Abbas Should Draw a Map Just Like Netanyahu

One of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s now world infamous preconditions is the insistence that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu deliver a map showing what the Israeli leaders foresees as the borders between Israel and Palestine. Abbas claims that until he is able to actually visualize the borders which Netanyahu is suggesting he will be unable to determine whether or not it would be worthwhile for him to meet and restart negotiations. Abbas is using this ploy so he can continue to reject one map after another claiming that Netanyahu is not serious about making peace as the map does not come anywhere near the minimal area which Abbas feels is required for the Palestinian State. By having Prime Minister Netanyahu draw such a map Abbas excuses him from having to make any demands or claims as to what he would accept leaving him to simply reject any map proposed without stating what would be acceptable. So, perhaps in all fairness Prime Minister Netanyahu should offer to exchange maps with Abbas thus having both men draw up their idea of what would make a fair border from which to begin the final border negotiations. Of course Mahmoud Abbas will refuse to exchange maps while continuing to demand that Netanyahu must submit a map to Abbas.

 

There is no doubts as to why Palestinian President Abbas will refuse to present a map of the final borders he envisions as acceptable to the Palestinians for the establishing of a final solution to the question of borders. His reason is simply as such a map already exists and is available for anybody to see. All one need do is look at the maps of Palestine in the Palestinian schoolbooks or the map behind Abbas’s desk in his office and the map of Palestine that they consider their minimal requirements are there for anybody to see. These maps all depict all of Gaza, Judea, Samaria (West Bank) and Israel as the borders for their state of Palestine. That is correct; everything from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea is their envisioned state with no Israel whatsoever. That is the reason that Abbas would reject any request for him to also present a map of his vision for final borders and also why no matter what map Netanyahu might present, as long as it depicted any of the land as belonging to Israel as a Jewish State would be unacceptable to Abbas. Along with offering to present Abbas with a map if and only if Abbas returns the favor and presents his ideal map in a mutual exchange, why not also do similar offers on some of the other preconditions which Mahmoud Abbas is currently hiding behind using them as a means to avoid negotiations.

 

Where Mahmoud Abbas demands that Israel accept the Right of Return for as many as five to six million refugees, Israel could demand that Abbas admit to how many Jews who own lands in Judea and Samaria will be allowed to remain on their lands after a settlement has been reached. It is unlikely that Abbas would surprise the world and admit that the Palestinians intend to dispossess the Jews who are living or own land beyond the Green Line and refuse to allow even a single Jew to remain and become a citizen of the Palestinian State. Once Abbas has made the situation clear that there will be no Jews allowed to remain within Palestine then the Israelis can hardly be condemned for not accepting the refugees, especially all five to six million, within Israel and demanding that they only be allowed to settle in Palestine. In all truth, Israel actually holds the moral high ground on this issue as there are already sizeable Arab sectors within the Israeli population who have full rights and are found throughout Israeli society. There are Arab doctors and nurses working right next to Jewish doctors and nurses in every Israeli hospital, Arab members in the Knesset even to include some who act more for the Palestinians than they do the Israeli Arabs who elected them. There are Arab judges, Police, and soldiers in the IDF, though the Arab Israelis are not required to serve in the IDF as Israeli Jews and Druze are required to serve. You cannot find a single Jews even allowed to reside in Area A of the West Bank or within any of the Arab villages under Palestinian Authority rule.

 

While President Abbas has demanded that Israel issue a building freeze once again in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, perhaps in exchange Abbas will freeze all Palestinian building within East Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, and Areas B and C of the West Bank in a gesture of equality and fairness. Just as the Israelis would still be entitled to build within the Green line and only cease building in the contested lands, the Palestinian would continue to build in Area C and they would also not build within the contested lands. As for the Abbas demand that Israel agree to utilize the 1967 Lines as a reference for final borders, these are actually the Armistice Lines from 1949 which the Arabs demanded could never be used to denote a border, that the Israelis could demand that Abbas recognize that the original British Mandate was presumably for the establishment of a Jewish State and that all the lands east of the Jordan River were already ceded by the Jews to the Palestinian Arabs when they forfeited those lands for the establishment of Jordan. Should that be too difficult a pill for Abbas to swallow then there is always the compromise position that at the establishment of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 Israel possessed the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza, Judea and Samaria and as required by Resolution 242 Israel had surrendered territories by returning the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and the disengagement from Gaza thus Israel is not technically or legally required to surrender any further lands except by mutual agreement and should Israel wish to fully exhaust their rights they could annex all of Judea and Samaria and still have satisfied all legal international requirements. There has to be a point where the truth is stated and a requirement that the actual International legal requirements are made obvious and that Israel has technically met every International requirement proposed by the United Nations and accepted by International bodies.

 

Proposing that for every precondition which Israel is requested to meet to jumpstart the peace process the Palestinians also meet a like precondition would be simply an equalizing and fairness measure. The examples above are simply that, samples, suggestions. It would be up to Israeli leadership to present proposals which they would deem as evenhanded. There are other preconditions such as the releasing of large numbers of Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons, including some of those who have committed the most grievous crimes, is one demand for which I am unable to find anything which would balance such out to pose in return. The other problem with this idea is that I have little doubt that Mahmoud Abbas would not simply keep adding more preconditions to the list while ignoring the Israeli answer of preconditions of their own. Still, by proposing such return preconditions they would add into the discussion a review of what are the demands and positions on each subject the Palestinians hold. Any turning of the tables that potentially reveals the truth of the Palestinians refusal to negotiate works in Israel’s favor. Trying to tell the world that these preconditions are merely excuses not to negotiate is not accepted and will not be accepted unless Israel actually gave in on them and the Palestinians still refused to negotiate. The problem is once Israel surrenders on any point there will be no backtracking away from the conceded point. For example, if Israel commits to a building freeze for a period, say six months, in order to allow for negotiations we all know exactly what would be the response as we already danced this dance. Abbas would simply ask about another set of preconditions such as agreement on the 1967 lines for borders and the acceptance of the Right of Return for all five to six million Palestinian refugees and the prisoner release. Israel would have allowed the building freeze to be established as something that Israel is obliged to commit to in order for negotiations just as it has been pushed ever since it was introduced and forced down Israel’s throat by United States President Obama. We also need to remember that the concept of the building freeze and using the 1967 lines as the starting point for borders were both brilliant ideas introduced and proposed by President Obama, not Mahmoud Abbas. Ever since their introduction they have stuck and Abbas realizes that these two gifts from the American President are in his pocket ad infinitum. As these preconditions will never depart the scene on their own, Israel has to find some tactic to turn them back on the Palestinians and use them to reveal the duplicity behind these demands being used deceptively by the Palestinians. Turnabout is only fair as all’s fair in love and war, and if this is not one it must be the other.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

How Israeli Leaders Should Solve the Peace Negotiation

With the appointment by President Obama of Samantha Power to replace Susan Rice as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations; the Israeli leadership has been put on notice that they no longer have a friend in the leadership of the United States. There is no reason for anybody who supports Israel to be comfortable with this appointment. Ms. Samantha Power has been quoted responding on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that it may necessitate using armed military forces, “a mammoth protection force” and an “external intervention”, to impose a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. This was to be implemented even if it would result in “alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import…or investing…billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new State of Palestine.” Where Samantha Power has not actually called directly for the use of troops to force Israel to remit their control and forcefully remove all Jewish influences from the West Bank in order to fully complete founding of a Palestinian state, this has been the heavily implied and many have taken the collective body of her commentary on this subject and concluded she would be supportive of such a policy and be pleased with such an outcome. This appointment of Samantha Power as United Nations Ambassador is a perfect complement to having John Kerry as Secretary of State and tasking him to mold a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by any means necessary. It has been made perfectly clear that President Obama and his entire Administration favors the formation of a Palestinian State utilizing all of the West Bank as the basis for the State’s borders with Eastern Jerusalem, including the entirety of the Old City and Temple Mount, to serve as the Capital City for said State. The recent moves, appointments, press releases and comments by President Obama and members of the foreign policy departments of his Administration with the new changes made for his second term should give the Israeli leadership sufficient warning that they will need to take actions to resolve the impasse with the Palestinians using whatever political force and capital necessary.

 

There will be those who will support Samantha Power explaining that she is not anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist or anti-Israel but simply stands up for the Palestinians’ rights to their own State and respect for their human rights. Ms. Power is a well-respected human rights activist and a leader in that movement. As such she takes the ‘human rights record’ of Israel as a habitual offender as factual. This goes a long way to explaining why after the United States had withdrawn most of its diplomatic participation from the noxious United Nations’ World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, better known as Durban I, Ms. Power remained to participate in the discussions. This was the conference which transformed from a conference to discuss and address problems relating to racism, xenophobia, and hatred but almost immediately broke down and wallowed in the fetid swamps of anti-Zionist, anti-Israel anti-Semitic blood libels and hatreds while ignoring every other human rights ills anywhere else in the world. The conference was chaired by Samantha Power’s friend Mary Robinson who had no difficulty allowing the laser focus on the purported human rights violations by Israel on the Palestinians, Arabs, and all non-Jews worldwide. With her background and track record displaying such a deep seated disdain and contempt for the State of Israel, how is it going to be possible for the United States to continue to support the Israelis in the United Nations Security Council when a United States veto is politically desired, or even convince Israeli leadership that the United States still presents a credible supporter? The new reality taking shape in President Obama’s second term administration should give Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition pause and question exactly what steps Israel needs to initiate to avoid being overrun by an adjusted, pro-Palestinian United States Middle East policy.

 

There will most certainly be some who profess to be pro-Israel and pro-Zionist who will claim that Ms. Power’s promotion gives Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu the perfect opportunity to finally prove that Israel truly wishes for peace. They will point out that should Netanyahu make some unilateral compromises that then President Obama along with Secretary Kerry and Ambassador Power would work with him to bring Palestinian President Abbas to the negotiation’s table and the Two State Solution would finally be achieved. One group which is suspected to take such a position would be J Street. Backing them in the media one might expect that Tom Friedman of the New York Times and Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic would pen flowing and glowing editorials exclaiming that a Palestinian-Israeli peace is at hand if Prime Minister Netanyahu would just grab the opportunity that would bring Secretary Kerry and Ambassador Power to Israel’s side and force Palestinian President Abbas to finally negotiate honestly yielding a resultant Two State Solution with peace and security guaranteed for both peoples. Unfortunately, such optimism ignores the one truth which nobody seems willing to identify; the truth that President Abbas cannot make peace. The Palestinian population, especially those under thirty years of age, has been raised on a visceral hatred for Israelis and Jews. They have been finely tuned to accept only a one Palestinian State solution in which the Jews are either second class Dhimmis or killed. Should Abbas ever sign a peace treaty with Israel which does not include a complete Israeli surrender his life would be forfeit in less time than Egyptian President Sadat lived after making peace before being assassinated by one of his military guard. Further, as long as the world continues to demand that Israel and Israel alone must continuously make unilateral sacrifices and surrender territory and other negotiation points, why would Abbas ever make any move towards negotiating a real peace as all he needs to do is agree to appear once every few years before the media cameras with the Israeli Prime Minister, whomever it may be, and then refuse to return to negotiate and wait for the world to force Israel to surrender everything piecemeal one unilateral concession at a time.

 

There is another path that would actually be productive and make Abbas and the Palestinians anxious and truly eager to negotiate and make a real and possibly lasting peace. This path demands that Israel make unilateral moves but not giving anything, especially land, to the Palestinians to bribe them to come and negotiate but to take concessions they might desire from the Palestinians, especially territory. Perhaps the first step Prime Minister Netanyahu might take to signal with a minor move would be to replace the Muslim Waqf from their supervisory role over the Temple Mount and limit their jurisdiction to the actual Islamic buildings while placing the Israeli Antiquities Authority to supervise the everyday activities and visitation to the Temple Mount. The Israeli Antiquities Authority could be tasked to form a Temple Mount Security Force in conjunction with the Shin Bet and new rules would need to be enacted allowing freedom to pray and freedom to wear religious symbols and universal access for all peoples of all religions to the Temple Mount with allowances made for major religious holy days. This would end the odious limitations currently enforced which limit prayers or other actions deemed to be of a suspected religious nature forbidden to all except Muslims. This condemnable religious stranglehold by Islam and the Waqf has been tolerated and accepted as equal religious rights under the current arrangement. Cancelling this oppressive and hateful arrangement would bring a fresh and liberating transformation to a place that is of primary religious importance to three of the world’s major religions and should never have been allowed to be restricted such that only one sole religion had rights to these holy grounds.

 

Should this reassignment of responsibility over policing the Temple Mount and granting equality to all to visit, pray and enjoy these hallowed grounds and religious shrines not get President Abbas and the rest of the Palestinian leadership’s undivided attention, then Israel should take a second step towards further limiting what Israel would be willing to consider to be negotiable. Annexing permanently a half dozen of the major and closest to the Green Line Jewish residential communities and the industrial, commercial, educational areas etc. would hopefully awaken the Palestinian leadership to realize that the rules have changed and they can negotiate in good faith or find Israel eventually annexing Area C and whatever locations in Area B or even Area A that are desired. Eventually Israel could inform the Palestinian leadership that Israel has annexed all the areas Israel wishes to retain as part of Israel and they have two choices, either form a demilitarized state on what remains or if they still refuse to negotiate then Israel will consider the remaining areas to be under Israeli security control while allowing it to be a semi-autonomous area within which the Palestinians living there have limited self-rule but they will not be granted Israeli citizenship. Meanwhile, whenever Israel annexed lands they would grant the Palestinians residing within a temporary status placing them on a path towards full Israeli citizenship. They would receive new identification cards which would be different from Israeli or Palestinian identification cards currently in use. They would be eligible for full citizenship in five years provided they did not support, participate, harbor, commit or allow the occurrence of any terror related activities. It has become obvious that as long as Israel is forced to give concessions there will be no peace so perhaps it is time to attempt a new approach where Israel no longer surrenders in small unilateral steps but rather takes a positive step establishing a new pro-Israel fact on the ground one annexation at a time. When you are running out of carrots and it has become obvious that carrots are not working, then it is time to try a few sticks and save whatever remaining carrots you have for when the other side truly and honestly desires to negotiate a permanent peace with security and tranquility for both peoples living side-by-side or together in the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Refuting Myths Against Israel and the Jews Made Simple

There are an unbelievable number of lies, distortions and misconceptions about Israel, the Jews, the Palestinians and the histories of each. First thing that is needed to do is to dispel some of the most common myths. The Jews were given Israel as retribution made because of the Holocaust the biggest lie. The idea of Israel as the Jewish State in modern times began with the first Jews returning to Israel in the 1850s. The Zionist movement was founded by Theodore Herzl as a response to the Trial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus for treason by France which has become known as the Dreyfus Affair. Captain Alfred Dreyfus was wrongly accused and convicted of treason on the flimsiest of evidence, a single scrap from a note, mostly because he was a Jew. The scandal was eventually revealed after Émile Zola wrote his famous article, J’accuse. All of these events took place before 1900 and eventually led to the Balfour Declaration which was written in November 1917. The League of Nations set aside lands for the Jewish State to be founded upon under the Mandate System which established the French and British Mandates; the British Mandate was tasked with the establishment of the Jewish State in July 1922 and became effective following the ratification of the Treaty of Lausanne in September 1923. All of these events were as a response to the end of World War I and were made between the winning nations and signed by representatives of the losing nations with the addition of representatives for the Jewish Zionists and the Arabs independent from the Ottoman Empire, which was dissolved as part of the settlements. Finally, the Faisal–Weizmann Agreement, which recognized and formalized the Balfour Declarations and related treaties and accords, was signed by King Faisal bin Hussein representing the interests of the Arab World and Dr. Chaim Weizmann representing the World Zionist Organization in January 1919. With all of these steps in place the formation of Israel as the Jewish State was set in motion and ratified by every conceivable interest more than a decade before the first stirrings which led to World War II and the Holocaust.

 

Another myth is that the Jews, Zionists and Israel have never made any territorial concessions. On this topic one can almost ask as to where should one begin? Let’s begin by taking things in reverse chronological order. The latest territorial concession Israel made was the complete and total removal of every single Jewish resident and IDF troop and any other Jewish or Israeli citizen or interest from the Gaza Strip turning it all over to the Palestinian Authority. When this was completed in August 2005 there was no Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip as none was deemed necessary while the area was under Palestinian Authority control. After Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip after a revolt in June of 2007, Israel then initiated the blockade in order to prevent Hamas from having the ability to import heavy weapon systems and larger rockets and missiles with which to launch attacks on Israeli civilians living in neighborhoods and towns near the Gaza Strip. When incorporating the Oslo Accords Israel relinquished both security and civilian control over all towns, cities, and lands within Area A and relinquished civilian control with coordinated security responsibilities within Area B in Judea and Samaria which is also called the West Bank in 1993.

 

When Israel and Jordan reached their peace agreement in 1994, Israel offered to return most of the West Bank but Jordan relinquished any claims to these lands leaving them under Israeli possession. Previously, when Israel and Egypt signed their peace accords in 1979, Israel returned all of the Sinai Peninsula after removing more than twenty Israeli settlements which had been constructed south of the Negev Desert in the Sinai while Egypt relinquished any claims to the Gaza Strip. This was a major compromise made by the Israelis as had they retained the Sinai Peninsula, which was an option available as they had won the territory in a defensive war, as it gave them access to one side of the Suez Canal, complete control over the Straits of Tiran, and they surrendered lands which would have quadrupled the size of the State of Israel. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 Israel was required to retreat from the disputed areas retaining those lands as deemed necessary for the security and defense requirements of the State of Israel in order to secure the peace in the future. Israel had technically met all requirements of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 once they had relinquished their control over the Sinai Peninsula. Just for the record, perhaps it would serve to denote the first lands which the Zionists relinquished and the guarantee they received in return for their sacrifice. After all of the papers, treaties, accords and Mandates had been established, the British were left with one nagging problem, their promise to the Arabs during World War I for their assistance with Lt. Colonel T.E. Lawrence, the Hashemite Family in particular who had lost their positions ruling over Mecca and Medina to the Family Saud. The British approached the Zionists demanding that they relinquish the lands east of the Jordan River for the establishment of a Palestinian Arab State ruled by the Hashemites. In return the Zionists were offered a guarantee that they would retain all lands west of the Jordan River and that these lands would be indivisible in perpetuity. This agreement is known as the Churchill White Papers of 1929, an agreement also ratified in principle by all the victors of World War I. The lands east of the Jordan River are today the nation of Jordan while the indivisible lands which were promised the Zionists west of the Jordan River are currently being divided up with the acquiescence of those same nations. So much for guarantees initiated by the British and backed up by the promises of the signatories to the Versailles Treaty among numerous other agreements, treaties, accords, and Mandate.

 

The last libel we will discuss is the claim that the Jews have no claim to any lands in the Middle East, never resided in or around Jerusalem, the Jewish Temples never existed, the Jews have had no presence in the Middle East for at least 2000 years, and the Jews in Israel are exclusively from Europe. As noted earlier, Jews started returning to Jerusalem and the lands around Jerusalem, especially in Judea and Samaria, since the middle of the Nineteenth Century. Even after the dispersion of the Jewish people by the Romans there has been a remnant of the Jewish people living in and around Jerusalem for the last three-thousand years. Even if one does not care to believe either the New Testament or the Jewish Bible (Old Testament) which both denote the Jewish existence in Jerusalem and surrounding areas including Judea and Samaria, there is corroborative evidence from Egyptian pictographs, Persian hieroglyphs, Greek historical records and manuscripts, Roman manuscripts and historical records, Byzantine records, Crusader histories, Ottoman tax and historical records, British histories, censuses and agreements, and Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and other writers bibliographies of their travels in the Holy Lands over the past two millennia. For the decades after the founding of the State of Israel there were over three-quarters of a million Jews expelled from across the Arab and Muslim Worlds, many of which ended up residing in Israel as well as some remnants in the United States and Europe. The population of modern Israel is almost of equal parts Ashkenazi and Sephardic. Modern DNA testing has revealed a common maternal root for both the Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews that predates their separation.

 

With the volumes of records from separate sources detailing the presence of Jewish communities in and around Jerusalem and their related histories, those pressing a denial of these facts are simply relying that most people will not do any research on their own and will simply accept their propaganda. With the historical contempt for the Jewish people throughout history, they are very likely correct that people will simply take their lies as facts as they simply reinforce their preconceived prejudices. Everything above can be validated simply by entering the names of the people or agreements into any search engine and follow the links. Some of these links will also tend to mention other histories but the original documents are available online and can be read in their unadulterated form. The body of evidence backs the right of the Jews to reestablish their historic homelands. There are other ancient peoples who also are entitled to their homelands but have been denied such by history and the powers which shaped it. Some examples, but not a complete list by far, are the Kurds who were victims of the European redrawing of the Middle East after World War I and their overriding preoccupation with their Arab allies, and the Tibetan Buddhists who had their country erased by Mainland China (it is non PC to call them Communists anymore) and have been victims of forced relocations and the involuntary immigration of Chinese citizens from all sides of the Chinese peoples. Perhaps the day will come when the indigenous peoples who have, despite the ravages of history and circumstance, kept a higher than normal cohesiveness will be permitted to reestablish their ancient homelands. Just because other such dispossessed peoples have yet to regain such privileges is no reason to prevent the Jewish People from reestablishing their ancient homelands, especially since they possess a guarantee in a treaty, the Churchill White Papers.

 

Beyond the Cusp