A new PCPSR poll was released today asking Palestinians questions about the 75th anniversary of the "nakba" as well as other topics.
As always, when given a choice, Palestinians show an overwhelming preference for terror.
When asked what was the most positive developments for Palestinians since 1948, 24% said the rise of Islamist terror groups, 21% said the two terror sprees known as intifadas, and 25% said either the establishment of the PLO or Fatah, both of which were explicitly founded as terror groups. Which means that 70% of Palestinians consider terror to be their proudest accomplishment.
71% of the Palestinians polled say they are in favor of forming terror groups such as the “Lions’ Den” and the “Jenin Battalion."
The vast majority (86%) says the PA does not have the right to arrest members of terror groups in order to prevent them from carrying out attacks against Israel or to provide them with protection.
The most popular potential presidential candidate is Marwan Barghouti - a terrorist. #2 is Ismail Haniyeh, senior Hamas official - a terrorist. Everyone else received only small percentages.
If new legislative elections were held now, of those who would participate, 34% say they would vote for Hamas and 31% say they would vote for Fatah.
This is not a people who want peace - and it is not a people who are being taught that peace is the best option.
In February, CNN's Christiane Amanpour said on TV, "The latest polls from the Palestinian side also show that they want a peaceful, two-state solution." It was a lie, and this poll proves it even more: only 28% of those polled supported a two state solution while 70% were opposed.
However, it appears that the "one state" that they favor isn't the democracy with equal rights that the "progressive" crowd claims they want. Only 21% support a one-state solution with equal rights between Arabs and Jews; 76% opposed.
Which means the "one state solution" that Palestinians want is a single Arab state with, at best, a small second-class Jewish minority population. Their idea of peace is replacing Israel, not living with it.
Every single response in this poll proves that Palestinians do not want peace and that they fetishize terror. So it won't get any coverage in Western media.
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On January 16, 1920, prominent leaders of Nablus - both Muslim and Christian - met in a conference where they pledged, under oath::
(1) To boycott the Jews completely as n counter-measure against their covetous spirit toward this country.
(2) To refuse them dwelling space in our district, and to binder their admittance thereto in every way.
(3) To persevere In this boycott and opposition until there remains no trace of the Zionist Idea, or until we perish to the last man.
(4) To submit this decision to His Excellency the Chief Administrator of the Occupied Territory, and, through the medium of the Allied representatives In Jerusalem, to the delegates of their respective governments at the Peace Conference; and to publish the same in the newspapers for the information of the civilized world, so that It may be understood why the inhabitants of this country are forced to sacrifice their lives for its freedom.
(Seat of the Islamo-Christian Conference at Nablus.] (Signed) Youssuf.
It was essentially a declaration of unending war against the Jews of Palestine until they returned to being the second class citizens they should be.
This wasn't the only boycott that Palestinian Arabs declared against Jews.
The fifth "Palestine Arab Congress" in 1922 pledged a boycott of Jewish products and services including the nascent electricity lines being set up by Pinchas Rutenberg, and this was reiterated in at least one successive Congress.
There is not exactly room for compromise here. The Arab leaders said, either Jews remain subjugated under our control, or we keep fighting them forever.
Terrorism and Arab Jew-hatred is not a reaction to Jewish "occupation" or supposed crimes. It pre-dates all of that. And whether it is official or not, the pledge to keep opposing Jewish rights in the Holy Land has never been rescinded.
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Violence should be discarded and condemned “in all its manifestations” for Jews and Arabs to have a common future as neighbors, Mansour Abbas, arguably the most prominent Arab Israeli lawmaker of the day, told i24NEWS in an exclusive interview.
“We think that this demand is a compulsory for all of us, and we should push the violence in all of its manifestations aside, and we should engage in peace and in construction. We need to treat the wounds of both sides, to translate into the reality the goals of both sides, in order for us to reach a solution that would be acceptable for both sides,” Abbas, chair of the United Arab List faction, said.
Abbas stressed that he regards himself and fellow Arab citizens of Israel as Israelis, and rejected attempts by Palestinian leadership including the Hamas terrorist group to enlist Arab Israelis against Israel on the side of the Palestinians.
This is in response to Hamas trying to drag Israeli Arabs into becoming terrorists as a fifth column.
I agree with very little that Mansour says, but this is a sane statement that reflects reality and not the fantasy of wanting nothing less than the destruction of Israel.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - which has extensive ties with "human rights" NGOs - strongly condemned Abbas’s statements, and said they are "treacherous and do not represent our people from near or far, and reveal the suspicious role assigned to him as an obedient tool in the hands of the occupation...he is a traitor to the interests of our people and their national rights.”
Mahmoud Abbas' "moderate" Fatah said his words “essentially affect the historical national rights of our Palestinian people in Palestine,” and described them as “a cheap fit with the Zionist narrative that falsely monopolizes the history of Palestine.... Mansour Abbas crossed the red lines with his positions.”
As of this writing, I have not yet seen any reaction from Hamas or Islamic Jihad, but since Abbas' comments were aimed squarely at them, one can assume that they would be at least as angry as their rival Fatah is.
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A State Department spokesman told the Free Beacon that Blinken’s engagement with anti-Israel groups like J Street is an "important part" of the agency’s mission.
"It is routine for the secretary of state to engage with different civil society groups representing a broad array of foreign policy interests, this is an important part of the State Department’s domestic outreach," the spokesman said.
While Blinken is not the first secretary of state to address a J Street conference—then-secretary John Kerry and then-vice president Joe Biden both spoke in 2016—the timing of his address is being viewed as highly symbolic. The Biden administration in December took the extraordinary step of launching a Justice Department investigation into the shooting of a Palestinian-American reporter by the Israel Defense Forces.
Israel in September conducted its own independent review in cooperation with the U.S. State Department, and U.S. lawmakers are accusing the administration—given the president's support for an additional FBI investigation—of kowtowing to radical elements in the Democratic Party who seek to transform Israel into a pariah state.
One senior State Department official told the Free Beacon that "attending this J Street event is like a blatant and obvious attempt to stick Bibi [Netanyahu] in the eye."
"Unfortunately," said the source, who was not authorized to speak on record, "it has the effect of undermining our relationship with Israel, and thus U.S. national security."
It's not the first sign that the Biden administration is less than elated at Netanyahu's reascension to power last month. Biden waited days to congratulate the newly elected Israeli leader, drawing accusations the president was trying to isolate Netanyahu's conservative government before it even was seated.
"The Biden administration is filled with partisans who hate Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu. They banned the use of the phrase ‘Abraham Accords,' couldn't bring themselves to have President Biden call Netanyahu to congratulate him until their silence became comical, and now they're even unleashing the FBI," Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) told the Free Beacon. "So of course Secretary Blinken is going to J Street, an anti-Israel activist group that also criticized the Abraham Accords, loathes Netanyahu, and regularly calls for investigations against Israel. It's both disgraceful and predictable."
One former Israeli government official told the Free Beacon the administration is not even trying to hide its disdain for Netanyahu and his conservative coalition.
"This is simply bad diplomatic strategy," said the source, who would only speak on background so as not to upset either government. "Speaking to J Street may displease the incoming Israeli government, but they're hardly afraid of the lobby. This doesn't send a message of strength but rather one of petulance. Secretary Blinken should know better."
The Biden administration’s new envoy to the Palestinians declared Wednesday that the US still plans to reopen its consulate in Jerusalem after nearly two years of delays, but Israeli and Palestinian officials did not appear convinced.
Asked for his response to US Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr’s renewed pledge, a senior Palestinian official speaking on condition of anonymity chuckled. “At this point, we don’t get excited over these kinds of declarations from the Americans,” he said. “With all due respect, we’ll respond when there are facts on the ground.”
Prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has avoided commenting on Amr’s remarks, ostensibly waiting until he is sworn into office, but an official in the Likud leader’s inner circle told The Times of Israel that his boss’s position on the matter has not changed, confirming a report in the Makor Rishon news site.
After vowing during the campaign to reopen the de facto mission to the Palestinians, which his predecessor Donald Trump shuttered in 2019, US President Joe Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken informed Netanyahu in May 2021 that Washington wanted to follow through on the pledge.
The then-prime minister responded by voicing his opposition to the proposal. Netanyahu and other opponents to reopening the consulate have argued that it encroaches on Israeli sovereignty in the city — the eastern portion of which the Palestinians claim as the capital of their future state.
The Biden administration did not move on the matter following Netanyahu’s refusal. And if the Democratic president’s hesitance to enter public spats with Israel guided his policy then, that inclination was boosted in the year that followed, when Israel was governed by a unity government led by prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid.
The founding document of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1964 (PLO) expressly disavowed any claim to sovereignty “over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” and “the Gaza Strip”. It was only in 1968 – after Jordan and Egypt had lost these lands to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War – that the PLO began to agitate for an independent Arab state west of the Jordan River – employing terrorism to try and achieve it.
The PLO strategy failed.
However the long-dormant UN two-State solution was resurrected by the international community in:
1980: Venice Declaration
1993: Oslo Accords
2002: Arab Peace Initiative.
2003: President Bush Roadmap
2011: President Obama
2020: President Trump
Powerful backers indeed – but no such two-State solution has appeared a remote possibility for the last forty years
A radically-different proposal however surfaced in Saudi Arabia on 8 June 2022 that was both revolutionary and ground-breaking: Merge Jordan, the Gaza Strip, and part of the West Bank into one territorial entity to be called the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine – no new Arab State between the River and the Sea.
The UN’s response has been disgraceful.
Instead of welcoming this Saudi proposal and the prospects its successful implementation offers for ending the Jewish-Arab conflict – the UN has failed to even acknowledge its existence - denying it any oxygen, exposure or traction in the UN.
Secretary General Antonio Guterres and UN Special Co-ordinator for the Middle East Process Torr Wennesland have made no public comments whatsoever on the Saudi proposal or included any reference to it in their monthly reports to the Security Council since its release. They need to break their silence. Until they do – they remain compromised and conflicted.
A UN closed forum convened on 8 November by the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) with Civil Society Organizations (CSO’s) from “Palestine” Israel and the United States “Advocating for Accountability in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” - - asserted that “Safeguarding the two-State solution” remained their prime objective.
Not one of them apparently mentioned the Saudi proposal - whose successful implementation would put them all out of business by finally ending a conflict that has defied resolution for more than 100 years.
Guterres continued parroting the UN’s commitment to the two-state solution on 22 November -without mentioning the Saudi solution – which needs to be aired and debated in the UN General Assembly, Security Council and CEIRPP and no longer suppressed.
The UN’s 75 years-old failed two-State solution to end the Jewish-Arab conflict has well and truly passed its use by date. The time has come for the UN to adopt the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution to replace it.
While Jabotinsky’s own appreciation of civic religion may have grown over time, there was no guarantee that the nascent Israeli right in 1948 would have been sympathetic to the Jewish state being a place that cherished traditional Jewish faith. It was Begin who, as prime minister three decades after the founding, first demanded kosher food when making state visits abroad; and it was Begin who, as prime minister, first insisted that Israel’s airline not fly on the Sabbath. He argued, as Yehuda Avner recounts in The Prime Ministers, that “one need not be pious to accept the cherished principle of Shabbat. One merely needs to be a proud Jew.” It was Begin, in other words, who understood the role religious tradition would play in the Israeli future.
This understanding has been vindicated. Much has been written on the various and very different views of the members of Israel’s newest government. But less focus has been given to the remarkable fact that this seems to be the first Israeli coalition with a majority made up of Orthodox Jews. This includes not only the members of the religious parties themselves but also those MKs from the Likud who are part of the Orthodox community. And this is an accurate representation of what the country has become. As Maayan Hoffman noted in an article titled “Why the Israeli Election Results Should Not Be Surprising,” the makeup of the future Knesset reflects plain sociology: “Around 80% of Israel’s population is either traditional, Religious Zionist or ultra-Orthodox, according to official reports.”
Begin was a singular figure in Israel’s history—one who seamlessly joined deep familiarity with, and knowledge of, Jewish tradition, a personal, natural faith in the God of Israel, and a Zionism that defended both Western democratic traditions and the Jewish right to the Land of Israel. But there is no question that Israeli society today reflects the fact that only Begin among the nation’s founders sensed what the future of Israel would be.
No one, under the new government, will be forced to eat gefilte fish. But all future successful political leaders will have to understand and address the central role that traditionally religious Israelis are now playing in the country’s polity. In the ministerial offices of Israel’s 37th government—and its 47th, and its 57th—there will be many more minha minyanim yet to come.
ALL OF the polls undertaken by the Israel Victory Project show growing support for the idea that peace will only become possible when the Palestinian leadership recognizes that it has lost its fight against Israel, and that Israel is here to stay.
This is reflected in a growing acceptance among politicians and even senior IDF officials that Israel has to return to winning wars and not be continually stuck in a cycle of violence with no way to escape the loss of life and bloodshed.
It is not a simple task to defeat Palestinian violent rejectionism as it has been allowed to fester for generations but as with all wars throughout history, once the will of the antagonist to continue fighting has been broken and that their war aims will not be reached are accepted, the war can finally end.
This is the strategic solution that the government must reach now.
It might be painful and difficult but it is the only one that will finally end the conflict for the good of both Israelis and Palestinians.
It will be good for Israelis because the country will finally see peace without the threat of endless military operations and can focus on potentially greater threats like those posed by a nuclear Iran. It will allow Israel to dictate the terms for peace that will ensure its permanent security needs.
For the Palestinians, it will free them of hate that unrelentingly permeates so much of their lives, whether in the media, the education system or in the mosques. It will free up the budget of violent rejectionism that incites and pays for mass murder which can then be freed up for social welfare, education, health and public services. This will mean a better future for Palestinian society which is being crushed by its own crucible of hate and rejectionism. It will ensure that Palestinians elect leaders who do not distract and deflect from allowing greater progress, development and democracy for their people by constantly blaming Israel for all of their ills. It is a win-win for all.
Just as importantly, the international community is starting to understand that wars are still simply won and lost, and diplomacy, unfortunately, isn’t enough when one party insists on playing a zero-sum game.
So, who does control the media and the “strong machine,” according to Marai, a featured panelist at the UN seminar?
That would be the “Center of Powers,” declared Marai, who confided to the audience it makes him “scared to say anything” because of unfair accusations of antisemitism the “Center” employs against people like him. The same Center also targets Palestinian journalists “even out of Palestine,” he added.
Marai’s cited evidence for the existence of this monolithic media-controlling entity is the case of several Deutsche Welle journalists who lost their jobs after CAMERA exposed their promotion of anti-Jewish terrorism and tropes, including their claims of Jewish control and “fabricating” the Holocaust.
Conveniently omitting the journalists’ own objectionable rhetoric, Marai suggested they lost their jobs over unproven allegations of antisemitism and that this, in turn, is evidence of a shadowy “Center of Powers” that controls the media by weaponizing antisemitism for its own nefarious purposes.
The moderator of the panel, Director of the UN Information Service Alessandra Vellucci, did not challenge any of Marai’s conspiratorial and bigoted rantings. Rather, she expressed her gratitude towards Marai for his remarks, thus imitating earlier silent acquiescence by other UN officials to such claims of “Jewish lobby” control during the July 2022 anti-Israel UN Commission of Inquiry.
One might forgive Marai for conspiratorial thinking regarding media control, given that he works for an outlet controlled by the repressive Qatari government. However, many inside the UN seem all too comfortable with suggestions that a manipulative Jewish cabal controls the levers of power.
Meet @UN_HRC's @FranceskAlbs, the "new favorite" rapporteur of the Syria regime and who believes Jews should be murdered, because Israelis don't have a right to self-defense against Palestinian terror. https://t.co/uDI26rrWeR
Palestine Today has an article about the Congressional race in Pennsylvania that was won by Summer Lee.
AIPAC had supported Lee's opponent Mike Doyle with a large infusion of cash in the final days of the race.
Palestine Today positioned this as "a crushing loss for the Jews in Pennsylvania"in Arabic (autotranslated):
For the Jews?
That's a strange way to look at it, since Pennsylvania's new governor, Josh Shapiro, is Jewish, and his campaign featured his weekly Shabbat dinners and that he sends his kids to Jewish day schools.
Sounds like a victory for Jews in Pennsylvania.
By the way, Shapiro is not even Pennsylvania's first Jewish governor. That was Milton Shapp, who served two terms from 1971-79, and whose birth name was...Shapiro.
Shapiro isn't even Pennsylvania's second Jewish governor. That would be Ed Rendell, who served two terms from 2003-2011.
Somehow, when Palestine Today says "Jews," they appear to mean something else.
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The maritime border agreement (indirectly) signed between Lebanon and Israel last week is not really a final agreement, according to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
In a speech he gave last night, Nasrallah showed a map of the various positions and said that there was still an area of about 2.5 square kilometers - demarcated by a line of buoys that Israel had insisted would be their border - that are still claimed as Lebanese by Hezbollah.
He still claims the additional 876 square kilometers "liberated" as a great victory, but says that the total should be closer to 879 square kilometers.
This is practically the same tack that Hezbollah too after the UN drew the Blue Line between Israel and Lebanon. Even though Israel withdrew behind that line, Hezbollah still claims small areas that the agreement gave to the Israeli side, and uses that as justification for maintaining a huge arsenal of weapons and rockets.
Not only that, but Nasrallah, in his speech, encouraged the Lebanese to pressure their government to re-assert their rights to Line 29, the current maximal position they made up during the negotiations that has no legal basis. He says if Lebanon decides that Line 29 really is the border, then Hezbollah will "struggle" to achieve that.
Nasrallah also claims that Lebanon - meaning Hezbollah - was on the verge of declaring war against Israel when it was about to start working in the Karish field that is within the Line 29 area, and that this threat is what forced Israel to back down and accept the Lebanese position.
In short, while Hezbollah is happy about the agreement, it does not accept the agreement. This was predictable. The agreement might allow Israel to freely work on the Karish field for now, but to pretend that the maritime border issue with Lebanon has been peacefully resolved when the most powerful army in Lebanon insists that it hasn't is foolhardy.
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There is one thing missing in all the media coverage of IDF operations in the West Bank.
Why they are there.
For years, the IDF rarely entered Area A. The Palestinian Authority took responsibility for security there, and they generally cooperated with Israel in rooting out terrorists - who were enemies of the PA as well. The system wasn't perfect, but it mostly worked, to everyone's benefit.
March 22: Doris Yahbas (49), Laura Yitzhak 43), Rabbi Moshe Kravitzky and Menahem Yehezkel, (67) were killed and two more were injured during a stabbing and vehicle-ramming attack in Beersheba.
March 27: Yezen Falah and Shirel Abukarat, two Border Police officers, were shot dead by two terrorists.
March 29:Amir Khoury (32), Ya’akov Shalom (36), Avishai Yehezkel (29), Victor Sorokopot (38), and Dimitri Mitrik (23)were killed during a series of drive-by shootings in Bnei Brak.
April 7: Tomer Morad (28), Eytam Magini (27), and Barak Lufan (35) were shot dead at a downtown Tel Aviv bar , seven others were wounded and hospitalized.
April 29:Two Palestinian terrorists murdered Vyacheslav Golev (23), a security guard, at the entrance to Ariel.
May 5: Boaz Gol (49), Yonatan Havakuk (44), and Oren Ben Yitfah (35) were killed in a terrorist attack in Elad.
Most (if not all) of the terrorists came from the West Bank. Israel could not sit back and wait for more attacks, so it went on the offensive to break up the terror cells that were planning these attacks.
That's why the IDF is there.
This is not ancient history. It is 5 to 7 months ago.
How many news reports mention the terror spree that sparked this current escalation?
When people's attention spans are limited to one-minute videos and 240 character tweets, the media isn't going to bother to give any context. Easier to pretend that Israel attacks Palestinians for no apparent reason, and they are locked into a never ending conflict that has no history. And the media doesn't mention the basic fact that these IDF operations are meant to root out terrorists that the PA could not - or now, refuse to - do themselves.
This helps the terrorists. When they attack Israeli civilians, they know that the world will forget the attacks - but not Israel's responses, which are framed as constant and never-ending. The impression given to those who are only casual consumers of news is that Israel is virtually always the aggressor, and therefore always at fault. And then the occasional fatal Palestinian terror attack is the response to Israeli aggression, not the other way around.
Israel doesn't want anything to do with Area A. It has been forced to react to terrorism, to bring the battle to the terrorists and away from Israeli civilians. And for the most part it has worked - there have been no fatal attacks on civilians in months.
But the Israeli lives saved by these operations are definitely not something the media will mention.
In the realm of public relations, terrorists cannot lose as long as the media panders to the lowest common denominator of news consumer who they assume cannot understand context that requires more than two explanatory sentences.
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Two Palestinian Authority security services members were killed this morning near the Huwara checkpoint as they shot at the soldiers there.
Whenever incidents like this happen, before a terror group takes responsibility, Palestinian media (and even other terror groups) first respond by claiming that the IDF shot innocent civilians in cold blood.
Then as more information started coming out that they were involved in an attack, the tenor of the responses changed.
The PFLP was cautious, saying they"were martyred in a new crime committed by the occupation" but implying that they were attacking at the time by saying "our people's response to the occupation and its aggression and the escalation of resistance against it proves the determination of our people to continue the confrontation until freedom and victory are achieved."
Then the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades took explicit credit for the attempted attack, saying they shot at the IDF soldiers at point-blank range at 1:05 AM, a "zero-distance clash with the Zionist enemy at the Hawara checkpoint in the city of Nablus, and that all the usurpers and settler herds are targets of the battalion fighters, and that the battle is open with this usurper occupation."
So now the responses change from "innocent victims" to "heroic martyrs."
Hamas praised '"the two martyrs of the armed clash with the Zionist occupation forces."
The narrative changed on a dime.
Note that two members of the Palestinian Authority security forces were also terrorists for the Fatah Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Either Mahmoud Abbas is too weak to enforce that his own security forces are not terrorists, or he supports it. Either way, negotiating with him for peace is impossible.
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Palestinian factions signed a reconciliation deal in Algiers on Thursday, vowing to hold elections by next October in their latest attempt to end a rift that has now lasted more than 15 years.
The deal was signed by a leading figure from the Fatah party of President Mahmud Abbas and by the chief of Islamist movement Hamas, which rules Gaza.
But Abbas himself, president of the Palestinian Authority since 2005, was not present.
"We signed this agreement to get rid of the malignant cancer of division that has entered the Palestinian body," said the head of the Fatah delegation, Azzam al-Ahmed.
"We are optimistic that it will be implemented and will not remain ink on paper."
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh said it was "a day of joy in Palestine and Algeria and for those who love the Palestinian cause, but a day of sadness for the Zionist entity (Israel)".
I didn't even bother to discuss it, because we've seen this movie before. Fatah and Hamas have made these sorts of agreements before - in fact, most of them have been supposedly more comprehensive, with the promise of "unity" between the rival factions.
After the agreement, nobody said much about it. But Mahmoud Abbas sent a message of thanks to Algerian President Abdel Majid Taboun for his role in the meaningless gesture.
But Palestinian Sama News held an online poll for its readers, asking "Will the Palestinian reconciliation succeed under the auspices of Algeria?"
As of Sunday afternoon, the results are 93% saying that the agreement is meaningless, and only 4% think it will succeed.
The Palestinians know that the rift between the PA and Hamas is irreconcilable. Only Western media takes these performative "agreements" seriously.
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From all appearances, the new Lebanese-Israeli maritime border agreement seems to indicate that Israel has given up significant positions for very little return.
David Schenker summarizes in the Wall Street Journal:
During negotiations, mediated by the Biden administration, Israel conceded the entirety of its claims to the 330-square-mile zone to Lebanon in return for a 3-mile internationally recognized buffer zone adjacent to the shoreline. The remainder of the zone goes to Lebanon, which will also have the right to exploit a natural gas field known as Qana, which extends south of the frontier, and an obligation to remunerate Israel for the extracted gas there.
The contours of the proposed deal are stunning. ...As per the new agreement, Lebanon will attain virtually 100% of its initial negotiating position.
It’s a remarkable turn of events, especially given Beirut’s profound lack of leverage.
Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist organization, also played an important if indirect role in the talks. The organization has threatened to attack the Energean floating production system rig in Israel’s Karish field, south of the 23 line, if the ship started to extract gas prior to reaching an agreement on the maritime border. Before Hezbollah’s warning, Israel announced that pumping would start in September. In the absence of a deal, extraction didn’t commence.
Israel's logic seems to be that if Lebanon becomes a partner in selling natural gas, Hezbollah is far less likely to start another war. But Israel is permanently giving up hundreds of square miles of maritime rights for an assumption of logic on the part of a group that slavishly does whatever Iran tells it to do. And Hezbollah has a history of not giving a damn about Lebanon when it makes its own decisions.
It turns out that there was practically a mirror image of these negotiations happening on Israel's other maritime border, with Egypt. Al Monitor reports that Israel appears to have given up on its maritime rights in the sea off the Gaza coast as well:
Egypt succeeded in persuading Israel to start extracting natural gas off the coast of the Gaza Strip, after several months of secret bilateral talks, according to information provided to Al-Monitor by an official in the Egyptian intelligence service and a member of the PLO Executive Committee.
It comes after years of Israeli objections to extract natural gas off the coast of Gaza on security grounds...
The member of the PLO Executive Committee told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that Egypt informed the PA of Israel's approval to start extracting Palestinian gas off the coast of Gaza. He pointed out that this came after political pressure exerted by European countries on Israel to meet their needs for gas alternatives to Russian gas.
The PLO official said that under the agreement, Egypt and Israel would supervise the extraction process, and that part of the gas will be exported to Egypt, and the bulk of it will be exported by Israel to Europe through Greece and Cyprus. The financial revenues from the process of exporting Palestinian gas will return to the treasury of the PA, with part of these revenues allocated to support Gaza’s economy.
The details are fuzzy, but it is apparent that there are commonalities between the Lebanese and the Egyptian/PA agreements: Israel agreed to both under pressure from world powers, Israel abandoned its long standing positions protecting its own rights, and Israel hopes that these agreements will reduce the chances of war without her enemies Hezbollah and Hamas making or even hinting at a single promise.
Avoiding war is of course important, but assuming that making agreements with parties who are adjacent to irrational enemies will avoid war with those enemies is a hell of a stretch, especially one to give up permanent rights for.
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CNN Arabic quotes an episode in Jared Kushner's book Breaking History that I couldn't find in any English-language articles. The quotes are obviously translated from English to Arabic and back, so they will not be exact quotes from the book.
The President was scheduled to meet with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, in the West Bank. Abbas came to the White House in May, told the president he was ready to negotiate, and expressed confidence in Trump as an arbiter of a peace agreement between the Palestinians and Israel. We were impressed, but we were still waiting to hear more. Just before we left, Ambassador Friedman showed Trump a video of Abbas making serious threats towards the Israeli people.
Friedman's message was clear: Be careful with Abbas - he tells you he's for peace in English, but look carefully at what he says in Arabic. Tillerson saw what was happening in the video and got angry, claiming he was dishonest. Friedman replied: ' Are you saying he didn't say these things?' Tillerson had to admit that they were Abbas's words, but he was angry that he was losing control. It was important for the president to see all sides of the issue, especially since he was hearing from so many respectable businessmen that Abbas was a serious man who genuinely wanted to make peace.
During the bilateral meeting in Ramallah, Abbas recited the same talking points he had used during his last visit to the White House. It was as if the first meeting never happened. He failed to show any progress on the issues he and Trump had previously discussed. Trump was disappointed. He was furious and did not mince his words: 'You pay those who kill Israelis. This is official government policy. You have to stop this. We can make a deal in two seconds. I have the best players on it. But I want to see some action. I want to I see it quickly, I don't think you want to make a deal.'
Abbas became defensive and complained about Israeli security. Trump replied: 'Wait: Israel is good at security, and you say you're not going to take security from them? Are you crazy? Without Israel, ISIS can take over your territory in about twenty minutes. We're spending so much on the military. Everyone in this region spends a fortune on security. If I can get high-quality security for free to America and save the cost, I'll take it in a second'.... After witnessing Abbas' stubbornness, I understand better why 12 former presidents tried and failed in reaching a peace agreement.
This sounds like Trump - and Tillerman, and Friedman, and Abbas himself. It is consistent with what Friedman wrote in his memoir about the meeting with Trump. The Jerusalem Post said that the businessman who had tried to convince Trump that Abbas was peaceful was Ronald Lauer, which is sort of amazing - he used to be a Netanyahu supporter but had a falling out, but to hate Netanyahu so much as to tell Trump that he should accept Abbas as a peaceful statesman is almost beyond belief.
CNN Arabic contacted the Palestinian foreign ministry to comment with no response.
It is interesting that this was not reported in English-language CNN. Apparently, criticizing Abbas in English does not fit the narrative.
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Israel has proposed a plan for West Bank Palestinian Arabs to be able to travel overseas via the Ramon Airport in Eilat, planning test flights to Turkey from which they can go anywhere else in the world.
Up until now, if they want to fly anywhere they need to travel through the Allenby Bridge crossing to Jordan and from there go to Amman.
This plan would save them a great deal of time and headaches, especially with the huge delays at the Jordanian crossing point.
So, naturally, they are opposing it.
Musa Rahhal, spokesperson for the Palestinian ministry of transportation, is saying "it comes within the framework of the policy of apartheid, pressure on our people, and the Israeli economic benefit."
The spokesman claimed that Israel was trying to force all Arabs – Palestinian citizens and Arab-Israelis alike – to travel through Ramon Airport. All citizens of Israel – Jews and non-Jews alike – are permitted to travel through Ben-Gurion Airport and other Israeli-controlled border crossings.
Rahhal also claimed that the current overcrowding at the Allenby Bridge between Israel and Jordan was part of an Israeli scheme to force Palestinians to use Ramon Airport. In the past few weeks, thousands of Palestinian travelers have been stranded on the Jordanian side of Allenby Bridge because of unprecedented overcrowding and the limited hours of work at the border crossing.
There is a very simple reason why the Palestinian leadership consistently opposes any plan to make the lives of Palestinians easier.
Palestinians have a thriving export business. This export has created lots of jobs in the NGO industry. It has brought in hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from the EU and from Arab countries. It is a critical part of their economy.
The export is Jew-hatred.
Anything that Israel does to help Palestinians live more normal lives threatens this critical export. Palestinian misery is the most important raw material for the profitable export of antisemitism, so the leaders must ensure that misery is generously spread to their people in as public a fashion as possible, s long as the misery is always blamed on Jews.
The Palestinian export of Jew-hatred is the only reason why Palestinians remain the top recipients of humanitarian aid on a per capita basis in the world - a position they have held, unchallenged, for decades. If they couldn't blame their misery on Jews, they would lose hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
So of course they oppose allowing their people to travel more easily to the world. They want to say they live in an open-air prison.
Of course they oppose closing down "refugee" camps even in their own areas. Because they claim that people in the borders of British Mandate Palestine are "refugees" and need hundreds of millions from the international community.
Of course they oppose any peace plan that allows Israel to exist as a Jewish state. They need Jews to blame for everything.
Once you understand this simple fact about the Palestinian export industry, all of the things that seem inexplicable suddenly make sense.
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Barkan completely accepts and supports the goal of BDS, to destroy the Jewish state, as perfectly legitimate. The author is merely uncomfortable about its strategy and methods.
The goals of BDS are a blend of the pragmatic (Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories in compliance with international law) and the radical (gaining the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return and claim the property they lost during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and 1967 Six-Day War). The radicalism of the latter goal lies not in whether it’s just — believers in pluralist, U.S.-style democracy should welcome the idea of a binational state that treats Palestinians and Israelis equally — but in the cataclysm it would likely unleash.
To Barkan, the problem with BDS isn't that it is manifestly genocidal and antisemitic. It is that it is too polarizing to be accepted by mainstream liberals who, deep down, want to destroy Israel too.
I wrote this comment in a small effort to expose the truth that the BDS movement has managed to obscure about itself:
What a disgusting and gaslighting article.
BDS is an antisemitic movement. It is a direct descendant of the boycotts of Jews that were enforced by the Arab League since before Israel existed. It doesn't boycott Arab Israeli businesses - only Jewish-owned businesses. Its goal is the destruction of the Jewish state. It rewrites the history of Israel and Zionism to recast a national liberation movement for the most oppressed people in history - Jews - into a racist, genocidal fiction.
This article accepts that fiction as truth.
Moreover, while BDS presents itself as a liberal movement and one that cares about Palestinians, it is the opposite. It mercilessly attacks any Palestinian who wants peace. It is silent about both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas' decidedly illiberal policies - against women, against LGBTQ+, against abortion.
Giving legitimacy to modern antisemitism is condoning it.
(h/t Melissa)
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I originally wrote this for publication in a major media site, but they do not publish from pseudonyms, so here it is.
____________________________________________
On December 4, Time magazine published an article partially entitled "Here’s What You Need to Know About BDS" by Sanya Mansoor.
BDS stands for the demand to Boycott, Divest from and Sanction Israel. The Time piece pretends to be an objective look at the controversial movement to treat Israel as a pariah state, but it is a one-sided and inaccurate, reading more like a press release for the BDS movement than an informative article.
It turns out that "all you need to know" leaves out a lot of important information.
Here is an accurate description of BDS' history, goals and philosophy.
How did BDS start?
BDS advocates claim that it was started in 2005 by a group of Palestinian civil society organizations and that it is a Palestinian-led movement.
In fact, the strategy was created in 2001 during the NGO Forum of the infamous Durban Conference, the United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance - an event that was so anti-Israel and antisemitic that even the conference secretary-general, Mary Robinson, said included "horrible anti-Semitism."
The NGO Forum published a lengthy statement, of which paragraphs 424 and 425 are the blueprint for the BDS movement that would be declared four years later:
424. Call for the launch of an international anti Israeli Apartheid movement as implemented against South African Apartheid through a global solidarity campaign network of international civil society, UN bodies and agencies, business communities...
425. Call upon the international community to impose a policy of complete and total isolation of Israel as an apartheid state as in the case of South Africa which means the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargoes, the full cessation of all links (diplomatic, economic, social, aid, military cooperation and training) between all states and Israel.
However, even this was preceded and inspired by the League of Arab States boycott of Jewish-owned businesses in the Middle East that started in 1945 and is actually still in force today in Syria and Lebanon.
What are BDS' goals?
The movement claims not to care as to whether there is one state or two states in the area of what used to be British Mandate Palestine.
However, it demands the so-called "right to return" of the descendants of Palestinians displaced in the 1948 war, a right that simply doesn't exist anywhere else - there were between 10 and 20 million people displaced after World War II and no one seriously claims their descendants have the right to return to their ancestors' homes.
The so-called "right to return" has been used to keep Palestinians stateless and without protection for over seven decades. The reason, as Arab leaders have admitted candidly, is to use them as cannon fodder against Israel. It is one unyielding demand by the Palestinians - not to have the Palestinian diaspora come to build a Palestinian state but to have them "return" to Israel by the millions and ensure an Arab majority there.
In short, BDS does not and cannot accept the concept of a Jewish state. It would accept one Arab majority state or two Arab majority states, but it vehemently opposes the existence of any Jewish state - even as there are plenty of states that identify themselves as Arab states (and Muslim states) without anyone accusing them of apartheid or racism.
Is BDS antisemitic?
BDS leaders insist that they are not antisemitic. However, their demand for "return" and their refusal to accept Jewish self-determination while insisting on Palestinian self-determination shows that they are the ones who are discriminating against Jews.
Beyond that, the BDS movement and their allies in the far Left insist that Jews are held to standards that no one else is held to. Jews who wish to become leaders in feminist, LGBTQ or other causes must renounce Zionism - the right of Jews to a homeland of their own. Jews who want to become student leaders are examined to see if they support Israel's existence, and saying they do makes them suspect at best, disqualified at worst. Israeli Jews who want to speak on campus are likewise subjected to litmus tests to have the simple right to speak.
BDS says that they want the world to boycott Israeli businesses, but in fact the entire list of businesses listed by BDS groups are owned by Jews. Even though there are Arab owned businesses in Israel and in the disputed territories, only Jewish businesses are targeted.
For all practical purposes, BDS is an ant-Jewish movement. Even the German parliament recognizes this fact, and they know a thing or two about what boycotting Jewish businesses looks like.
Is BDS pro-Palestinian?
The BDS Movement claims that it follows the will of the Palestinian people, listing some 170 "civil society" organizations - many of which had only one or two people - that signed on.
Ilan Pappe, a prominent BDS supporter and critic of Israel, has suggested that the international anti-Israel NGOs created BDS and part of the fiction was to pretend that it was a Palestinian-led movement - and it is important to maintain that fiction.
The BDS movement and its leaders have very little to say about improving Palestinian lives, whether in the territories or in places like Lebanon and Syria.
It goes without saying that most Palestinians do not boycott Israeli goods themselves, including luxuries like chocolates and ice cream.
The highest-paying Palestinians work for Israelis, with an average income of double what they can make domestically according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. A significant part of the Palestinian economy is dependent on workers in Israel. BDS wants all of these people to lose their jobs with no plan on how new jobs could replace them.
In fact, when BDS pressure succeeded in getting Sodastream to move its factory from the West Bank to the Negev, hundreds of Palestinians lost their well-paying jobs. BDS leaders were happy at this "victory."
Given the assumption that Israel is not going to be destroyed in the foreseeable future, BDS advocates have a choice: work towards helping Palestinians within this reality, or working towards the destruction of Israel anyway, to the detriment of the people they claim to represent.
Invariably, BDS chooses the latter.
The BDS apathy towards actual Palestinian lives goes well beyond Israel and the territories. Palestinians in Lebanon who have lived there since the 1950s are banned, by law, from many jobs. They cannot buy land. They cannot build new housing even in overcrowded camps. Yet you would be hard pressed to find a BDS advocate that demands that Lebanon offer basic human rights protections to their Palestinian residents. On the contrary, Lebanese bigotry against Palestinians is ignored and silenced, since the BDS narrative is that Israel is the only evil that may be discussed.
Even more horribly, during the first months of the Syria civil war, Israel offered to allow Syrians of Palestinian heritage to move to the West Bank to save their lives, if only they would sign a paper saying that they forego the "right to return" to Israel proper. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas angrily rejected the offer, saying that it was better for the Syrian Palestinians to die in Syria. He didn't offer the Palestinians of Syria a choice of their own, but made their choice for them. No BDS group objected to this decision that may have contributed to the deaths of thousands.
Does BDS support peace?
BDS advocates are emphatically against any peace initiatives that treat Israeli Jews as human beings. They denounce anyone who participates in peace initiatives, whether it is bereaved Israeli and Palestinian mothers speaking to each other or sports programs for Palestinian and Israeli youth.
The Muslim Leadership Initiative, which allows Muslims to learn Israel's point of view, had its participants boycotted by the BDS leaders.
Their intransigence extends even beyond that. When popular artists decide to perform in Israel, while the official BDS movement doesn't support threats, the effect is the same - some artists are bullied into canceling their shows, and the BDS movement celebrates these as victories.
Do American Jews support BDS?
BDS advocates claim that they have dozens of Jewish progressive organizations on their side, and use them as proof that they are not antisemitic. Yet every poll shows that the number of anti-Zionist Jews is minuscule in the US.
A 2018 Mellman poll of Jewish voters found that while plenty of Jewish Americans had plenty of criticisms of Israel, only 3% of them self-identified as "generally not pro-Israel." Although the question wasn't asked of that minority, but many or most of that 3% would not identify as an actively anti-Zionist subset. It can be assumed that only those very few who self-identify as anti-Zionist would wholeheartedly support BDS.
So while anti-Zionist Jewish groups like "Jewish Voice for Peace" and "IfNotNow" manage to get a large amount of press relative to their actual numbers, they are on the fringes of US Jewish life today, and their influence among Jews is similar to the all-but-forgotten anti-Zionist "American Council for Judaism," an anti-Zionist group that likewise gained publicity but very few adherents in the 1950s.
Is BDS successful?
By the standards of actually harming Israel economically or diplomatically, the answer it clearly no. Israel's economic growth is the envy of the world and it has relations with more nations than ever before. Only in the UN is Israel still somewhat of a pariah.
Yet using the yardstick of whether BDS has managed to demonize Israel in the eyes of the world since 2001, the answer is certainly yes. After all, this very Time magazine article quoted BDS leaders, without comment, saying flatly that Israel is a racist and apartheid state - an absurd statement given that some 20% of Israeli citizens are non-Jews, mostly Arabs, and they have equal rights under the law and enjoy more freedom than anyone living under Arab rule. When major media parrots false or contested BDS claims as facts not worth checking, it shows huge inroads in BDS attempts to brainwash the world to hate Israel, especially youth.
Ironically, it is the same Arab world which started the idea of boycotting Jews in Israel to begin with that is the biggest threat to BDS today. Israel's treaties with the UAE and Bahrain, along with unofficial ties with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states, has hurt BDS and its claims of being the only solution. Emiratis walking around Tel Aviv and enjoying the company of Zionist Jews - while still working to help Palestinians - reveal a model of peace and prosperity that is transforming the Middle East, a model where BDS is not only irrelevant but positively backwards.
BDS is not progressive, it does not support peace, and it is increasingly aligned only with Iran and its allies. This is the truth about BDS that its adherents don't want the world to know.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Short-lived Istanbul agreement between Hamas and the PA
Now that the PLO has caved and returned to security coordination with Israel, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are angry and upset.
The Islamic Jihad spokesperson in Lebanon (who has been very visible lately in PIJ media), Ihssan Ataya, called the announcement of the restoration of relations and security coordination between the Palestinian Authority and Israel "a disregard for the Palestinian people" and "a stab in the heart of national unity, consolidating the hegemony of the Zionist enemy over the Palestinian lands, and reviving the annexation plan in light of the increase in settlement projects."
Hamas stopped their reconciliation talks in Cairo with the PLO.
All of this puts the PLO's Catch-22 situation in focus, and it is also the reason that peace is impossible.
For there to be a chance at peace, the PLO - which would sign the accords - must represent the entire Palestinian people and it must oppose terror.
The PLO doesn't rule Gaza, so there can be no peace with a group too weak to control its own lands. If it unifies with Hamas, then it cannot pretend to be against terror.
There is no realistic solution to this at this time. No Palestinian wants to separate Gaza from the West Bank. Israel is not interested in a long, bloody war that would destroy Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. The PLO is too weak to govern Gaza. Neither the PLO nor Hamas would accept the results of elections that they lose and give up their power base.
The entire world knows this - it has been the situation for 12 years. Which is why those pushing for more negotiations are not thinking rationally: Israel cannot negotiate on final status issues with leaders who are too weak to govern their own people, and Israel cannot negotiate with terrorists.
One major reason peace is impossible is because of this dysfunctional relationship between the PLO's West Bank and Hamas' Gaza.
If you want to laugh, here is a solution: when Palestinians learn how to be as practical and accepting of Israel as a permanent part of the Middle East and Jews as natives - the way that Emiratis are - they can have a state by the week after.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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