Pope Francis has guided the Vatican politics straight onto a dead end street with this making of a treaty with the Palestinian Authority giving credence to the Arab claims that the Jews have no ties to East Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and potentially the deepest cut of them all, no claims or connections to the Temple Mount. I hear some of you saying hold on, there was no mention of the Temple Mount in the agreement, it was solely an agreement that the Pontiff with the full backing of the nearly one and one third billion Catholics of the world that the borders beyond which the Jews must never be permitted to claim is the Green Line 1949 Armistice Lines. This agreement gave complete and total backing to the Arab claims that Israel would take over the Middle East and after that, well, who knows, perhaps the world if not bottled up inside the Green Line. Pope Francis completed the damning of Israeli claims to any of the historic Jewish lands or any portion of the Old City of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount or even access to the Western Wall by signing an agreement, a treaty with the Mahmoud Abbas and Palestine, which the Vatican had recognized as meeting all the criteria for statehood back in February 2013, regarding the life and activities of the Catholic Church in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem thus setting the minimalist acceptable borders for Palestine should it ever decide to claim statehood unilaterally and then claim all the lands which were part of this agreement as de-facto established and recognized border. What furthers the damage of this treaty in regards to the now defunct peace process is to have given United States President Barack Obama’s hastily spoken and then withdrawn recognition of the Green Line, his reference to the 1967 Lines, was the obvious and logical border for any state of Palestine amending his words after creating a firestorm to these lines as the basis where any negotiations could use as a starting point and make mutually agreed upon land swaps. Even this idea is a far cry from the original implications of the Oslo Accords which recognized the Jewish claims to Area C and the Arab claims not to exceed Area A and Area B to be divided through negotiations.
The lie that Oslo or anything else defined Palestine as retaining all of Judea, Samaria, East Jerusalem and all of the old city including the Temple Mount and surrounding grounds has been stressed so vehemently and for so long while the media reported the grand claims of Abbas and the rest of the Arab Palestinian Authority, Fatah and the world’s loudest kvetches of the far left that Israel must be forced to return all of the lands to the state of Palestine reestablishing it in its rightful borders when in reality Palestine was not even dreamed of and never existed, let alone been illegally conquered by Israel as Israel liberated these exact lands from Jordanian nineteen year occupation which stretched from 1948 until June 1967 when Jordan launched their attack joining in the repulsed attempt by Egypt and Syria to drive the Jews into the (Mediterranean) Sea, which was the promise and presumed rallying cry of the Egyptian troops and the expected outcome of Egypt and Syria and subsequently Jordan as well when they assaulted Israel from within their occupied areas of Judea, Samaria and Eastern Jerusalem and where they had denied Jewish rights to enter anywhere near the Temple Mount for the entirety of their occupation. There was no Palestine in 1967, there was no Palestine in 1948 as the Arab League refused to accept or recognize the partition plan thus forfeiting the lands west of the Jordan River to the nascent State of Israel which the Arabs nations, at least a half dozen plus numerous militias including the Arab Brigades commanded by the Mufti of Jerusalem , Amin al-Husseini ( Amin al-Husseini who spent the majority of World War II in Berlin and Nazi occupied lands in the Balkans where he assumed titular command though he did no fighting instead choosing to enjoy the pleasures available to him in Berlin and other European, mostly within Germany cities, immediately assaulted the Jewish State subsequent to its coming into existence such that the Jews were forced into a war on every conceivable front before they finished raising the flag on that fateful morning of May 15, 1948, responding to the Arab full-out assault and not successfully stopping their initial advance and slowly regaining land until the end to hostilities was established by the United Nations and the allies of World War II. The final ceasefire and the numerous ceasefires during the interim as the world ended the fighting every time the Israelis began advancing, retaking the lands lost in the Arabs initial assault, as the Israelis became more organized and answered by halting the advances and pushing the Arab forces to retreat but hostilities ended when the final ceasefire was established which also appeared to come before the Israelis had regained all of their lands.
The Arabs, with the media’s full cooperation in repeating their claims, had already started their propaganda attacks by making claims that Israeli meant Jews and only Jews remained after the Jews had evicted everyone else from their lands making Israel free of anyone other than Jews, just as the Arabs had done to the Jews residing in most of their states, perpetrating the lie that only the Jews alone were fighting against the Arab invaders. The reality is that the Jews were joined, or at a minimum were not hindered in their efforts, by Druze and Arabs who intended to remain in the Jewish State and become citizens and whose children and their children are today also fully recognized Israeli citizens despite lies and propaganda denying the existence of Arabs and Muslims having full rights as citizens in Israel.
This propaganda war by the Arabs, and particularly by the Arab Palestinians and the media to which they feed their claims, often outlandish claims, making accusations of Jewish apartheid and ethnic cleansing of the Arabs within Israel when the reality is that it is the Arab Palestinians who refuse to allow even a single Jew to enter their areas to live as has been abundantly clear with the hostility some Jews have faced whose homes are near Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. Statehood is amongst the lies, falsehoods and fabrications which the European Union often supports but has fortunately not attempted to formalize in a treaty as the Vatican has now done endorsing many of the Arab accusations against Israel. President Obama recognized such things in his Cairo speech early in his Presidency where he supported the Green Line, or the 67 Lines as he put it, as borders for an Arab Palestinian state but was forced to walk back just as he later chose to do when he claims he was vague in his definition of wording when he told an AIPAC Convention that he supported an undivided Jerusalem (we suspect he was speaking the truth and just not telling them he meant under Arab rule). That the Arab League has backed statehood would be expected as they with Soviet assistance established this Arab Palestinian nation well after Israel had regained their lands west of the Jordan River liberating them from Jordanian occupation. The idea of an Arab Palestinian state was thus presented in order to have a weak and vulnerable strawman which the world could rally behind against the all-powerful conquering hordes of the IDF who; if the Arabs are to be fully believed including in all their propaganda spewed on Arab Palestinian television and radio stations, taught in their schools and permeating their society; would run roughshod over the entirety of the Middle East and beyond. That would be a tall order as Israel and the IDF do not have the numbers of soldiers, even including all the reservists, to take and hold such an expanse and do not even request, a grave mistake by the staff here feel, that the world recognize and honor their promises made at the end of World War I. These include those additional treaties entered into by the allies of World War I in response to the Balfour Declaration and included within the San Remo Conference Treaty, the Versailles Treaty and the Anglo-American Treaty, all of which defined Israel as the Jews state and encompassing the lands west of the Jordan River while the Arab Palestinian State would be Jordan on the lands east of the Jordan River.
The full ramifications of Pope Francis recognizing the 1949 Armistice Lines as the rightful borders and has included such in the treaty also claiming that his rights and the rights of the world’s Catholics to visit their holy sites in Bethlehem, a city which has witnessed escalating terrorism, brutal treatment, loss of lands, loss of businesses, and being completely locked out of the judicial system courts and facing death daily from their Muslim tormentors who have already driven the vast majority of Christians from Bethlehem dropping their percentage of the population from 60% in 1990 to 15% just last year. Steve Khoury, Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Bethlehem, was quoted by Justus Reid Weiner, of Hebrew University, as having said, “Christians are facing continuous harassment. Due to this, many of them refrain from bearing crosses in public and carrying Bibles. He added that they are often told by Muslims to ‘Convert to Islam. It’s the true and right religion.’ Khoury’s church has been fire-bombed fourteen times.” With this treaty the horrific and confiscatory nature of the treatment of the Christians will not decrease but, as we here fear, it will increase as now Mahmoud Abbas will claim the entirety of the lands beyond the Green Line, never moving from that delineation as will become the gospel for Abbas and he will wave a paper over his head claiming that, this peace treaty, as backed by the Holy See, the Catholic Church, and the leaders throughout the world declares our right as recognition as a true state. This treaty defines the minimum of the lands which Abbas will agree to accept and will now start claiming that the treaty is just proof that his claims have been valid all along and will regard the treaty just as much the basis that all subsequent treaties must meet but also as a bludgeon to beat his points home while clubbing Israeli leadership as ‘refuseniks’ opposing the now obvious truths which is why this treaty will be proven to have been the first shot in a coming disastrous conflagration and not what opened the door to reconciliation as this treaty will simply prevent any compromise from being reached. The one thing we can be assured of is that the Arab Palestinians will now wait out those nations seeking the Green Line to become the de facto framework by which any future treaty is measured. The sole item we can completely expect is for any number of European nations now also making treaties with the Arab Palestinian governance, for now with Fatah or the Palestinian Authority and wait to see if Hamas will also settle for some treaty or if they will continue with their maximalist demands for the destruction of Israel. This treaty will probably be lauded as just what was needed to force the Israelis to finally make peace and follow the example of the Vatican but the Israelis making any peace will not be the measure this action must be judged by. The real criteria of whether or not this treaty is a helpful act will be measured by whether terrorist acts against Israel cease or start anew using the Green Line as the definition of their jumping off point or if they Palestinians will be readily willing to make a final settlement. Our best guess is this treaty will be most helpful for some future leader of the Labor Party in Israel to use it as their platform of their expectation to agree and reach a peace with the Arab Palestinians and end the sources of all strife, Jewish presence beyond the Green Line and eastern Jerusalem including even the Temple Mount, the one area that will cause the greatest of difficulties. The end result will be that when such an offer comes, be it from a Likud leader desperate to simply end all confrontations or a Labor leader bearing what they will call the torch to a new beginning. All it will result in is the displacing of a million Jews from beyond the Green Line, the loss of any access to the Temple Mount and a great advancement for the Arabs who will then be lobbing their missiles and rockets into Tel Aviv itself within six months of any such agreement. Then the end result might not be anything the Vatican might have desired and they will likely lead the rush to denounce the Israeli defensive efforts as usual.
Beyond the Cusp
Beyond the Cusp 