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

 

Thanks for Asking and Israel is Doing Just Fine

Virtually every single hour of every day there are numerous governments, organizations, agencies, assemblies and other assorted interests inquiring as to what, why, how, where, and even if Israel is up to, committing, planning, revealing, building, planting, reaping, and almost every other inging imaginable. Nowhere else in the world is subjected to such close inspection and the Israelis are so happy that so many people are concerned but even Israel can have difficulty with the world showing so much love, or consideration, or consternation, or whatever it is the world is showing. We would like to assure every single entity that Israel takes all the helpful comments, suggestions, advisories, critiques, reports, proposals, and even demands into consideration and gives them the full weight they are due. Where Israel does not wish to be disrespectful of all the kind efforts from all over the world but could we please ask everyone to do us a small favor? Would it be possible that you address the calamities, inequalities, financial difficulties, and all the other problems existent in your own countries, societies and amongst your populace and leave us to tend to ours. Thank you.

 

There have been some suggestions we wish to impart to you, free of charge. To the world’s governments and especially the European Union and European Governments we wish that you use your treasures and resources towards tending to the problems in your houses before sending so much to NGOs in Israel with the intent of implementing your agenda in our country. We are not attempting to corrupt your national interests and wish you would return this favor. Please allow these sundry so-called NGOs act free of government funding and directives. How can they act as NGOs if they are mostly funded by government entities? If you wish to have an influence in how and what Israel does, please work through the various channels such as your embassies instead of attempting to use serendipitous, circuitous, duplicitous and underhanded means to affect change and force your political mendacities upon Israel. We have treated you with the respect and deference due countries such that each is allowed to control their own policies and pursue their own desires and ends. The levels of influence being attempted by many countries borders on levels which in previous times would have been sufficient to risk sufficient insult which inevitably has resulted in open conflict. We have already had a small taste of the extent to which you wish to keep the amounts you are expending secret by the uproar that followed the consideration by the Knesset to require NGOs to release the amounts of foreign funding they receive. One would have thought we had threatened the very milk that suckles these NGOs when we gave consideration to said financing legislation and we can imagine the furor that would arise throughout Europe if we were to also require the names that go with those foreign contributions which are from other than private individuals.

 

With the millions upon millions and even billions being spent by foreign nations to influence events in the State of Israel we can only imagine the financial health of these nations. Those reports of the financial difficulties within the European Union must be fabrications otherwise you would most assuredly have more pressing uses for these funds. Surely the events and internal policies in Israel are of far lesser importance than the health of your economies and the needs of your people. We cannot help but to wonder what would be the result if your levels and extents of your squandering government spending by diverting such large outlays of funds to NGOs and other organizations simply to make your desires expressed in Israel while everything at home is so completely funded that you have these funds to throw at Israel. We appreciate that you think so highly of our success that you feel impelled to assure that the levels of social spending in Israel remains so healthy. If we could ever return the favor and be requested to meddle in your affairs please do not refrain from asking, perhaps we could assist you in finding better ways of spending your people’s taxes than wasting them on influencing Israeli policy makers. Honest, we are sure we could be of great assistance.

 

What also amazes us is how short your memories appear to be. Treaties and other binding agreements made between the majority of nations of Europe and included representatives from the Arab League and other interests throughout the Middle East within the last century guaranteed independence over certain described lands to the Jewish People and their State. The minimal boundaries of these guarantees, as you well know but refuse to honor or admit, relents all lands remaining from the British Mandate after the Zionists permit the establishment of a State for the Arabs within the Mandate to be formed on the 78% of Mandate lands east of the Jordan River and such lands relented for the Jewish State shall remain undivided and inviolate. Perhaps if you would dedicate a similar amount of efforts and treasure to meeting the promises made presumably in good faith as you have committed in complete disregard of your promises, apparently worthless promises, then there would be no problems as this disagreement you foment through herculean efforts was already settled. Since your regard for your promises has been made evident, how can you now expect Israel to take anything you propose, promise or offer as an honest promise containing any weight or permanence? We wish not your council as your past is likely indicative of your trustworthiness or lack thereof and we wish no partner in such deceits ever again. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, well, you know and we prefer not to be fooled twice. Given your duplicitous past, what is there that would convince the people and government of Israel that should we finally find an agreement with the Palestinians, just suppose, that you would not then begin efforts by some other group to claim the Negev Desert and your financing and full support through international agencies to assist another group to deny our ownership and rights to the southern desert? The answer is nothing. And nothing is what attention and heed we will continue to give your meddling serendipitously through your several NGO front-men.

 

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