·East Jerusalem, within the
pre occupationmunicipal lines, shall be the capital of
Palestine,underfullPalestiniansovereignty
·ThebordersinJerusalemwillbedeterminedin
·Mutually
agreed arrangements possible,based on
reciprocity, on specifiedmatterssuchasaccessrights,burialrights,visitationrights,coordinationofmunicipalservices
accordance
with the rest of the borders andbasedon1967 lines.Allprinciplesregardingswaps that apply to the border generally shallalso
apply inJerusalem, suchastheprinciple thatallswapsmustbeequalandequitable.
·Land swaps in Jerusalem
shall not affectmaximumterritorialcontiguitywiththerestofthe West Bank
·Land
swaps shall not include any Muslim orChristianholy sites and holy places in EastJerusalem
·TheHaramalSharifcompound,initsentiretyon, above and below ground, shall
be underPalestiniansovereigntyandadministration
·TheWesternWalloftheHaram,includingtheWailing
Wall, shall be under Palestiniansovereignty
·Israel can be granted
prayer rights tothe Wailing Wall
(as opposed to theWesternWall)buttheserightsshallnot imply maintenance or other
rights toaltertheWallinanyway.
The PLO demands ownership of the entire Old City - the Jewish Quarter, the Kotel, everything. If pushed, they will allow Jews to visit, worship and maybe even bury Jews in the Mount of Olives - under heavy guard, they way they visit Josephs' Tomb in Nablus today.
The also distinguish between the "Western Wall" and the "Wailing Wall." They would only give limited rights to Jews to pray at the location of the Kotel, but not in the tunnels adjacent to it, or the "Kotel haKatan" to the north, or the egalitarian praying area to the south.
However, the Palestinians insist on total sovereignty over the entire area, the Kotel, the tunnels.
No Jew who has the slightest pride in their Judaism could possibly agree to any of this.
Religiousandculturalsignificance
·Safeguardthecharacter,holiness,andfreedomof worship in the city and its
holy sites andplaces
·TheborderregimebetweenPalestineandIsrael in Jerusalem shall correspond to
the generalborderarrangements
·
·Specific border
arrangements forJerusalemtotakeintoconsiderationthespecialcharacterofJerusalemandtheOldCityandwithaviewtoenablethefacilitated
movement of persons andgoodsacrossthetwopartsofthecity.
JerusalemCoordinationand DevelopmentCommittee
·Establishment of aJerusalemCoordination and DevelopmentCommitteetooverseecooperationandcoordination
between the PalestinianJerusalemMunicipalAuthorityandtheIsraeliJerusalemMunicipalAuthority
When they say that they will safeguard freedom of worship, what it left unsaid is that this is all subsumed by Islamic religious law. They would never allow Jews to visit the Temple Mount, let alone pray there, and the same would apply to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which Muslims did not allow Jews to visit for hundreds of years.
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In 2011, Al Jazeera and The Guardian released a collection of over a thousand documents related to the Israel/Palestinian peace process, most of them leaked from the Negotiations Support Unit (NSU)of the PLO headed by Saeb Erekat. They were known as The Palestine Papers. One of Erekat's many resignations came in response to these papers being leaked, presumably by one of his own people.
The articles at the time from Al Jazeera and The Guardian cherry picked out-of-context quotes from Israeli negotiators quoted in the papers to make them look bad. As far as I know, I am the only person who spent a bit of time actually reading the Palestine Papers and discovering many embarrassing things about the PLO as well as how Al Jazeera and The Guardian mischaracterized their findings.
After Saeb Erekat's death, I revisited the Papers which are still available at the Al Jazeera site. I found one document that is terrifically important, possibly the most important document in the collection, that no one else seems to have noticed - or wanted to report on.
It is called the NSU Negotiation Principles Matrix and it lists, over fifteen pages, every single issue that Israel and the PLO negotiated over, what the PLO's core position was on each issue, and what the PLO was ready to be flexible on and exactly how much.
It is a blueprint to the maximal concessions that the PLO would ever give for peace and what their true "red lines" are. This document, in all probability, is why Erekat dissolved the NSU and resigned - it showed all of the PLO's negotiating cards.
It also shows how impossible it is for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians. The PLO's public negotiating position is entirely consistent with this document and there is no reason to think that the Palestinian leadership has moved from these positions one bit.
Given that a new Biden administration will go back to an Oslo mentality, trying to negotiate a two state solution, this document is more relevant than ever. It shows, in the PLO's own words, how intransigent they are and how intransigent they always will be.
It makes no sense to pressure Israel for more concessions when the PLO already says that they won't be enough.
The matrix starts off with the PLO positions on the negotiations as a whole, upon which there is no flexibility.
·No
end of occupation until full withdrawal of armyandallsettlersandfullPalestinian controlover all the territory, its
inhabitants and allexternal
relations
·Fullnormalizationwith Israelby any
ArabStateshall only commence following the fullimplementationoftheTreaty.
·
Most of these are things we have heard before as PLO demands.
Note here that the PLO is insisting that they must receive all of their demands, completely and up front, before Israel gets anything. Notice also that the PLO is speaking for all Arab states, whether they like it or not.
·Must not include
recognition of certaincharacteristicsofthestateofIsrael,i.easaJewishstate.
·
Here the PLO is saying that they will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state. This is meant to protect the "right to return" so they can plan to turn Israel into an Arab state by forcing it to take in all so-called "refugees" which will be discussed later on in the document.
·Swap only settlement
built-up areas, not emptyPalland(i.e.,no‘blocs’).
·Swap only settlements adjacent to the border.Swapped areas cannot disrupt
contiguity. (Noannexation of Ma’ale Adumim, Ariel, PisgatZe’ev,NeveYa’cov,Giv’atZe’ev,orEfrat.)
·Proposals for tripartite land swap with
Egypt (orJordan)shouldberejected.
·Noleasing.
·Most of the options with
respect toborders will be in the
various swapscenarios,whichshouldbeguidedbytheprinciplesherein.
·Residencyrightsisacreativeoptiontoavoid
swapping difficult areas andwhichmaymakePalestinianslookmorereasonableatthetable.
Here the PLO is saying that the 1949 armistice lines must be the basis for the final borders, and the Palestinians should even get the "no man's land" between the Israeli and Jordanian positions in 1949.
It is saying that it does not want to gain land in Israel that includes a single Arab. Only lands where Jews would be expelled, or empty land, can be swapped for small settlement areas adjacent to the Green Line.
It explicitly says that Israel must give up all lands that are not, in the PLO's view, contiguous with the 1949 armistice lines. Ma’ale Adumim, Ariel, Pisgat Ze’ev, Neve Yaakov, Giv’at Ze’ev, Efrat - and certainly places like Bet El, Hebron and scores of other communities - must be emptied of Jews.
But if Israel pushes back, the PLO can consider allowing a few Jews to stay as residents of Israel "to make Palestinians look more reasonable."
All of these are clearly non-starters for Israel. But the PLO is saying that it will not budge on this - hundreds of thousands of Jews must leave their homes before Israel can get any benefits of peace.
Delimitationanddemarcation
·Delimitationonagreedandappropriatelyscaledmaps.
·This is
purely a technical issue.Itshouldnotbecontentious.
MaritimeBoundaries
·Palestine
will claim full share of what we areentitledtounderinternationallawasacoastalstate.
·Maritime
boundaries must be agreed, accordingtointernationallaw.
·Include
clause that says maritime boundaries willbe agreed in the future [ideal time would be at orimmediatelypostCAPS].
·Willingtonegotiateshared/jointzones.
·Maritimeboundarydoesnothavetobeagreed at
the FAPS or CAPS stage. Itcanbeagreedpost-statehood.
·There are many options for
themaritimeboundariesinlinewithinternationallawandequitability.
Privateproperty
·Deal with private property
interests in theswappedareasseparatelyfromdelimitationoftheborder
·
SovereigntyandInviolability
·West
Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip areoneunitedandintegralpartoftheterritoryofPalestine
·Palestinian
sovereignty must be full andrespectedbyIsrael
·NOTE:
issues of sovereignty shouldnot
be confused with functionalarrangementsthatsuitbothPalestinianand Israeli interests. For example,Palestinecouldenterintoarrangementsbased on its sovereign equality
onvarious issues in accordance with itsowninterests.
The next section we will look at contains the PLO demands about Jerusalem.
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I don't read Mondoweiss, but sometimes people send me links and I simply cannot get over how people think that is a serious site.
The New York Times reported that Israel assassinated an Al Qaeda leader in Tehran in August. Mondoweiss comes up with a conspiracy theory that the entire story was made up, leaked in order to give the US an excuse to attack Iran!
In what universe would the discovery of an Al Qaeda leader in Iran be an excuse for a war?
But the analysis by James North is even worse (if possible.)
The article reeks of dishonesty. At least one of its four authors, Ronen Bergman, an Israeli (who has lavished praise on the Israel lobby AIPAC), has sources in Israel’s spy apparatus, which immediately raises suspicion. The report’s only sources are those unnamed “intelligence officials,” who provide suspiciously precise details, reminiscent of a movie script: the paper said that last August in Tehran, al-Masri
was driving his white Renault L90 sedan with his daughter near his home when two gunmen on a motorcycle drew up alongside him. Five shots were fired from a pistol fitted with a silencer. Four bullets entered the car through the driver’s side and a fifth hit a nearby car.
Bergman literally wrote the book on Israel's spy agencies, and it wasn't a hagiography. Mondoweiss' writer has no evidence that Bergman has ever reported anything inaccurate but the fact that he has contacts in the Mossad is by itself enough to discredit his reporting for the anti-Israel drones who read that absurd site.
North, meanwhile, has been warning about the US trying to start a war with Iran pretty much every month for years. He must be very frustrated that his keen analysis of Trump's supposed desire to start a war has been so wrong so many times and yet he doubles down again and again.
Also, North's claim that the NYT article didn't cover the fact that Iran and Al Qaeda are not normally allies is false:
That he had been living in Iran was surprising, given that Iran and Al Qaeda are bitter enemies. Iran, a Shiite Muslim theocracy, and Al Qaeda, a Sunni Muslim jihadist group, have fought each other on the battlefields of Iraq and other places.
Iran may have had good reason for wanting to hide the fact that it was harboring an avowed enemy, but it was less clear why Iranian officials would have taken in the Qaeda leader to begin with.
Some terrorism experts suggested that keeping Qaeda officials in Tehran might provide some insurance that the group would not conduct operations inside Iran. American counterterrorism officials believe Iran may have allowed them to stay to run operations against the United States, a common adversary.
It would not be the first time that Iran had joined forces with Sunni militants, having supported Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Taliban.
“Iran uses sectarianism as a cudgel when it suits the regime, but is also willing to overlook the Sunni-Shia divide when it suits Iranian interests,” said Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Center.
Mondoweiss is a joke that is taken seriously by a large percentage of the Left.
(h/t Yoel)
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Three years ago I was present at the pro-Hezbollah Al-Quds rally in London. In the process of whipping up the crowd to prepare them for the march, the leader of the rally, Nazim Ali, made several blatantly antisemitic statements over a loudhailer. After it became known that Nazim Ali was a pharmacist, complaints were made to the General Pharmaceutical Council. They took three long years to even arrange a hearing. Last week they published their determination – that the four test statements they had selected, whilst offensive, were not antisemitic. An embarrassing joke of a finding and a slap in the face for all of us. The obvious conclusion from this story is that there is no real justice for Jewish people in the UK.
Justice and the facts
The undisputed facts of the case are these:
Nazim Ali is a pharmacist and is also a Director of the Islamic Human Rights Commission. The IHRC is an extremist group ‘inspired by the worldview of Ayatollah Khomeini’. On the last Sunday of each Ramadan, they hold a demonstration on ‘Al Quds’ day, an Ayatollah designed, pro-Hezbollah, pro-Iranian march through London. Until proscribed in the UK, Hezbollah flags were ever-present at these rallies. Nazim Ali has been the voice of the Al-Quds demonstration for several years.
At the event in 2017, and before the gathered protestors began to march, Nazim Ali made several antisemitic comments about Zionists. Some examples: Ali claimed Zionists were not real Jews, he blamed them for the Grenfell disaster, stated that they genetically need to ‘occupy’ and suggested British Rabbis have blood on their hands.
Justice fails in the findings
The publication of the findings of the ‘Fitness to Practise’ hearing confirmed all our worst fears. The entire process had been a badly handled, incompetent affair, that resulted in a near total whitewash. The Committee decided that whilst offensive, the words of Nazim Ali were not antisemitic.
There are several *major failures* in the determination. These are the two that I consider the most important:
Antisemitism – In deciding what was and was not antisemitic, their Legal Adviser had provided them with the dictionary definition. The IHRA definition was included by the Council in the bundle of papers ‘for guidance’. In assessing whether a comment was antisemitic, the Committee decided it would attempt to judge the view of a ‘reasonable person’, with knowledge of all the facts and context. Someone with ‘no particular characteristics‘ (ie not Jewish).
Impartiality – both myself and Jonathan Hoffman were not considered impartial. They mentioned that I had just returned from a visit to Israel along with the fact my daughter recently volunteered for the Israeli Defence Force. They concluded that this meant I was not an ‘entirely impartial observer‘. For Jonathan they stated that he had described himself as being ‘of the Jewish faith’, before mentioning his public order conviction and the fact he had visited Nazim Ali’s pharmacy as the reasons why he too, was not fit to be described as a ‘wholly impartial observer‘.
They found we were of ‘little assistance’ in reaching their decisions (page 52).
Osama Yamani claims that Al-Aqsa is located in Al-Ju'ranah near Mecca, in Saudi Arabia
A Saudi Arabian lawyer claimed that Al-Aqsa (the Farthest) Mosque, traditionally held to be Islam's third holiest site after Mecca and Medina, is not in fact, located on the Al-Aqsa compound (Temple Mount) in Jerusalem's Old City.
Writing in Saudi news outlet Okaz, Osama Yamani maintained that the mosque - which is one of the world's most ancient permanent Islamic buildings, having been completed in 705 CE - is actually located in Al Ju'ranah, near Mecca in Saudi Arabia, cited Israeli outlet, Israel Hayom.
In his piece, Yamani argued that the centuries-long confusion stems from the fact that history books have mistakenly located Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem.
"Jerusalem is not Al-Aqsa, which is not cited in the missions that Allah gave Muhammad and the caliphs. Similarly, Jerusalem is a city, and Al-Aqsa is a mosque," he stated.
Yamani added that originally, Muslims did not face in the direction of Mecca while praying and instead faced Jerusalem, a function imposed by Umayyad dynasty's fifth caliph Abd al-Malik, who built the adjoining Dome of the Rock in 691 CE.
Yamani explained that: "There are stories influenced by political considerations that served the purposes of that time, and sometimes claims are made that they have nothing to do with faith or following religious dictates."
Islamic tradition dictates that although the Prophet Mohammad's corporeal body never entered Jerusalem, with the word never being mentioned in the Qur'an, legend affirms that he ascended to heaven on al-Buraq - a winged horse, which is said to have taken off from the foundation stone underneath the Dome of the Rock.
We are already witnessing what a war of ideas inside the Islamic world looks like with Sunni and Shia Muslims continuing a battle that has raged for more than 1,300 years. A battle over the so-called "true" location of Al-Aqsa Mosque between Saudis and Palestinians could similarly spell trouble.
CNN’s chief international anchor, Christiane Amanpour, compared US President Donald Trump’s tenure in office to Nazi Germany after the recent anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogroms.
“This week 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened,” Amanpour began as her show opened. “It was the Nazis’ warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to genocide against a whole identity, and in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on fact, knowledge, history and truth. After four years of a modern-day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden-Harris team pledges a return to norms, including the truth.”
This, on a show which CNN describes as its “flagship global affairs interview program.”
Kristallnacht, in English known as the “Night of Broken Glass,” was a series of violent Nazi attacks that in the eyes of many historians constituted the start of the Holocaust. Over the course of two days in November 1938, thousands of Jewish properties and homes were ransacked and destroyed, 90 Jews were murdered, and 30,000 were deported to concentration camps, many never to return.
Amanpour’s remarks are offensive on a number of levels: First, for seemingly attempting to invoke Nazi atrocities in order to further a contemporary political agenda. Second, for seeking to universalize Kristallnacht by never mentioning Jews as the targets. And third, by cheapening history by engaging in such an over-the-top analogy.
Amanpour’s remarks were met with condemnation by media critics such as Glenn Greenwald — who, to say the least, is not known for his support of Zionism — and cable TV producer Steve Krakauer, as well as from leading Jewish figures such as Hillel Neuer and David Harris.
Krakauer reacted swiftly on Twitter, saying that, “Comparing Trump to Hitler and Kristallnacht, saying they ‘assault’ the ‘same values’ is obscene and outrageous.”
UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer wrote that such distortion of the Holocaust by a journalist on US television was unprecedented, adding, “the Nazi genocide was not ‘an attack on fact, knowledge, history & truth.’ They murdered 6 million Jews. Say it.”
Never before in the history of U.S. news networks did a journalist distort the Holocaust for political purposes as Amanpour just did on on CNN & PBS.
No, @camanpour, the Nazi genocide was not “an attack on fact, knowledge, history & truth.“
@CNN talk of listening and learning and say we can trust them. Wrapping the Kristallnacht anniversary in to a Trump piece was as disgusting as it was ridiculous.
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