Showing posts with label failed state. Show all posts
Showing posts with label failed state. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 11, 2023



The third Negev Forum met this week in Abu Dhabi.

The forum has participants from the United States, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco as well as Egypt.

The goal of the forum is to advance multilateral projects in the fields of health, regional security, education, water and food security, tourism and energy. It is not a peace summit - it is very focused on specific mutual interests to countries in the Middle East, to benefit all.

The US tried to get Palestinians to join the meeting. They refused. And Jordan said that they won't attend unless the Palestinians do.

Now, why won't the Palestinians attend? Certainly they could benefit from talks about health, water and energy. According to Arab News, the reason they refuse is "Palestinians view the forum as an attempt to sideline its key demands of independence and an end to the Israeli occupation."

But that is not what the forum is about. 

The only way the Palestinian refusal makes sense is if you understand the Palestinian mindset. 

They have joined lots of international forums - but, invariably, they use those platforms to attack Israel. Whether it is about the world's oceans, or climate, or women, or the disabled, the Palestinians enthusiastically join - and then the entire session grinds to a halt as a Palestinian representative uses his allotted time to bash Israel. 

To them, these conferences not a means to join the world community as an equal member. They aren't for information exchange. They aren't to work together to solve problems. To Palestinians, international foraare arenas of war, nothing more. 

But the Negev Forum accepts Israel as a permanent part of the Middle East. It isn't marginalized - it is a key player. And the Palestinians cannot stomach the idea that Israel itself is considered legitimate. 

Palestinians cannot hijack this conference. So boycotting, and shaming Jordan to do the same, it meant to somehow injure the conference altogether.

This has nothing to do with settlements, or human rights, or international law. The Palestinians refuse to attend a regional forum where they would benefit because it accepts Israel's existence - and Palestinian leaders still hope Israel will disappear.

Their childish behavior here is further proof that they have no interest in peace or becoming a responsible state. The entire purpose of the Palestinian national movement has always been the destruction of Israel. And they think that boycotting this event helps that goal in a tiny, tiny way.



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Wednesday, December 28, 2022

From Ian:

The European Union's deceit and the Israeli response
The EU insists that Israel should abide by the Oslo Accords, as it still believes that within this area, a Palestinian state should be established within the framework of a comprehensive peace agreement. At the same time, according to the leaked document, it tries to strip Israel of its rights per that same agreement.

So that’s where humanitarian law comes in; the very set of laws that are supposed to help the EU circumvent Israel’s authority in Area C. This means that the EU has found a way to fund construction in Area C without violating the Oslo Accords, or so we are tricked to believe. The claim is that the construction is meant for humanitarian ends and is not politically motivated. Yet the EU construction takes place in locations that are highly sensitive, precisely for the sole purpose of creating new facts on the ground and preparing the area for a Palestinian takeover without any final peace agreement.

Many times the political motivation is obvious, as the construction is conducted without permits and in such places where Israel has no choice but to demolish it, for example, a school adjacent to a dangerous highway or other construction in places where there are no facilities and thus are not considered habitable environments. The political motivation becomes even more obvious when the document explicitly states the EU’s plan to curb Israel’s archeological activities in order to minimize the Jewish connection to the land.

Moreover, the EU does not seem to consider building in Area A and Area B where all they would need is a permit from the Palestinian Authority. Apparently, in those areas, there is no need for humanitarian aid at all.

Needless to say, the news of the leaked document hit Israel really hard. Subsequently, a letter signed by 40 Knesset members was sent to EU leaders.

The letter, initiated by Likud MK Amichai Chikli, reminds the EU of Europe’s past when it used to taunt Jews to “go to Palestine,” and now, in essence, claims that Jews are foreigners in their own homeland.

The letter continues to state that the leaked document “completely ignores our people’s historical affinity to our homeland and completely ignores the status of the State of Israel in Area C.” Furthermore, the letter points out that no nation turns its back on its own heritage and reminds the EU that we have not forgotten our history.

Finally, the letter ends by calling upon the EU to immediately cease its illegal construction, halt the damage being caused to heritage sites and the nature in Judea and Samaria, and immediately desist from funding delegitimizing organizations that promote antisemitic propaganda, including Israeli organizations that serve EU interests.

The letter is, in fact, a fitting response to the leaked document and the reasons are twofold. For one, the EU has no jurisdiction in any of those areas and secondly, it has clearly misused humanitarian law and thus violated international law in broad daylight.

Now that the EU’s intentions are exposed, it should reconsider its positions, stop masking its political positions with laws and put its cards on the table for an honest discussion that is, in reality, a political and moral debate and not primarily about the law. They should do that before EU-Israel relations deteriorate any further.

As for Israel, it should invest more time and energy in defending its rights and preempt such initiatives, whether it comes from the EU, the United Nations or elsewhere.
Bezalel Smotrich (WSJ$): Israel’s New Government Isn’t What You’ve Heard
Our reforms are aimed at developing the area’s infrastructure, employment and economy for the benefit of all. This doesn’t entail changing the political or legal status of the area. If the Palestinian Authority decides to dedicate some of its time and energy to its citizens’ welfare rather than demonizing Jews and funding the murder of Israelis, it would find me a full partner in that endeavor.

Additionally, we seek to halt the execution of the Fayyad plan, a massive European Union-funded project to facilitate the Palestinian takeover of Area C, the one part of Judea and Samaria where Jews are currently permitted to live under the Oslo Accords. The authority is building housing, infrastructure and more in areas that are outside its jurisdiction to surround Jewish communities and other strategic locations in Area C in an attempt at de facto annexation. The EU contends its funding is purely humanitarian, but recent reporting has revealed this is not the case. This unrestrained usurpation poses mortal dangers to Israelis living there and risks significant damage to the natural environment and to historical sites. Among other measures, we will beef up enforcement of existing laws and agreements to stop this deliberate abuse.

Israel’s justice system also needs urgent reform to restore democratic balance, individual rights and public trust. In the U.S., elected politicians appoint federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, making the bench at least indirectly responsive to the people. In Israel, sitting Supreme Court justices have veto power over new appointments to the court.

Israel also lacks a written constitution, but in the 1990s the Supreme Court began striking down democratically enacted laws based on its own idea of what Israel’s constitution ought to be. This has created legal and economic uncertainty, precipitating a severe decline in the public’s trust in judicial and law-enforcement institutions. The Supreme Court ignores written law and, worse, invalidates government action even if it violates no law, but rather the court’s own notions of sound policy, or “reasonableness,” as it calls it. Moreover, the Israeli criminal-justice system also lacks basic procedural safeguards for defendants, such as the exclusionary rule, and there is no effective oversight on government prosecutors, who too often abuse their wide scope of authority.

Our emphasis on judicial reform is meant to bring Israel closer to the American political model with some limited checks to ensure the judicial system respects the law. We seek to appoint judges in Israel in a process similar to America’s; to define the attorney general’s scope of authority and relation to elected representatives in a manner similar to what’s set down in America; to develop effective oversight mechanisms for law enforcement to ensure they protect basic rights; and to restore the Knesset’s authority to define the fundamental values of the state and its emerging constitution.

All Americans should appreciate the wisdom and justice in these plans. They should shed their preconceptions and unite to support the resurgence of accountable government, prosperity, individual rights, and democracy in the Jewish homeland.
Why World Media Must Wait to Criticize New Israeli Government
Israel has a long legislative process. To become law, bills must be passed seven times, four in the plenum and three in committee. The controversial laws already passed by the new Knesset are – of course – fair game for criticism, but the rest will take their time.

Plenty of governments never get around to passing even their core goals. The outgoing government intended to pass legislation that could have limited Netanyahu from running again but never completed the process. Leaders of all its coalition parties were willing to make significant changes to the Western Wall prayer site, but for various reasons, they did not.

The previous coalition had an anti-LGBT party in Ra’am (United Arab List), which had four seats in a coalition of 61 that ended up taking unprecedented steps to help the LGBT community.

This coalition has an anti-LGBT party in Noam, which has one seat out of 64. It has Israel’s first gay Knesset speaker in Amir Ohana and a prime minister in Netanyahu who has repeatedly promised to prevent any harm to the community.

If the past two months of infighting inside Israel’s right-wing bloc are any indication, the new government will be less homogeneous than previously thought. It will likely have trouble passing bills that most of the parties in the coalition agree on, amid fights over credit and disputes over which party is more hawkish than another.

The new government has come to power with one clear mandate: To improve the security of Israeli citizens. This is a relatively uncontroversial goal, and its success would improve the lives of Jewish, Christian and Muslim Israelis as well as Palestinians.

According to official IDF figures, in the month prior to the election, there were 382 terror attacks in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Jerusalem alone. That number includes shootings, stabbings, explosives and Molotov cocktails.

There were three European countries where Far Right parties gained strength in recent elections. But in France, Italy and Sweden, there were nowhere near 382 terrorist attacks in the month prior to the election, so the rise of extremists there is arguably harder to justify.

But will those countries come under as much international scrutiny as Israel? Probably not.

To its credit, the Biden administration in the US has been careful to give the incoming Israeli government the benefit of the doubt until it takes steps it deems problematic and unacceptable.

The international media should consider following America’s lead.
Fatah's pro-violence logo


On January 1, Fatah will celebrate its 58th anniversary. 
Well, not really. It is the 58th anniversary "of the launch of the contemporary Palestinian revolution," meaning the anniversary of their first terror attack, That attack was meant to disrupt Israeli's access to water. It was a direct attack on civilian infrastructure, and those terror roots are an inherent part of Fatah, today.

It came up with a typically unwieldy slogan for the occasion: "Just as we dropped the deal of the century and the annexation project...we will defeat the neo-fascists."

Fatah is taking credit for Donald Trump's "Deal of the Century" not being successful. 

How did they accomplish this Herculean task? 

By saying "no."

The same way they "defeated" every other chance for peace and an end to conflict with Israel.

Their desire to keep the conflict going is something they are very proud of!

What happened after their latest rejection of any peace plan without a counter-offer? Bahrain and the UAE said, we've had enough of the Palestinians acting like spoiled babies, so we will normalize our own relations with Israel, ignoring their long standing demand that they hold veto power over our foreign policy.

But we want something in return - so they demanded that Israel rescind a partial annexation plan. The far-right extremist Netanyahu, wanting peace, agreed. 

So I guess, in a convoluted way, the Palestinians were responsible for the shelving of that plan! I somehow doubt this is what they intended, though. 

And how will they defeat the "neo fascists" of Israel's new government? Well, in a few years there will be new elections again, with different ministers, so then the Palestinians will claim that they "defeated" them.

The Palestinian leadership is incompetent and impotent, supporting terror to the last penny and unable to do anything remotely constructive.  But they want to pretend that they are in the center of everything.

For a long time, much of the West believed it. Now, even the most hardened Israel hater realizes that the Palestinian leaders have become irrelevant, which is the worst thing that can happen to you in an honor/shame society. 

Fatah still holds on to that pretense. 



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

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Sunday, December 25, 2022

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”:

Thursday, October 13, 2022




This video was featured on the Fatah Facebook page. It says, 

It shows a car being stoned by youths. The driver attempts to flee to save his life, and he ends up crashing the car and it falls into a ditch.


The video is captioned, "A settler entered Husan village in Bethlehem by mistake.✌️🇵🇸"

This isn't the Facebook page of some Palestinian teenager celebrating throwing rocks at cars. It is the official social media of the ruling political party of the Palestinians. 

There is real glee here from Mahmoud Abbas' party at kids terrorizing a presumed Jew because he or she is a Jew.

Anyone who thinks that Fatah can run a country has 25 years of counter-evidence - but all you really need to see is in how it promotes this video.





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Thursday, October 06, 2022

From Ian:

The Palestinian Authority cannot meet the most basic requirement for statehood
The supreme test for a stable, sustainable and legitimate state is a monopoly on the use of force within the territories it controls. In the case of the P.A., this territory is currently composed of Areas A and B of Judea and Samaria—constituting around 40% of the area. The P.A. does not have the capability or willingness to confront the armed factions in these areas, never mind an expanded area provided for a Palestinian state. Moreover, the P.A. does not control an inch of the Gaza Strip, which is under the control of the terrorist entity Hamas, which sometimes appears to hate the P.A. and its chief Mahmoud Abbas even more than the Jews.

According to Melanne Civic and Michael Miklaucic in their book Monopoly of Force, “While no state has an absolute monopoly of force, to be accountable for actions taken within its borders, a state must have at least a preponderance of force; it must be able to prevent hostile acts toward other states. This is a minimum assumption of effective sovereignty.” The belief that the P.A. would be capable of this minimal level of sovereignty is wishful thinking.

The current unrest in Judea and Samaria is a perfect example of the P.A.’s ineptitude. The cities of Jenin and Nablus in Area A and B are lawless spaces controlled by a toxic mixture of armed elements of Abbas’ Fatah Party, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, among others. If Israel were not doing the P.A.’s dirty work, these groups would not only attack citizens of the Jewish state but, within a short time, overthrow the P.A. itself.

According to Efraim Inbar, the president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, “To a significant extent, the P.A. is a failed state, defined by the lack of a monopoly on the use of force. … Abbas shied away from confronting the armed gangs and failed to centralize the security services. Indeed, the P.A. lost control of Gaza to Hamas and has continuous difficulties dismantling militias in the territory under its formal control.”

Ordinary Palestinian citizens are responding to this by arming themselves—a logical decision under the circumstances. As former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis said, “We need to recognize that in an imperfect world, we cannot blame a man for wanting to maintain his arms for the protection of his family, land and community when all around him is chaos, lawlessness and corruption, with little or no opportunity.” This is the environment created by an impotent P.A. The vacuum is being filled by terrorists, thugs and Islamist fanatics.

The willful delusion that the P.A. would have a monopoly of force in any proposed state would be laughable if it were not so dangerous. Indeed, the most likely outcome of the creation of a Palestinian state is a Hamas coup. One can support the two-state solution, but refusing to acknowledge that there is no entity capable of a monopoly of force in a Palestinian state—except perhaps for Hamas—is a danger to Israel’s existence and undermines American interests, which depend on a stable Israel. For the foreseeable future, the only realistic option is the status quo.
Jordan Is the Reason There Is No Palestinian State and Minorities Are Threatened
Clearly, the Jordanians have a poor record when it comes to safeguarding the rights of non-Muslims. Thus, it is quite hypocritical for the current Jordanian monarch to criticize Israel’s policies on religious freedom, especially since the Jewish state lifted the aforementioned discriminatory laws imposed on non-Muslim religious minorities once it assumed control over the West Bank and reunified Jerusalem.

Unfortunately, King Abdullah II’s hypocrisy is not limited to the matter of protecting religious freedom. The Hashemite ruler also used his speech at the General Assembly to call for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying that the Palestinians “cannot be denied the right to self-determination.” But who has been denying the Palestinians their right to self-determination? Not Israel, whose leaders have offered the Palestinians statehood on several occasions, only to be turned down and met with terrorist violence at the urging of the Palestinian leadership. In fact, if anyone has been standing in the way of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, it is King Abdullah II’s Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The Palestinians could have had a country of their own as far back as 1921, when the British literally handed the territory of their Mandate of Palestine east of the Jordan River to King Abdullah II’s Hashemite clan, instead of giving it to the Palestinian Arab population for which it was originally intended. Then, during the 1948 war, the Jordanians captured what they labeled the West Bank, including eastern Jerusalem and all its holy places. But did they end up giving this territory to the Palestinians so that they would have a country of their own? Nope. Instead, the Jordanians annexed the newly-conquered territory — an annexation that was not even recognized by the other Arab states.

The bottom line is that King Abdullah II and his Hashemite clan have stood in the way of Palestinian statehood, not Israel. The king’s diatribe about a two-state solution is as hypocritical as his argument that the Jewish state threatens the rights of Christians. Besides, without Israeli support, the Jordanian monarch would probably not have his kingdom, so I think it’s time he stopped biting the hand that feeds him.
David Singer: Lapid rejects Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution
The emergence of the Saudi Solution offered these reticent politicians a real choice – yet not one of them has had the intestinal fortitude finally – if belatedly and unrealistically – displayed by Lapid.

The Saudi Solution – in distinct contrast to the United Nations Solution – offers Israel the following concessions before negotiations are even commenced on implementing the proposal:
· -Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel only
· - No new State will be created between Israel and Jordan
· - The right of return by Palestinian Arabs to Israel will be abandoned
· -Jewish sovereignty in part of Judea and Samaria ('West Bank') will be recognised for the first time in 3000 years
· -Saudi Peace proposals made in 1981 and 2002 that were unacceptable to Israel will be superseded.

The universal silence by Israeli politicians on the Saudi Solution since its publication almost four months ago is shameful.

One cannot expect every Israeli politician to embrace the Saudi Solution, but then they should publicly state their opposition.

But is there not one Israeli politician – Jew or Arab – other than Lapid - prepared to express his own opinion on conducting negotiations to determine if agreement can be reached on the Saudi Solutions’ groundbreaking proposals?

In particular why have the leaders of sixteen of the major Israeli political parties contesting the elections – Netanyahu, Gantz, Sa’ar, Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, Deri, Litzman, Gafni, Shehadeh,Odeh, Tibi, Michaeli, Galon, Abbas, Shaked, Liberman and Hendel - refused to comment on the Saudi Solution since its publication?

Hopefully these leaders - like Lapid – will break their silence on the Saudi Solution well before November 1.

Leaders lead from the front – not cower and huddle silently together behind the voters whose votes they seek.

Friday, August 26, 2022

From the official Palestinian  Wafa news agency:

President Mahmoud Abbas today declared a 30-day state of emergency in Palestine to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

The state of emergency was first declared in March 2020 after the discovery of the first cases of coronavirus in the Palestinian territories.

The state of emergency gives the government the power to act in any way it deems necessary to combat the pandemic.
I have not seen any articles about a new wave of Covid-19 in the West Bank. There has been a slight uptick in the last couple of weeks, but the rate is way below Israel's. At its recent peak there have been two deaths a week.


As far as I can tell, he is not automatically extending an old state of emergency every 30 days. According to Xinhua:
The state of emergency was first declared in March 2020 after the discovery of the first coronavirus cases in the Palestinian territories. It was last extended or re-declared in January this year, local media reported.

Under the state of emergency, the government is empowered to take any step it deems necessary to fight the pandemic. 
I cannot find a single Palestinian news site that questioned this announcement. They just parroted it. They didn't even elaborate on it, showing a rise in cases or in deaths. 

And on Mahmoud Abbas' Facebook page, the announcement was greeted with Soviet-style unanimous praise for his great insight and wisdom:


If there was a free press, people would be asking questions why Abbas just added emergency powers on top of his already dictatorial powers over the executive, judicial and legislative branches of Palestinian government. 

World leaders and media still treat the Palestinian president and his government as if they are rational leaders. If anyone would read their own media and government websites for a couple of weeks with a critical eye, the levels of dysfunction would be obvious. And there is something very rotten about this "state of emergency."





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

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Friday, June 24, 2022

On Thursday, Mahmoud Abbas led a meeting of the PLO Executive Committee, for which he has been the chairman since 2004.

Here is what the meeting looked like as they prayed to open the session:


Sixteen older white men, almost all Muslim. 

Hanan Ashrawi, a Christian woman, was a member of this committee but she resigned in 2020 - partially because all the decisions were being made by old men. 

Keep in mind that the Palestinian Authority (or, as they call it, the "State of Palestine") reports to the PLO. This non-elected organization is what really makes the decisions, not the PA. So for example, in 2009 the PLO Executive Committee - headed by Abbas - voted to allow Abbas to remain the president of the PA indefinitely, even in the absence of elections. This power also allowed Abbas to dissolve the High Court and replace it with his own appointees, and to sideline the legislative branch of the government when Hamas won those elections. 

This is dictatorial power, and the Western media just shrugs - or pretends that the PA is a democracy because it sometime stages meaningless elections. 



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!

 

 

Sunday, February 02, 2020

There has been an interesting clash in the media between Jared Kushner and Saeb Erekat that, when analyzed, shows that Kushner is right.

Kushner went on Arab MBCTV to defend the plan. As usual, no one can argue with what he says so they are upset over his tone which they claim is condescending. This interview does not sound condescending to me:







During the interview Kushner also slammed Erekat for being part of the problem:

"He says a lot of things that have turned out not to be true," Kushner told Egyptian journalist Amr Adib on MBC Masr's Al Hikaya political program. "The guy has a perfect track record at failing at making peace deals."

Kushner riled up Erekat and anti-Israel activists last week when he said, accurately, that Palestinians like Erekat have screwed up every previous opportunity for peace:



Erakat tweeted after the MBC interview:
 It is because of people like you who want to dictate rather than negotiate and who they thought could impose an apartheid Netanyahu plan on the Palestinian people forever. Ending the occupation, two states on the 1967 borders, otherwise is failure.
Yet as I noted, the 2008 Olmert plan gave Abbas everything he demanded - and more. Erekat admitted this himself:

“I heard Olmert say that he offered 100% of the West Bank territory. This is true. I’ll testify to this. He [Olmert] presented a map [to Abbas], and said: ‘I want [Israel] to take 6.5% of the West Bank and I’ll give [the PA] 6.5% of the 1948 territory (i.e., land in Israel) in return.’ [Olmert] said to Abbas: ‘The area of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip on the eve of June 4, 1967, was 6,235 sq. km. [I said to Abbas]: ‘There are 50 sq. km. of no man’s land in Jerusalem and Latrun.’ We’ll split them between us, so the territory will be 6,260 sq. km.” [I said to Abbas:] Olmert wants to give you 20 sq. km. more, so that you could say [to Palestinians]: ‘I got more than the 1967 territories.’ Regarding Jerusalem, [Olmert said]: ‘What’s Arab is Arab, and what’s Jewish is Jewish, and we’ll keep it an open city.’ Regarding the refugees, [Olmert] offered him [Abbas] 150,000 refugees … [Olmert] said: “The refugees’ right to return to the State of Palestine is your law. But regarding Israel, we will accept 150,000 refugees over 10 years. 15,000 [per year] over 10 years.”

So by denouncing all previous plans - which is in fact what many "pro-Palestinian" activists are doing in response to Kushner's CNN interview - Erekat is saying that his opposition isn't to Trump's plan but to every single previous plan as well for not going far enough.

The only possible interpretation is that Abbas' demands in 2008 were a lie, and he wanted to paint Olmert into a corner, not thinking he would (stupidly) agree to every demand for land and Israel taking responsibility for 1948 refugees and splitting Jerusalem. Abbas didn't want to end his claims on all of Israel down the line; he didn't want to stop at 150,000 Arabs "returning" - he didn't want to agree to anything that would leave Israel strong and viable.

Kushner is accurately pointing out that if Palestinians want a state, they can have one. In this plan, he notes, all the checkpoints will be gone - a Palestinian can travel through the entire state without seeing a single Israeli. Any Arab that wants to pray at Al Aqsa can do so. Details that were never dreamed of in previous plans are considered with the welfare of average Palestinians in the forefront of its philosophy.

Erekat's fuming response is, essentially, that nothing less than full Israeli surrender to the demands of those who claim they have nothing is acceptable - and that includes "return" to destroy the Jewish state. He is showing that his problem is not with Trump but with all previous plans, which fulfilled every ostensible Palestinian demand.

Erekat's words show that Palestinian leaders were never serious about peace or an independent state.And the Palestinian people are the ones who lose out because of the egos of Erekat and Abbas and all the rest.




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Thursday, January 04, 2018

Qalandia "refugee" camp in the West Bank


From Times of Israel on Tuesday:
Responding to a reporter’s question on whether the US will continue to provide funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency, which provides aid to millions of Palestinian refugees, in light of a non-binding UN General Assembly resolution last month condemning the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, [Nikki] Haley said Trump was prepared to cut aid to UNRWA if the Palestinians refuse to return to peace talks.

“I think the president has basically said that he doesn’t want to give any additional funding until the Palestinians are agreeing to come back to the negotiation table,” Haley said. “We’re trying to move for a peace process but if that doesn’t happen the president is not going to continue to fund that situation.”

“The Palestinians now have to show their will — they want to come to the table. As of now they are not coming to the table but they ask for aid. We’re not giving the aid,” added Haley. “We’re going to make sure they come to the table and we want to move forward with the peace process.”
An article in Palestine Today says in Arabic what the  Palestinians try not to say in English.

If UNRWA cannot get funded, then the  "refugee" issue would fall to the UNHCR.

The UNHCR would not consider the vast majority of the people under UNRWA's mandate to be refugees.

As the article says, the entire point of UNRWA, from the Palestinian perspective, is to artificially keep the "refugee" issue alive - until the descendants of the refugees from 1948 are allowed to "return" to Israel.

Why would any self-respecting state, as the Palestinians consider themselves, want their own people to move to an enemy state? A state that they claim has an apartheid system against them, no less?

Absurdly, the demand for Arabs of Palestinian descent to move to Israel doesn't only apply to those who languish in "refugee" camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, but also to every single resident of the camps in the West Bank and Gaza - under Palestinian control!

Nothing makes the goals of Palestinian nationalism as clear as their demands to perpetuate and fund the fake "refugee" status of their people until they can "return."

UNHCR tries to resettle refugees in other countries so they can rebuild their lives in peace and security. UNRWA wants to keep their "Palestine refugees" to be stateless until they "return" to Israel.

The goal is not to build a state for Palestinians but to destroy Israel. And it always has been.

Everyone knows that "return" is a demand to destroy Israel from the inside. But the international community won't say this out loud. The claim that Israel is somehow obligated to adhere to a tortured reading of a part  of a single paragraph of a non-binding General Assembly resolution is still considered a cogent argument from the world that is still frightened of Arab terror. They pretend that the unique UNRWA definition of "refugee" has the same legal weight that the real definition of refugee has. (Not one European or even Arab country will accept asylum applications from UNRWA's "Palestine refugees" unless they are real refugees from Syria, for example.)

The entire UNRWA ecosystem has been subverted and repurposed since the 1950s  with the single goal of destroying Israel - by keeping Palestinian Arabs in stateless misery - under the pretense of human rights.

The goals of Mahmoud Abbas' PA, of Fatah and Hamas, of the "pro-Palestinian" agitators, are all the same. And the "refugee" issue is all the proof you need.





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