Formation of Palestinian State no Solution to Middle East Violence

For the entire twenty years since the fiasco named Oslo was perpetrated on Israel and the entire world we have heard the constant drumbeat droning out the mantra that the founding of a Palestinian State living side-by-side in peace and security with Israel will result in peace and calm over all of the Middle East ending all strife and violence. Even after experiencing over two years of unrest and turmoil of the Arab Spring, more aptly called the Arab Winter, we saw uprisings, violence, protests and revolution replacing longstanding dictators in the hope of founding something better all without even the mention of Israel or the Palestinians. How could it be that we had a popular uprising that replaced the government of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen with further unrest ongoing or soon to come in Syria, Jordan, Mali, and possibly Lebanon and others. Again, none of these will be about Israel or the Palestinians with the possible exception of Jordan whose population largely consists of Palestinians. Yet still we hear the drumbeat droning out the mantra that the Palestinian Statehood being established and carved out of Israel will end all Middle East problems and the world will enter a period of blissful peace.

 

How can anybody expect a thinking person to believe such foolery after witnessing the Middle East of the recent past? The Palestinian leadership itself has demanded that one of the conditions which must be granted when forming a Palestinian State in any form other than having it completely replace the State of Israel that they retain the right to resist and fight against the Zionist existence in the rest of their homeland until all of Palestine from the River to the Sea is liberated from the Zionist influences. So, by granting the Palestinians statehood a country established in all of the lands beyond the Green Line that includes every inch of land lost by Jordan in the West Bank, all of Gaza that Egypt lost, and half of Jerusalem including all of the Old City and the Temple Mount, there still will not be peace because as long as the Jews retain any land which was once under Muslim control there can be no peace. This is not my opinion but is the opinion of the PLO, Fatah, Hamas, Palestinian Authority, Arab League, Hezballah, al-Qaeda, and countless rulers, Imams, and Islamic leaders worldwide. So, it is obvious by their own words of intent that the two state solution as a final agreement is unacceptable to the vast majority of the followers of Islam and that they will only accept the entire eradication of Israel and replacing it with a Palestinian Islamic governance where the Jews will initially be allowed to remain as long as they accept the status of Dhimmi. But, even if this result were to be implemented, would that then lead to complete calm and peace throughout the Middle Easy? I think not and here is why.

 

Does anybody actually hold that should Palestine be formed and meet even the wildest of demands of the most radical of Palestinian leaders that this would result in the end of the violence and uprising in Syria? Of course not. That alone should be sufficient to disprove the claim that all of the violence in the Middle East has as its root cause the Palestinian/Israelii conflict. Would founding Palestine end the violence against Christians and other non-Muslims in Mali or Nigeria? No chance that would end simply because Israel and the Palestinians reached an agreement. Would all the terror induced violence in the West immediately terminate once the State of Palestine was founded and borders were established between the Israelis and the Palestinians? Nope. What about the eternal standoff which flares up with consistent levels of animosity and violence between Pakistan and India over the lands which were formerly Kashmir, would that come to a conclusion after the peace was signed between Israel and the Palestinians? That would rank as highly unlikely. Would stable governance and an end to the conflicts suddenly fall over all of Somalia, especially in its capital city of Mogadishu? Not a chance. Would Iran cease their drive to attain nuclear weapons and establish a Shiite crescent and hegemony over the entirety of Muslim lands and then spread this new caliphate to encompass the entire world? Never happen as their goals would remain unfulfilled. The simple fact is that most of the violence and terrorism which exists or is rooted in the Middle East has nothing to do with Israel or the Palestinians and whatever should come to pass between Israel and the Palestinians would have absolutely no effect on the rest of the Islamic world and those places where they have extended their influence or interests.

 

Solving the impasse between the Palestinians and the Israelis with the intent of solving all the violence and situations currently existing in the Middle East is a fool’s errand which only the most misguided would believe or expect such a result. That begs the question as to why in the world is it taken as fact that solving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict would be the cure-all of all the problems in the Middle East? The reason is the most obvious of reasons. An often used excuse for not addressing a difficult problem or not tackling a pervasive threat is to blame it on some unsolvable problem that is only loosely tied to the situation. The Middle East violence is a pervasive problem which would be extremely difficult to address, let alone solving. Much of the violence in the Middle East is of ancient origins with no resolution as long as the two sides of each conflict exist. The conflict between the Sunni and Shiite Muslims will not reach any conclusion in the foreseeable future. So, blame it on Palestinian/Israeli conflict and its lack of resolution. It does not matter if transferring the responsibility for tackling near impossible conflicts is a total ruse which anybody who takes even a moment to inspect would find the complete insanity of the claim as nobody wishes to see the truth. Seeing the realities as they truly are would require actions that nobody is prepared to undertake. Blaming the Palestinian/Israeli conflict for the entire bundle of turmoil, violence, and conflicts throughout the Middle East and related problems traceable to the Middle East is simply a way of kicking the can down the road, just somewhat more insidious.

 

This begs another question, what would happen if the Palestinian/Israelii conflict were to be resolved? Obviously, those blaming every ill or at least the majority of them, on the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians are counting on that problem never ending which is why there is never any pressure placed on actually forcing a solution. The pressures for solving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict are almost universally placed upon Israel while the Palestinian side rarely has any pressures applied to make concessions towards solving the conflict. The reasons for this is that Israel is actively seeking to meet and solve the problem while the Palestinians do not wish a solution as they are only being paid great amounts of money for as long as their “difficulties” continue. The Palestinian society is setup as being dependent on large infusions of money and on not taking the responsibility for governing themselves and simply blaming Israel. This fits perfectly with the desired situation of an insolvable situation which will continue without end allowing for a plethora of other problems to also be avoided and left unsolved. Making the finding of a solution acceptable to both sides of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict as the prerequisite for tackling the other myriad of problems which is the Middle East is exactly the same as promising to weed your garden after the last rainfall had passed. There will never be a last rainfall within reason thus the garden never needs to be weeded. The Palestine/Israel conflict also will never be resolved as long as the actual only result the Palestinians will accept is the instillation of a Palestinian State over all of Israel replacing the Jewish State and subjugating the Jewish population of Israel at best and an unspeakable alternative at worst. Since the Israelis are never going to submit to Palestinian rule over their entire homeland, the problem will never be resolved. Even if a Palestinian State is formed with recognized borders, the conflict will continue if this recognition includes a Jewish State of Israel existing beside the Palestinian State. That insures that the rest of the world can simply kick the can down the road rather than making the difficult decisions to address the rest of the problems in the Middle East. Simply stated, it is much easier to blame Israel for not completely surrendering to the Palestinians while never expecting them to do so. That is the path of least resistance when one considers that all the other paths are just as insolvable and much more dangerous to become involved. That is why the claim exists that the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is the root of all evil in the Middle East and why there will be no truthful attempts to address any of the plethora of problems involving Islam.  

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Abbas Announces Death of the Peace Process, Blames Israel

Palestinian Authority President Abbas announced in a conference in Ramallah, “The peace process is clinically dead and the Israeli side is definitely the one responsible. The ball is in their court.” Just days before his meeting with United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and putting further emphasis on this not so surprising announcement, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat added the following speaking to AFP on Sunday, “I was assigned by President Abbas to inform US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of our position on resuming negotiations once Israel commits to stopping settlement activity and release of prisoners, among other obligations. These are not preconditions but obligations and Israel must abide by them. We hope the American administration compels the Israeli government to fulfill its obligations in order to get the peace process back on track.”

Before anybody starts digging a grave for the obviously moribund peace process, shall we look a little deeper at exactly what was said, what was omitted, and what it is exactly that Mahmoud Abbas and his fellow conspirators are attempting to achieve by all this bluster. The first thing of note is that these grand statements and high drama come immediately before a meeting with Secretary of State Clinton. So, the first possibility is this was all setting the table for guiding the talks with Secretary Clinton in a desired direction. The crucial phrase was given to Saeb Erakat to relay and were, “…resuming negotiations once Israel commits to stopping settlement activity and release of prisoners, among other obligations. These are not preconditions but obligations and Israel must abide by them.” There are two items to note in this excerpt from Mr. Erakat. The demand that these are not “preconditions” but rather are “obligations” and as such Israel is bound to meet these requirements before anybody can even start to talk of the two sides meeting and negotiations restarting. That begs a few questions starting with where does this set of obligations derive from? Were these parts and parcel of any agreement between the two sides? Was this a binding resolution of the Security Council of the United Nations or similar decree from any other body holding the power to make these demands upon Israel? The answer is no. These are an ever lengthening set of demands that appear to sprout from the furtive imagination of one Mahmoud Abbas. Israel not only has never agreed to these stipulations, they have never discussed such things in all of their negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. And that leads us to the second consideration of what exactly is meant by “…Israel commits to stopping settlement activity and release of prisoners, among other obligations.” The idea of stopping settlement activity was a misstep, intentional or out of pure ignorance, made by the President of the United States Barack Obama which did lead to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu actually committing to place a one-time moratorium on settlement construction for ten months. During that period, Mahmoud Abbas twittered away the first nine months and only in the final three weeks made any appearance of an effort to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu. The end result was President Abbas demanding that the American President force the Israelis to extend the settlement freeze for an indeterminate amount of time until Abbas judged that the negotiations were completed. That demand never had any chance in the world and President Obama did not even back that demand.

About the rest where it adds, “…release of prisoners, among other obligations.” The release of prisoners is ridiculous as Israel recently released a large number of prisoners, over one thousand in total. But, needless to say, in the world of Mahmoud Abbas such does not count and Israel must release hundreds of prisoners each and every time he requests or they are obstructing the negotiations. The best part is the open ended “among other obligations.” This wonderful catch-all phrase fits the Mahmoud Abbas negotiation method perfectly and defines his approach for the past years explicitly. This allows Mr. Abbas to add item after item after item just in the case where Israel might decide to call his bluff and meet the stated demands. These other obligations inevitably will lead to the one deal breaker Mr. Abbas keeps in his back pocket for those emergencies when he is caught without a new demand, that is the “Right of return” where he insists that Israel absorb four and a half million or more so-called Palestinian refugees. We will get into the unique definition of Palestinian refugee in a moment. Other standard demands that he currently has been including in this list include but are not limited to the following; release of all Palestinian prisoners who have been incarcerated from before the year 2000 (this consists almost exclusively of prisoners who have murdered multiple Israeli civilians and are serving multiple life sentences, or put another way, the worst of the worst), surrender of all of the Old City of Jerusalem including the Temple Mount and the Western Wall (which then would be made off limits in practice if not in fact through violence such as is often seen when Jews visit Jacobs Tomb in Hevron), usage of the 1949 Armistice Lines as the starting point for the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, and others. The latest and most mind boggling of President Mahmoud Abbas demands was introduced in the last week or so when he now demands that the Palestinian Authority, fresh off being recognized by UNESCO as a member country, have the right to import weapons. Be assured, he will claim to the press that he intends only to upgrade the pitiful weapons his security forces and police are forced to use currently and nothing really serious. The Palestinian police and security forces are armed with two year old M-16s, a commensurate number equipped with M-209 grenade launchers, M-60 30 caliber belt-fed machine guns, 9MM side arms, and whatever older weapons they have from unofficial sources which include many Kalashnikov assault rifles, Russian and other RPGs, and when including the terror arm of Mahmoud Abbas’s PLO, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, very likely anti-tank launchers and other and various crew served weapons including small and medium range mortars, Grad rockets, Katyusha rockets, enhanced Katyusha rockets, Qassam rockets, and other various mines, explosives grenades and indirect fire weapons. Yet, Mr. Abbas sees the need to enhance their armory with whatever he can drag across the border with assistance from Iran, Russia, possibly some European countries, and whomever else might be willing to trust him to take the weapons now and pay them some time in the future. And this is also an obligation he requires of Israel despite their never having agreed to anything even remotely resembling such.

Now for the promised definition of a Palestinian Refugee. Where in the real world, that is anywhere not part of the Palestinian influence and support groups, the refugees are cared for by the UNHCR which is tasked with caring for refugees and making every possible attempt to arrange for the refugees to return to their homes after any crisis has ended or be absorbed into an accepting country in cases where the refugees are the result of a war or agreement which changes state boundaries. One example were the hundreds of millions of Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu refugees who found themselves on the opposite side of the formation of India and Pakistan and desired to be relocated to their respective states. Oddly enough, today all of those refugees have been relocated and are living as citizens within one or the other country. Pakistan was founded approximately one year earlier than was Israel and due to much the same problems of religiously motivated warfare between Muslim and Hindu people as compared to Muslim and Jews in the founding of Israel. The main responsibility for UNHCR is to resettle and resolve all refugee situations. This was totally unacceptable to the Arab and Muslim states which desired to retain as many refugees as possible to use as a political bludgeon against Israel. They desired a way to actually increase the numbers of refugees. Within a decade of the founding of Israel, approximately six-hundred and fifty-thousand to seven-thousand Arabs were displaced from their homes within Israel by the Israeli War for survival after Israel was attacked by more than five Arab neighbors the day after her founding. The vast majority of these refugees had willingly abandoned their homes believing the promises of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Muhammad Amin al-Husayni who promised them a quick war where the Jews would be massacred and they could return to their homes and take of the spoils of victory. During the same period many Arab and Muslim countries either forced their Jewish population to leave or the Jews fled extreme violence and pogroms leaving behind their homes, businesses, and any wealth they were unable to carry. These Jews numbered over seven-hundred-fifty-thousand and some estimates place the number near to nine-hundred-thousand. Today there are no Jewish refugees left from that time and even millions of Russian Jewish refugees have been absorbed by Israel and Israel is in the process of absorbing hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian and Indian Jews currently. Today the number of Palestinian Refugees is estimated at somewhere over four-and-a-half-million. The United Nations went so far as to have an agency just for the Palestinian refugees separate from all other refugees. This organization is UNRWA and has the charge to increase the number of those considered Palestinian refugees by any method possible. Unlike other refugees who had to actually have been alive and lost their homes at the time of whatever event caused their refugee status, Palestinian refugees are not so tasked. If either parent is a Palestinian refugee, then the child is a Palestinian refugee, and their children will be refugees and their children will also be Palestinian refugees. Under the care of UNRWA there exist millions of second, third, fourth, and possible starting to be fifth generation Palestinian refugees. The sole solution the world has been conditioned to allow for these refugees is their incorporation into Israeli society in order to overwhelm the Jewish population of Israel and thus conquer Israel through sheer numbers. This is the intent of the demand for the “Right of Return” for Palestinian refugees. It is simply another imitation of the Jewish laws for the return from the Diaspora of Jews to Israel which is the “Law of Right of Return”. The Palestinians have even now begun to refer to the Palestinian refugees as being the Palestinian Diaspora in order to make them appear to have the same heritage to return to their ancient homeland. To initially qualify as a Palestinian refugee one need not even have been living within the Middle East and definitely not within what became Israel to qualify. All one need claim is that they resided in the British Mandate area for two years between 1940 and 1949 and they became Palestinian refugees. Even if they lived in Palo Alto, California in the United States during the 1948-1949 Israeli Arab War but had lived in the British Mandate from 1941 to 1944 they became Palestinian refugees as have their children and grand-children on and on. This is just the tip of the iceberg that is the scandal that is the Palestinian refugees. There are no Palestinian refugee camps within Israel; they all exist either in Palestinian autonomous areas or in Arab countries such as Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon etc. President Assad has numerous times shelled some of the Palestinian refugee camps in Syria during the civil war that is ongoing. In Lebanon the Palestinians are forbidden from most forms of employment and are not allowed to own land or even rent an apartment and their camps are guarded to keep them within, not to protect them. Jordan was the sole country to grant Palestinian refugees citizenship. Many of those citizens were stripped of that privilege after the Black September uprising by Yasser Arafat when he attempted a coup in Jordan against the King. The Palestinians remain as refugees multiple generations after their original loss of their homes in a war they did not start and neither did the Israelis start, but that was propagated in the Palestinians’ names by their brother Arabs and Muslims. That is an introduction to the reality that is the Palestinian refugee problem. Even under Mahmoud Abbas in the Palestinian Authority areas of autonomy the Palestinian refugees are contained in squalor of their refugee camps in greater poverty than their brethren who feel nothing for them and only wish to use them to destroy Israel.

Beyond the Cusp

Egypt, Obama, and Present & Potential American Hostages

Way back at the beginning of what transformed into the Arab Winter, known by the optimistic term Arab Spring, and freedom was presumably breaking out all over the Arab Middle East, numerous pro-democracy Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) were represented by numerous optimistic representatives who dreamed they were assisting the removal of a viscous dictator and replace it with a democratically elected liberal governance to uphold the Western standards of human rights, equality, religious freedom, equal rights for women, and equal rights of minorities of all kinds. These dreamers honestly believed they would make a difference and that a new age of unparalleled change towards a society based on enlightened principles which would be a close resemblance to modern society in Europe and the Americas. Somewhere between Tahrir Square and the election of a Parliament dominated by Islamists made up of largely the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists something went off the tracks onto a tangent which for these Western activists was completely unanticipated. Despite the potential for reality being far darker with significantly less freedom rearing its head in the form of the election results, these idealists remained in Egypt in order to continue the fight for a better and noble new society. Unfortunately, the last forty or so dreamers remaining in Egypt were now seen as a threat to the newly elected Muslim Brotherhood who, with willful compliance of the ruling Military Council, decided that they were now useful idiots which had been made unnecessary. Having outlived their usefulness, these Western representatives have had their passports and papers confiscated, informed they were not to leave Egypt, and have now had charges filed against them for belonging to unrecognized NGOs which were now illegal and had no right to operate in Egypt. Among these victims of the new Egyptian government were nineteen Americans which included the son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. This latest development does pose some interesting questions about what will be the reaction of the Obama Administration, especially to the detention of American citizens and how far will Egypt go in pressing to actually hold these people, hold trials, and possibly imprison them.

 

Thus far, there has been no ultimatum or demands for the release of these representatives for NGOs who were there with the blessings of these very same groups and parties which was so completely happy to allow these same people to press for and assist in bringing about the end of the government of Hosni Mubarak, but now found them no longer useful and have gone to the same predictable extreme in disavowing the now useless freedom workers. There have been so many similar examples throughout history of such utopian dreamers that we have coined a phrase to describe them, useful idiots. This is not to imply they lack intelligence but that they refused to see that they had been utilized for a completely different result than they had intended to bring about and were soon to become a threat to those who had taken advantage of their accomplishment and had hijacked the events and the systems. Their willful blindness led them to continue to push for their idealistic outcome despite everything which had gone awry and now placed them in the sights of the new oppressors who would go to any extent to end any potential for opposition, which places these people in extreme danger. They have now been trapped, charged, and may face trial and confinement which should be considered as a hostage situation. Fortunately, some of the American fugitives of conscience were able to take refuge in the United States Embassy in Cairo. This may lead to a situation where the new Egyptian government might demand that these people be turned over by the Embassy for trial and probably conviction and imprisonment under threat of attack of the Embassy. Hopefully, the American Embassy personnel have been instructed to refuse to turn over United States citizens for a ruse of a trial followed by prison terms of possibly five years length. The problem is that I would not put it past the Muslim Brotherhood, and definitely not beyond the Salafists as they would relish such, taking the United States Embassy by force and holding the American personnel hostage. I actually fully expect that this scenario is in our future and we will end up with a repeat of the Iranian Hostage Crisis, except it will be the Egyptian Hostage Crisis. Thus far, the Obama Administration has been actively attempting to increase foreign aid to Egypt and expedite the transfer of the funding to these same people who are currently threatening American citizens. Sometimes I just have to ask whether or not the Obama Administration could look any more like the Carter Presidency on steroids. Should the worst occur out of this coming crisis with Egypt it will be so much like, as Yogi Berra once said, “It’s déjà vu all over again!”

 

Beyond the Cusp