that the PA actually cares about its people and actually wants an independent state. The PA focus on "return" shows that its goals lie elsewhere. 

So, no, Israel isn't the reason the Palestinians have a dysfunctional and corrupt statelet.

The Jews built Israel despite the difficulties, the Palestinians avoid building a state despite the financial and political support of nearly the entire world. 

Adults take responsibility for their actions. Palestinians do not. Instead they blame all their problems on others.

Any objective observer can see that they are the ones who have architected their own problems by making poor decisions for decades and never abandoning Arafat's "stages" program to destroy Israel.

If the Palestinians were serious about peace and building a nation, they'd have no better partner than Israel. 

But leaders that responded to  a peace plan in 2001 with a terror spree that they remain proud of today are not leaders. 

They are antisemites.





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Sunday, July 09, 2023




The Times of Israel reported last week during the Jenin operation:

The Israel Defense Forces says troops located and destroyed at least 11 improvised explosive devices hidden along roads in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank.

Operatives of terror groups “are planting IEDs and bombs on the roads in the refugee camp and in the city, in a civilian environment. This poses a threat to the security forces who use the roads in counterterrorism activities and to innocent people who also use them,” the IDF says in a statement.

The military says that during the last few hours, dozens of combat engineering vehicles have been combing the streets for such IEDs.
This is confirmed by the Washington Post:
One long street was plowed like a farm furrow where Israeli bulldozers had intentionally detonated explosives embedded in the pavement.
Embedded explosives in the ground are pretty much the definition of landmines. The Jenin terrorists are burying landmines in their own town, where their own people could be killed.

If the mines can be triggered by a person, they are considered illegal under the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention.

It sure looks like many of these IEDs can indeed be triggered by someone stepping on them. Here is a relatively small one being detonated by the IDF.




I have yet to see a condemnation by any NGO or state about Palestinians putting their own people at risk of being blown up by these IEDs. 

Israel's clearing of the mines is considered a bigger crime than the mines themselves. 

Which tells you a lot.

UPDATE: The "State of Palestine" acceded to the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, which proves yet again that the only reason they signed these conventions was to be accepted as a state, but had no intention to actually do anything to adhere to the various conventions' rules. (h/t Ian)



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Wednesday, July 05, 2023



The Safa news agency reports that the Palestinian Authority arrested some would-be jihadists on their way to Jenin Tuesday to attack the IDF:

The Jenin Brigade of the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, said on Thursday that the arrest of a number of resistance fighters by the Palestinian Authority security services while they were on their way to repel the aggression on the city of Jenin and its camp was a "disgrace."

The battalion said in a statement, a copy of which was received by the Safa agency, that "it is heartbreaking that the fatal stab comes to us from the back, by our people, by the security services of the authority, which last Tuesday did an act that no fighter and defender of this land would accept."

The statement indicated that the Preventive Security Service arrested the resistance fighters Murad Malaisha and Muhammad Brahmin and assaulted them along with a number of resistance fighters who were on their way to support their brothers in the Jenin battalion.

The Jenin Battalion confirmed that the tension is still present with the continued arrest of Malaisha and Brahmin from the authority's apparatus.

The statement continued, "The political arrest of our mujahideen brothers and sons is a disgrace, and it is shameful that we engage in battles with the occupation and are stabbed in the back."

The Jenin Brigade called on the Fatah leadership and movement to stand up to their responsibility in curbing such actions, pursuing and arresting them.
If this is true, it sounds like the PA publicly says that it ended security cooperation with Israel but privately - perhaps at the behest of the US or UAE, or under threat from Israel - has been trying to do at least a minimum of its official security role. 

Many times, things are happening under the radar, and all we analysts can do it take best guesses based on parsing statements and trying to line them up with facts on the ground and news from opposing parties. 




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Monday, July 03, 2023

Today's raid by the IDF on terror targets in Jenin is revealing a huge terrorist infrastructure, with large arms caches and command and control centers, in the heart of the Jenin "refugee camp."

Why is there a "refugee camp" in Jenin? 

The city has been under Palestinian Authority control for nearly three decades. The residents live in "Palestine, so they aren't refugees or even the grandchildren of refugees. They live in the land they claim as their own, under Palestinian rule. There is no definition of "refugee" in the world that would call these people refugees. 

Yet they live, rent free, in a  cramped "refugee camp" and the world pays for their housing, as well as their schooling and their medical care - all services way beyond what real refugees receive.

One can see from a satellite image the clear outlines of the Jenin camp. The structures are much smaller than in the surrounding town and the roads, such as they are, are narrow.


In 2002, after the IDF went into Jenin and destroyed the terrorist infrastructure in fierce fighting with heavy casualties on both sides, the Israeli housing minister offered to rebuild the camp elsewhere where residents could have larger houses and wider roads - to live like normal people in their land.

The idea was vehemently rejected.  

One of the self-appointed leaders of the camp said that the Israeli offer to rebuild everything better was really a plot "to erase the camps from existence, because these camps as a political reality constitute living testaments to the Nakba of the Palestinian people." (source, page 128)

That's exactly it. The camps are considered an important symbol of "resistance," not a place where human beings actually live. When UNRWA wanted to rebuild the camps and widen the roads, the same self-appointed leaders again opposed the plan, because wider roads meant the IDF could more easily enter. UNRWA and the committee remained at an impasse for months before the actual camp residents got their own committee together and said they wanted the UNRWA plan. The residents committee head said:
If we left it to debate we would have needed another five years. We agreed with the UNRWA plan. The families I meet now are happier and they are happy with the roads. If the Israeli army uses the road once (a day), we use it 100 times a day.
This is the way things have been since 1948. Ordinary Palestinians are stuck with leaders who actively want to use them as "symbols" of  misery - by keeping them miserable. 

These leaders choose to keep hundreds of thousands of  people in "camps" - places that are ideal for terrorists to flourish, where the leaders can cry to the TV cameras about how Israel is bombing these densely populated areas and where they really, really hope that civilians die.

Real leaders would have demolished these camps decades ago and told UNRWA that their services are no longer needed because Palestinians are a proud people who take care of their own. Leaders whose main goal is the end of Israel would grasp any opportunity to make Israel look bad - and therefore they keep so many residents miserable in camps where terrorists build huge caches of explosives near children's bedrooms. 








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Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

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