Since the last generous Israeli Peace offer made in 2008, under the Israeli government led by Ehud Olmert. The PLO leadership, led by Mahmoud Abbas, has done it’s uttermost to undermine any negotiated peace by insisting solely on their terms and definitions of borders alone.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu outlined in his speech, the change of the view of Israel as the aggressor in the Middle East began with the infamous Zionism equals Racism resolution in the UN in 1975.
Since the early 1980’s the PLO has been mobilizing left-wing sympathizers in Europe and the United States, especially "leftist" activists on American campuses, who have enthusiastically succeeded in reframing the Arab-Israeli conflict into a struggle for national liberation against an "Imperialist Occupier".
Since the first Lebanese War in 1982 the PLO has needed to work in a way that concealed its real goals, permitted strategic deception, and gave the appearance of moderation.
"Stop talking about annihilating Israel and instead turn your terror war into a struggle for human rights. Then you will have the American people eating out of your hand." Muhammad Yazid
Ever since the UN Durban Conference on Racism in 2001, Israel has been presented as not only denying Palestinians their rights but as doing so out of an essential racism. This totally false analogy of Israelis’ security precautions, with apartheid in South African, has been wildly embraced and pushed by the brainwashed Pro-Palestinian sympathizers throughout the US and Europe. They have succeeded in raising the flag of Apartheid while pushing the BDS scheme: de-legitimization, boycotts, divestment against Israel.
Muhammad Yazid, who had been minister of information in two Algerian wartime governments (1958-1962) once advised Arafat and the PLO to wipe out the argument that Israel is a small state whose existence is threatened by the Arab states, or that the Palestinian problem is a question of refugees. Instead, present the Palestinian struggle as a struggle for liberation like the others. Wipe out the impression …that in the struggle between the Palestinians and the Zionists, the Zionist is the underdog. Now it is the Arab who is oppressed and victimized in his existence because he is not only facing the Zionists but also world imperialism.
So here we have Abbas not wanting to negotiate and give in on some terms to have a real peace instead he has turned to the UN to try to get a Peace imposed on Israel without negotiations.
Abbas the “Al-Nakba” (Catastrophe):
“The Question Palestine is intricately linked with the United Nations via the resolutions adopted by its various organs and agencies and via the essential and lauded role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East -
UNRWA - which embodies the international responsibility towards the plight of Palestine refugees, who are the victims of Al-Nakba (Catastrophe) that occurred in 1948.”
Historical Fact:
Resolution 194 does not JUST deal with the situation in the region after the Palestinian population fled.
What is conveniently forgotten to be mentioned is that the minority Jewish population had been similarly expelled by the Arab Legion of Jordan from their homes in Jerusalem's Old City and in the West Bank. The resolution called for the return of refugees to their homes and defined the role of the U.N. United Nations Conciliation Commission as an organization to facilitate peace in the region.
This photo is from a 1948 Life Magazine article by John Phillips:The expulsion of Jews from the Old City under the guns of Jordanian soldiers.
What is never mentioned nor dealt with by the UN in UNR194 is the expulsion of over 900,000 Jews from Arab lands in response to the embarrassment of the loss in combat to the Jewish State. The vast cost of this all Jewish refugee crisis and the absorption of these immigrants into the fledgling state was never covered by UNWRA or by UN but by the efforts of the world Jewry.
What Abbas also conveniently fails to mention is that that all six Arab countries then represented at the UN voted against it and that the resolution was adopted by a majority of 35 countries from among the 58 members of the United Nations at that time.
Most importantly of all is the fact that the Palestinian Leadership consistently and intentionally fail to mention the actual cause for the Arab disaster they refer to as the “Nakba”. That THEY the people of "Palestine" allowed for THEIR leadership to reject outright the "Partition" that was meant to allow for the creation of a Palestinian Entity because it would allow for a Jewish State
That these same six Arab countries then represented at the UN who voted
AGAINST UNR194 - ; Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen,
were those who invaded the Mandated Area in 1948 to eliminate at birth the State of Israel and it was they who called for the Palestinians to flee!
UNR181 states that it:
“Recommends to the United Kingdom, as the mandatory Power for Palestine, and to all other Members of the United Nations the adoption and implementation, with regard to the future Government of Palestine, of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union”
Note that the surrounding Arab countries violated UNR181 by invading the Mandated Areas:
“The Security Council determine as a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression, in accordance with Article 39 of the Charter, any attempt to alter by force the settlement envisaged by this resolution;”
Furthermore it called for;
"Independent Arab and Jewish States.”
Since there was an overly intense rivalry between the Mufti of Jerusalem Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini and exiled Iraqi former Prime Minister Rashid Ali there was no Palestinian shadow government to claim their state.
Instead the hungry Arab neighbors attempted to divide the area between themselves and in total disregard for the Arabs of Palestine. This fact can be seen in the Non movement to establish a Palestinian State between 1948 to 1967 when The Gaza Strip and the entire West Bank area was held by the Arab nations of Egypt and Jordan in violation of UNR181.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also known by the kunya Abu Mazen:
“those, including myself, who were forced to leave their homes and their towns and villages, carrying only some of our belongings and our grief and our memories and the keys of our homes to the camps of exile and the Diaspora in the 1948 Al-Nakba, one of the worst operations of uprooting, destruction and removal of a vibrant and cohesive society that had been contributing in a pioneering and leading way in the cultural, educational and economic renaissance of the Arab Middle East.”
Historical Fact:
When a Jewish area was overrun - and some were - the homes were looted or destroyed and any survivors were killed, as at Kfar Etzion (only three of the defenders survived the massacre). The potential for the ethnic cleansing of Jewish Palestine was never realized because of the bravery, discipline, determination and sheer luck of the Yishuv.
If the Arabs had not carried out across the board attacks throughout the Yishuv between 1947 and 1948, perhaps the nature of the subsequent Jewish victory would have been different. As it was, the ceaseless attacks against all isolated Jewish settlements only gave Zionist commanders every reason to see neighboring Arab villages as threatening and to act accordingly.
Mohammed Abu Ghosh from the Arab village, which remained neutral in 1948 has been quoted as saying,
"What we did, we did for Abu Ghosh, for nobody else. Others who lost their land, hated us then, but now all over the Arab world, many people see we were right. If everyone did what we did, there'd be no refugee problem . . . And if we were traitors? Look where we are, look where they are."
Historical Fact:
The continuation of the “Big Lie” Hazem Nusseibeh, an editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service's , told the BBC in an interview in 1998 that the fabricated atrocity stories about Deir Yassin were "our biggest mistake," because "Palestinians fled in terror" and left the country in huge numbers after hearing the atrocity claims.
What the Palestinians are attempting to state here is that their suffering in the “Nakba” was worse than that imposed upon the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust.
Abbas: “The core issue here is that the Israeli government refuses to commit to terms of reference for the negotiations that are based on international law and United Nations resolutions, and that it frantically continues to intensify building of settlements on the territory of the State of Palestine. “… the policy of the Israeli colonial settlement occupation,”
“Settlement activities embody the core of the policy of colonial military occupation of the land of the Palestinian people and all of the brutality of aggression and racial discrimination against our people that this policy entails.”
“This policy, which constitutes a breach of international humanitarian law and United Nations resolutions, is the primary cause for the failure of the peace process, the collapse of dozens of opportunities, and the burial of the great hopes that arose from the signing of the Declaration of Principles in 1993 between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel to achieve a just peace that would begin a new era for our region.”
Historical Fact:
United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed Resolution 242, which affirmed Israel's right to retain at least some of the territories it had acquired in any anticipated "land for peace" agreement, as well as Israel’s right to "secure and recognized boundaries."
US Ambassador at the time, Arthur Goldberg: "historically, there have never been secure or recognized boundaries in the area"; adding that the armistice lines did not answer that description.”
In fact, Article II of the 1949 Armistice with Jordan explicitly specified that the agreement did not compromise any future territorial claims of the parties, since it had been "dictated exclusively by military considerations."
Besides "Resolution 242 did not call for a full withdrawal from all the territories that Israel captured in the Six Day War; the 1949 Armistice lines were no longer to be a reference point for a future peace process."
In September 1968 President Lyndon Johnson stated: "It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of 4 June 1967 will not bring peace. There must be secure and there must be recognized borders."
The Arab call for a return to the pre-Six Day War situation is as much an emotional attempt to erase the humiliation inflicted on the combined Arab forces at the time, as a requirement to be scrupulously observed. Although the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative refers to the 1967 lines, and the 2003 Road Map speaks of ending "the occupation that began in 1967," all sides acknowledge that a final agreement will incorporate land swaps aimed at ensuring secure borders for both Israel and the future Palestine.
In terms of international law International Court of Justice Stephen M. Schwebel has stated; that since Jordan had unlawfully occupied the area from 1948 and 1967, the entire area of what remained of the Palestinian Mandated Territory in the “West Bank” and East Jerusalem was terra nullius or "land belonging to no one". The sovereignty of said area may be acquired through occupation. The concept of terra nullius is well recognized in international law. Therefore the “Palestinians” never had sovereignty over the “West Bank” or East Jerusalem. According to Justice Schwebel Israel, which subsequently took that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense in 1967, has better title to it.
Logically, since Jordan renounced its claim to Judea and Samaria in 1988, and signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, recognizing its current border, the only other possible valid legal claim, was defined under the Mandate for Palestine, is that of Israel. The Palestinians have no legal claim because when they had the opportunity to proclaim a state, between 1948 to 1967, over the West Bank they failed to do so. Therefore Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria is legal and legitimate because it did not acquire territory belonging to another state, or legal entity.
Bibi:
President Abbas just stood here, and he said that the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the settlements. Well, that's odd. Our conflict has been raging for -- was raging for nearly half a century before there was a single Israeli settlement in the West Bank. So if what President Abbas is saying was true, then the -- I guess that the settlements he's talking about are Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jaffa, Be'er Sheva. Maybe that's what he meant the other day when he said that Israel has been occupying Palestinian land for 63 years. He didn't say from 1967; he said from 1948. I hope somebody will bother to ask him this question because it illustrates a simple truth: The core of the conflict is not the settlements. The settlements are a result of the conflict.
The settlements have to be -- it's an issue that has to be addressed and resolved in the course of negotiations. But the core of the conflict has always been and unfortunately remains the refusal of the Palestinians to recognize a Jewish state in any border.
Abbas:
“Construction of the “annexation Wall” that is eating up large tracts of our land, dividing it into separate and isolated islands and cantons, destroying family life and communities and the livelihoods of tens of thousands of families.”
Historical Fact: The “Security Wall”
“When completed, it will extend 450 miles (720 kilometers), sometimes dipping as far as 15 miles (24 kilometers) into West Bank territory, claiming ONLY 10 percent of Palestinian land for Israeli settlers. The Israeli government says its goal is only to protect Israeli lives, not to redraw the border, and as soon as there's a sweeping shift in Palestinian policy toward Israel, the wall will be destroyed and the confiscated land returned. The Israeli government doesn't even call it a wall. It prefers the term "security fence," and in most places in the West Bank it is indeed a network of electrified chain-link fences and coils of barbed wire.
The Israeli government says the wall is working. The second intifada brought wave after wave of suicide bombings, striking throughout Israel, killing over a 1,000 civilians and soldiers. Starting in 2003, with construction of the wall proceeding at top speed, and with intensified military checkpoints, patrols, and intelligence, the number of attacks drastically declined.
Abbas:
“The occupying Power also continues to refuse permits for our people to build in Occupied East Jerusalem, at the same time that it intensifies its decades-long campaign of demolition and confiscation of homes, displacing Palestinian owners and residents under a multi-pronged policy of ethnic cleansing aimed at pushing them away from their ancestral homeland.”
Historical Fact:
Jordan invaded, conquered and ethnically cleansed the area known as the “West Bank” and the Jewish Quarter of the “Old City” of Jerusalem of ALL Jews in 1947 and held it, without any Palestinian objections, until LIBERATED in 1967.
Abbas:
“The occupying Power also continues to undertake excavations that threaten our holy places,”
Bibi:
“President Abbas, stop walking around this issue. Recognize the Jewish state, and make peace with us. In such a genuine peace, Israel is prepared to make painful compromises. But they should be ready, like us, for compromise. And we will know that they're ready for compromise and for peace when they start taking Israel's security requirements seriously and when they stop denying our historical connection to our ancient homeland.
In my office in Jerusalem, there's a -- there's an ancient seal. It's a signet ring of a Jewish official from the time of the Bible. The seal was found right next to the Western Wall, and it dates back 2,700 years, to the time of King Hezekiah. Now, there's a name of the Jewish official inscribed on the ring in Hebrew. His name was Netanyahu. That's my last name. My first name, Benjamin, dates back a thousand years earlier to Benjamin -- Binyamin -- the son of Jacob, who was also known as Israel. Jacob and his 12 sons roamed these same hills of Judea and Sumeria 4,000 years ago, and there's been a continuous Jewish presence in the land ever since.”
Abbas:
“…its military checkpoints prevent our citizens from getting access to their mosques and churches, and it continues to besiege the Holy City with a ring of settlements imposed to separate the Holy City from the rest of the Palestinian cities.”
Historical Fact:
Palestinian leaders argue the wall has little to do with the reduction in suicide attacks. The bombings have stopped, they say, because the major militant groups, including Hamas, proclaimed a ban on them, in the hope of restarting peace talks. “A concrete wall can't stop someone who's willing to die”, many Palestinians say, and if militant groups wanted, they could send a suicide bomber into Jerusalem every hour of the day.”
Bibi:
“I removed hundreds of roadblocks and checkpoints, to ease freedom of movement in the Palestinian areas; this facilitated a fantastic growth in the Palestinian economy. But again -- no response. I took the unprecedented step of freezing new buildings in the settlements for 10 months. No prime minister did that before, ever. Once again -- you applaud, but there was no response. No response.”
Abbas:
“In addition, we now face the imposition new conditions not previously raised, conditions that will transform the raging conflict in our inflamed region into a religious conflict and a threat to the future of a million and a half Christian and Muslim Palestinians, citizens of Israel, a matter which we reject and which is impossible for us to accept being dragged into.”
Historical Fact:
Sheik Muhammad Ibrahim Al-Madhi in a sermon, called for turning Jews and Christians into Ahl-Dhimma [protected second rate citizens] under Muslim rule.
Palestinian nationalists refuse to recognize that Israel is the state of the Jewish people because they refuse to admit that there is any such thing as the Jewish people. The PLO Charter of 1964 states:
Article 18…Judaism, because it is a divine religion, is not a nationality with independent existence. Furthermore, the Jews are not one people with an independent personality because they are citizens to their states.
Bibi:
“We believe that the Palestinians should be neither the citizens of Israel nor its subjects. They should live in a free state of their own. The Jewish state of Israel will always protect the rights of all its minorities, including the more than 1 million Arab citizens of Israel. I wish I could say the same thing about a future Palestinian state, for as Palestinian officials made clear the other day -- in fact, I think they made it right here in New York -- they said the Palestinian state won't allow any Jews in it. They'll be Jew-free -- Judenrein. That's ethnic cleansing. There are laws today in Ramallah that make the selling of land to Jews punishable by death. That's racism. And you know which laws this evokes.”
“Israel has no intention whatsoever to change the democratic character of our state. We just don't want the Palestinians to try to change the Jewish character of our state. (Applause.) We want to give up -- we want them to give up the fantasy of flooding Israel with millions of Palestinians.”
Abbas:
“Thus, we agreed to establish the State of Palestine on only 22% of the territory of historical Palestine - on all the Palestinian Territory occupied by Israel in 1967.
Historical Fact:
Once again Abbas brings the big lie of the Palestinians and fails to mention that 76% of the Mandated Area of Palestine was given unilaterally by Britain to "buy off [Prince] Abdullah and the chief tribal groups such as the Bani Sakhr, Abadi, Shobaki and Manaseer for a "Hashemite solution” in 1921.
Abbas attempts to twist the fact with the creation of Jordan the Jewish National Home was limited within the 23% of Palestine west of the Jordan River, an area that includes what is today called the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Churchill brought a memorandum to the March, 1921 Cairo Conference, which envisaged:
... establishing a Jewish National Home in Palestine west of the Jordan and a separate Arab entity in Palestine east of the Jordan. Abdullah, if installed in authority in Transjordan, could preside over the creation of such an Arab entity.
According to Sir Alec Kirkbride, the British representative in the area, Transjordan was:
... intended to serve as a reserve of land for use in the resettlement of Arabs once the National Home for the Jews in Palestine, which [Britain was] pledged to support, became an accomplished fact. There was no intention at that stage of forming the territory east of the River Jordan into an independent Arab state.
Bibi:
In the last few weeks, American officials have put forward ideas to restart peace talks. There were things in those ideas about borders that I didn't like. There were things there about the Jewish state that I'm sure the Palestinians didn't like.
But with all my reservations, I was willing to move forward on these American ideas.
Abbas:-Speaking ONLY to the UN:
“I am here to say on behalf of the Palestinian people and the Palestine Liberation Organization: We extend our hands to the Israeli government and the Israeli people for peace-making.”
Bibi:
“President Abbas, why don't you join me? We have to stop negotiating about the negotiations. Let's just get on with it. Let's negotiate peace.
In two and a half years, we met in Jerusalem only once, even though my door has always been open to you. If you wish, I'll come to Ramallah. Actually, I have a better suggestion. We've both just flown thousands of miles to New York. Now we're in the same city. We're in the same building. So let's meet here today in the United Nations. Who's there to stop us? What is there to stop us? If we genuinely want peace, what is there to stop us from meeting today and beginning peace negotiations?
And I suggest we talk openly and honestly. Let's listen to one another. Let's do as we say in the Middle East: Let's talk "doogri". That means straightforward. I'll tell you my needs and concerns. You'll tell me yours. And with God's help, we'll find the common ground of peace.
There's an old Arab saying that you cannot applaud with one hand. Well, the same is true of peace. I cannot make peace alone. I cannot make peace without you. President Abbas, I extend my hand -- the hand of Israel -- in peace. I hope that you will grasp that hand. We are both the sons of Abraham. My people call him Avraham. Your people call him Ibrahim. We share the same patriarch. We dwell in the same land. Our destinies are intertwined. Let us realize the vision of Isaiah -- (speaks in Hebrew) -- "The people who walk in darkness will see a great light." Let that light be the light of peace.
