If Only Abbas Could Honestly State Desires

 

Mahmoud Abbas is excellent on claiming that Israel or Netanyahu are unable to meet his demands to make a peace. Could anybody tell us and point to the evidence that Mahmoud Abbas has ever stated plainly before the world even what his maximalist demands are to make peace or any hints as to what reasonably he would accept for a peace to be made? That is the problem; he has never laid forth any plan for peace. Mahmoud Abbas’s only statement about peace is that everything that has ever been offered is insufficient for him to agree and make peace. There will be those who have to blame Israel who will claim that Israel had never offered a peace proposal either. The problem is Israel had made specific proposals and submitted them during talks, the few which have actually managed to include Mahmoud Abbas or other Arab Palestinian representatives. Some have gone as far as splitting Jerusalem and turning over more than 90% of what Jordan held when the lands were renamed West Bank with land swaps for the remaining less than 10% and Abbas refused these offers and simply walked away without even trying to state a counter proposal and work out the particulars. Then as soon as the media was asking why, he would start screaming that Israel refused to give them Jerusalem and Israel was stealing Palestinian lands and Israel are refusing to continue negotiating and all kinds of lies and fabrications. Then much of the media print Abbas’s accusations and if Israel is lucky they print that the Israelis disagree with the Palestinians on why the talks failed.

 

 

Mahmoud Abbas grabbing for everything within his reach including all of Israel given half the chance

 

 

There has also been another reason why Abbas refuses to make peace and it is actually quite logical. The cycle of peace talks goes something like this. First Abbas makes his accusations that the Israelis have not negotiated in good faith and that until the Israelis make certain concessions he refuses to even speak of peace talks. The United States, United Nations and Europeans all demand of Israel meet the concessions demanded by Abbas. Eventually the go between drags sufficient concessions from Israel and there is a big buildup in the media and there are cameras to record the historic handshake and then Abbas pockets the concessions and goes home. The negotiations fail and Abbas starts screaming to the media that Israel refuses to make an honest peace. The media run with that story and that is what we hear again and again and eventually pressure is once again put on Israel to make concessions so that somebody with a brilliant new approach, there are no more new approaches, trust us, so Israel makes more concessions. The cameras all document the handshake with a new backdrop and the negotiations soon die. Abbas starts screaming before the media about Israeli perfidy and refusal to make proper concessions for peace. This leads to more demands for Israel to make concessions so the peace talks can resume. The cameras record the historic handshake, the peace talks crash, Abbas screams, pressure on Israel bring the next concessions which has another handshake and the talks, well, you get the idea. Israel has run out of room for more concessions plain and simple.

 

The French are about to start their pitch for new talks and they will demand of Israel to make concessions to bring Abbas to the handshake ceremony. There will be no use in giving him a postage stamp, let alone actual territory. There is a way which could lead to peace if anybody out there really desires peace. It is actually quite simple to state. Have Mahmoud Abbas and the Arab Palestinian leadership make an actual offer as the first step towards peace. I promise that if anybody can get an actual concrete written with maps et al offer for peace that is anywhere even close to reasonable there will be peace almost immediately thereafter, just get the Arab Palestinian side to make an actual offer of what it is they will accept. Obviously if their minimal offer for peace is for them to be given all the lands from the River to the Sea and the Jews gone, which is code for all of Israel from the Jordanian Border to the Mediterranean Sea with all six and a half to seven million Jews with their throats slit, then Israel will likely not jump at that offer. The nice thing about such is the truth would finally have been made obvious for all who are willing to see and those still refusing to see can be written off as anti-Israel and anti-Semitic as when somebody believes that only the Jewish People are not entitled to have a state of their own, that is anti-Semitism plain and simple. Abbas believes that the Jews are not worthy of living in their own historic and ancient homelands and further would like for the Jews to all be killed just as do his counterparts in Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezballah, Iran and in all too many other corners of this world.

 

You can know one by their words and actions and Abbas uses his words to instill hate and perpetuate the violence between the Arab Palestinians and the Israelis and particularly the Jews. We will not claim that there are not those who are on the Israeli side who do not advocate for the removal of the Arab Palestinians by any means necessary. We will tell you that they are not the ones who are in power. The people in power now and since 1948 in Israel have desired living in peace and preferably cooperatively side by side with our Arab neighbors. Our Arab neighbors have not been as cooperative in this venture since the dawn of the very first day of Israeli existence when their armies poured across our borders intent on a complete and total slaughter of every Jew and all too many of the Muslims, Christians and anybody else they came across. The Mufti of Jerusalem, recently returned by the British after his comfortable time in Berlin during World War II, demanded of his Arab and Muslim brothers and sisters that they leave their homes and farms and get themselves behind the soon to be victorious Arab armies massed on the borders so that the Arab armies could freely massacre all they encountered without worry of murdering a Muslim. The majority of the Muslims living within what was declared Israel on May 15, 1948, left their homes and sought sage refuge behind the Arab armies who ran into a small problem and were unable of destroying the Jews as they had sworn they would do. This led to not being able to share the plunder with their brother and sisters who had fled to seek refuge awaiting the promised bounty the Mufti had declared would be theirs. When these Muslims attempted after the fighting ended to return to their homes, their brothers refused to allow them passage back into what was now established Israel. Instead of allowing them to return they were rounded into camps and have been quarantined as refugees in Arab lands, some are even kept in camps in Arab Palestine areas such as outside Gaza City and in Nablus where they are Palestinian refugees residing in camps in Palestinian areas. They are kept prisoners by their fellow Arabs simply to be used as a bludgeon to strike Israel and flood Israel with these “refugees” changing the demographics and destroying the Jewish State. These “refugees” presumably numbered around six-hundred-fifty-thousand which is close to the three-quarters of a million Jews expelled by the Arab world after Israel was declared. Should these two separate sets of refugees have been treated as were the refugees between Pakistan and India, Greece and Turkey, Poland and Germany, France and Germany and others which occurred due to the redrawing of the maps of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa and the liberation of colonial states all of which though not without violence likely prevented much further violence and conflict which may have otherwise ensued. Proof is the lingering nature of the Arab Israeli conflict partially due to refugees on one side as there are no Jewish refugee camps as the Jews were simply accepted by Israel and incorporated into the society and were never looked down on or seen as a potential weapon to be used against the nations from which they had been forced to flee. The Arabs are a completely different situation as their fellow Arabs have kept them in the camps and they are now viewed as lesser people who could never be permitted to integrate into the society around them despite the fact that many have relatives living in the nation surrounding their camp.

 

Of course another one of the demands made by Abbas is that Israel accepts these refugees into Israel and grants them citizenship before any peace treaty can be discussed. This is a ruse and deceitful attempt to subvert Israeli society without needing to have peace negotiations as once these refugees would be granted voting rights they would likely pose a majority population and be able to turn Israel into an Arab state making negotiations unnecessary. Abbas is fully aware of this fact as he knows that should Israel have ever accepted such a condition that there would be triple the number of refugees than there are in the camps as additional “refugees” would magically appear as the population transfer was in progress. This would be even more pronounced with the huge numbers of Iraqi and Syrian refugees who could be included as Arab Palestinians since there is no real difference between the Syrians, Iraqis and Arab refugees from 1948 as noted above when we stated many of the refugees have relatives living outside the camps because they stayed with their relatives when they were waiting for Israel to be decimated and crushed.

 

The French are the latest to have a brilliant solution in mind if only they can get the talks resumed. Initially the French idea was to start the talks and if there was no solution reached after six months, maybe a year at the most, then they would declare a border and establish the Arab Palestinian State by fiat (not the car, a decree). This was the brainchild of their Foreign Minister Jean-Louis Debré who was recently replaced and the new Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius taking over and backtracking the ultimatum removing such setting of borders and French recognition claiming rightfully that such gave the Palestinians no reason to negotiate fairly. We thank Hashem for such little favors such as changing the French Foreign Minister to a man with slightly higher reasoning than dislike for Israel. Still, the cards are stacked against Israel on the world stage and will continue to be that way until Israel herself takes a stronger and more assertive stance for her rights and future borders as well as who may be considered for citizenship. It is well past time for Israel to simply reassess the situation, set her borders as they legally were intended by the Churchill declarations White Papers and tell the Arab world to be glad Israel does not demand all of the British Mandate as recompense for all the terrorism and wars declared against her.

 

There would necessarily be a weeding-out period where many of the Palestinian establishment would necessarily need to find new nations of residence as they have proven beyond any doubt their subversive and untrustworthy natures. Perhaps Tunisia or Lebanon might welcome them or they could seek a bunker in Syria or Libya or wherever else they might find acceptance. As for the troubled generation which has been raised on hatred and trained for terrorism and little else, it is recognized and been theorized that it would take between thirty and fifty years to turn the Arab Palestinian society back into productive members of any society, even their own, and even then much of it would need be done against the desires of the students of hate who either have graduated school or are so far into their indoctrination as to make any new and normal educational systems unsuccessful in altering their programming. That is a heavy price but with time, effort and a combination of rewards and punishments the returning these lost souls to a regular and normal life must necessarily be attempted. The most ardent and severe cases which insist despite knowing the consequences to murder what would then be their own countrymen and women simply because they followed a different religion, these would necessarily need to face expulsion and exile to any nation outside of Gaza who would be willing to accept them. The training to fight and kill Israelis starts at a young age as shown in the video below where a father in Gaza where Hamas rules and there are no Israelis is filmed training his four year old son to fire and RPG rocket grenade, a four year old child.

 

 

 

There will eventually be only one way this conflict will ever be terminated and that is for one side to lose totally. If the Arab Palestinian side loses completely, they will likely continue to have their area under Hamas control in the Gaza but will be pushed from Judea and Samaria areas as well as Jerusalem. The Arab Palestinian demand that they control the Temple Mount and their insistence that prayers on the holy site be restricted solely for Muslims as all other prayer is an abomination and would putrefy the Temple Mount being overturned and the Waqf being disbanded and returned to Jordan will be a first step in resolving the situation. The Arab Palestinians already have their own governing body despite their leader, Mahmoud Abbas, refusing to hold election since the 2005 election being won by Hamas. They have their own police and run their own affairs in Areas A and B and Hamas along with Islamic Jihad rule another Arab Palestinian State in Gaza which could be considered an actual nation if they were to so declare and become recognized. I am sure a number of European nations would gladly recognize Hamastan but they would rather scream about their being occupied by Israel and the IDF despite neither being the case and the only time it is otherwise is after Hamas rockets rain down on Israeli cities, towns and kibbutzim often numbering in the hundreds per day. Most nations would declare all-out war long before the fiftieth rocket rained down on them from neighboring nations, territories or whatever entity launched them but Israel takes a few consecutive days of over a hundred rockets as Israel apparently must go through a whole series of warnings, entreatings and whatever the latest European and United Nations demands may be and still the media and world will treat the situation as if Israel were the aggressor. There will be those who will point out that Israel fired the first bullet, which will be true only because rockets, no matter their size, are not bullets. Don’t laugh as I have heard that as an argument that Israel always fires the first bullet in the war as nothing was covered in the news until Israel attacked. Ignoring attacks on Israel no matter their severity and only covering the Israeli response on whatever news these people were watching, perhaps Al Jazeera America or who knows or cares, does not make Israel the aggressor anywhere outside the United Nations and its chorus of NGOs and Commissions no matter what anybody claims. The fact that the truth can be so twisted is why the Arab Israeli conflict will not end until one side eliminates the other, period, sad but true.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Israeli Leadership Requires an Upgrade

 

Reading the Bible, Old Testament and particularly the Torah, it does not take long before one asks themselves where are the fighters for Eretz Yisroel as are told about in both the Torah and Bible. Just a quick list we find Abraham who likely was the first man to use special forces tactics and a nighttime attack somewhere between midnight and two in the morning to free Lot and his family from the slavers who had taken them captive. Where are those like Jacob who fought an Angel pretty much to a standstill or some might say overpowered the angel while receiving only one serious injury to himself. Then there is Moses who fought the Midianites, the Amalekites, brought forth water from a rock as a miracle from Hashem, taught the Torah to the Israelites and assisted the building of the Mishkan. Then there was Joshua, Deborah, Samson, King Saul, David and Solomon as well as many other heroes. Then there were the wise and fearless all of whom showed their courage, convictions and faith in Hashem and only then were they found worthy of Hashem’s miracles. Even the parting of the Red Sea (Sea of Reeds for you modern revisionists) would never had happened had not Nachshon, from the tribe of Judah, not only jumped into the sea but walked out until he was up to his nostrils and about to take a deep breath before the sea parted. This is one of the main truths from the Bible which today is summed up by the proverb; Hashem helps those who help themselves. We must take the first step and in some instances we take those steps and Hashem foils our efforts simply so that Hashem can display that it is Hashem who saves us and assists all that we do and all of it is in service of Hashem. This was proven during the last Gaza War when a rocket was tracked by an Iron Dome unit, those anti-missile and artillery intercepting batteries which shoot interceptor ultra-high speed missiles which strike and neutralize incoming rockets, missiles, mortars, artillery and anything else launched at Israel short range with over a 90% kill rate, which indicated it would strike central Tel Aviv business district in the area of the central train and bus stations where the high rise building are located thus a threat to tens of thousands should it strike. The actual words of the commanding officer of the Iron Dome officer after they had fired three times and missed the incoming rocket all three times, nearly impossible, he saw that, “Suddenly, Iron Dome (which calculates wind speeds, among other things) shows a major wind coming from the east, a strong wind that…sends the missile into the sea. We were all stunned. I stood up and shouted, ‘There is a G0d!’ I witnessed this miracle with my own eyes. It was not told or reported to me. I saw the hand of G0d send that missile into the sea.” We reported more on this miracle here. This battery proved they would act as they tried and tried and tried and in the end it was Hashem who saved Tel Aviv from an awful fate. Another thing I can tell you as one who fired anti-tank missiles for Uncle Sam, wind has a very marginal effect on a rocket or missile’s trajectory and a wind capable of redirecting a rocket to turn and a land mile off to the west from a northward trajectory would have really upset anything not nailed down in Tel Aviv including such minor things as busses and anything short of a locomotive and that would be debatable.

 

 

Hands of Hashem Lifting and Protecting the Innocent

 

 

So, where are we leading with all of these little stories and examples? We look at the Israeli leadership and they are always so fretting the reactions of the European Union, European governments, the United States Congress, the American President, the United Nations, Russia, Kathmandu, well maybe not Kathmandu as Israel is loved in Nepal after the aid hospital and search and rescue teams we sent to aid them after that horrific shaking that rumbled through that Himalayan country destroying the capital and many of the villages throughout the nation and Israel sent medical assistance even to small villages halfway up some rather impressively tall slopes. It is somewhat understandable that Israel does what it can to remain on good ground with the United States as they are a major, actually sole, provider of fighters and helicopters. This was at the time deemed a good idea when the United States offered to provide both F-15 and F-16 fighters if Israel would stop their design and production of the Lavi fighter Jet. The Lavi would have been a direct competitor with the F-16 and the United States probably figured they would rather have one less competitor in the fighter jet department so they offered Israel a really good deal and also promised they would make sure Israel maintained air superiority in the Middle East. Well, with F-15 JSF being sold to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and potentially Turkey and who knows who else such as, Heaven forbid, Iran; Israeli air superiority apparently is not going to be so guaranteed down the road in five or six years when these Arab nations have the same exact aircraft and more of them in each nation such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Still the Israeli leadership bends over backwards to please the United States and even please President Obama with the sole example of leadership coming when Prime Minister Netanyahu and every other Israeli political leader, even those from the opposition playing the loyal opposition which is something rare these days, with the opposition to the heinous Iran Nuclear Deal which will give Iran a path to nuclear weapons in at most twelve years and more likely eight years assuming they are not currently producing their second run of them using an even improved thermonuclear design given them by North Korea. Otherwise Israeli leadership bows and scrapes before virtually every other nation which demands Israel limit building homes for Jews in Jerusalem or Hevron or Bet El while also demanding that Israel both allow many Europeans to build residences for Palestinian Arabs in Areas which were forbidden them under the Oslo Accords but apparently the only nation bothering to obey treaty limitation is Israel and they are going even further and obeying limitation which supercede any treaty. Such fearfulness and timidity has not served Israel well as all it has done is encourage Europeans and the United States to demand more concessions and more concessions and even more where Israel simply bows and scrapes and almost mindlessly obeys as if such was in Israel’s best interests.

 

The question which must be asked and resolved by Israeli leaders is where has polite concession after concession gotten Israel. The answer is they have become a doormat which everybody steps on their way to ask almost reverently of Mahmoud Abbas what he would like Israel to gift him for the privilege of having him meet with them, shake hands with whatever Prime Minister Israel has elected and then spit in Israel’s face and walk away pocketing the concessions the European or American forced from Israel on their way home stepping once more on the doormat. This has cost Israel any respect they had ever gained through the years and watching the spineless actions whittle away any respect Israel might have had has been disheartening. Remembering the valor and will-do, which is one step more audacious than simply can-do, which was exhibited in such bold and daring missions such as the raid on Entebbe Airport to free hijack hostages and the stern pride exhibited by Prime Minister Menachem Begin whose resolve and respect he earned assisted in the making of a peace with Egypt. Then there were the great deeds which were actually committed by the likes of Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ya’alon back during their time in the IDF where they had committed deeds of a nature similar to that committed by the young soldier now being politically sacrificed before the court of political correctness and seemingly in anticipation of European and United Nations simply going “Tisk, tisk, you had better punish that man for killing the enemy who had already stabbed one soldier.” Israel is in a war and in wars you actually shoot your enemies with intent to kill them; but not Israel as we shoot them with rubber bullets or if we use real bullets we are to shoot their legs. Shooting terrorists in their legs already did not incapacitate one determined terrorist who after being shot in both legs, one of them twice, still managed to sink his hatchet into another victim which finally convinced the people with the guns to shoot him somewhere more vital and then he stopped swinging his hatchet at people and will never again commit such a heinous assault. That is the only way you prevent your enemy from ever killing your soldiers, and with these terrorist that includes your civilians who apparently are legitimate targets for the terrorists despite the terrorists being treated like an endangered species and their lives treated as more important. The Rules of Engagement (ROE) are upside down as when you have an enemy who is sworn to murder every last person in your country, and in the case of Hamas and Islamic Jihad they want to kill every Jew everywhere, you do not allow them to live for another day and try again. And as the same government who demands that the terrorists not be killed but disarmed and taken alive as that is the humane thing to do, war is not humane, and then trades over a thousand of these terrorists taken humanely in order to retrieve one single soldier, then it is better to not be quite so humane. There are those out there who will claim that I am a monster for even suggesting the killing of these poor unfortunate terrorists who are only acting against the occupation. There is no occupation unless you count the Arabs who are squatting on lands promised to the Zionist Congress as sacrosanct and guaranteed by the crown of England and by the League of Nations and theoretically also the United Nations according to Article 80 of the United Nations Charter. The leaders of the European nations, the members of the United Nations, the Americans and anybody else capable of reading knows already that Israel was defined as we stated in the article yesterday, Israel is all of Israel as defined by the San Remo Conference and other inclusive documents from the end of World War I. Not only the Middle Eastern and North African maps were completely redrawn but so was the map of Eastern Europe. It was not restricted to the Arab World as claimed by so many, and that marked pretty much the beginning of European colonial enterprises in the area which had been colonized by the Arab Muslims and their converted allies for over a thousand years before the Europeans ever arrived. The colonialism label is simply a guilt trip being laid on the European and the Western world in general.

 

Another item that the spineless leaders have allowed by not standing up against the false charges has been the claim that Israel is a colonizing power. Israel was formed from part of the British Mandate from which both Iraq and Jordan were also formed. If Israel is a colonizing power then so is Jordan and Iraq as all were made from the same British Mandate and then Syria and Lebanon also would be colonial powers as they were formed from the French Mandate. Israel is an indigenous peoples who have returned to their ancestral lands and were residing in the lands south of the Litany River through the Negev Desert and on both sides of the Jordan River and Sea of Galilee since approximately 1200 BCE with a continuous Jewish presence in areas of the land and definitely in Jerusalem with many centuries having a Jewish majority population in Jerusalem while Jerusalem was never the capital of any Arab or Muslim nation. The Israeli leadership should be as proud of their country returning to its homeland and making the deserts bloom, draining swamp lands and making them furtive and building a modern nation while under constant threat of war in the face of terrorism and seemingly ignoring all adversity to thrive. Israel because of her people was rated the eleventh happiest nation in which to live placing it ahead of the United States and obviously virtually all if not all of the Arab and Muslim worlds. Now we need to have leaders equally as happy to lead with the same esprit de corps that is so apparent in the people. Yes, Israel has its problems but the most threatening and dangerous of these challenges needs to be met with vigor and nerve and dare we say, chutzpah, and simply declare what we know to be true and our lands as originally defined; and if there are those who object, well, sucks to be them.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Are These Two Demands From Israel in Peace Negotiations That Extreme?

Everybody claims that the Palestinians are the side which is ready and desirous of making peace. Their demands are well known or at least everybody claims to understand and believe that their demands are justified. The problem claimed by so many around the world, especially throughout the Western nations. They believe that the Israeli demands are the problem and that Israel is being too demanding and are occupiers of lands which actually belong to Arab Palestinians. I am aware that almost nobody who believes these assumed truths would accept any evidence I could provide proving their beliefs are incorrect and based on propaganda issued by the Palestinian leadership and repeated by the sycophantic leftist media which has condemned Israel as being colonialist occupiers who unfairly conquered the land of Israel and forced out indigenous Arab Palestinians. Another canard is that Israeli Jews are European refugees who arrived solely after World War II and Israel was only founded and that idea arose from guilt over the Holocaust. Never mind trying to persuade you by presenting truths such as the Balfour Declaration of 1917 or the San Remo Conference of 1920 were the most important documents, votes and treaties made through negotiations which included the victorious allied powers which defeated the Ottoman Empire or that these debates included King Faisal, the leader of the Arab and Islamic world, who attended many of the negotiations and conferences after World War I and who accepted the return of the Jewish people to their natural homelands even quoting the references in the Quran that stated that the Jews had been granted the lands between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea by Allah as nobody will accept such. So, why do we not discuss the two most important of Israeli claims which are as basic and simple of demands one could ask that the Palestinians refuse to accept.

One demand Israel makes of the Palestinians is equivalent to the Palestinian demand that the Israelis recognize the Palestinian Arabs existence as a people deserving of their own state, the Israelis demand the Palestinians recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people. Mahmoud Abbas and every other Palestinian leader responds exactly the same, there will never come the day when they will ever recognize Israel as anything other than occupied Palestine and that the Jewish people should return from where they came, Germany, America or wherever in Europe they came from. The big lie behind this rebuttal is well known and recognized by the Arabs as it was their leaders who caused half of the Jewish population in Israel by the middle of the 1950s as they chased, persecuted or otherwise forced the vast majority of their Jewish populations to flee often with one suitcase each forfeiting the remainder of their property and their homes and businesses. There were approximately eight-hundred-thousand Jews who sought refuge in Israel between 1948 and 1958 from Arab nations across the Middle East and North Africa which resulted in equal representation of Sephardic Jews from Arab nations and Ashkenazi Jews from Europe by 1960 and the two populations still share a near even percentage of Israeli Jews in the modern era. Should the Jews be forced to return to the nations from whence they came into Israel, the question is will those Arab nations not only allow the Jews to return but also provide them with their previous homes and also return their businesses and other forfeited property? Such is not only unlikely but an absurdity to even consider as they would be more likely to simply murder the Jews rather than accept them back as citizens. What is odd is there are those Jews who actually long to return to their former Arab homes and regret the fact they can never return.

The second demand made by the Israelis is that any agreement reached with the Palestinians result in an end to hostilities and an end to claims issuing in a permanent peace. This may seem to be an obvious result of any agreement except part of the continuous endeavors to incite violence against Israelis in general and the Jews in particular is the theme that the Palestinian leadership will never ever agree to an end to the violence and terror war against the Israelis until all of Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea has been liberated and cleansed of its Jewish population. This insistence that any peace treaty not represent an end to their terrorist war against Israel is part of what Yasser Arafat defined as the liberation of Palestine in stages. Arafat defined the first stage as a long term series of negotiations where he would demand from Israel concessions whenever the Europeans and/or the United States react to enticements and Palestinian demands to restart the peace talks. Once Arafat and the Palestinians gained these concessions they never returned them nor permitted Israel to take them back even as it was Arafat who always forced the negotiations to break down. During the negotiation the Palestinians would make offers to entice Israel to make return offers and once the Palestinians broke off the negotiations they would insist that the next round begin with everything Israel had offered in the last round be the starting point for the next round plus demand that the Western powers force even more concessions from Israel. This lesson was learned well by Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s protégé and second in command since the founding of the PLO in 1964 where there cause was the elimination of Israel replacing it with Palestine as there were no occupied Palestinian areas since the Six Day War had yet to occur, where Israel gained possession of the Golan Heights, Sinai Peninsula as well as the West Bank, historically referred to as Judea and Samaria, integral parts of ancient Israel lands. Mahmoud Abbas has continued this tactic and it has been used to the point where Israel has been pressed into concession after concession by supposed allies, even those United States Presidents who were awarded the title of Israel’s best friend ever in the White House falling in line with the round after round of forcing Israel into ever deeper compromises and surrendering bargaining chip after bargaining chip. The result is Israel has been left with no bargaining chips other than her survival and still the Palestinians demand concessions or no peace talks. The Palestinians have never been held to a single promise or concession as they simply insist they never made any such offer and threaten to walk out of any talks which back the Western sponsors away from holding them responsible for any act or promise they have ever committed and then backed away from fulfilling. Much of this has been further facilitated by the leftist media which blames Israel for every breakdown in the negotiations and carries the Palestinian’s water for them in every situation as they are threatened with no longer being granted access to Palestinian areas to gather news and pictures and are always mindful that they are dealing with terrorists who might turn against their reporters. Whatever the reason, the Israelis have reached a point where even the moderate leftists have realized that the game has been fixed and they are tiring of the constant hounding and hatred from European backers of the Palestinians and are noticing the United States starting to rival the Europeans in their political lack of will to side with Israel and even the loss of any fairness on university campuses where often Jewish students are attacked simply for their wearing anything which displays their Judaism and thus they are accused of supporting Israel making them legitimate for assaults. This is all part of why the Palestinians can never make a lasting peace, their promises to their people that the revolution against the Jews will never end until all of the lands are freed and the Jews destroyed and the spoils being split amongst the Palestinian people. Is there any wonder why Israel has reached the point that they are not all that anxious to return to the peace talks and refuse to make any new concession as what can they give now, Tel Aviv, the Negev, Haifa or what?

Beyond the Cusp