Warning for Israel as Kerry Implements Abbas’s Wishes

If early reports are to be believed, United States Secretary of State John Kerry’s meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was agreeable and revolved around restarting the peace process and what needs to happen in order to persuade Abbas to return to the negotiations. Secretary Kerry has insisted that Abbas give up his preconditions of an Israeli building freeze, right of return for millions of refugees, and a return to the pre-June 1967 borders. One would think that having Mahmoud Abbas back away from his insistence upon such preconditions would remove those as obstacles and that is true for as far as it goes. The problem arises when one pays attention to the details of the results of the meetings. The small bits which have been mentioned point to some agreements between Kerry and Abbas on certain items which would be desirable to accomplish before the start of actual negotiations, though these items are not being labeled as preconditions, just things that should be accomplished before negotiations start.

The first of these items which have been hinted are for Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu present Secretary Kerry with a map showing what will be the borders for the Palestinian State and to reach an agreement on what should be the desired goal, but of course this will not have any relevance or appearance to the pre-June 1967 borders. Kerry and Abbas are also apparently in agreement that Israel be required to release a number of terrorists from Israeli prisons before the resumption of negotiations. President Abbas was quoted stating that prisoner releases were a “top priority” upon which everything else was dependent. Thus far no number has been discussed but one can figure that Secretary Kerry will most likely push Netanyahu as hard as he is able to meet the fullest numbers of Mahmoud Abbas’s desired numbers. Also mentioned was that the Palestinians could not abide by any Jewish construction in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, particularly Israeli planed project in E1 area between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim as this would isolate Jerusalem.

These discussions were not the most troubling though they do provide a view of a coming problematic series of negotiations with Secretary Kerry even before negotiations with Abbas can even begin. This was further amplified when one learns of some of the offers which Secretary Kerry was reported to have plied Mahmoud Abbas to return to negotiations. These were offers initiated by Secretary Kerry and were not in response to anything asked, demanded or even stated as a wish by Abbas. These are just more items being suggested by members of the Obama Administration who appear to enjoy seeing if they can invent demands on Israel which are even more outlandish and extreme than the ones emanating from the Palestinians themselves. These new ideas proposed by Secretary Kerry to be conditional for the restart of negotiations were for Israel to surrender much or all of Area B to Palestinian control and be included in Area A which is under complete Palestinian control and forbidden to IDF troops, Israeli civilians or any manner of Israeli control. Kerry also promised to have all of the tax funds Israel is holding be turned over to the Palestinians immediately and that Secretary Kerry and the Obama Administration would assure that these funds never be withheld or delayed again in the future. Even more troubling is the indications that Secretary Kerry is proposing that the Palestinians be granted jurisdiction over lands currently within Area C which is currently under complete Israeli control and beyond Palestinian reach. Area C were the lands which were originally considered to be the areas which Israel would retain and would never be granted to the Palestinians when the Oslo Accords were first negotiated and implemented. This plan also would allow for the Palestinians to be allowed to build with relative ease and mostly unabated wherever they had a need within Area C. So, Kerry is by implication of these moves to grant the Palestinians with total right to build anywhere within Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem while curtailing any Israeli control or rights to these lands.

Kerry apparently wishes to provide the Palestinians with control and freedoms throughout the contested areas while forcing Israel from any influence or rights in these areas. This would inevitably lead to the slaughter of the Israeli living in Judea and Samaria and would inevitably lead to the surrender of all the contested areas to Palestinian rule without any need for further negotiations. Abbas would simply have to sit across from Netanyahu and repeatedly claim to have to consult after every point is brought up for discussion, leave for consultation for a couple of weeks, return and decline to accept any offer and simply build the Jews back beyond the Green Line. The question then would be how much further Secretary Kerry with the full backing of the Obama Administration would try to force Israel to surrender? Would Abbas once again be boasting on how he would build the Palestinian capital in all of Jerusalem as he had when former Prime Minister Olmert was making ever more generous offers of land for empty promises? The promises and gifts which Secretary Kerry is proposing to Abbas are beyond anything which Israel can allow if there are to be real and productive negotiations. Kerry cannot be allowed to give away the store as if Israel was having a going out of business sale.

Prime Minister Netanyahu must do more than simply tell Secretary Kerry that he has no deal and that if Secretary Kerry honestly believes that negotiations are simply supposed to be Israel granting the Palestinians anything and everything their dark little hearts’ desire, perhaps he should check with President Obama whose recent message to President Abbas was to drop the preconditions while also pointing out the settlements were not an obstruction to peace. The Prime Minister had also better make sure that MK Tzipi Livni understands the limits and what areas are off limits and beyond her power to surrender in negotiations. There have also been rumor that MK Livni has concluded that the Israeli insistence to be recognized as the Jewish State is an unnecessary demand and thus one she is willing to surrender away. It has been reported that a Western source well-versed in the diplomatic contacts saying Livni “has become convinced that Israel’s insistence on this condition could prevent the resumption of negotiations, and did not rule out the position presented to her, according to which the most Israel can receive from Abu Mazen is a recognition of the solution of two states for two peoples.” Without this point being recognized there can be no insistence that terrorism and violence to liberate the rest of Palestine cannot be made honestly as releasing the Palestinian leadership from making this recognition is the sole route to defining the lands contained within the final agreed borders are truly Israeli lands and not just more Palestinian lands to be liberated. Without the recognition of Israel as the Jewish state there is no two nations side-by-side; there is only current Palestine and to be liberated Palestine side-by-side as far as Fatah, Hamas, and the Arab world are concerned. That is the reason Israel must insist on recognition as the Jewish state if the violence is to be ended. And that is also the reason that Secretary Kerry needs to be sent packing well chastised with his tail between his legs never to return as long as he holds the concept that peace means Israeli complete and total surrender and subservience to the Palestinians and the Arabs. Never Again means Not Now, Not Ever will Israel surrender and allow the Jews to be made homeless again.

Beyond the Cusp

Israel Needing New Leaders with New Validating Justifications

Israeli leadership are finally realizing that the old arguments and the old reasoning for supporting Israel have been corrupted and turned on their heads as a result of decades of propaganda. The spreading of half-truths, utter falsehoods, and other fronts of agitprop has turned Israel from the underdog facing overwhelming odds defending against the entire Arab World into an oppressor which uses means and oppressions against the nearly defenseless Palestinians which are reminiscent of the Nazi crimes against humanity thus corrupted the memory of the Holocaust turning it into a liability instead of an event of horror that must be remembered if it is to be avoided in the future. With the Palestinians stealing the Jewish history and claiming it as their own, Israel needs to reestablish their legitimacy and disprove the Palestinian house of lies which the world has eagerly adopted in order to facilitate and validate their hatreds of Israel and Jews in general. The spreading of anti-Semitism, which has broken out attaining unprecedented heights with the promise that the steep increase is just the beginning, is simply the tip of the iceberg of cold hatreds and calculated threats to eradicate Israel and the Jews.

So, what is required for Israel to turn the tides of abrogation of the Jewish State by supplanting it with a Palestinian binational state or a two state solution which will render Israel indefensible? Some of the initial steps would be to state in simple but firm language the positions which Israel is prepared to defend and not bend or surrender their positions any further. The sacrifices of territories Israel has made from the agreement by the early Zionists, who ceded all of the Mandate Lands east of the Jordan River in return for a promise by the British and the countries of the League of Nations that all of the remaining Mandate Lands west of the Jordan River would remain as the Jewish State in perpetuity free of any future partitions, was a huge gift of seventy-eight percent of the promised Mandate lands for the purpose of establishing a Palestinian Arab state to guarantee a peaceful future. Display the White Paper treaties which frame this guarantee which established what is owed Israel under International Laws. Remind the world that Israel liberated Judea and Samaria in a defensive war which would allow the Israeli retention of all or parts of the lands gained from the hostilities in 1967 and 1973 under International Law and the Geneva Conventions in particular. Israel needs to remind the world which claims Israel has made no concessions for peace and demands that Israel surrender land for peace in order to establish yet another state for the Arab population which mostly immigrated subsequent to the initial return of Jews from the Diaspora during the Nineteenth Century. One such claim was the surrender of the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula back to Egyptian control in exchange for a peace with Egypt and in that treaty the Egyptians ceded any claims to the Gaza Strip. Point out that the treaty made with Jordan that the areas west of the Jordan River which had been illegally occupied by Jordan was returned to the previous owners of these lands under numerous treaties and conventions back to Israel fulfilling the obligations made by the League of Nations and acknowledged in Article 80 of the United Nations Carter.

But Israeli and Jewish leadership must go beyond the dry facts of treaties, conferences, proclamations, and edicts of governments and men and reassert the expressions of the inspirations, dreams and aspirations of the Zionists and their love and desire to reestablish and rebuild their historic homeland. The Zionists and Israelis must reclaim the emotional front and thus personalize their claims to their Biblical homelands and the establishment of the dream of an Israel that would be a light unto the nations through exemplary conduct, establishing a just state, and leading development in all fields dedicated to the betterment of the human existence. Israel must proclaim the good they have presented to the world and the potentials of future miracles, scientific developments, agricultural inventiveness, medical discoveries, and general improvements in countless fields of human endeavors complimenting and furthering knowledge and accomplishments. Above all of these arguments must be accompanied by the human emotions and inspirations which tie Eretz Yisroel and the Children of Israel and attach the modern return to the first return out from Egypt and away from Pharaoh. The Biblical establishment of the claim to the land must become a driving force and validation just as it drove the Zionists to expend their energies in reestablishing the State of Israel with the blessings and cooperation of not solely Europe and the United States but also with the blessings of King Faisal bin Hussein bin Ali al-Hashemi who signed numerous treaties, conventions, and conference agreements as the reigning Arab leadership in setting aside lands for the establishment of a Jewish State. The real histories which prove that the initial investments of the world towards the establishing of Israel were committed beginning at the end of World War I and had nothing to do with the Holocaust. The agreements to found a Jewish State in the Middle East was an idea that has its roots in the mid to late Eighteen-Hundreds and the returning of the Jews to the area which would become Israel began even earlier. It must be expressed and displayed that there has been a Jewish presence in the areas which now constitute Israel with an emphasis on the facts that a Jewish presence and historical relationship has existed for over three-thousand years with large presence of Jewish communities in cities such as Jerusalem, Hevron, Tiberius, Shechem (Ramallah), and among many other towns and villages throughout the lands.

The need for an update of the arguments used to validate the Jewish presence in the Middle East may require an entire change of the leadership with a passing of the torch to a new generation. The old leadership which are still steeped in the old arguments and who dream of a return to the times when Israel was loved by most of the world believing that is possible to rekindle must be supplanted by those who are ready to establish new and uncorrupted by Arab propaganda arguments and validations of the correctness and promise of Israel as the Jewish State. New arguments which reveal the perfidy of the lies which the Arabs utilize to steal the legitimacy of Israel being established for the Jews and are making every effort to corrupt and adapt the Jewish history and rights into a falsified collection of arguments establishing a Jewish Israel to establish an Arab replacement must be revealed and the truth reestablished. They must no longer present the apologetic appearance which begs for favor and recognition all the time presenting a meekness which is unbecoming and undermines their arguments. This is the time for rekindling the fire of Zionism in the souls of the Israeli leadership. The Jewishness of Israel and the right of the Jews to their eternal homeland must be presented forcefully, beaming with pride and challenging any who might choose to deny these truths. The old ‘if I may’ attitude should be relegated to the scrapheap of history and a new, inspired, reinvented Zionism needs to be presented the world, the same Zionism which burned hot and bright resulting in the Balfour Declaration and the ensuing documents which laid the foundations for the current state of Israel. Inspired presentations of the truth in an unapologetic manner even to the point of arrogance rather than meekness is necessitated due to the surrender of the preeminent claims to the lands being perceived to stand with the invented entities of the invented peoples, the Palestinians, who are simply Arabs who before immigrating to what is today is Israel since the late nineteenth century were simply Syrians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Iraqis and other native Arabs from neighboring lands. The time for polite discourse passed decades ago and, as was predicted, the only arguments and reasoning that will be heard by the rest of the world are those presented with a forcefulness with which truths must be presented. The phrases which need be adopted by all the Jews of Israel and the Diaspora are those of the late Meir Kahane, “Never Again” and “Am Yisroel Chai.”

Beyond the Cusp

United States Department of State Proves Their Blindness Again

The State Department of the United States once again made the same tired old New Year’s resolution, or should I say wish list, by once more urging that the leaders of Israel and the Palestinians return to negotiations and find a resolution. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland stated, “As we turn the calendar to 2013… now is the time for leaders on both sides to display real leadership, to focus on the work that’s necessary to return to direct negotiations.” Her helpful suggestions were for, “both sides to clearly demonstrate that they are serious about achieving two states living side by side in peace and security,” adding that both sides, refrain from “counter-productive unilateral actions.” Ms. Nuland turned thoughtful and made this observation which had obviously escaped everybody else’s observations, “We have an environment that was quite fraught and quite difficult at the end of 2012, so the question is whether we can make a fresh start in 2013, and that’s going to require restraint on all sides. We want 2013 to be a better year, we really do.” How can anybody expect anything short of miracles to suddenly bloom and both sides to come together and hold a hoedown.

Well, let’s take a look at what needs to occur from both sides in order for negotiations to actually produce results. We will start with the Palestinian side. Numerous times, almost as many times as we’ve discussed this, Mahmoud Abbas has given a partial list which varies from time to time, depending on the atmospheric conditions, orientation of the stars, and his horoscope, of preconditions he requires the Israelis fulfill before he would be able to even consider joining into negotiations. His precondition lists usually start with almost understandable demands as if you can get anything from the other side before negotiations begin, you have gained the advantage and that is one less area of contention. Examples of such are the Israelis accepting the pre Six Day War which are also the 1949 Armistice lines as the starting point for negotiations for boundaries for the Palestinian State, a complete freeze of any and all Israeli building of any variety beyond the same boundaries, the surrender of the Old City areas of Jerusalem, the surrender of the entirety of the Temple Mount, and the surrender of the Western Wall and the Plaza where Jews regularly gather to pray as it is the closest Jews can come to praying at the holiest site of Judaism which is the Temple Mount.

There is a secondary level of preconditions which the Palestinian leadership regularly trot out just in case anybody might think that if only the Israelis make some offer of compromise which was the whole idea behind United States President Barack Obama’s forcing of a ten month building freeze on Prime Minister Netanyahu in order to entice Mahmoud Abbas to the negotiating table near the beginning of the President’s first term. It was during that time when Mahmoud Abbas first previewed some of his additional preconditions. Some of these include the release of the majority of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel serving life sentences, release of all Palestinian from Israeli prisons as part or at the end of negotiations, open route under Palestinian control and security between Gaza and Judea and Samaria cutting Israel in halves, no restrictions on military buildup of Palestinian security forces, ability to hold military training exercises with other nations within Palestine, removal of all roadblocks and checkpoints anywhere in the West Bank, recognition of all Islamic holy sites in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) which a subset of these sites bears a remarkable similarity to the Jewish and Christian holy sites, and the requirement that upon completion of negotiations every single Jew must be removed from within the lands denoted as the Palestinian state and be forbidden from reentering these lands in perpetuity thus placing the majority of Jewish holy sites out of the reach of the Jewish people both Israeli and non-Israeli.

Then there are the deal busters which Mahmoud Abbas has trotted out any time it appears that the Israelis might actually agree to meet any of his preconditions. These are the real beyond the pale demands which no Jewish or Israeli leader would ever agree to grant.  These include the Right of Return within Israel with full rights as citizens of over four and a half million Palestinian refugees as listed by UNRWA, the Palestinians are not to be held to consider any agreement as final and must be permitted their understandable right to continue protests until all of the Palestinian lands have been liberated which means they get to continue their terror war, and they then claim that these are not preconditions at all; they are simply items and obligations which Israel is required to fulfill in order to prove to the Palestinians and the world that they are seriously interested in peace.

There are some items that Israel has declared that must be included in the final agreement which are that Israel be recognized as the Jewish State, the agreement be an end to incitement, terror, rockets, and other forms of attacks, and recognition that all of Jerusalem belongs to Israel and Israel understands the existence of Christian and Islamic holy sites in addition to Jewish sites and that Israel will fulfill their obligation to allow free access for all religions to their holy religious places while Israel intends to be allowed access to Jewish holy sites within Palestine. Mahmoud Abbas has never stated that he would refuse allowing Jews to visit the Jewish holy sites in Judea and Samaria and has left that to others to state; Abbas has simply claimed that no Jewish holy sites exist anywhere in the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and figures that settles the need for Jewish access as there are no places to visit.

There is one thing I would love to hear from Ms. Nuland or any of the other United States State Department spokespeople, exactly what do they expect from the Israelis who are willing to come to the table and attempt to hammer out some agreement between the two sides which they both give and receive some amounts of what each side claims while Mahmoud Abbas simply wants to hold a signing ceremony after the Israelis have met his demand over every single negotiable point which exists and then some. My bet is that had the Jewish people accepted the alternate offer the British had proposed, taking Madagascar in which to build their Jewish state, Mahmoud Abbas along with Yasser Arafat would have sailed their and claimed it as Islamic lands of the ancient Madagascar Muslims and they were here to take back their ancient homeland. Would you bet against such a preposterous idea and feel safe?

Beyond the Cusp