Ray Cook - As I See It

Israel, Zionism and the Media

Tag: palestine (Page 10 of 11)

Ahmadinejad and the history deniers

21/09/2009 / / 0 Comments

That nice Mr Ahmadinejad from Iran is at it again.

Having found himself in hot water at home because of accusations of a rigged election, he has apparently sought to unite the people against, you guessed it, the Jews.

Ho hum.

His latest Holocaust denial came on Quds (Jerusalem) Day:

He is reported to have said:

“[The Holocaust] a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim”.

He also repeated the canard that the Zionist entity (Israel) was created as a result of this supposed lie.

Not only is this historically illiterate (and this faulty historical narrative can be heard in many places, not just in the Middle East) but he and those like him are attempting to create another Holocaust. But this time it isn’t the physical extermination of the Jewish people (although that is a much desired outcome for Hamas and Hizbollah to name the prinicpal culprits) but this time the Holocaust will begin with the extermination of Jewish history.

Anyone who knows anything about the Jewish people will know that history is central to identity. This is true of most nations but for Jews it defines them even more deeply because for 2000 years they were scattered across the nations of the world with only their history to unite them.

That history was not just one of persecution, migration and expulsion but also a history of yearning for a return to the Land, to the holy city of Jerusalem whose importance in history is solely due to its Jewish history. Without the connection to the Land, to Israel and Jerusalem there would be no Jewish people at all. Look at Jewish liturgy: the Torah, the three daily services, literature, poetry, art.

The Jews and their ancestral land have always been two sides of the same history: the People and the Land.

Now you can argue, and I’m sure you will, about the right to that land today and it’s an argument of history that is a valid one to discuss. And it should be because there are so many lies and misconceptions about the Jews’ return to the Land.

But if you accept that, whatever you may think of Israel and the events of the last sixty or hundred years, that Judaism and the Jewish soul identify completely with that land, (and it is a spiritual as well as a religious and historical connection), then you will see that to deny that connection in effect denies the existence of the Jewish People and its right to exist; to exist anywhere, not just in Israel.

And this is what Ahmadinejad does, but it is also what is taught in the Middle East; not just by the perverted purveyors of hatred that are known as Hamas and Hizbollah but by clerics, publishers, academics, politicians, archaeologists, teachers and broadcasters across the Middle East. They daily trot out lies which deny that Jeruslaem was the site of the two Jewish Temples, deny any Jewish connection whatsoever to the Land and characterise the Israelis and, therefore, of course, all Jews, as part of a (Zionist) plot to deprive them, the Palestinians and the Muslim umma in general, of their land. And part of this ruse perpetrated originally by a few hundred thousand Jews was to fabricate or exaggerate their own suffering to prick the conscience of those who persecuted them, or allowed them to be persecuted, and thereby allow them to steal the Land. That ruse, they claim, was the Holocaust.

And don’t take this lightly. because those who deny history – the ‘history deniers’ (Richard Dawkins uses this term in rather a different context in his latest book) who use it now against the Jews will and, in fact, do use it against everyone else. They denigrate and deny others’ holy books whilst being ready to kill the denigrators of their own, they deny what happened on 9/11 whilst in a breathtaking example of double-think and hyprocisy, celebrate it as a victory over the Zionists who they also say carried it out!

Mahmoud Abbas wrote his doctoral thesis on the Holocaust and you won’t be surpised to find that he found it was a lie.

You can get a flavour of it here: http://www.pmw.org.il/holocaust.htm which shows very starkly that the oh so moderate Palestinian Authority is Holocaust-denying to its rotten core.

So Ahmadinejad is not alone. He is part of a vast army of Muslims who actively seek to deny Jews their history, any land whatsoever and in some cases, their lives. And it is widespread because it is promulgated and taught not just in the Middle East but across the world.

Shana Tova

18/09/2009 / / 0 Comments

Shana tova – Happy New Year – to you all, Jew or Gentile.

May it bring peace to the world and especially to Israel and Palestine and their people.

Aya’s story – a hope for a future of peace between Israel and Palestine

13/08/2009 / / 1 Comment

The Rambam Medical Center in Haifa has just issued a press release about a little Palestinian girl called Aya Aiid Abo-Mois.

Aya Aiid Abo-Mois from Jenin at the Rambam Medical Center, Haif, IsraelAya travels every day from a village near Jenin in the Palestinian Authority-run West Bank.

At 5.am every morning she and her mother are picked up by Jewish volunteers from an organisation called Derech HaChlama (The Road to Recovery). They operate regularly between the West Bank and Israeli hospitals.

Aya is just two and her sister died, aged one, of kidney failure. Now Aya also has kidney failure and requires dialysis every day.

It’s a struggle for her mother and traumatic for Aya but her mother Sahir is determined that her daughter survive.

The report relates:

Israeli Arabs and Jews, meet and speak freely about their fears and hardships and even discuss geo-political issues of the day. Sahir has developed a close kinship with the people she met at the hospital and says that there is a feeling of cooperation. She says, “I am especially grateful to ‘Derech Hachlama,’ and without their help I don’t know how we could provide my daughter with the superior life-saving treatment that she needs.”

So how did Derech HaChlama come about?

“Derech Hachlama” was founded in 2006. It began when a Palestinian member from the “Forum of Bereaved Families” asked his friend, an Israeli member of the forum, to help him with travel to Rambam. The Israeli, Yuval Roth, lost his brother 15 years ago; (his brother was murdered during his reserve duty service when he hitched a ride with Hamas terrorists disguised as religious Jews). Yuval didn’t hesitate to offer assistance to his friend and very quickly, with the aid of other members, a network of approximately 60 patients’ using the organization’s travel services developed. “The demand is great for travel from Palestinian villages to Israeli hospitals, and at least two new patients join our service every month,” states Yuval.

Aya Aiid Abo-Mois from Jenin at the Rambam Medical Center

Sometimes, amidst the darkness of hatred and prejudice a bright light shines.

Photos by Pioter Fliter with the kind permission of the Rambam Medical Center

Palestinian Authority rejects the two-state solution

10/08/2009 / / 0 Comments

Fatah, led by the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, has held its first congress for 20 years.

Draw your own conclusion as to why now.

My guess is that things are going very well for Fatah which is in power on the West Bank and nominally in Gaza where it has been chucked out by the nice Hamas people by a series of gunfights, murders, torture, intimidation, throwing people off high buildings etc. you know, the sort of stuff that passes for politics in the Palestinian world.

Anyhow….

… things are going well because Israel is under intense attack not just from the usual suspects in the Arab world, the EU, NGO’s and the UN, but also from its closest ally, the United States of America.

This means that Fatah, alias the Palestinian Authority, alias the PLO (yes, I know they are all different but they temd to have the same cast list) believes it can make another small step or two forward in its ultimate goal of destroying Israel.

It doesn’t need to use an Intifada, armed resistance, suicide bombings and other terrorist tactics, it just has to sit back and watch Israel dangle from an ever-tightening noose, partly of its own making but mainly from the pressure from the Obama administration.

It appears the world wants Israel to make concessions: freeze “settlements”, freeze expansion of “settlements”, grant a Right of Return for the great grandchildren of  Palestinians who left, or were driven out in 1947-9, concede East Jerusalem which is supposed to be “Arab” m, and withdraw to the 1967 borders (thereby rendering the Arab attack on Israel in 1967 as of no consequence).

But Fatah have made some surprise moves on the compromise front – the main one being no compromise at all, so:

it will not change its charter which calls for Israel’s destruction whilst retaining the option of armed struggle enshrined within this charter ““until the Zionist entity is wiped out and Palestine is liberated”.

So where is there room for two states if they still want to eradicate Israel? They say they will pursue peace but reserve the right to use arms. But what peace do they intend? A peace where Israel no longer exists. The road to peace from the Fatah perspective is a series of concessions by Israel which will lead to its destruction. That is Fatah’s idea of peace and if they don’t get it, they will take up arms – possibly.

Fatah refused to recognise Israel as a Jewish state. In fact it’s quite derisory about the idea and considers a Jewish state to be a racist concept but not an Islamic state.

The whole tenor of the Fatah congress was refusal to compromise, refusal to recognise Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, refusal to give up the armed struggle, refusal to relinquish any part of its charter where the destruction of Israel is its stated goal.

Of course, recent events in Israel show the current administration to be equally uncompromising: Prime Minister Netanyahu states that the whole of Jerusalem is indivisible; retains the right to expand “settlements” and cares little about how evictions of Palestinians, however legal, play out on the world stage and give fuel to Palestinian rhetoric.

Israel has not ruled out a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, but the Palestinians’ idea of a two state solution appears to be little more than empty rhetoric aimed at the non-Arab world whilst they tell each other that the liberation of ALL of Palestine is still their goal. So we may have two entrenched positions but what is there to negotiate from an Israeli perspective until their right to exist is fully recognised.

Obama and the Jewish Democrats

06/08/2009 / / 0 Comments

In an op-ed piece in the Jeruslame Post, Marc R. Stanley castigates the Jewish critics of Obama who say that he is not talking to Israel.

Stanley correctly points out the often paranoid reactions coming mainly from the Right and concludes:

The long-term security of Israel will only be fully ensured if peace is achieved. Obama has made clear that the road is difficult, but the president is working hard to make that day come. However, there will still be those with the undying chutzpah to attack the president for not being sufficiently supportive of Israel. I urge them to actually listen to what the president is saying and watch what he is doing – they might be surprised.

Hmm.

I have to say that from where I sit/stand (in the UK) Obama is playing a very dangerous game and the efforts of the US Jewish Democrats to convince themselves that all is well and peace will inevitably result from this ‘new approach’ are simply comforting themselves that their choice of President will all turn out OK in the long run.

I do not doubt President  Obama’s commitment to Israel, and, as a naturally left-leaning person myself, I was extremely pleased to see him elected. But we should not allow the historic significance of his election at home cloud the reality of his policy in the Middle East.

Although ‘well-meaning’ I believe the ‘even-handed’ policy, designed to give confidence to the Arab world and to be seen as an honest broker, just will not work for a very simple reason: the PA (and, of course, Hamas, Hizbollah and Iran) have not budged one inch; they see a Palestinian State merely as a stepping stone to the destruction of Israel and the creation of a single state ‘from the river to the sea’. None of their statements are in any way indicative of any compromise on ANY of the sticking points, namely, settlements, Jerusalem, Right of Return, demilitarisation etc., let alone changing the whole ethos of Jew-hatred which is promulgated daily on TV and in schools and mosques.

As long as the Palestinian leadership continues its century-old animus against the Jewish people with attitudes which have only become more polarised over time, then Obama is barking up a tree that has been continuously urinated on by the dogs of the PA et alia.

Obama, frustrated by Arab and Palestinian stone-walling (encouraged, no doubt by the US administration’s new tough-love approach to Israel) simply reacts by criticising just about everything Israel does (settlements, evictions etc) whilst remaining publicly effectively uncritical of the PA.

But, sooner or later, he will realise that regardless of what Israel does, the PA will remain firmly a prisoner of its own rhetoric and history. It cannot change. Only a revolution within Palestine, a new generation that can face reality and not live on fantasies driven by ideology and religious fanaticism, can start a real dialogue for peace.

Obama is doomed to fail, and in the process he simply fuels the world’s bias, anger and frustration with and against Israel whilst Palestinians remain the poor benighted victims of racism, apartheid and European colonialism. So the narrative goes and will go for a very long time.

BBC et alia misleading on Jerusalem evictions

03/08/2009 / / 0 Comments

Nothing could better illustrate the skewed and biased animus of the BBC and much of the world’s media against Israel than Sunday’s story about the eviction of two Palestinian families from  buildings in Sheik Jarrah in East Jerusalem.

News From Jerusalem has a scathing article about the misrepresentation and trashy journalism that completely turns the real situation (known as “The Truth”) on its head.

Here’s the BBC article in Question, now headlined as “Israel Condemned over evictions”,

The News from Jerusalem article quotes as follows:

A BBC article entitled, “Palestinians evicted from Jerusalem,” tells of Israeli police who evicted nine Palestinian families living in two houses in “occupied East Jerusalem.”

“Jewish settlers moved into the houses almost immediately. The U.S. has urged Israel to abandon plans for a building project in the area,” reported the British outlet.

An AFP report, “Israel evicts Palestinians from Jerusalem homes,” begins with a scene of intimidating Jews removing peaceful Arabs from their apartments.

“Israeli riot police wielding clubs kicked out two Palestinian families from their homes in occupied east Jerusalem on Sunday, defying international protests over Jewish settlement activity in the area,” reported AFP.

“I was born in this house and so were my children,” Maher Hanoun, one of the evictees, was quoted as stating. “Now we are on the streets. We have become refugees.”

But NFJ reveals

The home was originally Jewish, but its Jewish occupants were chased out during countrywide anti-Jewish Arab riots in 1929. Arabs then squatted on the property, with one family, the Hejazi family, becoming the de facto occupants despite never having purchased the property.

Even though documentation proves the complex is owned by Jews and that Arabs have been squatting on it illegally for almost a century, Jewish groups still legally re-purchased the property from the Hejazi family. Following pressure from the Palestinian Authority, however, the family later denied selling the complex back to the Jews despite documentation and other evidence showing the sale went through.

Israel’s court system, not exactly a friend of Jewish “settlers,” twice ruled now the property undoubtedly belongs to Jews.

This is not made clear by the BBC. Let’s just repeat this. The land was owned by Jews until 1929. The Arabs who live their never compensated the original owners. Despite this, the land was RE-PURCHASED. Yes, money was paid for the property but despite evidence to the contrary the family living there denied it! Presumably under pressure from the PA and out of fear that they had sold property to Jews, which is a capital offence in the Palestinian Authority.

The family were given weeks to move out, but didn’t.

But here’s the crunch:

The construction project at the center of attention, a hotel financed by Miami Beach philanthropist Irving Moskowitz, is located just meters from Israel’s national police headquarters and other government ministries. It is a few blocks from the country’s prestigious Hebrew University, underscoring the centrality of the Jewish real estate being condemned by the U.S.

Moskowitz’s housing project, legally purchased, formerly was the house of the infamous mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who spent the war years in Berlin as a close ally of Adolf Hitler, aiding and abetting the Nazi extermination of Jews.

Al-Husseini was also linked to the 1929 massacre of Jews in Jerusalem and Hebron and to other acts of incitement that resulted in death and destruction in what was then called Palestine. Some Palestinians have expressed a desire to preserve the building as a tribute to Husseini.

Did the Israeli authorities try to rehouse the families involved? I don’t know. But, presumably they and their PA backers were more intent on making political capital against Israel because they knew how the eviction would appear, and they were certainly right.

Once again Israel is vilified even though the Supreme Court, internationally recognised as an independent judiciary, found in favour of the Jewish groups who legally purchased the property. This is completely glossed over by the BBC who thus imply that the Supreme Court is an instrument of Israeli State oppression of the Palestinians when nothing could be further from the truth.

The US condemnation is as ignorant as it is malign and disingenuous.

A Brave Muslim Voice

03/08/2009 / / 0 Comments

It’s not often that a Muslim, brought up in hatred of Israel and Jews has the courage to explore the truth and becomes an advocate for mutual respect, support for the State of  Israel and is openly critical not just of the Arab world but aspects Islam and Sharia.

Such a person is Nonie Darwish.

I urge you to read her story and visit her websites which are a breath of fresh air to the debate about Israel-Palestine and the dialogue between Jew and Muslim.

Arabsforisrael.com is a fascinating site and it is telling that so many contributors have to make anonymous comments for fear of retribution.
Nonie’s personal blog can be found at noniedarwish.com

Please read them.

US Department of State ethnically cleanses its Jerusalem website

03/08/2009 / / 0 Comments

Take a look.
http://jerusalem.usconsulate.gov/

Spot the deliberate mistake?

Take your time.

Here’s the answer. The United States Consulate in Jerusalem’s website is Judenrein.

You would think that Jerusalem was an Arab city and not the capital of the State of Israel.

Is this a deliberate policy of the Obama administration or have the anti-Zionists in the State Department taken over the website?

The United States still refuses to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel (even though this is dubious under the Embassy Act of 1995). But it appears to have gone even further and recognised it as the capital of an, as yet, non existent state of Palestine.

OK. The Consulate may claim that it is a separate entity from the Israeli Embassy and deals specifically with Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza; but the consulate is actually located in the Old City which has  a Jewish majority (and had one until 1948 when the Jordanians expelled every Jew and demolished all the synagogues).

And, by the way, East Jerusalem also had a majority Jewish population until Jews were driven out and massacred in 1929. (And, by the way, a similar situation existed in Hebron which was a Jewish city for hundreds of years before being ethnically cleansed in the 1929 riots and massacres).

All this is consistent with the myth of an Arab majority East Jerusalem as the long-term de facto capital of Palestine. The truth is that East Jerusalem only had an Arab majority when the Jews were kicked out and Palestinians moved into Jewish areas after 1948.

But history before 1948 appears to have been conveniently air-brushed to accommodate Arab and Palestinian claims which seek also to do some air-brushing which involves the denial of any connection of Jews to the land and especially to Jerusalem.

The US Consulate would do well to consider Jewish sensitivities for a change.

Obama and the concept of even-handedness

01/07/2009 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been away for a bit and it’s given me a chance to mull over what President Obama (isn’t it strange how quickly we’ve got used to that) was up to in Cairo.

Many observers have taken this speech apart and pointed out how it has ushered in a whole new era of US-Israel politics where Israel can no longer get a free pass from the US and where the new administration has shifted US policy to a tough stance with the Israeli government on the question of settlements and, to a lesser extent, on easing restrictions in Gaza. The impression given is that it is Israel that has to make these concessions to move the peace process forward and that these demands are part of the Road Map agreements, blah, blah.

Many have pilloried the Cairo speech, many have praised it. It all depends on your viewpoint. If you have thought that Israel is the main impediment to the “peace process” then you will applaud Obama’s “tough love” stance. If you have believed that the Palestinians’ refusal to engage honestly in final status negotiations is the problem, then you will be appalled by Obama’s speech.

As so many have picked over the bones of the speech since the beginning of last month, I want to concentrate on the “big idea” behind the speech and why Obama wanted to follow the path of “even-handedness” .

Ah. But was it even-handed or was it heavily biased toward the Muslim world which was such a sea-change for an American president that it just seemed even-handed.

OK. Let’s just say the intention was even-handedness, not in the speech itself but in positioning the US in the eyes of the Muslim world as a more honest broker. To do this Obama had to be seen to be tough with Israel whilst paying little more than lip-service to what the Palestinians and the Arab world have to deliver.

Unfortunately for Israel, to redress the balance (or what Obama wanted to be seen as balance) he had to come down heavy on Netanyahu. This is transparent and not particularly credible posturing; most Arab and Muslim politicians said, “fine, but now we want action”. Subsequent exchanges between Jerusalem and Washington have gradually turned up the heat, evinced responses, but not had very much obvious effect on Israeli government policy.

Indeed, what is clear, is that the Israelis are keen on pursuing their own agenda to push forward the peace process and the two prominent signs of this are firstly, a rapid series of roadblock dismantlements on the West Bank accompanied by the recent “handover” to the Palestinian Authority of responsibility for day to day security in Judea and Samaria. Secondly, a measured expression of  the need for and the reasons behind Israel’s demand that the PA recognises Israel as the national home of the Jewish people. Of course, the settlement issue does not go away but there is a marked improvement in the life of Palestinians on the West Bank. Gaza and Hamas are a different matter, however.

But back to Obama.

Why ingratiate himself and his country with the Arab world? What are the US interests in any peace settlement in the Middle-East? Why does Obama want to be seen to be even-handed? What are the US national interests in rapprochement with the Muslim world, especially the Arab world and Iran? Is this the vanity of power? Does Obama see himself as a Messianic figure conferring peace and goodwill to the world? If so, what about North Korea, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Cuba?

The answer is more simplistic than than the real issues that lie behind the questions. What is the major threat to the free world at the moment? Islamist terror and the spread of Jihadi philosphy. But, if Pakistan falls, if Afghanistan is re-Talebanised, if Iraq falls apart, if Iran acquires nuclear weapons?

The major impediment to neutralising Islamist extremism, according to the simplistic narrative of the US government, is the Arab-Israeli conflict. If you get that out of the way, all done and dusted, everyone reconciled, not only is that a huge Obama-legacy moment but it removes the excuse of the Israli-Palestinian conflict to foster the anti-US animus in the Muslim world. It takes the legs from under the Jihadi movement because the conflict which most animates them has been removed.

So goes the narrative. In fact, it’s a charade built on a hope, built on delusion.

Obama may well believe that he can persuade moderate Arabs and Muslims to defeat the Jihadis amongst them and move their societies into the 21st century, engaging with the West whilst retaining their own culture and history. A world where East and West meets and each learns from the other with mutual benefit and increased prosperity. If you remove the main cause of conflict, the world will be a better and safer place and we will will bathe in the light of the Pax Obama.

Nice story. But it is all based on a major misconception that Israel, Zionism and the Palestinians are the real cause of  Jihadism. In fact, they are just an excuse, a recruiting seregant, a source of malign and indignant rhetoric.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not end Islamism. The Jihadis will only be satisfied with the destruction of Israel and the Islamisation of the West. The Israelis and Palestinians must be reconciled but only because it is morally imperative that there be a just solution, not as part of an American global peace strategy.

In light of this, despite misgivings about the new Israeli government, so far, I agree with many of the things they are doing and the independent stance they are taking. For the Israellis, asking for more concessions from them without addressing the real nub of recognition of Israel as the national home of the Jewish people, just does not wash.

Meanwhile, I wait to see how the Obama strategy pans out. Don’t hold your breath.

What happened to the two-state solution?

28/05/2009 / / 1 Comment

I thought, and certainly President Obama thought, that Israel and Palestine were pursuing a two state solution.

The key issues to be resolved with regard to this 60 year conflict are as follows:

1. Borders and security

2. End of belligerence

3. Status of Jerusalem

4. Refugee issues

5. Israeli settlements on the West Bank/Judea-Samaria

It’s very easy to get confused with long litany of “peace agreements” , accords, understandings etc. We have Oslo, Geneva, Camp David, Taba, Annapolis, road map, Saudi Plan and so on.

Despite Ehud Barak offering Yasser Arafat 95-7% of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and compensation for refugees, not only was the offer rejected, without a counter proposal,  to the dismay of all involved, including the Saudi Ambassador, but Arafat issued orders for the Second Intifada covering his own inability to confront the possibility of a just peace and leading to the deaths of thousands of Palestinians and Israelis.

Now the Netanyahu government is turning away from seeking a  final status solution, including the two-state solution and instead is following a course to ameliorate the conditions on the West Bank and to improve the infrastructure and living standards of Palestinians.

At the same time it is saying that it will honour all previous agreements. It’s getting very confusing. Clearly, the Netanyahu government has decided to follow its own agenda in the apparent belief that there is no current partner for peace. Netanyahu is, therefore, giving the distinct impression that he has accepted a sort of de facto annexation of the West Bank as part of Israel but with Palestinian autonomy.

Whilst Netanyahu kicks the two-state solution into the long grass, Mahmoud Abbas and the PA continue with their own maximalist agenda: Jerusalem is Muslim only and Jews have no claims to it or to any of Palestine (that means Israel too).

Let’s take a look at some recent pronouncements:

Yesterday the Prime Minister’s Media Adviser issued the following:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today (Wednesday), 28.5.09, convened the Ministerial Committee on Improving the Situation of the Palestinian Residents of Judea and Samaria.  At the start of the meeting, he said that advancing economic projects for the Palestinian population of Judea and Samaria would a better economic, social and political reality and would improve the Palestinians’ quality of life and personal welfare.

Note “would be a better… reality”. This means better than pursuing any further peace negotiations which both Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman have rejected as having a history of leading not to peace but to Israeli concessions and Palestinian violence.

The communique continues:

Defense Minister Ehud Barak presented economic projects in the PA, including: The establishment of an industrial zone in the Mukibleh-Jenin area of northern Samaria, the establishment of an industrial zone for the processing and marketing of agricultural produce in Jericho, the establishment of an industrial zone in the Hebron-Tarkumiyeh area, the establishment of an industrial zone in Bethlehem, environmental protection projects (waste disposal and sewage treatment sites) and the establishment of a Palestinian city near Ramallah.  He noted that approximately 100 projects in various fields in the PA areas of Judea and Samaria are currently in various planning stages.

And so it continues. The strategy here appears to be that an economically stronger Palestine with greatly improved living standards would lead to the de-radicalisation of certain elements with Palestinian society on the West Bank. This in turn would lead to the easing of security arrangements and a better quality of life.

Although I can only applaud the improving of Palestinian economic conditions and easing of restrictions, if they result from this strategy, I also have an impression that this is the language of quasi-annexation. It certainly does not address Palestinian self-determination or any of the agenda items at the top of this page.

Yesterday Arutz 7 reported :

Minister of Strategic Affairs Moshe (Boogie) Yaalon believes that the time has come for Israel to “free itself from the failed paradigm” of the “two-state solution.” Yaalon spoke Tuesday at a meeting of MKs dedicated to finding an alternative to the creation of a Palestinian Authority-led Arab state.

While the creation of a PA-led state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza is perceived as a necessity both in Israel and worldwide, such a state would not solve the Israel-PA conflict, said Yaalon. In fact, he said, it is doubtful that the possibility of creating such a state exists, due to Arab and Muslim reluctance to take any step that would imply recognition of Israel or compromise on Arab claims to the entire Land of Israel.

Meanwhile President Obama is advancing his “peace plan” although we only know vaguely what it entails. The Jerusalem Post reported:

US President Barack Obama’s statements about how to advance the peace process do not differ significantly from those of his predecessor, George W. Bush, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told The Jerusalem Post…

He denied reports in the Hebrew press that Obama had drafted a Middle East peace plan calling for a democratic, contiguous and demilitarized Palestinian state whose borders would be determined by territorial exchanges with Israel.

According to the reports, the Old City of Jerusalem would be established as an international zone. The initiative would require the Palestinians to give up their claim of a “right of return,” and Europe and the US would arrange compensation for refugees, including passports for those residing abroad.Arab countries would institute confidence-building measures to clear the air with Israel. When Palestinian statehood would be achieved, diplomatic and economic relations would be established between Israel and Arab states.

“I don’t know of any Obama plan that has been finalized,” said Ayalon, who has been briefed on the closed-door meetings between Netanyahu and Obama. “Don’t believe the headlines. What was in the papers was mere speculation, and there is no substance to it,” he said.

So what IS the plan?

Ayalon said his Israel Beiteinu Party would oppose the internationalization of Jerusalem and the relinquishing of Israeli sovereignty in the “holy basin” around the Old City. He said the party would also insist that Israel not take in a single Palestinian refugee, citing legal, moral and historical grounds.

Tzipi Livni now leader of Kadima said in the Knesset:

“We will not be able to keep Jerusalem if we say no to everything, or if out of fear we adopt unwillingness as a policy and frozenness as an ideology,” Livni said. “I believe that it is possible, through proper management, to make the world understand the things that are important to us, and with them we can keep Israel as a national home for the Jewish people and Jerusalem as its eternal capital.”

Wow! She thinks she can make the world “understand” – that’s more ambitious than a peace settlement given the world’s hatred of the only democratic and free country in the Middle East.

And she seems to fear not just losing Jerusalem but Israel itself as the home of the Jewish people!

Silvan Shalom, Vice Premier puts it most succinctly:

“There aren’t two Jerusalems. Jerusalem will not be divided. Jerusalem will remain the eternal capital of Israel. It’s not a promise. It’s a fact. Jerusalem will not be a topic for compromise.”

Now if you think that’s all a bit uncompromising let’s look what the PA are saying.

Again in the Jerusalem Post, reacting to rumours of a Obama’s “peace plan” President Mahmoud Abbas said:

One PA official said Abbas and his aides were currently studying which, he added, included “several positive points.” The official stressed, however, that some of the proposals mentioned in the plan were completely unacceptable to the Palestinians. These proposals, he said, included the talk about resettling Palestinian refugees in Arab countries, swapping lands between the future Palestinian state and Israel, creating a demilitarized state and granting the Old City of Jerusalem the status of an international city.

“The Palestinian position on these issues is very clear,” explained another PA official. “We insist on the right of return for all refugees on the basis of United Nations resolution 194, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with all of East Jerusalem, including the Old City, as its capital.”

The official said the PA had, in the past, rejected the idea of establishing a demilitarized state and swapping land with Israel.

“The only way to achieve real and lasting peace is by forcing Israel to withdraw from all the territories that were occupied in 1967,” he said.

The interpretation of resolution 194 is highly problematical. 194 does not offer a “Right of Return” nor does it mention Palestinian refugees exclusively. See this article for a full discussion.

The Palestinian position is still maximalist in that it demands ALL of Jerusalem and ALL refugees returning to Israel. As Alan Dershowitz so succinctly puts it:

… the only justification for Palestinians opting to exercise their right of return would be a macropolitical, rather than a microhumanitarian, one. It would be part of a large-scale, carefully orchestrated plan to return millions of Palestinians to Israel in order to overwhelm the Jewish state with a Palestinian majority. (The Case for Peace, John Wiley and Sons, inc. p. 47)

No Israeli government can ever agree to that and the Palestinians know it.

As for Jerusalem, the PA has and continues to make obnoxious statements which deny that Jerusalem was ever Jewish, that the Temple was was not built there, the Torah was altered to lay false historic claim to the Holy Land and all Jewish claims to Israel are bogus. This is nothing less than the negation of Jews and Judaism by denying there clear and evidenced historical connections to the Land of Israel.

June 1st 2008 worldnetdaily.com reporter Aaron Klein provided the following report:

“Jerusalem is Muslim. The blessed Al Aqsa mosque and Harem Al Sharif (Temple Mount) is 100 percent Muslim. The Israelis are playing with fire when they threaten Al Aqsa with digging that is taking place,” said Abbas’ chief of staff Rafiq Al Husseini.

WND also reported March 15th 2007:

The Jewish Temples never existed, the Western Wall really was a tying post for Muhammad’s horse, the Al Aqsa Mosque was built by angels, and Abraham, Moses and Jesus were prophets for Islam.

All this according to Sheikh Taysir Tamimi, chief Palestinian Justice and one of the most influential Muslim leaders in Israel. Tamimi is considered the second most important Palestinian cleric after Muhammad Hussein, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

… Tamimi, who preaches regularly from the Al Aqsa Mosque, claimed Jews have no historical connection to Jerusalem or Israel and that the Jewish Temples never existed.

“Israel started since 1967 making archeological digs to show Jewish signs to prove the relationship between Judaism and the city and they found nothing. There is no Jewish connection to Israel before the Jews invaded in the 1880’s,” said Tamimi…

“About these so-called two Temples, they never existed, certainly not at the Haram Al- Sharif (Temple Mount),” Tamimi said.

This is the same Sheikh Tamimi who ranted against Israel in front of Pope Benedict as I reported here.

Previously, a leader of the Waqf, the Islamic authority which manages the Temple Mount, was dismissed for stating the Jewish temples existed on the site of the Al Aksa mosque and that denying it is purely political.

The PA is supposed to be “moderate”. Maximalist positions are not moderate. In fact maximalist Palestinian positions and historical revisionism by its lay and religious leaders only give fuel to the current Israeli government to claim there is no point in pursuing solutions using old formulas which have always been rejected.

So we now have two entrenched positions.

Meanwhile President Obama seems to be moving ahead like someone driving a buggy without the horses.

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