Troubling Clouds on the Israeli Horizon

Troubling Clouds on the Israeli Horizon

 

While there are some who will look upon the recent statements by a small but sufficient sized group from the party of Prime Minister Netanyahu, Likud, that they are prepared to resign from the coalition should Netanyahu make land concessions to the Palestinian Authority. Their position has also been adopted by the leadership of the Jewish Home Party and has been stated by Naftali Bennett numerous times as the peace negotiations continue under increasing pressure from United States Secretary of State Kerry and his team. Normally such threats would be sufficient to put an end to any chance of surrendering lands to the Palestinians except in the case where a final agreement had been reached and a formal treaty which also meets the requirements for Israeli security are addressed and included. Should a final agreement be reached which includes Israeli retention of the Jordan Valley; Israeli control of Jerusalem with emphasis on the Old City, Temple Mount, Kotel and other Jewish Holy Sites; requirements for the Palestinian state to be demilitarized with the IDF responsible for security; recognition of Israel as the Jewish State; and land swaps which permit Israeli retention of the majority of the mislabeled settlements. Of course it has been made extremely evident that these conditions are considered to be deal breakers by the Palestinians as their leadership, especially Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Chief Negotiators Saeb Erekat and Abed Rabbo, have made statements when each of these Israeli positions were first made public insisting that each is now a primary red line which the Palestinians cannot and will not permit thus adding the rejection of these central positions of the Palestinian Authority. None of their protestations are surprising as the real truth of the negotiations is that under the actual Oslo Accords the Palestinians were required to remove the statement calling for the eradication of Israel as the Jewish State from the Palestinian Charter and this initial and crucial demand which stands as one of the required steps for the implementation of the Oslo Accords and validation of intentions allowing for an open and balanced start to the peace process has never been implemented by the Palestinian leadership. There was the one time when there were Western witnesses at a Palestinian Parliament session who were present to assure that the Palestinian Charter would be amended as required where the Parliament voted to discuss the establishment of a committee to research a proper and acceptable rewording of that section of the Palestinian Charter at their next meeting. The next meeting and every one since have not been attended by Western representatives and no such vote has ever been taken nor any such committee established of course meaning the Charter has never been amended to remove the offensive calls for the eradication of Israel.

 

Obviously the peace process has continued despite the complete lack of good faith from the very beginning by the Palestinian representatives and leaders. The talks have had as much success as has the demand for an amended charter. The most evident change since the Oslo Accords has been the successful propaganda campaign maligning Israel and convincing much of the world that it has been Israel’s lack of efforts to cooperate and meet the Palestinians half way that has prevented a lasting peace providing security for both sides and ending the conflict. This view which has produced the recent calls from Europe to boycott Israel should the peace talks end without a peace agreement. The European threat simply assumes that should no peace be attained through these negotiations that it has to be an Israeli shortcoming and fault and the Palestinians are automatically not held responsible. With such a threat one might ask why there is no similar demand that the Palestinians also be required to reach an agreement with Israel. Obviously the European Union believes that the Palestinians are only capable of being in agreement with an evenhanded peace and that Israel, and only Israel, is capable of rejecting an agreement. This completely ignores the history of the Israeli/Arab state of war. The European Union is completely ignoring the Arab side which was worded very succinctly in Khartoum shortly after the Six Day War with the approval of the “Three No’s”; no peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel. The invention of an Arab peoples who were indigenous to the area including Israel and had been present in these lands for many thousands of years and predating any claim which the Israelis have made, despite the Arab insistence that there is no record or evidence that the Jewish people had ever resided in Jerusalem or the surrounding lands throughout all of history, was contrived in order to invalidate any Israeli or Jewish claims to the lands, predate and subsume Jewish history replacing the Jews including Abraham and Moses with Muslim versions of Abraham and Moses (and Jesus as they once again did this past Christmas) in an attempt to void any Jewish validity in claiming the area as their ancient homelands.

 

There was a second reason for the invention of a Palestinian Arab people and that was to use them as a replacement for the whole of the Arab world thus making Israel into the invincible armed presence against the weak and defenseless Palestinians rather than little Israel pitted against the entirety of the Arab and much of the Muslim world. This invention was further enhanced by claiming a history which if inspected bears a suspicious similarity to the history of the Jews with one major exception, the Jews were forced from the lands in the first two centuries of the Gregorian Calendar by the Romans and the Palestinians were supposedly dispossessed by the colonizing Jews who invaded their lands and forced them out in 1948. In order for the claims of the Palestinians to be accepted at face value one has to ignore almost four thousand years of history and many of the agreements, treaties, commission and declarations, especially numerous ones convened at the close of World War I. But there is an easier way to find the truth behind the entire argument being wages against Israel using deceit, lies, subterfuge and a reliance on anti-Semitism. Take the time and research recent history of the last century of Judea and Samaria, renamed the West Bank by Jordon in order to strip the lands of their obvious ties to the Jewish people. The lands were original ruled by the Ottoman Empire which left the area almost devoid of population. For a description of the lands in 1867 one simply needs to read Mark Twain accounting of his visiting Israel where he wrote his impressions in “Innocents Abroad” recounting his trip to Europe and the Holy Land. A short excerpt will give on a general idea of what he found as he wrote this description, “….. A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds… a silent mournful expanse…. a desolation…. we never saw a human being on the whole route…. hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.” Mark Twain described Jerusalem writing, “A fast walker could go outside the walls of Jerusalem and walk entirely around the city in an hour. I do not know how else to make one understand how small it is.” The modern state of Israel came into being in 1948 and was immediately set upon by as many as half a dozen Arab nations’ armies. The ensuing war continued in various stages of activity until peace was declared in 1949 and the Armistice Lines were drawn. At the insistence of the Arab leaders these Armistice Lines, today referred to as the Green Line, were never to be considered to signify borders as if this were to be permitted then Israel would have official borders and thus be a recognized nation state among the nations of the world. The Armistice Lines left with Egypt possessing Gaza, Syria possessing the Golan Heights and Jordan possessing Judea and Samaria. Egypt never annexed the Gaza Strip and refused to take them while accepting the return of the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula when Egypt and Israel reached a peace accord ending their state of war which began in 1948 and finally ended on March 26, 1979. The treaty was arranged by Egyptian President Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Begin and was signed in Washington DC. After the armistice in 1949, Jordan did annex Judea and Samaria and renamed them the West Bank in order to solidify their claims and in the hope of erasing the historic names which were considered to be Jewish. Israel and Jordan also reached a peace agreement on October 26, 1994. This treaty was arranged and signed by Jordanian King Hussein and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Jordan refused to take back Judea and Samaria ceding them to Israel only to renege on that claiming to have instead given the Jordanian claim to the area to the Palestinian people. The main problem with this presentation of the lands by Jordan is that Jordan illegally held the lands and while Jordan did claim they had annexed them, only two nations, Britain and Pakistan, ever recognized the Jordanian claim. Even the rest of the Arab League never recognized the Jordanian claim on Judea and Samaria. Since Jordan was an occupying power when they claimed rule over Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, to who did the lands actually belong? The answer refers back to the Churchill White Papers and the Peel Commission. These agreements along with the Balfour Declaration, the San Remo Conference and in the Treaty of Sevres are the major documents concerning the British Mandate and the applicable divisions and uses for these lands and are all recognized officially to this day as they were ratified subsequently with the formation of the United Nations under Article 80 of the United Nations Charter. The only problem is that nobody appears to care about their promises and treaties and prefer to abide by fanciful falsities which they find more convenient than actually enforcing international treaties and accords.

 

Beyond the Cusp